Introducing Coins to Kids

Has anyone here had any luck in introducing coin collecting with their kids?

I have a son, he's young (4), but I'd like to see if he has any interest in the hobby and I was curious how others may have introduced their kids to it.

 

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You could buy him a Whitman album for Lincoln cents and go through your pocket change every few days with him.

 

+1

I started collecting when I was around 5 and got started with the modern Whitman albums that I could fill with the change i found laying around the house. It provides hours of fun. I would get him the penny, nickel, dime, and statehood quarter books to start

 

Those are great ideas. Thanks for the input!

 

Show them bright and shinny proof sets......that's how the 'old man' got me started.

 

Coins are not the best choice to get the collecting bug into kids. Try first with cards or something more colorful, then coins. Age 4 is way too young.

 

I am 12 years old and I started when I got a 1940's or 1950's nickel in circulation and then my mom & dad gave me a 1970's half dollar and I thought it would be cool to have really old stuff and I looked through my brothers change found a 1948 penny and found a 1948 nickel in circulation and that's when I really wanted to start. less than a year later I started to buy some coins and a silver certificate.
So, my parents helped me out a little bit I guess you could say.

 

A quarter set is easy to complete and the folders are cheap.

Add in the states coins and he'll still be working on it for years and always have a couple coins to add.

 

I would also say that it would be good to buy them an older coin, even if it is a wheetback from the 20s,30s, or 40s because for new collectors there is nothing like having a coin from the roaring twenties, dust bowl era, or the era where ford first started to mass produce cars.

 

I think it's pretty cool that there are lots of old coins in circulation now. When I started in 1957 there weren't any really old coins. The oldest was a 1909 cent and it was a mere 48 years old. The oldest quarters were dated 1925 because earlier dates were worn off.

Now you can find 100 year old cents and 50 year old quarters. Nickels are as old as 77 years.

 

I don't know..........I'd stick with the shinny stuff. Kids and crows are attracted to shinny objects........

 

Good point, but his son is 4 yrs old. Do you think a preschooler, who's barely out of his toddler years, knows about the roaring 20s...? ;-)

 

Exactly.......shinny things......

 

Brian, my kids are 3 and 5 and all I have done so far was showing them "pirate gold" after they saw a pirate cartoon series LOL if you wonder what I showed them, it was a $1 US gold from the 1850s...

 

Who's Brian?

 

Thats a good point!!! the whitman thing is awesome then, I would say just a common date wheatback cent might be good though in addition to the coin folder, because you could then compare how the designs are different are on the reverse yet the designs are the same on the obverse? I might be wrong though as I am very unfamiliar with four year olds, worth a try though!

 

You guys don't know kids.........

 

Absolutely! That would work... even the year is difficult to read for a 4 yrs old... they think like "yesterday, today, tmrw" that's it... oh and "yesterday" is some day in the past, and "tmrw"... well you know

 

the OP

 

Gottcha.