State of the Hobby

Over the years we have seen post after post suggesting the "Hobby of Kings" is doomed to suffer the same fate as Stamps, Sports Cards, and many other collecting areas.

I would venture to say most of the posts base their claim on the belief that the hobby is made up of mostly males that are over 65.

Interestingly when I view our website traffic, one sector "New Sessions" does not support the theory. I first noticed this while sampling a small time segment of the last 30 days, then quickly changed the date range to the last year, then two years. The results change very little expanding out the date range. The other statistic that really surprised me is that over 23% of the visitors are female, I was expecting this to be less than 5%.

What does it all mean? In my humble opinion, we (the numismatic community) are reaching the younger collectors. We are heading in the right direction to maintain and even grow the hobby. I would love to see this same report for PCGS, Heritage, or any of the larger traffic sites to see if its similar.

 

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This hobby has always been older white male dominated. I went to a coin show in the 1970's and it was mainly old white males. What does this tell us? Since no one is born old, it says that naturally as people get older and look for a hobby some take up coin collecting. It has never been a case that you must have them start when they are 10 years old or that person will never collect coins. Most collectors are not like me who DID start young and continued to collect. Most collectors start in their 30's or 40's.

For this reason I have never worried that our hobby is "getting older". It has always been older, we simply recruit guys after they are settled down in life for the most part. Btw, I LOVE having women involved in the hobby. I thought that was a great statistic. I do hope that trend continues, as I believe input from members like @TIF adds tremendously to our hobby.

 

Our local club has a very strong YN group (emphasis on Y). They enjoy widespread club support, as well as the interest and attention of club leadership, which makes a difference in their viability.

 

Exactly. That "old & stuffy" argument has no basis in actual fact as evidence of the contrary is seen at every turn. From forums to shows to auctions reality stands in stark contrast to it

 

Ok, it's assumptions based on old outdated facts. I stand corrected

 

I thinjk that "The State of the Hobby" is just fine.

The "Coin Market", on the other hand, could use a little tweeking!

 

So let me in on a secret.... how does Google know my age and my gender?

 

they know everything about you, and even watch you when your sleeping.

 

The collectors of ancients have most of the women. Neener neener neener.

 

It does make sense for the hobby to be the older crowd given they generally have advanced further in their careers and have more money to spend.

With that said the internet has been a game changer. I honesty do not think most people realize just how much collecting goes on almost entirely if not entirely through online purchases.

I would not be the least bit surprised if someone ran all the data and found more purchases occur online than in person at this point. Sure the market is weak right now, but that is a reflection of the economy and lack of disposable income not lack of collectors. Even with stamps and sports cards killing their own hobby flooding the market with different versions, there is still a good market in select sections of them. People need to relax about the future of coin collecting, though I suspect thinking the hobby is dying is nothing new to the hobby.

 

Wow... thanks, @medoraman! I try to bring some humor (with a touch of numismatic information ) to the board

 

Why do these threads always seem biased against old men with money?
We get the job done.

 

But, but, but........................I would have joined before I was 30 if you had been around before 1977.

Chris

 

I would agree you bring both great knowledge as well as humor, I simply believe women have a different perspective on average than men. Some of the most thought provoking comments I have read concerning numismatics have come from female numismatists. They tend to have a different angle on coin collecting, one which men do not pick up on. Always remember it took Margaret Thompson to be able to make sense of Byzantine anonymous bronzes simply on style and overstrike evidence. This series had confounded men for decades or longer.

Do I wish we had more everyone in numismatics? Heck yeah. I welcome every new perspective, especially for world and ancient numismatics. Coins are artifacts of the culture that produced them, and I am pretty sure white Anglo Saxon men didn't produce most coins.

 

The next generation of collectors is finally coming on board.

As we old timers are replaced there will be dramatic changes almost across the board. Predicting these changes is almost impossible but I'd expect more type and theme collecting and less focus on precious metals. Our generation considered base metal coins junk but the new generation might collect anytrhing from 18th century gold to memorial cents to aluminum South American coins.

No matter how they develop it will be a lot of fun for me to watch and to see the changes.

 

I think a lot of coin collectors start out as I did collecting while young and possibly through high school then putting it on the back burner for awhile while we establish our lives and careers then when we are more set and settled and better financially (at least somewhat) we get more serious in our late 30s early 40s and continue from there

 

this is excellent and a little bit surprising news to me. Our club ensures that we accommodate youth and all collectors at our meetings. I wish I could say that for other coin clubs I have joined.

 

The state of the hobby is just fine. The State of The Union is just terrible.......