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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kaparthy, post: 13542, member: 57463&quot;]My daughter never became a collector. However, she did benefit from her time in the hobby as a child. She is now 25. I asked her what she learned working in a coin store and what she learned as a YN page at conventions. Her first answer was &quot;Not much. I never collected coins.&quot; I asked her what Life Lessons she learned and she rattled off this list: </p><p><br /></p><p>1. Be on time. </p><p>2. The more you work, the more you make. </p><p>3. Huge sacks of money have no value. </p><p>4. Sitting around is not an option. </p><p>5. Work can be boring. </p><p>6. Education matters. </p><p>7. Tip the bartender. </p><p>8. You don&#039;t make money sitting down. </p><p>9. It is all about trade. </p><p>10. You make more money working for yourself. </p><p><br /></p><p>Selene&#039;s 10 Rules of Work pretty much stand on their own.&nbsp; I do want to go into some detail on 3, 6, and 9.</p><p><br /></p><p>Working for a coin store pretty much got her over the childhood idea that large amounts of money objects must equate to riches.&nbsp; The coins, etc., had &quot;no value&quot; until and unless someone bought them.&nbsp; They were no different than clothes on a rack at the Gap.</p><p><br /></p><p>Education to her meant both schooling and knowing your business.&nbsp; While arithmetic and English are pretty well universally required, none of the people she knew actually had any kind of high school or college classes or degrees in numismatics.&nbsp; Obviously, however, they all knew a lot of about different aspects of coins, paper, etc.&nbsp; So, she learned that there are two equal sides to &quot;knowledge.&quot;&nbsp; You need school, but school is not enough.</p><p><br /></p><p>While working in numismatics, she kept track of the spot prices for silver and gold, mostly for her own needs as a consumer of jewelry.&nbsp; &quot;Trade&quot; meant knowing the markets, a clarification of the education issue.&nbsp; You could &quot;know&quot; a lot about coins and still lose money all the time -- which she saw collectors doing all too frequently.&nbsp; &quot;Trade&quot; is about charisma and that truth was reinforced by Moria, a Dungeons and Dragons role playing game we all ran on VAX accounts when my wife and I worked at the local community college. </p><p><br /></p><p>So, the bottom line is that I am sorry that the kid never got the collecting bug.&nbsp; The best I can get is that she does swap out any &quot;interesting&quot; coins from work and throws them in a jar at home.&nbsp; Mostly, working with money taught her about money -- and I guess that is something.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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