So I played two games with my parents today and may have finally convinced my mom that trashing coppers is a good thing. She at least recognises that buying extra coppers is rarely useful (We don't have the base set, so we've never played with Gardens).
In the
other thread, luser suggested having her start with 6 estates and 14 coppers. Since she already knows that extra estates are bad until the very end of the game (even though she still doesn't like trashing them), I opted to let her start with 5 extra coppers, so her deck had 3 estates and 12 coppers. But I didn't think of doing that till the second game.
The first game kingdom: Native Village, Embargo, Fishing Village, Steward, Ambassador, Warehouse, Forager, Watchtower, Upgrade, and Torturer.
FYI, I have Intrigue, Seaside, and Dark Ages, and I usually add in one proxy card per game which is often a fan-made card, but in this case was Watchtower. I usually play 3-player with my parents.
With an abundance of trashing, it seems like this would've been a great kingdom to have her start with five extra coppers (of course I gave her a few extra coppers anyway with Ambassador) to learn that trashing them is a good thing. I won this game by a lot anyway largely because I'm the only one who used Ambassador. And I learned this game that Watchtower is, at least on boards like this, a lot better than I thought it was. I did point out that Watchtower is a great defence against torturer, but I didn't tell them that they probably want more than one Watchtower when I have two torturers which I'm playing pretty often because of trashing.
The second game kingdom: Lighthouse, Haven, Island, Navigator, Conspirator, Treasury, Bazaar, Rogue, Harem, and LastFootnote's Wheelwright as the proxy card.
Seeing this kingdom, I wondered if it might be best to wait till next time we played to use the extra five coppers idea, but I decided against waiting, so she started with 12 coppers and 3 estates. I figured as much of a disadvantage five extra coppers would be, it would still help her to learn that coppers are junk despite a kingdom that isn't ideal for the purpose. This game, I tied with my dad, only beating my mom by five points. I'm pretty sure she at least learned that having extra coppers is not an advantage.
Maybe next time I'll start with five extra coppers as a handicap.