On Saturday July 22, 2017 Tom Kays and I ran the Kids Club event at Wayne Herndon's Annandale Coin Show (Tom assisted greatly with this writeup as well). We had a nice large room across the lobby from the coin show entrance, which was held at the Ernst Cultural Center at the Northern Virginia Community College campus.

We always scramble a bit to get set up in an hour, but things worked out well this time. We arrived early and our speaker was already getting set up. Professor William (Bill) Wright is an adjunct history professor at Lord Fairfax Community College. Bill collects and spoke about Greek gods and heroes pictured on ancient coins. He brought along many beautiful ancient coins and had the fortitude to hand them out to the children on little trays with magnifying glasses to pass around the audience. He impressed upon the children that they must be good caretakers of these ancient artifacts so that people hundreds of years from now may be able to do just what these lucky kids did, to see and hold coins that have passed down to us from antiquity.

No corroded bronzes here, but nice, high-grade silver Athenian Owls, coins with Zeus and Alexander, quadriga and lightning bolts, and worth many hundreds of dollars, passed throughout the room in the hands of the children. We saw parents taking photos of their children holding the ancient coins in a rapture of concentration and high regard. None precipitated from their little trays and all returned to their owner without blemish. We may have been holding our breath just a little for that outcome.

Before Bill spoke we told him he might award a few extra Action Bucks to children for especially good answers or for earnest participation. Bill would ask what symbols, what characters, what meaning the kids saw on the coins before handing them out, having projected them on a big screen to explain them and their context. Little children, apparently watch and remember movies like the Percy Jackson series that feature Greek Mythological figures and their sagas, because some of the most amazing "two-dollar answers" poured forth from even the smallest kids to the amazement of the adults.

We had to run all over the room handing out about fifty extra auction bucks as the little scholars knew things way beyond what we knew in third grade. Looking at what I would call a "seahorse" one boy properly named it a "Hippocampus." Others began a deep discussion about family relations among the gods and heroes. By the end, we heard the professor respond with "that is a sound conjecture" which could have been code words for needing to go look something up, or perhaps needing a beer. Toward the end of the lecture we had even awarded an auction buck to one of parents as many were so animated with the talk they forgot their place and were raising their hands too, trying to keep up with their little scholars, not always succeeding.

Tom and I set up the registration and auction lot tables. Albums and coin books were awarded as door prizes to encourage all to register. Those who do will receive a reminder card in the mail for the next event. All the dozens of lots for auction are donated by generous Nummis Nova members and some coin dealers on the bourse floor. Popular lots included silver dollars, proof and type coins, obsolete currency, tokens, medals, and even official Disney pins.

Lots must be worthy of the collections of these budding coin collectors who do know values and quickly questioned the authenticity of one mint medal, and do their homework on unfamiliar items, polling value estimates to obtain consensus from many of the coin collecting adults in the room. Tom helped find some chalk for the blackboard and ordered some additional chairs for the audience, which came in handy. People started trickling in right at 11:00 am but we soon had a full house.

Bill Wright did a fabulous job connecting with the kids and quizzing them in return for auction dollars. Here are some pictures Tom and I took. I didn't manage to get one of Tom (behind the scenes), who did a great job calling the auction while I acted as the runner. Sorry!

We had our usual mix of regulars and newbies. The crowd was engaged, and clearly enjoyed the presentation. Everyone participated in the auction, and a lot of kids came up afterwards to spend some of their remaining auction dollars on coins from our "Treasure Box."

We were done by about 12:30 and packed everything up for the next show. We do this again in December, and we have an odd feeling that we will see some of that flood of auction bucks given for participation will come back to us in due course, perhaps under a dynamite family pooling strategy where that new group of five siblings, who sat in back, observing the scene but not bidding, could dominate the room in December with a hundred auction bucks between them.

Another consortium of boy scouts up front also gave me the impression they will "be prepared" next time too. Other old hands (fifth grade) have been attending for a couple of years and no telling what wealth they have amassed, who will return as proto-teenagers with auction bucks to burn.

Worthy numismatic donations to further the education of these sharp children, who may soon be bidding, winning, and likely dominating future coin auctions using real dollars from their allowance (boo-yah!) may be accepted by any participating Nummis Nova member.