When the then ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) government took the initiative to re-dominate the cedi and subsequently change the legal tender, little did Ghanaians know that the old currency and legal tender under the then leadership and government of Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings would become useful in the near future.

Intelligence reports gathered by this paper can confirm that some group of young men parading as gold dealers plying their trade in the following areas Lapaz, Chanttan, Tabora, Alhaji and Lomnava all suburbs in the Accra Metropolis are doing brisk business by buying the old five hundred cedis coin from the adult population in these areas, who could not change from the various banks when the deadline for use of the cedis elapsed under the authority of Bank of Ghana (GoG).

As any Ghanaian living everywhere would recall, the above mentioned old cedi denominations were in coins and plated in “gold”and because of this belief it has become a source of wealth for young men in these area.

The Accra Times newspaper is reliably informed that because of these features on the one hundred cedi coins and five hundred cedi coins, the young merchants are offering as high as ten Ghana cedis and twenty Ghana cedis for a member of the old currency coins made available to them. The young men, who dabble in this trade, engage the adult population in the area to do the buying but now children who stumble on the old coins of their parents are also offering them for sale to these young men without recourse to their parents.

Some unconfirmed information picked up by this paper attest to the fact that majority of these young men of Nigerian origin and some have collected huge sum of coins from unsuspecting Ghanaians have since disappeared. When operatives of the The Accra Times newspaper engaged some of the young merchants undercover, it came to the fore that the young men purchase the coins from their unsuspecting clients and melt it for rings, bracelets and bungles that are highly patronized by the youth especially those in the entertainment business in the country.

The papers visit to the Makola market and Kwame Nkrumah Circle, all business districts in Accra confirmed the end product, such as bungles, bracelets and rings end up on the glass show case of some young men of Nigerian origin, who have taken over the sale of bracelets and bungles at the Kwame Nkrumah circle area