2016-04-09 Sat

A story which will prove the fact that you are never too young to start collecting! 14 year old Sanskar Jain Bedmutha met a few polish visitors 3 years ago and enquired about their national currency. He collected the first coin for his collection at that instance, a polish one. There was no looking back since then and today he has collected 1,678 coins from 286 countries and 533 currency notes from 280 countries.

He started growing his collection with the help of foreigners he spotted or from family friends and relatives returning from overseas trips. His father was against his hobby as the young collector was so mesmerised by his collection of coins that he would keep staring at them for a long time. His father thought that it is a waste of time and also took him to a guru to find a solution. But then the guru showed his father a coin from Shivaji's era and asked him to support Sanskar’s passion. Sanskar chased foreign tourists and collected 85 coins and some currency notes during his family trip to Rajasthan. He also befriended them and is still in touch with them on facebook.

During an exhibition in Mumbai in May, Sanskar met an 89-year old collector, Dhirubhai Purohit. Mr. Purohit wanted to buy 4 currency notes from Sanskar for Rs. 5,000 each. But Sanskar wouldn’t budge! Finally as a gesture of respect and camaraderie between two collectors from two different generations, the old man offered him to take his lovely stamp collection that he had started collecting when he was 9 years old in return for the four notes that he was seeking. Mr. Purohit thought that Sanskar would be the ideal person to take care of his precious stamp collection.

Sanskar hopes to host his collection at an exhibition in the future.