Okay, so it wasn't a table at a coin show, but I'm glad you opened this thread. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of running a table at the hobby fair hosted by the school district where I work. No, I realize why I work at the middle school level instead of elementary. It was the most chaotic thing I have ever been involved with. Right away, I felt like I put my collection in danger. I was under the impression that there would be an adult with each group of kids. Instead, the kids were just running wild from table to table. The presenters at the tables were left to fend for themselves. I wasn't too worried, because I was keeping a close eye on all my stuff and tried to keep kids on their side of the table. Occasionally a teacher would come by and bring down the hammer on some kids that were getting a little too wild. After a while, I put away some of the things on the table to try to keep some kind of order and prevent the kids from damaging anything. I kept out a few choice pieces and calmed everyone down by showing them, as a group, my oldest coin, my most expensive coin, my shiniest coin, my favorite coin, and my only gold coin. At that point, it seemed to calm down considerably and it showed me what to do and what not to do if I participate next year. The prinicipal, who I know and is a very nice lady, thanked me and apologized for the chaos. Apparently, she was short quite a few teachers that day. I told her not to worry about it and I would be back next year with a better idea on what to do. I'm 99.99% sure that there were no sticky fingers, but I am planning on doing a full inventory of my collection later today. However crazy it was, I had a blast and always love showing my collection. I felt bad for two things. One, I had about 15 kids at my table at any given time while the other tables only had three or four. Everyone else was doing scrapbooks and cross-stitch and lighthouse collections, so I can kind of see why the guy with the money collection would be so interesting. The other thing was that the kids were still just as crazy at the other tables. Most of the presenters were very old and couldn't watch everyone the way I was. I was waiting to hear something crash the whole time, but never did.
It wouldn't have been half the fun without the chaos. For my english oral at college I did a talk on my coins, it was fantastic watching their fascinated eyes...probably wanting to nick something. Great stuff!
Glad you enjoyed it enough to do it again. Any event involving loads of kids with freedom to run at will at that age is bound to be chaos. If you can keep their attention for a minute or more you're doing well. Kids get excited about coins, there's no doubt about that. I was at a coin show where they handed out presidential dollars if the child could say something about the history of the president featured on the coin (big poster display behind for them to look at). I imagine it got expensive quickly but it was fun watching the kids get into it.
