Has this thought ever occurred to you, as it has to me? Since the advent of screw-on caps on bottles, the 'hobby' of 'Bottle Cap collecting' has largely gone the way of the 'Dodo', (very quickly). (See also 'Hub-caps', 'Radiator caps', and the like.) With the entry of 'Digital Currencies', and the reliance on money shifting and payments from 'cash' to 'e-transactions', are we seeing the death of coins, (as we know them)? Will coin collecting 'pass' the same way that 'Bottle Top' collecting has? If it is to be so, in what time-frame? Interesting to know people's thoughts.
Not in my lifetime! Even if we produce no modern coins, all the coinage of the past will still be collectible.
Personally, I already hate using coins/paper money. Perhaps I'm in the minority here but for me, I collect coins for many reasons other than "it's an older version of something I'm used to using". I wasn't introduced to them from collecting from circulation so I don't believe my interest would have been adversely impacted.
I can imagine a time when all financial transactions will occur through microchip implants or through facial recognition technology. I don't think that interest in collecting coins will ever diminish however.
Maybe, maybe not. The end won’t be for quite a long time, but it will likely occur when absolutely no one is interested in history nor material stores of value. We are approaching that, but it won’t ever be total. What does that spell for the market? The coins we all want become cheaper! Same here. They can tell riveting stories, but they don’t take up much space. I tried collecting newspapers and books a while ago because they can tell their stories more explicitly than coins can, but I realized that they would take up far more room than coins, so with coins I stayed. I also enjoy doing research on the coins, and the Chinese coins I collect better open an avenue to pursuing original research as they are an under-studied field.
For those of us who collect for the coins and not for their investment potential, it seems good for the coin market to crash making today's fine collections sell for flea market prices. However, this would put out of business the well organized coin dealers and eliminate the online images that we now enjoy. Coins would be impossible to find and many would be melted. I won't live to see this happen but I wish I were more certain about the few collectors still around after collecting dies. How many collectors would buy fine coins if they knew that there would be negative return on their 'investment'? Would that number support the publication of catalogs (paper or online) like the recent Triton XXIII? My wife collects bells. She was a member of a bell collector club which folded when the founding members were either gone or over 90 and the young ones were 70. Driving many miles for a club meeting gets hard when you reach a certain age. I suspect her bell collection will be hard to give away when she is gone.
It won't be long before the last coins meant to circulate as currency gets minted. Maybe within the next 20-30 years if not sooner. This is just a natural consequence of inflation. However, that doesn't really have anything to do with coin collecting. People collect antique guns for example. Typewriters. Daguerreotypes. I've heard there may still be one or two philatelists left out there even. Plenty of people collect stuff that's obsolete. Rasiel
Trouble is guns printers and stamps all still exist. For how long will they be collected Once they go out of production ?
I tend to agree with TypeCoin971793 - I think history is the driving force of at least our corner of numismatics. As long as people remain interested in history and also in art, I think we and our hobby will be safe.
If all paper currencies/ coins were to become obsolete (which will never happen), but lets say it will in next 50 years. This would even increase the popularity of numismatics, for nostalgic reasons/ artistic beauty of classical coinage/ and of course speculation and investment. But, my view is not that good either for our hobby, new records are set with every year in auctions.Escalating prices have made the hobby unaffordable for many average collectors. This was also the case a hundred years ago, when only the "rich" dabbled in the hobby. There will be more and more people from Third World Countries, that when entering the "middle class" will take up hobbies/ including numismatics. The supply (esp. of Ancients) is never enough for the demand. But, thankfully many will buy the modern mint sets. collector coins John