If you are following the practice of paying for your groceries and your fun activities with cash in order to help manage your budget and stop credit card use, one thing you may have noticed is that you end up with a lot of loose change.
This makes it a great time to start coin collecting with your family!
We have a small, but growing assortment of coins in our house. We use old salsa jars to contain most of our coins, but we do have a small collection of proper coin holder books from when TR Dad was younger. We separate our coins by decade first. And then by year, after we have a whole bunch from one decade. Plum is seeking to gather the full set of fifty state quarters for herself, as well as the special nickels and pennies that have come out recently. We also have a collection of coins from the birth year of each member of the TR household. We imagine that when the TR kiddoes are old and grey, they’ll enjoy having a bunch of coins from when they were wee lads.
Coin collecting (Numismatics, if you’d like a $3 word for it.) and coin sorting is a fun hobby for the whole family. We have had a wide range of conversations surrounding our coins since we started.
We talk about:
* Economics: What are the face values of the coins, and why are some worth more based on their ‘collectibility?’ What makes things ‘valuable?’
* Chemistry: what are the various coins made out of, and how have they changed over the years.
* History: Who are the people depicted on the coins, and how/why were they selected? Why were coins changed over the years?
* Physics: How does the magnifying glass work?
* Geography: We inevitably end up with foreign coins mixed in to our collection. Where are the countries located? How did the coins come to the USA? Why don’t all the countries use the same money? (OK, that last one’s a toughie, but we work through it.)
And these are just some of our coin inspired discussions. Younger ones, like our Bluey, can sort coins by size and shape, and help count them out in stacks or piles. Bluey also gets his beginning knowledge of money while we sort coins over the dining room table. Plum, who is older, helps sort by date. Her expert eyes help find those tiny mint marks. We are together the whole time, having fun, and learning!
Need other ideas on how to make coin collecting a fun activity? Try this site at the US Mint.
We recently received a 1919 penny in our change from the grocery store. How often do you get to hand your child something from your pocket that is nearly 100 years old?