The limitation of merely reading up on history as a window into the past is that you have to rely on your imagination to conjure images of what things actually looked like in the days gone by. But artefacts fill that gap. Even if it's a broken vessel from as far back as the Harappan Civilisation, we still get a glimpse of how kitchens must have operated back then. And travelling much further ahead in time, a coin from the British Raj sometimes tells us more about what the feeling of being colonised was like than books about that era.

It is partly with this thought in mind that first-generation entrepreneur Sushilkumar Agrawal started mintageworld.com, an online museum where people can view such ancient coins, currency notes and stamps, and also buy or sell the same. And now, during the lockdown, they have started a free service where anyone can log on to ask for more information about such possessions they might have at home. The Mumbai-based website is asking people to dig into, say, trunks lying in their storage area and fish out old coins and notes that have been gathering dust, and then contact them for information on the same.