Once demonetised, they will join the league of coins, of 1, 2, 3 and 5 paise denominations, that have disappeared from circulation, surviving only in numismatic collections and in forgotten piggy banks.
Come July 1, coins of 25 paise denomination will be history. The Reserve Bank of India has decided to withdraw the coins from circulation.
Once demonetised, they will join the league of coins — of 1, 2, 3 and 5 paise denominations — that have disappeared from circulation, surviving only in numismatic collections and in forgotten piggy banks.
Even before price inflation killed the 25 paise coin, there was a premonition about the coin’s death. KS Venkateshwaran, 81, a former bank officer said: “Shopkeepers stopped accepting the coins a few years ago, even when the coin was a legal tender.”
Before inflation eroded its value, the coin was no cropper. In the fifties when General (retired) Prakash Gokarn was a student of St Xavier’s School at Dhobi Talao, four annas (25 paise) went a long way at the canteen. “You could buy a cake or a Coke with four annas. You could also buy a box of chikkis or a large heap of peanuts with that money,” said 70-year-old Gokarn who is also a coin collector. “My eyes would shine when my father gave me four annas.”
And trust an ex-soldier to remember the historical price of rum. “You could get a quarter of rum with 25 paise at one time,” said Gokarn. In 1950, 25 paise could buy a breakfast of idlis for four in the restaurants of Matunga where Venkateshwaran lives. Soona Kapadia, 82, a resident of Godrej Baug on Napean sea Road, remembers that she bought four eggs for four annas in the mid-fifties.
The annas went out of circulation in the first phase of demonetisation in 1957 when India shifted to the decimal system. In the 1970s, production of small denominations from one to 5 paise that were introduced in 1957 was stopped. Inflation and rise in the price of metals is one of the many reasons why small denominations have been demonetised. When the price of the metal in the coin becomes more than its face value, the coins are melted for other uses. In the fifties, the one rupee coin was in silver and when price of the metal rose, the coin was more valuable than its face value and it was melted for jewellery and other uses. Before India adopted decimal coinage, the quarter anna coin in copper with a hole in the centre was used as washers by plumbers.
So, will the 25 paise coin become a collector’s item? “It will never be sought by collectors. The government stopped producing 1, 2, 3 and 5 paise decades ago, but the coins never became collectibles. These coins were minted in millions or even billions. Only coins made in limited numbers have any value,” said Abdul Razak Shaikh of the Mumbai Coin Society, a group of coin dealers and collectors.
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