Now I Am Getting Worried.... The Future Of Our Hobby

Wow, great video. I grew up in the great sports cards craze, so I personally remember the crowds, the noise and the excitement of a floor filled with people, three-ringed binders and lots and lots of cards. It was huge. Then, as the video states, it crashed because companies threw too much stuff into the market. In 1981, one major card company (Topps) became three (Topps, Fleer, Donruss) and collecting became more of a drag. Then more sets and variations were added, then more, and more, then brand new cards started selling for hundred of dollars. It was ridiculous. I bailed and sold out pretty early. I regretted it for a while, now I feel lucky. I did have a Wayne Gretzky rookie many years ago, which might be nice to have now, but otherwise... anyway, the footage of that card show was downright depressing. Ugh.

I don't think coins are there yet, but they could be someday. They at least have inherent value, unlike cardboard trading cards. Who knows?

 

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What killed stamp collecting was self adhesive stamps followed by the ridiculous amount of stamp issues. As s retired postal employee and a past collector I've seen and heard this first hand. Not all but most of the older collectors use their collection to mail letters and/or parcels. I do.

 

I think you made a great point: the supply of cards simply got extreme. The scarcity factor that made cards valuable from 1900-1980 was eviscerated as the card companies produced multiple sets, including special premium sets, and the number of card companies went form one to four.

When I collected in the 1960's and 1970's, when you said you had a Tom Seaver 1971, you knew what it was. 20 years later, there could be 5 different Ken Griffey cards. Or more.

The U.S. Mint has to make sure they don't keep coming out with too many collectibles besides the annual edition of the ASE and Eagle Gold coins. There's tons of supply from regular coins and bills from our nation's past; we don't need MORE SUPPLY from the future.

 

This is exactly it. It happened with my own collecting and I see it now with my stepson. He was very interested when he was 12 - 15, wanting to go to all the coin shows with me and whatnot. Then he discovered girls, graduated from high school, got a serious girlfriend and went off to college. The other day we were watching preseason football together and out of the blue he asked about the coins I had given him through the years, "are they still in your cabinet and, no, I didn't want to take them now I was just wondering". I think years down the road he will come back to the hobby just like I did years ago.

 

It should be very easy to gauge interest from the change in attendance at monthly coin shows that are local...as well as the big national shows like Long Beach and FUN.

 

I agree that the self adhesive stamps followed by the enormous amount of commemorative issues is what's killing the stamp collecting hobby. But please don't tell me you're using ALL of your collection to mail letters and parcels. You're not even keeping the singles that create the collection? I can see using the duplicates, triplicates, etc., but at least keep one of each for the collection! I, for one, don't use my stamp collection to mail letters and/or parcels. But I do buy discount postage off of the bay for that.

 

Afraid I am and I'm not the only one. There is no market for stamps.

 

True, but if you don't see them, how do you know they ARE out there? That's why I say that promotion outside of flyers at a coin show is important. For example, if you don't have a chance to place a free ad in your community newspaper, at least a sign advertising a coin show placed outside the event space would be seen by passing motorists. Even if the promotion doesn't bring in any serious collectors it will bring in interested people who might start collecting.

I was surprised one day when I stopped by the local mall and found they had people selling collectibles like baseball cards and sports memorabilia. And in the midst of all this was a coin dealer who not only had some coins for sale but also supplies. This is the kind of thinking that reminds the public what is out there.

 

Interesting. A lot of the appeal for coins goes to the artistry and history of the coin. I would think the same could be said for stamp. Plus, stamps have color!

 

I think there were other factors contributing to the demise of stamps and BB cards, but yes, "too much crap" from the US Mint isn't helping things. It creates collector fatigue and cheapens everything that's issued.

I wish the US Mint would limit themselves to a mint set, proof set, ASE, AGE and one commemorative per year (ideally a return to 90% silver half dollars, but I know that's too much to ask for).

And for crying out loud, US Mint & US Gov't, when you stop circulating a coin, just stop making them altogether.

 

No less rare, but will it still be as costly in real dollar terms?

Isle of Man is now a piker compared to Canada. A couple years ago I went through the 21st century Standard catalog to see what country had the most pages. It was Canada by a LARGE margin with over 125 pages. That's 125 pages, three columns to a page, in just 17 years.

 

I don't think they should limit the number of commemoratives per year to one (or any number). After all, some years it would make sense to issue a few of them. Look how the 2016 mercury, SLQ, and WLH got messed up because of the arbitrary cap on the number of silver commemoratives they could issue. That ended up with them striking them as bullion and then changing the sizes and it went off the rails. Obviously, that year they needed to make all three as silver commemoratives and they couldn't make it happen.

But on the whole regarding collector fatigue, what they need to do better is to edit. If they issued 5 commemoratives in a year and they were all commemorating significant things and the artistry and quality were there, I'd have no problem buying all of them. Even one coin commemorating something that is a stretch to be significant and/or with yet another poor low relief design is one coin too many.

