Dick Johnson writes:

Dusty time capsules from a half-century or more ago, a dozen canvas bank bags pregnant with metallic mystery reposed in a neglected corner of City Hall's attic until archivist Paul R. Campbell grew curious and severed one old-fashioned lead-and-twine seal.

Out poured pieces of Providence's past � thousands of coins, tokens, slugs and odd, inexplicable discs. Some glitter. Others are battered or bent, or dulled by time. But all are curious.

His best guess as to why public officials of the past accumulated the hoard?

"Amazing what people will put in parking meters."

So far, coins have been identified from 28 countries, and there are a variety of tokens from defunct transportation agencies.

The archivist has been assisted in his numismatic inquiry by two 13-year-olds � Emma Jutras, a student at First Baptist Christian School, Warwick, and Sophia Jordan, a student at Park View Middle School, Cranston.

The girls are friends. Sophia's mother works elsewhere at City Hall. They plan to make school projects out of their summer vacation hobby.

Campbell said that when Sophia recently visited her mother at work, the girl found the bags of coins and started poring through one of them.

"When we were ready to close, she was still going through it, fascinated," he recalled.

The youngsters work with white gloves at a table. A steady clink, clink filters through the air in the quiet depository for old records. A row of plastic cups sits in front of them, bearing such labels as England, Italy, Canada, Belgium, Pakistan and India.

Campbell isn't sure if the collection is worth anything more than scrap value, but he plans to consult a coin dealer to get an estimate.

Until then, each metal memento may have a tale to tell, but time has robbed coin detectives of their witnesses, leaving only the sparse clues of dates and perhaps country of origin � or the name of a vanished utility � for present-day speculators to ponder.

To read the complete article, see:Parking meter cache a ticket to Providence's history(www.projo.com/news/content/CITY_HALL_COINS_07-21-11_RHP9PKK_v12.44b99.html)

On a related note Tom DeLorey adds: