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

Great thread and very interesting.

A point I have noticed with the young folks of today and it really relates to the comment in the first few pages about "how kids aren't taking up woodworking as a hobby'. What I have noticed lately, where we (Gen X'ers and older) may have pursued a profession that maybe we weren't all that passionate about and looked to hobbies to fill that passion gap, the youth of today are looking for ways to monetize their passions. So where someone with a woodworking passion may have worked at Chrysler and then had a shop at home, the woodworking youth of today are becoming business owners/artists/makers. Look around and you will see MANY young people doing woodworking, but they have turned it into a business making tables or custom furniture. This is one thing I admire about the youth of today - they mostly don't care about accumulating things (bad for coins maybe) but about finding happiness.

Another thing at play that has continued to amaze me over the past two years (since military retirement) is how EVERYONE under 40 (with a work ethic) has a "side hustle". Consulting, making furniture, baking, making videos, pushing product, etc, you name it they are doing it. They work at a job they may or may not like, but they are hustling to find that better thing on the side. I think this will really impact the future where young folks may collect, but they will also be pocket dealers at the same time and monetize the passion.

Just my take and observations over the past two years.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Coin collecting is my alternative and not a job. I enjoy it for the history, the beauty, the challenge to build a collection I feel great about, and it is a stress reliever - something in my opinion we all need these days.

I also think that the access to see coins at hand is an issue - the local coin and stamp shops are diminishing, which is not good.

 

Hi, I don't post often but did want to add to this thread. My family is doing its part to keep the local coin club and the hobby going!!! I have 3 kids and they all collect. We attend 3-4 shows a year and they will make me go all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday until I drop! Been collecting all my life. My 9 yr old daughter collects rainbow toned Morgans, my 12 yr old son collects large cents and errors and my 15 yr old son collects Chinese and Japanese. I get much more enjoyment watching them find coins than buying them for myself.

 

It's likely that the hobby is slowly dying. Back in Late April, National Coins Week took place starting the Great American Coin Hunt where many collectors spent rare coins. Non-Collector might not notice wheat pennies because the obverse of a wheat penny is very similar to a modern day penny so therefore, the wheatie is left unseen. Another reason why non-collectors might not notice these (Rare coins) is most likely they don't check there coin changes at all. Which may explain why I found 3 Indian Heads, a 1912-S, and a 1922-(Weak) D pennies. These finds all came from different penny boxes when roll hunting from June 2019-January 2020.

It's mostly likely that these semi-key dates and Indian Head pennies may originated from collections or perhaps collectors may have spent them to attract more collectors in to the hobby that was likely past down/given out as changes to non-collectors and didn't know what it's worth and cashed it in to a bank or at a coin counting machine such as Coinstar. And gets sent to be packed into bank rolls then they are distributed to banks. The rolls mostly end up going to merchants to give out as changes and/or hopefully can go to collectors like us.

I remember back in 5th grade our teacher let me and my friend look inside a coin drive jar at lunch we were able to pull out the following:
-1903 Indian Head Cent:my first Indian Head and was the oldest coin I had.
-4 Wheat pennies from the 1920s-1930s.
-1940-D Jefferson Nickel
-Tons of foreign coins.
I let my friend keep all the wheat pennies and all the foreign coins. I kept the 1903 IHC and the 1940-D Nickel.

 

No it's not as has been laid out for page after page already.

Very few is any actual rare coins were put out. Old coins were put out which were mostly indians, wheats, buffs etc that every shop has tons of that are hard to sell.

 

I was going to say that. Most wheat and buffs spent are dateless or common date.

 

I mostly collect tokens, yes I have coins as I used to collect coins exclusively. I changed my focus years ago and started buying gold coins. It certainly looks to me like the demand has gotten smaller as I get older. I mean all you gotta do is look at the attendance at some of these large coin shows. I was talking to my LCS owner the other day about this and according to him the Long Beach Coin show has gotten a lot smaller than it was, say 10 years ago. That said, he still packs up and goes to it as he makes bank there.

 

Coin show attendance is only a measure of how many people go to that show

 

Correct and my point is some of the larger coin shows in California just aren't drawing the crowds they did years ago.

 

Many things are affecting coin shows. One, the cost of hotels, etc keeps increasing making it more expensive to travel there. Two, most good material is getting put into auctions rather than offered on the bourse. I used to go to shows and see great rarities on the bourse, now those coins are in Roma auctions. Third, with the rise of the internet, most people are collecting that way now.

When there was no other option to coin shows, coin show attendance was a good gauge of the health of the hobby. With a plethora of options now, I no longer think it is. How do you account for even Ebay? How many of those sales would have been made on the bourse floor in the past?

 

I'm going to tell a little more. When I was in fifth grade my school started a coin drive which you put coins in the jar, the class that has the jar filled first gets a pizza party. Which sounds great, people in my class every morning would dump in pretty much any coin they had. One day me and a coin collector friend asked our teacher if we could inspect the jar to see if we could find anything unusual at lunch. Our teacher accepted and we opened up the jar and poured it on the table. We inspected each coin and we would keep checking the jar at lunch for the next few days. We were able to pull out wheat cents, an IHC, and a bunch of foreigns. I think the wheaties and the IHC originated from a collection. One of the students may have broke open their grandparents/parents coin collection and threw it into the coin drive jar for the pizza party. We weren't able to pull out any silver and traded everything we took for face value (with the exception of the foreign coins). In the end my class didn't win and I bet that person that threw those wheaties in would have wished to get them back. The jars of coins were collected and may been cashed in at a Coinstar by a PTA member at my former school. I may have missed may unusual coins. Who knows?


(Please ignore file because I added it by accident.)