MANGALURU: Most of us are concerned only about what is in a matchbox. But for this retired banker, it is all about judging a matchbox by its cover. He has a huge collection of matchbox labels. Besides, he catches up on the ‘soaps’ literally! He also collects soap covers.If you think these are just two of his hobbies, then you are wrong. To coin a phrase, he was swept off by the desire to collect coins too. And, on the other side of the coin, he started collecting currency notes.
Retired banker Anantha Tamankar, was invited to the city, a few days ago, to exhibit his collections of 25 years - an extraordinary set of stamps, coins, currency notes, matchbox labels, and yes, bath soap covers.
“I am a philatelist, notaphilist (collector of paper money), phillumenist (collector of matchboxes, labels) and numismatist (collector of coins),” Anantha says about his hobbies. His collection exceeds 5,500 matchboxes, 600 soap covers and innumerable stamps, coins and currency notes from 1947 till now. “I just lack Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000 from the Indian note collection. I have about 406 notes from 195 countries,” he says.“I once reached 10,000 matchbox labels. But the old ones became crisp and powdered.”
His journey started, however, with the usual, stamps. “I then started collecting coins, currency notes, matchbox labels and soap covers,” he says. “When I was in the eighth standard, we had extracurricular activities every Wednesday. We used to collect different coloured stones and Ganesh beedi pictures. Then I began with stamps, first the 1 paise, then 2, then 5 paise, with the India map on them. Those stamps then stopped.”
Over the years, the hobby discontinued. However, it reignited, when he was working with a bank.
He narrates his interest in coins. “When I joined the bank, an old woman gave me some coins of different validity. I told her they were not valid, she told me ‘give me 8 annas, I want to have coffee or tea’. I gave it to her. After a few days, she got some Nizam coins and again asked for 4 annas. I was irked but agreed. Again, after 15 days, she got 7-8 coins which were totally rejected and I lost my cool. That was when she said ‘when those two coins (that are valid) are okay for you, why are you not respecting this (invalid) coin?” Then on, the journey with the coins began.”
However, there is a different story about the soap collection. “It was not me but my daughter who collected it all these years. When she was in the eighth standard, she was also interested in stamp collection. But I wanted to divert her attention from my collection. So I made her collect soapcovers,” he said. The collection went up to more than 600 different covers for 11 years.
Anantha is supported by his wife, daughter, and son throughout. “All these years, when I was transferred from place to place, I would freely exhibit my collections in schools. There is no income earned, I’m not a trader. I used the money I earned, now it’s reduced a little after retirement. In all, I do it for self-satisfaction,” he says.Anantha who now lives in Mysuru continues to collect stamps, coins, currency notes, soap covers and exhibits them. He took over bath soap cover collection from his daughter the previous year.
PRESERVATION
Anantha has been collecting stamps since 1989, coins and currency notes since 1992, matchbox labels since 1997, and his daughter’s soap collection was from 2007. In 2000, when his collection grew substantially, Anantha took all of them, except the soap covers, and got them charted at a photo album factory in Tumakuru. It was the first time that the factory laminated such items. Now his collections are preserved systematically in the charts and are put aside in a locker, only to be taken out during exhibitions. From his oldest Shivaji coins to the latest K50 notes, none of the items have been preserved with powder or chemicals spray, as Anantha believes chemicals spoils the quality of the currency and products. “Currency papers are affected by acid, hence if I spray it, the originality is lost, and quality of the coins can be compromised when using petrol products for their preservation,” he says.