Your estimate of coin collector population?

Well I would suggest that probably 100% of those members have some interest in coin collecting, but there are plenty of coin collectors who are not ANA members, so at best that suggests there's at least 30,000 but likely quite a few more. (I personally am not an ANA member but I'd still call myself a serious coin collector. If your hobby comes up in conversation enough that 100% or close to it of your friends, family members, and coworkers know you're devoted to the hobby, I'd say that's a good definition of a "serious" collector lol...)

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Collector is not as broad a term as people here are making it out to be. I own two cars, about average for an American family, yet I'm not considered by any stretch of the imagination a car collector. I own a piece of relatively expensive art, but I'm hardly an art collector. People who throw coins in a jar aren't coin collectors.
Guy

 

Oh come on now. A coin collector is the guy
who's a paranoid geek and/or hermit.
Be proud of it!

 

Yeah, I have never bought that argument.

Older collectors have been predicting the demise of their own hobby for decades now at least. When I was a kid they constantly asked me "How do we geto more young people to be collectors?" "We are going to die off since the kids nowadays aren't collecting coins"! Yada yada.

Yes, some famous collectors/dealers like David Bowers started off as a kid. Many kids collect pennies and then leave it forever. However, the REAL pattern of a serious coin collector is someone who probably collects "something" as a kid, but then girls, cars, college, career, all get in the way. However, around 30 or so they look around and discover coin collecting. This is where most serious new collectors come from, and with the advent of the internet there are more of them than ever.

Sorry sir, I know your heart is in the right place, but I don't, and have never, bought the argument this hobby must go to extraordinary lengths to attract new collectors. Best thing we could ever do is try to "clean up" the hobby.

 

Perhaps we need to have a few questions added to the next US Census. :thumb:

 

Fixed that for ya.

 

I work at a place that at certain times of the year has a lot of down time and searching for any topic of conversation is appreciated lol... they don't mind too many conversations about coins despite not being nearly interested in it as I am.

How about another measure: if 50% or more of your disposable income goes towards coins, I think that makes you a serious collector lol...

 

Yep, this is my experience as well.

There may simply be a coin collector gene.

 

Just a thought that has often crossed my mind lately, as a coin-collector and a 'boomer'. They say 10,000 boomers are retiring daily. I expect that boomers make up the majority of the coin-collecting population, as their generations generally had more disposable income per capita, and thus came to collect almost anything. As boomers like myself retire, our income & lifestyle changes. We start to look for sources of extra income. Ah-ha, selling our coin collections. Of course, the number of boomers expiring daily will be drastically increasing, and so lots of coin-collectors will be gone. The younger generations have so much technologies and other areas of interest in which to spend their extra dollars. Couple this with the fact that coin collecting isn't what is was in the 40's & 50's, when you found the coins to fill your album in pocket change. It just seems to me the hobby is in (or in for) a serious downslide.

 

Just a thought that has often crossed my mind lately, as a coin-collector and a 'boomer'. They say 10,000 boomers are retiring daily. I expect that boomers make up the majority of the coin-collecting population, as their generations generally had more disposable income per capita, and thus came to collect almost anything. As boomers like myself retire, our income & lifestyle changes. We start to look for sources of extra income. Ah-ha, selling our coin collections. Of course, the number of boomers expiring daily will be drastically increasing, and so lots of coin-collectors will be gone. The younger generations have so much technologies and other areas of interest in which to spend their extra dollars. Couple this with the fact that coin collecting isn't what is was in the 40's & 50's, when you found the coins to fill your album in pocket change. It just seems to me the hobby is in (or in for) a serious downslide.

 

I think website traffic is a good way to get an idea of active collectors.

A lot of our pages have visible counters on them. This allows Coin Clubs, Dealers, and anyone else that wants to take the time to look at the counters to get an idea how many people are actually looking at their page.

 

There are a lot of people holding old coins I wouldn't call collectors. These are the most types I run into most. One of my supervisors has an UNC 1884 CC. His only coin he says and he loves it. The other night another dealer, before work pulled a 1922 drilled peace dollar from his pocket, had been polished and told me his grandfather gave it to him, and that he had once worn it as a necklace.

 

I know quite a few people that have a collection. Very few that actually collect. Most of these collections consist of circulated silver, Kennedy halves, and wheat cents. Most have no clue what their coins are worth or how to grade.

 

Not a direct answer to your question, but an interesting number I came across a few days ago. I was promoting a Facebook page to all people in the US above age 18 who identified as coin collector, numismatist, numismatics, etc. Facebook claimed that I can reach 210000 people with my advertisement.

 

My estimate is 3!

Or is that how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop? Oh well, either way, it's a pure SWAG.

 

If there were 150 million coin collectors in the U.S. few of us would be able to afford collecting coins with that much demand chasing the supply.