 

I have been arguing this for quite some time. I don’t know how many people in the US collect coins, but I’ve heard numbers ranging from 0.1% to 1%. That means to sustain the hobby, between 1 and 10 kids per 1000 need to adopt coin collecting at some point in their life. Put into that perspective, it does not seem so bleak.

 

Being in my early thirties and was a coin collector as a child that stopped then recently rekindled, I can say what happened to me that got me out of the hobby. It was a bunch of things honestly, but it comes down to money, peer pressure, and girls.

Money, my collection was nothing but it was still a cool collection, almost all my finds were from change in elementary, so I collected halves and quarters mainly, dad would bring home pennies and I would go through them and ask to keep the Wheaties. I slowly found that I was envious of the "big ticket" items and my collection was beginning to bore me, I "invested" in some poor coins which I should never paid the premiums I did. I found that you needed money to get what you wanted if you wanted to go pass the culls and Wheaties. Major bummer as I was just a poor farmer kid.

Then we start to grow and peer pressure takes over. Where I'm from, you were a nerd if you collected anything or read comic books, or whatever. I wanted to fit in the best I could, being a Asian American in a small farming community was hard. Lots of racism and bullying can take their toll on a kid, so I didn't want to show that I collected coins or cards. I wanted to be one of the guys that played basketball or the star player, at least, that was my thinking at the time. So the coin collection went slowly to the wayside, finding a few coins time to time but never to put much stock in it anymore.

Then you grow up more. Girls. Plain and simple, I got in my teens and I wanted to chase girls.....or at least try, lol. My thinking was, if the guys think coins are lame/geeky, what will the girls think? No more coin collecting, even though I wanted to.

As I grew up, I never touch coins really but if I noticed a wheatie or something, I would save it but again, didn't really care at all about it.

As I was growing up, I needed money. Money to take the girls out, party, and have fun. I started to sell my stuff to pay for these things, coins ended up on ebay. I started a coin store online and started to sell my collection piece by piece. I was making good money, to where I didn't work and took my girl out every night, I never re-invested the money I made. I just spent it up as fast as I got it. My collection ended up to almost nothing, at least what people wouldn't buy I had left. I cancelled my store on ebay and got a job. The rest is history.

In my case, a lot of what happened to me was I was growing up and wanted to be accepted. Now that I am older, I don't care what people think of me. I have a wife that loves me for who I am and I am secure of who I am. I have a room (lockable room) devoted to a lot of my passions, my geek room. I collect comics, cards, coins, figures, anything geeky and I love it! Do I regret selling my collection, yes and no. It was mainly low grade crap but I think what kept me going on collecting as a kid was the hunt and the acquisition of something new, once you lose that along with growing up, I think any kind of collecting can go away.

Now is the coin hobby dying? I would say the same for cards and I recently got back into those too and there is a great following for it. The cards of today are amazing. I think coin collecting will go through it's highs and lows, there will always be collectors. The only way for us to find the real answer is to wait and see. Keep on exposing new youngsters to the hobby and if 1 in 100 take up the hobby, that is still a win. That one person can then convert a few more to the hobby and so on. I believe its up to us to keep it alive and to pass it along. If they don't like the hobby, it's all good, coin collecting is not for everybody. The point is to try and continue to love your passion. If you love your passion, people will see it and will want to know why you are so passionate about it. Keep on collecting!

 

And this is exactly the concern that is on my mind. See, I have long believed that my generation is responsible for coin values being as unrealistic as they are these days.

But here's the deal. Just this morning I ordered a $500.00 large cent. Wasn't that big of a deal financially. Ten years ago it would have been a big stretch for me. Twenty years ago, absolutely unthinkable.... I also suspect in another ten years I will likely be at some level of retirement with more going out than I have coming in. As I suspect will be the case for most of my generation. The folks that are now looking for double ear Lincoln cents will be the new middle age generation with more disposable cash. Will they find the $500.00 large cent to be as valuable as it was to me? Or will they want to spend their $500.00 on a double ear Lincoln?

 

The approach to YNs must also be different. Young folks are more engaged and interested when they learn how the coins fit into an interesting area of history. When I talk to my young peers about the difference between an S-103 and S-104 1796 large cents, their eyes glaze over. Sure, they perk up when I tell them that the difference means hundreds or thousands of dollars, but otherwise they don’t care. However, when I show them my collection of medieval coins from each city I visited in Europe and tell them the history of the city and context of the coin, they are fascinated.

I have noticed the same thing at shows. If you ever get to meet Tom Wood at a show, watch his table. He will capture the interest of many YNs by telling the story of each coin they look at, regardless of whether or not they are going to buy it.

 

With age comes wisdom so they'll go for the large Cent.

 

That's a good dealer and a kind man.

 

Old coin designs were worthy of commemorating? Seemed more like an absence of real ideas to me. We'll have to agree to disagree on those.

Agreed. Which is why I should have said, "no more than one commemorative per year.