Hey guys, Just wanted to know why there aren't many kid collectors. It's a pretty fun hobby and kind of cheap (like just get a box of pennies or something). I'm considering kids 16 and younger. At Whitman Philly show I saw 1 13 year old boy and myself being the only 2 kids. At the Baltimore show I saw 2 girls 11 and 13 and myself so 3 total. (They smiled and giggled at me I think they liked me lol). So just why?!?! Oh and also when I made my coin club at the library... only 5 people came, but I'm starting it again in the summer because I had a day where there was ccd and it was winter so no one wanted to come lol Thanks, Jason
It's been discussed a few times before. Coin collecting is generally a hobby that appeals to older people. It isn't anything about the new generation of kids, it's just how it is. It was that way in the 70's, 80's, 90's, 00's, and it's that way now.
I was young once. Dad sparked my interest in collecting. I collected mostly mint and proof sets as that was what he did. Sure wish he'd have shown me more collecting avenues, but hey, such is life. Besides, I've found my own. Old guys once started out as young guys, left the hobby and returned in later life. What you witnessed in Baltimore Ace was a new beginning......
I would guess that they have NO money to spend on coins. also no one has showed them coins to get them interested in coins.
I started collecting around 12 years old, after inheriting my grandfather's collection. I think it would have been much harder for me to break into the hobby if I was starting from scratch - coins are expensive, and allowance money only goes so far.
Kids today are not interested in the search to find anything as to coins or anything else. They do not have the parents at home to get them interested in such. They have TV, the internet, I-phone, cars, and such. When I came up Boy Scouts got me interested in coins and other things. The easiest things to collect then was Civil War things, stamps, arrow heads, rocks, and then to play sports. Most today, are couch potatoes, and have muscle fingers & thumbs, because of texting on an I-pod, tablet, computer. Also, money of today is mostly of plastic cards. The kids see them as having no history in a plastic card, it's a disposable thing, where coins are not. We have very few young people in our coin club.
Some of yall sound pretty doom-and-gloom here. I count myself among the number of YNs here, being 14 years old. No, we do not make up a large percentage of the collecting community, but the majority of the collecting community has deeper pockets than the average teen. We are not many, but we are few and proud. You should have seen the turn out at the Summer Seminar last year for YNs, btw. I think there were around 80 of us in the 2 sessions combined. I cannot, however, provide any advice relating to the girls. I am a quick learner on most subjects, but some things are not meant to be understood...
There are a few YN's on CoinTalk, including me. Most people around my age would rather be playing GTA V, COD or Battlefield, not collecting things. It's not like the post two above states (from my point of view in Canada), that kids are 'couch potatoes' and therefore don't like history. For a few years, I could be counted as a 'couch potato', but I was spending all of my time watching the history channel (which was actually all about history at that point) Most are getting the history taught in schools, which is very biased towards political history. This isn't a very interesting or good way to learn about history, and is causing youth to dislike history. People who dislike history aren't exactly about to start collecting coins. That my opinion on the matter.
It is really shameful that this has to be written in this way nowadays. Even in my relatively short life, I have witnessed the programing on the history channel transition from being almost completely characterized by documentaries of some form to the reality Tv channel it is now. 5 years ago, I would turn on the history channel and odds would favor me finding a documentary on, while today the same is not true.
IMO, most people today, young or old, just don't have the kind of curiosity of past generations. They just follow the sheep in front of them. And this a very curiosity intensive hobby. // Great to see you YN's in here posting! And remember, Q. David Bowers started when he was 15.
Coin collecting in a general sense is a hobby that requires a good percentage of 2 things: time (including patience) and money. Guess what kids generally don't have a lot of? Time, patience, and money. Between attending schools, jobs, and entering the adolescent phases of their lives, many kids just do not have the resources to become seriously committed to coin collecting. It has almost always been a hobby reserved for the older folks (no offense guys), who are generally more responsible with managing money and have more time and patience for collecting. It has almost always been this way. But what we can do to is give the newer generation a little spark of curiosity into the hobby. Don't try to drag them in all the way...that might just frustrate them and force them to do something they might not be all that interested in, and they'll further distance themselves. You need a small balance of initial curiosity and interest so that younger folks can still express an interest in the hobby, but pursue it on their own time.