Programs for Young Coin Collectors

ANA Education Director Rod Gillis outlines some of the fun and challenging programs for young collectors.

Hello, this is Rod Gillis, the education director at the American Numismatic Association. And I’m here today to talk with you about young collectors. You know, intelligent dealers and coin collectors alike know that the future of our hobby deals with youngsters. There’s going to come a time when you’ll need to sell your collection and if youngsters aren’t interested, who would you sell your coins to?

The American Numismatic Association tries to do their part by fostering a lot of programs for youngsters. We call them young numismatists, or YN’s. And so today what I’d like to do is spend a little bit of time talking with you about the different programs that we offer, and hopefully you can spread the word to any youngsters that you’re familiar with.

Probably our flagship program — the programs that we have the most participation — is our Coins for A’s. Any youngster who earns three or more A’s in a marking period can submit their report card to us, and we will send to them a world coin. And we’ll challenge them to learn as much about the country that minted their world coin as possible. If you happen to be a homeschooler, that’s not a problem. There are plenty of report card templates that your parents can find and use them to be able to submit a report card to us. As a matter of fact, I would say that approximately one-quarter of all our youngsters who participate in this program are homeschoolers, so we welcome them! The really nice thing about the program is when you submit your very first report card, not only will we send you to you a world coin but, we will also send an application for a free one-year membership to the American Numismatic Association!

Now, once you become a member of the association, that opens up a whole world of other programs that you can become involved in.

If you’re 12 years old or under, we have a program called the Dollar Project. In the Dollar Project, you will complete several activities and you’ll earn a dollar each time that you do it. You can earn a Presidential dollar; you can earn an Eisenhower dollar; you can even earn a silver dollar. And all these are there for you when you complete projects.

If you’re a little bit older and more experienced, we have an Ancient Coin Project for you to complete. And again, it’s a matter of completing certain requirements, and you’ll receive ancient coins for doing that.

We also have an Early Copper Coin Project where we can offer you early United States copper coins — half cents; large cents — and all these are for the asking as long as you are able to complete the requirements.

It’s important to understand that the American Numismatic Association fully realizes that youngsters are the key to the hobby, and we try to do everything we can to support youngsters and learning the great hobby that we love.

All of the projects that I mentioned can be found on our website, money.org. Simply look for the Young Numismatist area and place your cursor on there and click and you can find information about all the programs that I mentioned. Again, this is Rod Gillis, Education Director at the American Numismatic Association, wishing you happy collecting!