The South Wellington Coin Society is marking its 25th anniversary today.
The club is holding a meeting today and will celebrate this special anniversary following its Guelph Coin Show on Sept. 24.
Founded in the spring of 1997 by six local collectors, the society filled a numismatic void in this particular region of Southwestern Ontario near Guelph. After struggling to develop what founding member Scott Douglas calls the club’s “personal identity,” the SWCS has since earned a reputation for its educational leanings.
“For a city as big as Guelph, I was very shocked there wasn’t an active coin club,” said Douglas told CCN in 2017 when the club celebrated its 20th anniversary. “For the first five years, we struggled for a personal identity and mirrored the Waterloo Coin Society through Bob Zmija’s request.”
“Bob was a young man of 75 then, and it’s interesting because he lived two streets away from me in Acton, and I didn’t know him at all,” remembers Douglas, who added Zmija has since been named the society’s first honorary life member. “He had a huge interest in coins and coin collecting, and so did his family, so he thought it’d be good to have a coin club in the area.”
It was Mike Hollingshead, another SWCS founding member and then first vice-president of the Ontario Numismatic Association, who told Douglas of Zmija’s plans.
The inaugural meeting – which included Zmija; Douglas; Hollingshead; Zmija’s son, Tony; Zmija’s nephew, Matthew Fleet; and Bruno Kerkhof – took place in the spring of 1997. Douglas assumed the role of inaugural president.
Details on the 25th anniversary celebration will be available in the coming weeks.
For more information on the SWCS, visit southwellingtoncoinsociety.ca.