Under a tap of water, and with an old brush I slowly scrubbed it off. A bright light reflected off the coin, my eyes mesmerized by its shine; the face of a queen on the metal white. Rupees are made of steel and have that steel finish & colour and so I was convinced this was Silver! I scrubbed off the dirt all around the coin, and in my hands was 2 and a half Guilders from the “Nederlands”. The effigy on it was that of Queen Juliana of the family of Orange-Nassau. I had to know more about this and if there were more coins like it in my dirty batch. Alas, this was the only one. My search for a reference to this coin in the hope to prove that it was indeed made of Silver led me on a voracious quest for knowledge. My days & nights were spent reading, so to me, this Guilder represented an age of discovery & exploration. I couldn’t travel but my mind took me to places I'd never seen before. It symbolized the core of my obsession with different countries, their people & the culture they live by. In 1999 I used my birthday gift money of Rs. 600 to buy an encyclopedia into the World of Coins. There in its pages, I did locate the Guilder minted in 1961 which was indeed made with Silver. And ever since I’ve been Chasing Guilders.
