Joel Orosz, in this week's Coin World, has an article about COINS Magazine, which apparently folded in April. My absolute favorite coin writer was the late Carl Allenbaugh who wrote in COINS in a column called Expertease. Oh well, it's been a hard slog for publications since the interwebbie came along.
That's really discouraging. I remember writing in to their "coin finds" section years ago when I first started collecting.
These publications were/are good for some knowledge development, but I quickly noticed as a teen with Coins and Coinage subs that the articles tended to repeat often over months or years and the content was often just regurgitating that same surface level information. AKA: I got bored of those publications very quickly. So it goes.
I'd imagine it's difficult to keep producing a publication with a fresh perspective on any single topic over a long period of time. We're seeing more print publications go by the way side every year. Advertisers are paying for adds online, not as much in printed publications and that's what kept them going. When I was a kid we didn't have the internet so if you wanted to learn about coins, you had to borrow a Coin World or buy a magazine at the store. That was the only info I got growing up. Now some stores are getting rid of their magazine sections all together. Just a sign of the times.
In the early '70s I read the Red Book as my primary source of info. I read Coin Magazine to learn about hucksters scamming people by reading all of the adverts. I learned some stuff from the articles.
@Vess1 I hear ya, but I had these subs from 1990-1995 when print magazines were still strong. I think they could have definitely found more diversity of article subjects, but fully understood the 'journalism' was merely pretext for the advertising revenue/profit.
It was all about the ads for me, anyway. Sure, I enjoyed the articles a time or two, but back before the Internet, and living in the numismatic boondocks most of the time, it was publications like Coins or Numismatic News that provided me a place to shop, most of the time. Sight-unseen. The Internet and eBay really revolutionized things for me, around the millennium. (What, you mean I can actually see pictures of the stuff before I buy it? Wow.)
I will miss COINS. They moved all their subscribers over to Numismatic News, so we weren't left out in the lurch. The thing I liked about COINS was that it seemed to be more geared to the average collector and not the high-end crowd with a ton of cash like Coin World is. Mike Thorne (who is a member here), Mark Benvenuto, and R. W. Julian are great writers and I will continue to enjoy their articles in Numismatic News.
Yeah, kind of by design. They were geared for newer members, and if you climbed the knowledge ladder you simply outgrew it, like a lot of beginner coin books. I had the same experience. Great beginner publication.
Though I don't think I ever purchased a single copy of Coins over the years, it's still sad to hear of the passing of a numismatic magazine. As many have already said, this trend will likely continue as print slowly becomes the next telegraph. Print just can't keep up with the almost real-time abilities of the online world. Print does come in handy when the power goes out, though. Like others here, I perused coin magazines (mostly COINage and World Coin News) just as much for the ads as for the articles. Prior to the Internet, I had access to only 2 or 3 local coin shops, so magazines became another marketplace to browse and research. I still have some of the coins purchased from those magazines years ago. Sadly, I found out well after the fact that many examples I bought as "AU" or "XF" ended up harshly cleaned. As a beginner, I didn't know any better. So I do harbor some slight resentment against them as well. But I learned, and I would never buy a coin sight unseen today. But back then, one sometimes had no other choice. Regardless, I still miss picking up the magazines in stores and rummaging through them, flaws and all. But the movement away from print seems more and more inevitable. Until the power goes out, at least.
I am sorry to see “Coins” magazine go although I had not looked at an issue for years. I preferred “COINage” to which I still subscribe. Those magazines were great when I was a kid. I never bought from the advertisers although I did look at the ads. I was more interested in the articles. Collectors don’t realize how lucky we are today to have so many reference books available. Back in the ‘60s, there wasn’t that much, and some the books that had been written were out of print and generally unavailable.
That's the great part. ^ The bad part, IMO, is that we are lazy. If only the TPG's could come up with a pop-out Partridge Family hologram singing "come on, get happy" we'd have everything done for us. Even a happy celebration for how fantastic we were clicking that BIN button before anyone did. We are Tree Sloths and the hunters are fake coins, fake grades and fake slabs.
The success of CAC is an obvious example. Instead of becoming discriminating buyers, a lot of collectors believed the line that it is run by an infallible person who is the greatest grader in the world if not of all time. All they have to do is look for the green or better yet, gold sticker, and all their worries are over. That’s one aspect of it, but the even worse aspect were the attacks on those who disagreed with them that CAC is perfect and the only way to go.
Well glad hear their perfect - will remember mark them up ole bull market. Got pocket? If they want pay extra / big money for CAC good for them. But when some those coins going to heck in the holders atmosphere, heat, humidity - bad tarnish, etc. it’s party over. Plus even without that u gotta find somebody willing off bourse pay that extra money. Many won’t. When is CACG coming out? Time open the gates let those bronc riders run. They have been touted for months……let’s see what they can really do at a real rodeo (on the bourse). I have seen a few CAC at local shows here and there but sellers have them marked up in stratosphere. Are you ready pay the money? Me would rather pick out my own nice coins than pay somebody else extra $ (sticker game) to.
Do you mean you have seen CAC stickered coins, or graded CACG Holders? The CACG graded Holders are just in the last week or so becoming available, and sample slabs with quarter slabbed in VA. have been sent out to members/investors/collectors. Could you share an example of a piece marked up to the stratosphere?
My question not about sample slabs. Marked up to stratosphere - figure of speech - u don’t know what that means lol?
