A lifelong journey of explorations is how many stamp and coin collectors describe their passion. It often began early in life with a small bag of coins collected or inherited from relatives combined with a healthy dose of curiosity and speculation about the origin and journey of these simple treasures.

Many find they are able to combine coin collecting with other interests such as history or languages. A number of lower North Island collectors of coins, medals, banknotes and tokens gathered in Levin recently to natter about their finds.

Martin Purdy from Upper Hutt grew up in Levin and graduated from Horowhenua College.

His family came here from England when he was a child and had among their possessions a pocketful of small coins, which set him on the journey of a lifetime collecting coins.

He is a member of the Royal Numismatic Society and compiles catalogues for it on New Zealand medals.

He combined an early interest in languages with his hobby of collecting foreign coins.

"I prefer the coins that have been in circulation," he said.

"I read all the books on coins the Levin library had and once I was working - as a translator - I bought copies of these books," he said.

"Books are the best source for information. Not everything is online."

Today he researches and catalogues and spent years editing the Numismatic Society's Journal, which comes out once a year.

He expects his current project, cataloguing New Zealand's medals, to take 10 years.

Martin adds:

To read the complete article, see:
Coin collecting: a lifetime adventure that sometimes leads to a dream job(https://www.nzherald.co.nz/horowhenua-chronicle/news/coin-collecting-a-lifetime-adventure-that-sometimes-leads-to-a-dream-job/LTSTSA2TDNT73ACB32D35W3UFY/)

To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
NEW BOOK: NEW ZEALAND MEDALS 1939-40(https://www.coinbooks.org/v23/esylum_v23n36a05.html)
NEW BOOK: NEW ZEALAND MEDALS, THIRD EDITION(https://www.coinbooks.org/v23/esylum_v23n49a04.html)