In the days before Valentine cards, there were love tokens, sometimes improvised from existing objects. So the commissioner of the coin displayed in the Irish Emigration Museum in Dublin must indeed have been a poor man. His name was St Valentine, and by 1836 he had been dead for 16 centuries. The location of supposed St Valentine relics situation is a crowded field. But the relics brought back to Dublin by Fr John Spratt in 1836 did have impressive provenance and a covering letter.

Source: The Irish Times February 14, 2018 00:01 UTC