JEDDAH, 23 April — When Faiz A. Nawab was a child in Bombay, his close relatives — long since settled in the United Kingdom — were in the habit of bringing him notes and coins from Britain and other European countries during their periodic trips back to India.
“That’s how I developed the hobby of collecting notes. My older brother collected the coins,” 37-year-old Nawab, now a project manager at the Saudi Binladin Group in Yanbu, told Arab News.
Over the decades, he has amassed a collection of currency notes from 96 countries. However, it was only after he came to work in the Kingdom as an engineer that his collection really started to take off.
“I brought with me the small collection of notes given to me by visiting relatives, but after I came here I was surprised to find that there were so many different currency notes from such a wide range of countries. And I made a point of bringing back local notes whenever I traveled abroad.
“I’m so devoted to my hobby that when I meet someone from another country I tend to launch into a discussion of my hobby and ask them to let me buy from them any international currency notes they may have in their possession. My main source, however, is money changers,” Nawab said.
His collection includes a number of notes that are rare in this part of the world, for example from Peru, the Cayman Islands, Uzbekistan, Fiji, Jamaica, Malawi, Libya, Poland, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Tunisia and Vietnam.
“Many of my friends have wondered why I’ve been collecting notes when there are ‘better’ hobbies to pursue. But what’s wrong in collecting currency notes? If no one else is collecting notes, I would like to promote interest in the hobby,” he said.
Today, his hobby is so well known among his close relatives and friends that whenever they meet him they always present him currencies from one country or another.
“My elder brother, the coin collector, is also now settled in the UK, and he is the other source that enriches my collection. My younger brother is a businessman constantly dealing with his African business partners, so he brings me all the African currencies he comes across,” Nawab added.
“I have been getting in touch with world currency collectors through the Internet. My aim is to collect all the notes currently in circulation of every country of the world, and of those available from the previous centuries,” he said.
