Internationally-acclaimed 17-year-old Coin Master Debi Prasad Mangaraj, who is all set to establish a first-ever private coin museum in Odisha in Bhubaneswar, held a coin exhibition at the 2nd Floor Conference Hall of the State Secretariat here on Thursday. His father PK Mangaraj was present during the exhibition.
Chief Secretary GC Pati was very impressed after seeing the rare coins at the exhibition.Debi Prasad has more than 40,000 antique coins from 130 countries and hopes to enter the Guinness Book of World Records. “My proposed museum will immensely benefit school students, tourists and research scholars having fascination in numismatics. The museum will educate school children about history and rare coins of 12th and 13th centuries BC,” he said.
Devi Prasad, who was a student of Kendriya Vidyalaya No-1 here, has a collection of rare coins dated 1857. Earlier, the Dalai lama, APJ Abdul Kalam, Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi, Naveen Patnaik, MC Bhandare, Rameswar Thakur and Murli Manhor Joshi were surprised to see the rare coins.Devi Prasad’s collection includes coins belonging to Australia, the UK, France, Japan and the US, to name a few. Major attractions of the collection include coins of the East India Company dated between 1800 AD and 1810 AD, the pennies belonging to late 18th and early 19th centuries, Peso of the mid-19th century.The collection also includes pressed coins of both stone and gold and earthen coins with imprints of lords and animals stated to be 800-year-old.