Busmen’s Pennies

Busmen’s  Pennies

By Paul McCann

I started collecting pennies when I first noticed an old Queen Victoria coin in my change after buying a quarter of Merry Maids in the shop beside the bus stop where I caught the 57 Bus home from St Patricks scout hall in Lower Donegal Street . I was fascinated with the old penny and wanted to get some more . One of my school friends Gerald Stewart lived in Cranbrook gardens and we often swapped coins and marvel comic books . Once a week usually a Friday I would make my way to his house . He lived beside a little shop there not far from the Ardoyne bus depot gate so I took the short cut through the bus depot . One day as I was passing through there I  heard the jingle jangle of coins that made me go an investigate . I pushed open a door and inside a room there were about eight 8 bus conductors in there counting out their fare money on tables . I was just about as tall as the table so I could see all the coins lined up in rows . One of the bus men said hello and I asked him if I could swap my new pennies for his old pennies . That’s when my collection of old pennies started . The bus men told me to call anytime  before 4pm and they would exchange any old penny coins they had with my new pennies. They would always welcome me in to the counting room at the bus depot each time I called and they would always upturn their satchel bags for me to have a look through their coins . Some days I’d be lucky to find old bun pennies amongst their small change . After a year I have a decent enough collection of pennies that covered most every year from 1800’s to the 1900’s . There must have been days when those busmen wanted to get home after their shift but they always made time for me to look through their coins .

Before school I worked with Noel Benson , delivering milk around Ardoyne for the Co-Op. I asked Noel to keep me any old coins he might get on his run . There were days when people would buy cream or juice on their way past our truck and Noel always kept a satchel bag as well in the truck with spare change . I got ten shillings a week for helping him with the milk run which helped me to buy coins from Joe Kavanagh’s shop in Smithfield . He had a great a collection of crowns and half crowns , florins and sovereigns and now and then I would find something special like the 1798 coin with Napoleon’s head on it   That was a lucky find .

My coin collection was growing and I had a couple of big tins full of old bun pennies, and with different Queens heads . I also had some old half pennies and farthings that were always good to have in my collection .

Many people who collect things like stamps , posters, records comic books and so on become like  a bowerbird collecting things like old Tom the man who I met who collected teapots  , His house was full of all kinds of teapots that sat on shelves all around the place . Other people I met collected coloured bottles that they placed on shelves to capture the sunlight and when the sun hit them they had this wonderful colourful display of light all around the room .

I swapped coins with some other coin collectors like Mr Quinn the history teacher at St Gabriels . Before I had left to go to Australia I swapped him my 1789 coin with Napoeon Bonaparte’s head on it for two of the new decimal coin proof sets that were released in 1971 .

On the day we left Ardoyne for Australia I gave all my collection of coins to a close friend who has passed away now . I often wondered what ever happened to all those busmen’s pennies that I had collected . When I think back of the times I was standing there in the bus depot with all those kind men . I am even more aware of the calibre people had in those times . These days when time is money and there’s never enough of both , I can understand the wealth of old fashioned values . Like the old penny coins I once collected that are no more in circulation .

The End

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