2327) Did You Know Series (64): The Blog exclusivecoins.blogspot.com (Coins and More): The exciting journey/race to the 10 million views milestone (2011-2022):

2327) Did You Know Series (64): The Blog exclusivecoins.blogspot.com (Coins and More): The exciting journey/race to the 10 million views milestone (2011-2022):

i) My Blog on Numismatics and Philately has today crossed an important milestone of 100,00,000 (Ten Million) views, making it one of the leading resources on information on both subjects in the world, and among the top two in India. 

ii) One leading rating agency based in the USA, which monitors International numismatic websites/blogs/Mint information on an on-going basis presently ranks my blog at 19th place in the world, out of 80 websites/blogs on Numismatics, the world over.

iii) It was started as a Numismatic and Philately Blog  on 18.04.2011, and was primarily meant to display my collection of coins/currency notes/stamps in an informative manner, which would be useful to users in knowing about the history of the period when these coins/banknotes/stamps were minted/printed and events/persons they honour/depict, both on Indian and International coins/banknotes/stamps. The content was designed to be more in the nature of a walk down memory lane through my collection/posts.

 iv) In the early days of the blog, when the 25 Paise coins were being demonetised,  I was surprised to get an email from Siddharth (Sid) Srivastava, the most prominent producer in Hindi TV Channels,  to  lead  a documentary  on the life and times of the 25 Paise coin titled "Chal Basi Chavanni" ("The Four Anna/Twenty Five paise coin passes away"), which was aired by STAR NEWS on 29th and 30th June 2011. 

The programme helped in making many persons hold back onto their "chavannis", the little round beauties, instead of returning them to the Banks.  I was thrilled to bits, with the popular reception the programme got, thanks to Sid. Unfortunately, none of my friends taped the programme, so there is no live recording available.

v) In 08/2020, Anuradha Gupta (based in Bengaluru) and I made a comprehensive on line presentation on the "History of the British India Coinage from 1611 to 1947", inter alia covering the sweep of history of the period, the British Mints, Indian Coinage, British India Standard Coinage etc. The presentation was well received by a group of Senior State Bankers in Bengaluru.

vi) Over time, the Blog has on board some very interesting stories on  International/Indian Numismatics, Philately, Short Stories written by me, a "Did You Know Series" and "Leisure Time Memories", Heritage Walks, Crypto-currency, Indian Defence Services, Eco-friendly posts through the medium of  coins & stamps, Contributors to Society, Wines, Stories on my Alma Mater - La Martiniere College, Lucknow and the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), the State Bank of India where I worked for around 25 years etc.

vii) The Blog has been visited/revisited by viewers from 211 Countries & Overseas Territories (OTs) word-wide, including far-off places like - the Aland Islands, Alderney Islands, Andorra, Antigua & Barbuda, Aruba, Azores, Bahamas, Belize, Bermuda, Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Comoros, Curacao, Dominica, Djibuti, Falkland Islands, Fiji, French Polynesia, Faroe Islands, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guam, Guadelope, Guatemala, , Greenland, Guernsey, Haiti, Honduras, Isle of Man, Iceland, Jersey Islands, Kosovo, Maldives, Malta, Macau, Malawi, Martinique, Mauritius, Netherland Antilles, Papua New Guinea, Puerto Rico, Pitcairn Islands, Reunion Islands (French), Samoa, Pitcairn Islands, Seychelles, Sint Maarten, San Marino, Solomon Islands, St. Lucia, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Swaziland, Tahiti, Tunisia, Tuvalu Island, Niue Island, Turks & Caicos Islands, Trinidad & Tobago, US Virgin Islands among others.

viii) Exclusivecoins has been quoted as a reference source in at least 10 references in Wikipedia posts on Indian and International Numismatics (the Gold Pagoda Coin, the English Penny, Hirakud Dam, 7 ancient Chinese Banknotes)  and was part of a study by a school in China on British Numismatic references. It has been translated into Russian, Japanese, Chinese et al, by Wikipedia for ease of access in these countries.

ix) The Blog has almost 2400 posts on it covering Banknotes and coins from at least 130 countries, spanning all five continents.

x) There are over 7536 comments recorded on the blog from an international numismatic community which visits the Blog.

xi) Like the one-time British Empire - the "Sun Never Sets on the Blog" and someone or the other constantly visits it 24 x 7.

xii) The top few countries visiting the Blog are - 

India (5.50 million), USA (2.50 million), Canada (372,000), Germany (321,000), France (181,000) Ukraine (134,000 - recorded before the Russian invasion, no visits since the war began), UAE (125,000), Unknown Region (113,000 - cases where the originating servers could not be segregated/identified by Google), Brazil, (90,000), Czechia (66,000), United Kingdom (59,000), Russia (45,000 - even during the war several visits have been recorded), Slovakia (36,000), Romania (32,000), Spain (26,000), Indonesia, Netherlands, Ireland & Poland (32,000 - aggregate), Other countries world-wide (881,000 - clubbed together).

xiii) There have been guest posts contributed by an International Community of numismatists. The most edifying is by my friend Tom Babinszky who is Hungarian by birth and lives in the USA, who blogs on Coins under the name of "Blind Coin Collector". He has  a huge collection of Coins - all catalogued - most unlike my collection, where one can see a piece on the blog, but I simply do not know where I have kept it.  My wife Sumita has been telling me that I should stop collecting any more Coins, Banknotes and Stamps for two reasons - one - I have exhausted all available space in the house for safe-keeping my valuable possessions and two - the flat may come crashing down under the weight of my collections. Nevertheless, I carry on undauntingly.

Tom also figures in the list of 80 best Coin Collectors in the world. He has obliged me with a guest post on how he goes about his collection, while I have an interview on numismatics posted on his blog.

xv) Around 25 friends/relatives have contributed coins/banknotes for my collection.

xv) I have received several complimentary stamps and coins from Postal Administrations/Mints which have helped build up the collection. The prominent one being India Post, Royal Post UK, London Mint Office, UK to name a few.

xvi) Some interesting comments which I have received on the blog -

i) A reader from New York wrote that he was having a bad time in his office and was feeling depressed. So he keyed in some random words in the search engine and started browsing topics that he had not seen before. One search led him to my blog and he landed on my post on Fiji Coins and Banknotes. He got very fascinated with the content on that post, locked his desk and went home.  After dinner, he read my blog again and has become a constant reader of the  stories which I put up ever since.

ii) One elderly lady wrote a comment on my post on the 100 Mark Banknote from Germany issued in 1920. Apparently, her father had served with the US forces in the German theatre and had brought back with him one of these banknotes, which wee in her safe-keeping as a memento. Her grand-daughter was very fond of the artwork on this Banknote. This lady chanced upon my blog post and found the content very interesting and comprehensive. She had taken a print-out of my post and kept it alongside an album, meant for her grand-daughter for when she grew up.

iii) The great-great grandson of the erstwhile Chinese Emperor Yuan Shih Kai, wrote to me that my post on the Coin nicknamed "the Fat-man Dollar" was the most comprehensive that he had ever read and complimented me for it.

iv) The Blog has answered a strange/unusual request from a reader/visitor - "Peace be within this Wallet Coin". I have never been so happy, when my blog presented him with an answer to his query.