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Here’s something most people don’t know: I collect coins. Don’t tell anyone.
When I was a kid coin collecting was my whole persona. Every birthday and Christmas wish was for more coins, I was in the coin club at school, and my greatest excitement was a weekend excursion to the tiny coin shop in the Riverview Mall, where I would incrementally spend all of my saved-up earnings and allowance money. It didn’t hurt that my family owned and ran a variety store, where I would spend the time between customers sifting through the register searching for old silver and rare pennies*.
And then when I was fourteen years old someone broke into our house. The thief went straight to my bedroom closet and took my entire collection. There had been no ransacking at all, so the police concluded that the person must have known that the coins were there, so it was probably a friend of mine. This happened more than forty years ago but I have to admit that it still gets me remarkably upset when I think of it.
I’m guessing that if you surveyed serious coin collectors – especially teenaged ones – you’d find that they don’t tend to have a whole lot of friends. I sure didn’t. Also, there was a large footprint left on the front door from where the intruder kicked it in, and with that clue I was able to narrow down the suspects to just two. To this day I am pretty sure one of those two people did it. I haven’t seen one of them since I was a teenager; the other person I still know.
The only other thing the thief took was my mother’s box of jewelry. We did get a cheque from the insurance company but the family was pretty low on funds at the time and the replacement money went towards food and bills. I was disappointed – I had been looking forward to using my share of the insurance money on a shopping spree at the coin store – but I understood. In the end, that break-in stopped my coin collecting dead in its tracks.
Then a dozen or more years ago m’lady gave my a Royal Canadian Mint collector coin commemorating Canada’s Six-String Nation guitar for Christmas. And while my interest in coins had never truly waned this gift reinvigorated my passion for collecting.
Way back when I was a goofy little coin-geek in short pants my greatest dream was to visit the Royal Canadian Mint in Ottawa, but by the time I was in my twenties and living in the city attending university my obsession with coins had given way to a guitar obsession (which remains to this day), so a Mint visit was off my radar. However, I was still living in Ottawa when my coin quirk was reignited and my inaugural trip to the Mint was a solo visit on my birthday a bunch of years ago. It was awesome! Everything I had hoped for as a kid and more!
So now that you’re up to speed let me quickly bring you to October 27th, 2023. I was in Ottawa working at the NAC and I was excited to learn that the Mint would be hosting a coin exchange in their boutique while I was there. (You’ve probably noticed that the Mint often issues loonies and toonies with commemorative designs on them, things like the 1972 Hockey Summit toonie and the Oscar Peterson loonie. Well, when they release them the Mint tends to host events where collectors can purchase a few uncirculated commemorative coins for face value.) As an RCM insider Masters Club member I get a free Mint tour every year so I booked one to coincide with the exchange.
I walked from my hotel to the Mint and climbed the stairs to the boutique. I bee-lined to the coin exchange and snagged five coloured Jean Paul Riopelle toonies**. Then I perused the display cases playing “Got it, need it, need it, got it, need it…” until the tour was ready to begin.
Like I say, I’ve taken the Mint tour a bunch of times (though this is the first time I’ve included one of the visits here amongst these ticket stories), and the tours are all the same. A guide leads the group along an enclosed second-floor hallway that overlooks Mint employees working in different rooms below while explaining the entire minting process, from the machines that melt down massive huge strips of gold and silver all the way to the bins full of shiny new coins at the end.
This particular tour closed with something new: an explanation of the Mint’s pending switch on all circulation coins to the new obverse cameo featuring King Charles. Amazingly, here we were more than a year after the Queen had died and the Mint still had not released their portrait of the new monarch. The guide did explain that the new image would portray Charles facing the opposite direction from his mother, as every new monarch pictured on Canadian coins is meant to be facing the previous monarch.
To which I could only think: well, duh.
For one reason or another, over the years I had generally found myself touring the Mint specifically during the holidays or on weekends, so this was only the second time I took an RCM tour when there were actually people working down on the floor. And while that certainly made the tour significantly more interesting, it reminded me of another quirk I have: I find it embarrassing to watch people work. Going forward I’m going to try to stick with the holidays and weekends.
But then, I’m a bit of a weird guy. I do collect coins, after all.
(Once bitten, twice shy: I now keep most of my collection in a safety deposit box. So don’t even try it.)
*I’ll never forget the time I popped open a roll of pennies at the store and found a 1925 small cent staring up at me. A 1925 penny in any condition was well out of my price range down at the coin shop and this one still had a bit of red left in it! My gosh, I was so, so excited. I wish I still had it.
**I was disappointed that they didn’t have any of the non-coloured Riopelle coins at the exchange. Sure, the coloured coins are more eye-catching but the non-coloured ones are more collectible. Why? Because when the RCM issues commemorative toonies their standard formula is to mint two million coloured coins and only a million non-coloured ones.
Todd Man Out 