As coin collectors, we have a responsibility to share our knowledge with the future generation. Probably the most obvious way of doing it is to pass information on to the next generation. It maybe that our kids will never collect coins, but there is much more to it than raising a new collector. If we can educate our kids about history, culture and geography, even if they don't take up collecting, it is time well-spent, not to mention bonding and relationship building, creating memories for life.

In this article I will write about my experiences collecting with my eight-year-old daughter, and try to pass on a few ideas about what worked and what didn't.

First, let's see why coin collecting, there are many other things we can do with our kids. Most importantly because this is what I know the most about. I could teach her many other things, but I felt that if I pick something I have a passion for while she can see that I'm doing the same, it maybe more inspirational. Besides, I encourage other activities and hobbies, in case collecting is not her passion, but so far so good.

We live in a multicultural family, my wife is from the US, and I am from Hungary. Collecting allows me to talk about cultural differences, languages or history, which I think our kids should know about. At this age, there's nothing like coming along with dad to the coin store and picking something that looks interesting. I have to admit, sometimes I go to the coin store pretending that I need something, while the only reason is to encourage my daughter to look around and pick something.

It started with the State Quarter collection. I showed Emily my collection and when she seemed interested in creating her own, I pulled out a huge bag of quarters and started to find the State Quarters from the states she was familiar with. At this point she was approximately five years old.

We matched the quarters to the state map of the US, and talked about the different states, mostly based on her life experience. Since she has lived in three states already, the conversation topic was given.

As the next step, I told her about different ways of collecting, and explained how I made many friends through swapping coins. Thanks to many WINS members, Emily received a few coins and collecting albums that we got started with. At this point she was able to write basic things, so we made a point of sending an email to the people who sent us coins and thank them. What a wonderful way of starting to talk about thank you notes and make it part of your life.

At this point I think I made my first mistake. I started encouraging her to organize her coins very meticulously. While organization is a good skill to learn at this age, I think I made it way too complex and for a while she lost interest. We put the coins into folders, and I required her to identify all her coins, which was relatively difficult with foreign coins. So, I had to take a step back. There is nothing wrong with collecting some coins into albums as it makes sense, and just put others into plastic bags, maybe by country, maybe by feature. I quickly learned that if I wanted to maintain her interest, I had to take her lead, and explain things casually. Most of this explanation was through my own collection which she enjoys looking at. I showed her how I organize my coins, how I take notes on what's what, but let her do her own way of collecting. I was happy to find recently that on her own she felt the need to organize coins by country.

We also used collecting to go to different places, we visited the local coin museum, and also went to a few coin shows and coin club meetings. Yes, I was very proud to introduce my then 7-year-old daughter at the coin club, where the theme was the Franklin Halves that day, and she was able to bring one with her and talk about it. This alone made her more interested, just being able to see that other people are collecting the same way as she is. Of course, it also helped that I told her about the theme and that now she is old enough to get a valuable coin such as a Franklin half to bring to the meeting.

But what is a valuable coin anyway? Honestly, at this point I try not to get into it too much. There is way more to a coin than a discussion of what it takes me to get it for her. Of course, there are times when we need to discuss it, for example when at a coin show she wants to take home something which is worth hundreds, but in general our discussion of value is more about what a coin is able to buy you in different countries.

When value comes into question is to decide how many coins to buy her or give her. I can go to the coin store and get her a hundred coins from the bucket for $25. I can't even get a Morgan from that money. Or, I could just give her my 2000 swap coins, my trading buddies already picked out the nice ones, I can live without the rest. But from a child's perspective, it is just as important to understand that we need to work on collecting just as much as understanding the coins. I would like if she could be happy for every single coin she gets or picks out, so I have limited the number of coins she is allowed to get. Of course soon she will be able to buy them by the hundreds from her spending money if she chooses to, but I hope she won't.

One more thing for her to understand about value is the quality of the coin, which we often discussed. First we put together the state quarter collection, then when we found good quality coins, we looked into replacing the old ones with nicer ones. Coin shows are particularly great to talk about coin quality, because she can see the same coins side by side in different grades. At some point I started discussing grading, which I thought was too advanced for her, but I was surprised she found it interesting.

An interesting conversation is the age of coins. I had to think hard about how I am going to introduce this topic, to her a relatively new date sounds old, but when she looked at my collection, I wanted her to understand the difference between 50 years or 300 years.

At some point I found that she was very interested in elongated coins, which are very often marketed to kids in zoos or museums. Since I didn't know much about them, we just decided to join The Elongated Coin Club together.

One of the biggest challenges I had when our younger daughter also wanted to have coins. At that time she was too young, but I wasn't sure if I should start her in coin collecting at some point, or find something equivalent for her. I still don't know what's the right answer. Ultimately I decided to show her some stamps to avoid sister rivalry. I have heard from her several times that she likes the stamps, but she prefers coins like her older sister. This question is still open, and as I have learned in the last few years, probably I should take their guidance on it, and help answering questions as they come up.

I have to admit the fact that my daughter is interested in coins is more exciting to me than I ever thought it would be. A few years ago when I wanted to go to a coin show, I had to take time out of the weekend which I could have spent with the kids, now we can enjoy it together. But most importantly, I often find that many of our conversations about collecting surface somewhere else in her life. So far it appears that I am able to achieve what I wanted, an interest and understanding of cultures, history and languages.