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INTRODUCING PEOPLE TO COIN COLLECTING
Joshua McMorrow-Hernandez penned a nice introductory article for beginning numismatists on the Smarter Hobby web site. It's U.S.-centric, but a good overview.
-Editor
To read the complete article, see:
Speaking of beginning coin collectors, Dave Harper of Numismatic News published a thoughtful article on the topic on September 5, 2017. Here's a lengthy excerpt - see the complete article online.
-Editor
Can numismatics survive without kids? The short answer is yes. The long answer is it's complicated. Historically, there have been two portals to entry to numismatics. Youth is one of them. The other portal to entry is middle age. It is a time when the next generation of kids has gone off to college. The spouse is engaged in one activity or another. The other partner has time to spend on an activity of his or her own. Coins look appealing. The root of interest could be deep in childhood. Interest might be due to a gold bullion coin commercial seen on cable TV. Maybe it is due to receipt of a challenge coin while serving in the military. The military has provided many an accomplished collector. Knowing that there are these two paths to entry, organized numismatics has spent decades sponsoring Young Numismatists programs. There has been virtually no attention paid to the entry point at middle age – except by marketers. They are selling gold bullion coins to the middle-aged. They are selling gold-plated state quarters. They are selling medals made of silver supposedly recovered from the World Trade Center after the twin towers crashed to the ground. Organized numismatics only pays attention to these numismatic novices when they knock on our door to resell what they have purchased. Why do we not have a program to convert these individuals to coin collecting? It won’t be easy. It is far easier to collect donations on the bourse floor for cute 10-year-old kids than middle-aged lawyers or doctors. Yet in the 150 years of modern numismatics, it is precisely those middle-aged lawyers and doctors who were the backbone of numismatics. We need a modern outreach to them.
Charles Morgan of CoinWeek has expressed similar thoughts about the entry of older folks to the hobby. I think they're on to something. It certainly can't hurt to try outreach to a new demographic.
-Editor
To read the complete article, see:
Wayne Homren, Editor The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
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