I Have Become A Collector

Originally published July 31, 2002.

It has happened. For some weird reason, I, who always used to poke fun at other people collecting things, have become a collector myself.

It started quite harmlessly. As you may or may not know, fifteen European countries introduced the Euro currency in January this year. While the bank notes are all the same, one side of the coins differs from country to country. I live in Austria, so basically we have those coins with Bertha von Suttner and Mozart and famous Austrian buildings and flowers.

At first I just acknowledged the fact that from time to time I wouldn't just get Austrian, but also other coins. Then I thought, I should just keep those foreign coins and see how long it takes until I have a complete set of all of them. At some point I started asking people if they might, by chance, have some foreign Euro coins. A few weeks later I bought a coin album and nicely arranged my coins in there. Then I started asking friends who went abroad to bring me the coins from those countries. Yesterday, seeing that I still had no coins from Ireland and no way of getting any soon, I went to a coin dealer and bought the complete Irish set.

At that very moment I realised that something had gone wrong. I had become a collector. The man at the coin shop told me that I need not be ashamed. He said that Euro coins are actually collected by lots and lots of people, far more than those who used to collect current coins in the past.

I don't know if all of this is a scheme by the European Union to encourage cross-European cultural exchange. But no matter if it is or isn't, it's certainly successful.

PS. If you have any coins from San Marino, Monaco or the Vatican and are willing to sell them to me at a reasonable price, please contact me.

The opinions expressed here are those of Horst Prillinger and his only. Please note that while he is taking great care to ensure that all the information displayed here is correct, he cannot be made responsible for any factual errors that may occur. Under no circumstances is his employer in any way responsible for anything published on this site. Links posted on this page are here for information purposes only. Under no circumstances can the owner of this web site, Horst Prillinger, be made responsible for any content on the linked pages.