YOUNG NUMISMATISTS OF AMERICA HISTORY

The history of YNA is somewhat short and encompassed less than our life span (unless you are a "younger" young numismatist). The start of the YNA club was somewhat political according to Greg Lyon a founder of the club: "In the late 80's , the ANA started a separate magazine for YN's called First Strike. It was published quarterly and although the editing and publishing was done by an outside organization, it focused on articles by and for YN's. Several years later, ANA eliminated First Strike as a separate publication and incorporated a much smaller version in the Numismatist. Unfortunately this version featured very few articles and many were now written by adults - depriving in my mind, YN's the opportunity from having their writings published on a national level."

The stage had been set and the club was formed at the 1990 ANA Summer Seminar. The founders main goal was to put out a publication which would give YN's an opportunity to write articles to be published on a national level. Things were looking up. In 1995 Steve Roach became President and the club membership peaked to an all time high of 100. The club published four newsletters a year and had an annual meeting at the ANA Summer convention in addition to an informal get together at the Summer Seminar.

During the same time, in the 1996 Spring issue, John Kraljevich Jr. wrote on the importance of involvement by saying "Don't collect from the sidelines. The top numismatists of today didn't get where they are today by quietly filling holes in an album. They learned all they could from their precious artifacts. They absorbed publications, thrived on talking to other collectors, and gained intellectual nutrition from going to as many conventions as possible.....It will benefit you more than you know, and you can take special pride of sharing your knowledge and adding your own footnote to the story of numismatics. Be involved. It will pay off at college. And never forget to thank your audience."

By the end of 1996, problems started to appear as many of the original founders grew older and went off to college. The publishing of the newsletter became difficult to stick to as most members did not contribute articles. Steve Roach took over the Presidency/editor position and was able to get out a simple one page quarterly newsletter. Jeremy Haag soon became editor and had "great difficulty getting anyone to contribute anything to the newsletter." He resorted to "reducing the size of the publication and writing small articles." A list serve was set up but only 15 members joined and was soon discontinued for lack of use.

In 1998 the officers changed, but not for long. Jake Wood Jr. took the reigns of President, but resigned a short three weeks later for an undisclosed reason. John Brush stepped up and became President and was able to get out three or four newsletters, annually. In July of 2001, YN's at the ANA Summer Seminar jump started YNA back up. Since then, over 200 young collectors have joined, a quarterly newsletter published, and a new website.

What can we learn from the history of the old YNA that will help the new? Jeremy Haag, a former editor, says "It was always one of those things that people got excited what the organization can do at conventions and the ANA Summer Seminar but once we dispersed few followed through with their promises. I think one of the secrets is to draw up a list of what things you want the club to offer and then another list of how it is you could do those things successfully. Find out how much work people are willing to contribute. You don't want to ask too much of people or you will risk the possibility of them just dropping everything. Last but not least try to cultivate new leaders so that when it is time for the present leadership to move on, there is someone there to take their place."

As all can see, the lack of involvement and the recruitment of new members/leaders killed the old YNA. If we do not heed the past members warnings, the same can happen with our club. Stay active and write an article or two. I would like to thank the previous members quoted within this article for spending countless hours e-mailing me back and forth the history as they recall it. Thanks goes to John Brush, Greg Lyon, Jeremy Haag and Steve Roach. Without them, my initial research about the club would never had gotten off the ground.

Cameron Kiefer - Historian

To read the complete article, see:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070614144535/http://www.ynaclub.org/history.html

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