What do you consider "low mintage" for a US coin?

Wow, I hope you don't put me in the "speculator" or "investor" bucket. I have never speculated in coins, and tell everyone who will listen they are a terrible investment.

Having said that, I still have a few thousand "good" US coins, (generally $50 and up), and many, many thousands of ancient coins. I also have a library of about 850 books on coins, and a few hundred more on history.

 

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The conversation was concerning demand for rare coins. Someone who collects cents or state quarters from circulation is not a factor in the demand equation for rare coins. They never buy a single coin, let alone a rare or collectible one. They simply put coins aside from circulation. That is why, if you are considering the possible extent of the demand side of the equation for US coins, I believe 250 thousand might be a possible number to use. At least most of those 250k collectors are aware of a thing like a 1916d dime and how its more valuable than others.

 

3, yep 3, that would be low.

 

250k collectors is definitely a low number for the number of collectors in the USA. eBay, Great Collections, Heritage ect wouldn't be doing the sales they do if there were only 250k people buying. .5% of the USA population would be more than 15 million people. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that half of 1 percent of the population are collectors and really it is likely higher especially with the internet where a collector never needs to make themselves known to build a collection.

 

Based upon what? A guess? The 250,000 number what put together looking at mailing lists versus non-mailing list customers of large firms, numismatic subscriptions, coin show attendance, registered users for online coin sites, and tons of other REAL data. From that they extrapolated an overall number of people they considered collectors who purchase coins for a collection. Does it include bullion holders, people who keep "unusual" change, or those who inherited some old silver dollars from grandma? No, but one cannot expect those to be "demand" for future sales of rare coins, can they?

Yes, I do consider it unreasonable to pick a number out of the sky and assume that represents anything. Its the same innane argument that the PM people put forth, "most people on earth cannot own an ounce of silver, there is not enough to go around". Most people on earth have ZERO interest in owning an ounce of silver, and even fewer care one with about a collectible coin.

An "estimate" should be just that, a reasoned approximation with data to support it.

 

Based upon social studies showing time and time again that you can literally pick almost anything and more than a half of a percent of the total population will be into it.

That is all antiquated data. It's like why poll numbers are often wrong only using landline phones for a survey. Numerous collectors are on no mailing lists, don't regularly attend coin shows (not to mention you wouldn't even be able to tell who has been counted already without sign up sheets that most collectors would be opposed to) or subscribe to no print publications. 30 years ago that would have been a good measure, not today with the internet.

You could find a couple hundred thousand different ebay IDs alone that bought or sold a collectable coin in the last year. The internet has changed everything and if we only use old methods as a count we will be vastly off the real number. If I wanted to I could sit back and build a collection from online purchases and no one would know I ever existed. Plenty of people do exactly that.

Bullion buyers you can. A percentage of people that start out as bullion buyers only end up becoming collectors. The doomsday prepper types don't but a lot do develop an interest in other coins.

 

No, I wasn't referring to you. Perhaps I misunderstood your post. I was referring to someone I understood you knew.

 

The best sources of data I consider eBay, Heritage and maybe Great Collections. These three seem to be representative of the collector population because most collectors presumably buy from one or more of them. B&M dealers are an additional source but it isn't necessary to use them to be a collector anymore. Since I resumed collecting in 1998, I haven't bought from a local dealer even once, because they have nothing I want to buy - EVER.

Heritage has hundreds of thousands of registered users and though all of them are not buyers and include collectors of other areas, I suspect (but do not actually know) that most are buying coins from them. On eBay, I suspect that most who are active collectors buy through them, I believe this is a noticeable multiple of the Heritage base. All aren't active but only eBay knows their activity and to my knowledge, they haven't provided this data to anyone.

Like I said in my initial post on this subject, the primary reason I believe the actual collector base is larger or much larger than what is apparently visible through sources such as that survey is because of the combination of the estimated supply of US coins and price level. Yes, I know that non-collectors own tons of coins they inherited (like my step grandmother who died about 15 years ago who must have had a valuable collection of maybe 10,000) and "investors" own a noticeable percentage of Morgans, generic type gold and maybe even "key dates.

But even accounting for that, I don't believe there are enough hoarders who own large numbers of any number of coins and don't believe dealers are holding an outsized percentage as inventory either.

My number of two million is probably off but if it is much less, it implies two things.

First, that any number of coins are owned in common by an outsized percentage of the collector base. I don't believe this for a minute.

Second, as big of a pessimist as I am on the future price level, apparently I am still actually far too positive. If the collector base is really only in the vicinity of 250,000, given the economic train wreck which is in store at some point in the future and almost certainly while most reading this post are still alive, the upcoming price crash should really be a sight to behold because the supply of coins coming out of the "woodwork" by desperate people forced to raise cash will totally overwhelm future buyers. The only reason it did not happen in 2008 is because the financial stress was temporary.

 

I don't want to wade through this amiable morass.......

Short answer, anything under a thousand that a whole bunch of people want..........

 

Agreed. Internet buying has certainly surpassed local buying by now given that you just have to go over to the computer and have access to a countless number of coins as opposed to making a drive and hoping something is good there. Coin shows you see this the most with fewer and fewer people footing the expense to travel there and the show markets often being much more local than people flying in for it.

Your point about shops is one a lot of people seem to forget. In the old days it was shops and shows, today we have collectors that have never set foot in either. Just like you can find almost all the information online without having to buy any books or subscribe to any magazines.

Aside from all of the online sales that actually is solid evidence. 250k people could in no way support these price levels on their own. If they had enough money to buy every coin in sight they likely wouldn't be buying three and four figure coins.

I think 2 mil is a low estimate in my opinion, but it is certainly in the millions if not 10s of millions and not the hundreds of thousands. I am not sure what the survey being referred to is but if it left out online activity there is no reason to think it holds any weight given that it didn't bother to include the largest part of the market.

I don't either. Sure some people hoard everything they can find but the shift from quantity to quality over the years has certainly diminished the hoarding mentality in a lot of people. Not to mention the actual size those hoards would have to be for so few people to be supporting the amount of sales we see every month. Their mail boxes would like like a TPGs.