Silver prices and the young collector.

I feel sorry for these young collectors who come on this forum bragging about their small collection that they have only to be told there coins are only worth melt. What does this do to their concept of coin collecting? It discouraged me not long ago when I sold a batch of beautiful Franklin half proofs to my local dealer and he threw them in a junk silver bucket on the ground. How would a comic book collector feel if the price of paper skyrocketed and their rare Fantastic Four comic was worth more for it's paper weight than it's rareness.

I'm not much of a collector anymore. Silver prices and ebay has made me a decent profit on my silver. I worry about the kids who get excited over a Mercury dime. Kids can't buy the expensive stuff, so the price of silver dictates what they can afford. Now it's not collector prices, but bullion prices. Now it's not a collection, but an investment. Kind of takes the fun out of collecting for kids. It does me.

 

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I feel the same, but for slightly different reasons. I feel bad for kids trying to collect coins and being told a lowly common mercury dime is like three and a half bucks. That is a lot of money for a kid! A 1964 washington quarter for almost 9 dollars?! I don't know how kids would get into coin collecting.

This is something I need to think about since my wife is pregnant. I wonder if I should keep more silver coins simply to let my kid have fun with them if they catch the collecting bug from me. I already have a few bags of wheats for them to play with.

Wishful thinking?

 

I agree with both of you 100 percent. Many people would consider me one of those "young collectors" (I'm 31 and have been seriously collecting for about a year now). Right when I started trying to complete sets of things like Mercury dimes and Barber quarters was when silver started to shoot up, and now my collection has come to a screeching halt. I keep waiting for silver to go back down but it isn't, so I just can't collect. I love the way silver coins look and there are so many coins I'd like but I just won't pay the prices being asked. I think the silver cost is ruining the hobby by turning coins from a collectible into an investment. Coin shops are just gold and silver dealers now and hardly anyone in there is just looking for regular coins for the thrill of it. I wish silver would plunge so this can be a more enjoyable hobby again.

 

If it helps, this is just like 1979-1980 where all the dealers and most customers wanted to talk about was silver and gold, and numismatic coins were over in a small dark corner. This too will pass, and someday all of the silver buyers won't be around and the dealers will have to concentrate on coin collecting customers again. It was a dark time to be a coin collector and not a bullion buyer in 1979 or 1980. It even lasted into the 80's, as many dealers kept trying to get their money out of the silver.

If you are open to it, try collecting pennies, large cents, or even something as different as ancient coins. The only change in ancients has more to do with the euro going up. I don't think a lot of denari or ancient gold is getting melted for scrap!

 

I've been focusing on world coins lately as a way to get around the silver trap. I think there's enough out there to keep me busy, but I still miss being able to buy the silver ones. I hate to have a set that isn't complete.

 

I'm 14 and I bought over $3,000 on 2 coins in the past 3 months. Am I included in this?

 

When I was a kid, I got really excited about Mercury dimes. And Indian head pennies. And Barber dimes. But having an allowance of maybe a dollar or two a month made it quite difficult for me to build a collection. So I couldn't buy the expensive stuff, either. At one time, I was happy just to be able to buy a couple of worn V-nickels and a Barber dime for a dollar. Eventually, though, I was able to save up some money and buy what was a *really* expensive item for me at the time-- a Turkish 25 kurush gold piece for the princely sum of $3.95.

 

Uh, no.
When I was 14 I was scrounging around for odd jobs to be able to afford a 99 cent movie.
If you are 14 and able to spend that kind of money on coins than more power to you but I do not think that represents the average kid collector.

Back to the original post,
Just this past weekend I went to visit my family in rural PA. I gave each of my nephews (from 5 to 12) a state quarters album and a $10 roll from the bank.
I don't know if it will stick or not but they had a really good time cracking open those rolls and trying to fill all the holes. They were swapping quarters back and forth with each other. It was really pretty fun. I was having fun telling them what each state design meant and why.
The whole thing cost me less than $50.

The point is I think the new "changing reverse" coins are great for kids. It will give them something they can collect right from dads pocket change.

 

That's impressive for 14 ... when i was 14 i had about $80 to my name
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You're 14, live in Hawaii, and buy expensive coins? I have to think about this for a minute.

 

I agree. There are a lot of great coins to collect that aren't silver or gold and have much more history behind them than most silver or gold coins could ever hope to obtain. Besides, the kids who get their hearts crushed because they had their silver thrown into a junk bucket are usually the ones who thought they were out to make a fast buck but failed to do even five minutes research before they started. It's hard to sympathize with them when thats the case. If they're collecting to collect, more than likely their treasures are still residing safely in their shoe boxes under their beds, without complaint or worry.
Guy

 

I didn't pay $3,000 all by myself, I asked Dad to help me out by going in halves on both of the coins.

@Pilkenton: Yes, you are correct. I am in Honolulu, on the Island of Oahu. You can think about it for 5 minutes or the rest of your life, but that is where I am. And this isn't the only time where people doubt where my home is and where I was raised. That's pretty sad.....

 

I dont believe you. Do you have a birth certificate or a certificate of live birth? ;-)

 

With the recent rise in silver it overcame any numismatic value over condition value.Which means that the value has gone up. Now when the prices of PM's drop the value the piece will drop. Though it may take a few years after the great melt for the lower grade pieces to show a rise in numismatic value. While it may hurt now but down the road when you cannot find (lets say) a AU 1945 merc, the prices will eventually rise to reflect that they are few and few to be had.

 

Never once doubted you for a minute. It's just that 14 and living in Hawaii. I thought there'd be more interesting things to do in Honolulu...the beach, the sun, surfing, GIRLS!!!

 

As much as I like ebay, I also think ebay has ruined the value of pretty much anything that can be collected. Say for instance a baseball card is listed as 100 dollars in beckett, you have 500 people on ebay that are competing to sell the same item, so they lower the price to make a sale. So sometimes guide values are higher than actual sale value

 

When I was 14 I was lucky if I had $8 in my pocket. The minimum wage in 1966 was only $1.25, so $8 felt pretty good.

 

Well, if the "listed" prices are based on an inefficient market and/or buyer ignorance, good riddance to them, I say. Of course, I've always been more of a buyer than a seller.

In contrast, if you find an out-of-the-ordinary item in an out-of-the-way place, you can list it on eBay where 500 people are competing to buy that item.

 

^This. I have seen Ebay grow astronomically the collectors if certain fields as well, collectors, like me, that before the internet were not reallly able to participate in, or were simply unaware that certain coin markets existed. It cuts both ways. I would say anyone trying to get a guide book value out of anything may have trouble since guide books are notoriously mispriced.

 

As I've mentioned before, I returned to coin collecting a few years ago, after concentrating primarily on paper money for many years. I decided to build a collection of US type coins and a date/mintmark collection of cents (yeah, I know. My eyes are always bigger than my stomach).

I feel these days it's a good time to concentrate on the cents and non-silver elements of the type collection. We'll see what happens with silver going forward.