PAPER PENNIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 25, 29 January 1921, Page 13

PAPER PENNIES.

CURRENCY COLLECTING THE LATEST CRAZE. The human being, like the jackdaw, is a born collector: beneath his waistcoat is the jackdaw's desire to amaes a large number of objects of the same species, writes Cicely Hamilton, in the ■'Daily Chronicle." Sometimes the objects are butterflies, and sometimes they are pewter pots or stamps; it is probably a matter of chance or environment what shape the collect ing-passion takes. For a passion it is—that success cannot dull, that no form of adversity can stifle. Recently I came across a new development of the mania; a development which has come into existence as the direct result of the mysterious economic laws which have ordained the disappearance of a metal coinage from large portions of the habitable globe. We in England have long parted from the golden sovereign—the child under ten would hail it as an object strange and new; but from Central Europe it is not only gold that has vanished—copper and silver have likewise- emigrated, giving place to the paper mark and krone, the paper penny and half-penny. MARKET IN LOCAL ISSUES. And the rule seems to be that while the central authority, the State, prints money above a certain vahie, the smaller amounts—the paper pence and halfpence, are issued by boroughs or districts, and are current only in their birthplace. Hence removal from one town to another may result in the transformation of all your small change into a handful of printed waste-paper. The local issues, being many and various, have awakened the interest of the collector, wh6 is catered for now ac in other countries the stamp-collecter is catered for. In Vienna I came across two shops which dealt simply and solely in papermoney; where neat little seta of lowvalue notes could be purchased—were purchased by a steady stream of customers. Obviously the various local authorities—municipalities and the like —now find it worth their while to consider the taste of the amateur: emulation has been aroused, the artist and designer have been called upon, and the later issues are one and all docorated with views of local attractions —public buildings or picturesque landscapes.

MONEY HAWKERS AT THE STATIONS. And the trade is by no means confined to one or two shops in Vienna; so j wide-spread is it that attractive speei- i mens of paper money are actually' hawked on the railway station. More j than once in the course of the tedious halts that characterise the present-day Austrian journey small boys would arrive with their local specimens and cry them down the length of the train. There was never any difficulty in finding a purchaser, and the trade, I gathered, wae lucrative. Once, I remember, I occupied a carriage with two determined enthusiasts, who, discovering that their passion for inflated currency was mutual, produced neat bundles of worthless money from the depths of their hand baggage and proceeded to while away the rest of the journey by displaying their specimens in rows on the seats and exchanging their duplicates, with much bargaining and pleasurable excitement. There are. it would seem, compensations even for the much deplored evil of currency inflation, which, in sending up prices and sending up taxes, created a new interest, and with that new interest an industry— an industry, moreover, that, unlike many others, can hardly languish for lack of ite raw material.