“See, this is real history here in Anguilla,” Franklyn Brooks of South Valley asserted as he threw some two hundred copper pennies from an old helmet onto the Front Desk of The Anguillian newspaper on Tuesday, September 29. “I have saved these two-cent and one-cent coins for twenty-two years as a tribute to Anguilla and the rest of the Caribbean region.”
The discoloured coins, some of which are dated 1958 and 1965, bear such markings as “British Caribbean Territories” on one side and on the other, “Queen Elizabeth The Second” along with her engraved image, with crown and sceptre.
Brooks, excited over the coins, which he thought he had been lost, since taking them from his mother’s set of draws, eventually found them in the cellar of his home. “They are my treasure; I will not part with them and they must have some sort of value,” he stated. He plans to clean them up to redeem some of the original design and markings. The value he speaks about may just be historical but, whatever it is, Brooks thinks he has a coveted possession and an excellent collection of keepsakes.
He credited his mother – Cressida Brooks – for her safe-keeping of the coins in her set of draws for many years, and his grandparents for saving them in the first place. “It is now a number of years since my mother had the coins,” he stated. “One day I went to her home and took out the coins because I realised that they were kind of important, so I carried them to my home.” So careful he was to secure the coins that in safely putting them away, he eventually could not find them, and assumed that somehow they had got lost. When they tuned up in his cellar, he spoke to a number of acquaintances. “I asked my friends what I should do with them,” he recalled. “They said they are good for a historical moment so I put them together and here I am right now at The Anguillian to talk about the coins.”
Whatever value the coins may have, (sentimental, cultural, or historical), Brooks is a fine example to other youngsters to demonstrate a passionate interest in collecting and saving all possible artifacts coming to their attention. By so doing, they, like Brooks, can contribute to preserving some important aspects regarding the social and cultural lives of past generations.
