How many "serious" collectors are there in the US?

I was thinking about how many coin collectors there are nowadays. I hear some estimates close to 20-25 million but that seems rather high to me. What do you guys think? How many "serious" coin collectors are there?

 

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What constitutes a "serious" collector? But that number does seem high to me too.

 

I don't like serious collectors. I prefer the flippant ones.

 

haha Maybe I should clarify. I don't mean the people who pick up a couple of presidential dollars or collect state quarters out of change. I mean people who want to focus on completing a particular set and/or focus on what grades they want. This is my definition but you don't have to take mine. Just go with your gut feeling on what constitutes a "serious" collector. Onto the main topic!

 

I would say as the dollar value of the collection increases the number of serous collectors decreases.:devil:

Edit to add.

Collections worth $25,000,000.00 or more less than 100
Collections worth $1,000,000.00 or more maybe as many as 1,000.
Collections worth $100,000.00 or more maybe more than 100,000.
Collections worth $10,000.00 or more maybe more than 500,000.
Collections worth $1,000.00 or more maybe a million.
Collections worth $1.00 or more then we get to that 25,000,000 figure.

Purely my thoughts on this and not counting in dealers and their inventories or bullion investors.

 

That number seems really high. I think the majority are just people who save a wheat penny in their change, or try to put together a state quarter set for their grandchildren. I think the number of 'serious collectors' is MUCH smaller.

 

How many registered member of ANA? Are they SEROIUS COLLECTORS? Your numbers 25 Million is too high...

 

You are not serious without a bit of knowledge.

If you can accuruatly describe P G F XF AU BU MS, as it pretains to grading coins. If you can name most of the US coin series's, including gold, and odd ball coins. If you have red books from multiple years, and a ebay store...

yadda yadda - If you don't know about metal content, or grading, then you are not a serious collector. I would put that as my marker.

 

...what about VG and PR, they aren't serious?

 

Touche! haha - I am serious compared to MOST - novice compared to MANY on this forum.

My local coin shop owner calls me a Stacker - but at the same time i love the history of coins, and have been learning a lot this last year.

 

Use of the word serous can be so miss leading as I consider the kid trying to put together a state quarter set from circulation to be as serous as I am in trying to put together a date set of circulation half dollars. BTW my coins are all professionally graded and is the number one set in the PCGS registry.
And there are many of us that do not belong to the ANA and for many serous reasons.

 

I hear numbers of something like less than 1 out of every 100 people in the US is a coin collector. If the population is around 314,000,000 that means that there are less than 5 million coin collectors in the US. Whether this is accurate or not, I don't know. I'm 18 and got into collecting 2 years ago so I haven't had the privilege of attending many large coin shows and don't have a good estimate of the number of collectors in the country.

 

To me there are two categories of "serious":

1. Someone who studies coins intently, knows what they are doing, regardless of the size of their purchases or roll finds

2. Those who spend "serious" money on a coin. I would say $100 up.

Lots of overlap between these groups, but they can be fundamentally different.

My estimate of collectors in these two groups in the US? Less than 200k. Maybe half a million worldwide.

 

Is their another country with as many collectors as the USA? Their is almost a coin shop in every small town USA

 

Not yet but I understand the fastest growth in the hobby is overseas. The reason the US leads is attributed to the early start of published collectors books in the US yes the venerable old "Red Book".

 

I am in the same area as Medoraman, about 200,000 - 300,000, that I would call serious. If someone attends 75% of some type of coin club meetings, they fit my category of serious whether 12 year olds or 102 year olds. Personally if I go into someone's house and see a 3' shelf with numismatic books and such, they are serious

 

well i can name one, Esparto does not haave one.

 

And the old Whitman "coin boards."

I don't know what it is about those blue folders that Whitman now make, but I've seen normally restless kids spend hours looking through bags/boxes of pennies (I know, technically they're cents...) to stick coins in those things...

I dunno, though. Trying to define a "serious collector" seems like it's opening a can of worms similar to defining a "real biker." Could be a good topic for a poll...

 

My wife wishes I only had 3' of coin books. Heck, I have added 3' of books since I took that photo that I have posted here on CT before.