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Guyanese seeks highest bidder for rare 1832 coin
Could you imagine carrying around something that was made almost two centuries ago in your wallet?
The rare 1932 coin
Grantley Phillip Watterton has been doing that for the past 10 years, and until the price is right, he will be holding on to it for years to come.
It happens to be a one cent coin which was the official currency of the counties of Demerara and Essequibo during the nineteenth century.
Although it has been in Watterton’s possession since 1966, he only became aware of the possibility that it could be a prized possession when a newspaper reporter tried to steal it from him several years ago.
Watterton of Den Amstel, West Coast Demarara, visited this newspaper last Thursday with the coin after reading about the multi-million-dollar purchase of a rare British Guiana stamp.
That one-cent Magenta postage stamp from 1856, the only one of its kind to still exist, sold for a record $9.5 million at Sotheby’s on Tuesday last.
Watterton became a bit excited when he realized that in his wallet, he had been carrying a one cent coin that was minted in 1832, 24 years earlier than the date of the stamp.
A check with the Bank of Guyana confirmed that the coin was genuine, but he is still trying to ascertain its real present day value.
Watterton told this newspaper that he found the coin in an old trunk with clothes left for him by his father before he died in 1966.
At first he did not think much about the coin which he stumbled upon when he pushed his hands into one of the pockets of a suit jacket.
“When he (my father) gave it to me, I did not think much about it at the time. I almost threw it away, but something tell me to put it back in the trunk,” Watterton explained.
For the next 38 years the trunk with the coin in it remained untouched until Watterton decided that he needed to get rid of the stuff.
In 2004, he disposed of the trunk and its contents, except for the coin, which he put into his wallet.
Every time he changed his wallet, he placed the coin into the new one as if it was some lucky charm.
In 2012, he decided to publicise his “prized possession” to see what interest it would generate.
He took it to a local newspaper and the reporter who he dealt with promised to publish an article about the coin and took possession of it, telling Watterton to return the following day to uplift.
Unaware of its value, Watterton left the coin with the reporter but when he returned the next day the reporter had left the job and had taken the coin with him.
“I realized then that this coin was worth something. I was thinking that that was the end of it for me; I had lost it,” Watterton recalled.
Several calls to the reporter’s cellular phone went unanswered.
But Watterton still harboured a little hope, although farfetched, of retrieving the coin.
Luckily, he had a friend who held a senior position at the Brickdam Police Station and after relating his plight, Watterton’s despair soon turned to euphoria.
“The policeman called (the reporter) on his phone and when he answered, the policeman told him to bring back the coin and threatened to hunt him down and arrest him if he didn’t,” Watterton told Kaieteur News.
A few hours later the coin was back in Watterton’s possession. He has been guarding it with his life ever since.
There is a possibility that what Watterton has is the only one of its kind still in existence.
He is hoping to ascertain the true value of the coin with a view to selling it to the highest bidder.
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