Do you feel it is important to get kids into the hobby and Why?

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I tell just about everyone I know about the hobby I love, some get interested and some don't. At least if someone is interested they know who to talk to.

As a kid I collected sports cards and although I don't regret spending my hard earned allowance on them I wish I had known about coins instead. I now have about 10,000 sports cards in my parents attick and I would love to unload them on E-bay, but I just cant see a respectable market for them. I guess I should just keep all the Michael Jordan cards and sell the rest in one giant lot. Maybe I could get a couple of morgan Dollars out of it!

 

I have to agree with ussaty. I bought alot of cards and junk with money that would have been better (and more rewarding) spent on coins. Unfortunately, I did not get into coins early enough to prevent this. Getting young people into the hobby is a must for all involved. It is a rewarding experience for the children who pick it up, the coin collecting benre as a whole is sustained, and our generation now has a whole new generation to buy/sell/trade with. Everyone wins with new blood. So prices go up, big deal. This is a double edged sword. It can be a pro and a con. Anyway my opinion.

Ryan

 

I have to agree somewhat with the two previous posts.
I used almost ALL of my allowance on Basketball cards. I now realize that there is no market and my "investment" is almost worthless at present.
To the subject of introducing kids I would say to intruduce them only if they are interested in the hobby. Because if there are too many collectors there will not be enough to go around. Which brings up an interesting point why collect cards, which you pay money to get your IDOLS on paper, when you can get money for other money.

 

I've read articles recently stating that coin collecting is now more popular than ever in the U.S., with millions (I think 20 million was the estimate) actively collecting the state quarters.

Do any of you think that we certainly at the beginning of a large upswing in popularity, and that kids collecting the quarters now will continue? In ten or twenty years, will there still be more collectors than ever before? Or is this merely a short spike that won't last?

 

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I believe(and I DO know everything :} ) that coin collecting is like everything else that is popular and trendy one day and not the next. It will wax and wane, some will drop it and pick it up later, some will never go back to it again. I think many seeds will be planted and some will die below the surface and others will thrive.

My long-winded point here is that of course the popularity now will translate in new collectors in the future but that shouldn't stop anyone from bringing in new blood into the hobby as often as possible.

 

I already have my two in coin collecting. I think the youngest will stick with it for a lifetime. When you take the time to seek out those little ones who have that "collecting mentality" as I call it you are also teaching them things through the years that they are not even aware of. The importance of saving and like it or not when you put a coin away in a collection you are saving! And, in a sense, when they get older and their collecting habits change to more desirable coins you are then showing them an investment side of things when they start making their own decisions. Do you buy the one high grade Morgan dollar or those 4 low grade Morgan dollars? Do you mint sets, clad proof sets or the silver proof sets? What will the childs priorities be in his/her collecting habits? There is so much more being quietly taught in this hobby when it comes to children and I have every intention of passing the "bug" on to every child I can and for a lot of different reasons, even if it just saving some for a rainy day!

 

Yes Introduce kids to the hobby, but don't teach them to be collectahollics.

My grandfather is always getting junk because it might be worth something someday.

Auctioniers always sell him what no one else wants because he does.

He has 4 houses filled to the roofs. In fact that is what holds the houses up.

So teach them to collect responsibly.

 

If I could have just gotten my kids interested in coin collecting sooner, I WOULDN'T have hundreds of dollars worth of Yu-Gi-Oh cards sitting in drawers unused and useless. Damn!

 

I bit the coin bug at 5 also.

Although i think i'm a bit of an anomaly in the scheme of things, i introduced myself to coin collecting. Basically because as an inquisitive child i wanted to know why some of the ten pences we had, had a picture of a king on and were dated back to the 1940s! They were old and they were different!

I got interested, and then shortly afterwards the Royal Mint being as annoying as they are decided what a good idea it would be to shrink the 5 pence to something so small it was ridiculous. I hated the change at the time, i still hate them now (me and the rest of the population so it seems). But this event perhaps i should be thankful for, it occured when i was still green as grass in coins... it triggered the collector bug that was only laying semi-dormant. That's when i started saving the old big 5ps that were going to be demonetised whilst i could. That was it and i was hooked.

My father then gave me a tinful of his old coins... so i got myself interested BEFORE anyone had thought to give me any coins. My father gave me them because he realised i had become interested in coins.

So this might explain why i take a laid back approach when it comes to recruiting newbies, i just don't bother, i leave that to other people on the front line to do. I just sit here waiting for newbies that have just bitten the coin bug when they need help and guidance, that's when i get involved.

 

I think it's essential, without them numismatics has no future. Kids who spend money in the hobby may (high probability, I think) grow up to be adults who spend even more money in the hobby.

Concerning whether coin collecting will keep kids from drugs, etc. Perhaps, but it's my opinion that kids who are at the stage where they would do drugs couldn't care less about that Bison nickel, MS Morgan, or 1797 Small Eagle Half Dollar, etc. (but maybe, sadly, to steal to convert to cash) therefore, the hobby wouldn't affect them positively, anyway. Conversely, it's been my experience that kids who are interested in coins are good students, and overall good kids. Were they good kids due to coin collecting, again perhaps - but I believe their family/social environment (parents supportive of education & learning, stable homelife, etc.) probably contributed more and collecting stemmed from that. Am I correct here? Maybe maybe not. Are there exceptions to what I wrote above? I'm sure there are...