Hi all, I thought I would tell a little story about sharing the love for ancient coins. A few months ago I contacted someone in the Classics department at the university where I teach. I asked him if he might know if any of his colleagues might want me to bring a set of the 12 Caesars in silver into the class and have the students handle the coins. The answer was yes and today I was in a 3rd year Roman Empire class showing and discussing the coins. It was only for about 15 minutes but I had lots of fun. I took the coins from their flips and passed them around. Some had a hard time believing that they were holding a 2000 year old piece of history in their hands. The Professor was discussing Nero before I started talking about the coins and it was really neat to show them Nero on a coin. They were familiar with Suetonius and they seem to like seeing portraits of the historical figures they had studied. There were many questions such as "Are these real?" , "Are these hard to find?" "Are these expensive?", and "What were these used for?". I did my best to answer their questions and had a wonderful time doing it. It was so nice to take my coins out of the house and share them with people who were genuinely interested. I told them that many ancient coins are inexpensive, and they asked me where they could find coins for themselves. I made my suggestions and noticed that at the end of the class they were looking up sites on their phones. Anyway, I had a wonderful time today and just wanted to share my experience with my forum friends.
Good on you.... I do the same at all the schools I test at and take them out metal detecting on the school field. They love it dont they.
I am impressed. I've thought about doing some such, but never have. I think Doug said he speaks at schools now and then, and this has made me think about it. I guess I should get off my duff, eh?
Nice job @Orfew!! If someone had brought ancient coins into my Classics class, I probably would have started collecting 20 years earlier than I did.
cool orfew! any pics? i couldn't even stir up much interest and the school i teach at. it's not my field, and we don't really have a ancient history class (small community college) but do have the standard wordl civ before 1500 type thing. when my daughter were doing greek/roman mythology in middle school sent a coin with her to class and offered to bring some stuff in to show the kids...no response.
I did this to my each of childrens' 3rd grade classes some years back to teach them about why money was created and how it's changed over the years. We started with an Ionian fraction and ended up with a Sesterius of Trajan. I gave each one of them a LRB to take home. I'm sure I created at least one new coin collector in each class. My kids weren't even embarrassed to have me in class, which is saying something. I also brought in a 1924 US $20 gold piece to pass around and asked them who would rather have that or a $20 paper bill. Every single kid without exception said the $20 gold piece. They couldn't believe that our money used to made of be gold and silver.
That would have been such an incredibly fun experience.. seeing the eager eyed people suddenly lighten up and having a deeper appreciation of history.. this is what gotten me so much in love with coin collection
I read this on forvm and thought it was pretty cool too. I would love to do something like that too but my area schools are pretty ghetto, even I went to them all my 12 years.
If you do this again, also bring a piece of gold worth $20 at today's prices to show them why we no longer have $20 gold coins and to introduce the concept of inflation. When the US started issuing gold coins, their value was similar to the Roman aureus or roughly a month's pay for a low end worker. Kids today think of coins as change we get back when spending paper money but few items actually sell for a quarter (nothing sells for a cent). Kids in the 50's that got an allowance of 25 cents a week were on easy street since it meant a movie with popcorn and a couple toys at the dime store. Coins were real money.
We scrambling Canadians have dropped the one-cent coin and have also upped our game by adding a $1 and a $2 coin to the ol' pocket-change-pot ... => yup, if you go out pub-crawling, sometimes you come home with $20 bucks in coin-change!! (far different than when I was a kid, eh?)
That was a pleasant surprise to me when I visited Toronto a few years back. I had a pocketful of change when I got back to the hotel, and thought nothing of it until I counted out $25!
http://www.dollarcoinalliance.org/facts-about-the-dollar-coin/ There are those who promote the change in the US but getting anything through congress has become a chore. The link above suggests the savings to the government at $150,000,000 a year which is, to them, chump change.
