by Doug Ashbury
Northern News Services

NNSL (Sep 03/97) - Anyone who knows anything about saving money will say the same thing straight away -- start early.

For most, the lesson begins with a piggy bank.

They won't hold enough to retire on, but they get the message across early.

The Bank of Canada currency museum collection "A Penny Saved," currently at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, features the forms and history of the piggy bank.

Souvenir banks, mechanical banks, promotional banks, banks for good causes, still banks and registered banks make up the display.

Still banks are piggy banks with slots but no internal mechanisms, while registered banks automatically calculate coins.

"I remember my first piggy bank. It was a ceramic pig," Maryann Slade said.

She said the money was used "probably to buy a doll."

Slade, a Yellowknife resident, visited the heritage centre Saturday with her mother-in-law, Pearl Slade, visiting from Newfoundland.

"When we were kids we'd make piggy banks out of old coffee tins," Pearl Slade said.

Tin containers with logos were among the first piggy banks in North America.

One of the piggy banks in the collection -- of the promotional variety -- carries the Eight O'Clock coffee brand name. Companies often use piggy banks as packaging for their products.

"Those were quite popular," Pearl Slade said, pointing to a Colonel Harland Sanders still piggy bank.

The pig has long symbolized wealth. It's image was engraved on ancient Roman money boxes.

Potters of the past fashioned a type of clay called pygg into containers which became known as "pyggs."

As well as a wide range of subjects, piggy banks have been made from various materials from metal to plastic.

A reproduction of a page from an 1895 Montgomery Ward & Co. catalogue, part of the display, depicts a cast iron artillery bank. Costing just $1, it was 15 centimetres high and 20 centimetres long and weighed in at four pounds.

Among the most impressive in the collection, on display until Nov. 19, is a four-chambered cast iron replica of the Toronto head office of the Trader's Bank of Canada.

Ironically, this piggy bank has outlived its maker. Trader's Bank is now the Royal Bank.