What are the "Hobby Killers"?

Discussion in 'Coin Chat' started by kaparthy, Jan 25, 2020.

  1. kaparthy

    kaparthy Well-Known Member

    My other hobby is astronomy. Many hobbyists call beginner telescopes "hobby killers." They feel that the 3-inch refractor or 4-inch reflector is not enough of a telescope for the money and if you buy one for yourself-- or worse, buy one for a child -- it will be a disappointment as a viewing instrument and get little use. Personally, I disagree on several grounds and have written about that in those fora. For this hobby, I toss out the question: What do you think kills the hobby for the new entrant?
    • Cable TV shopping channels.
    • Overabundant new issues from the US Mint.
    • Overabundant (and irrelevant) new issues from world Mints. (Elvis, Beatrix Potter, Harry Potter...)
    • Registry Sets
    • Vagaries of Third Party Grading.
    • Coins as an Investment
    (Just for starters...)
     
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  3. baseball21

    baseball21 Well-Known Member

    The biggest hobby killers in this hobby are other collectors. Far to many look for reasons to demean how someone else collects, push opinions that are contrary to the market as facts, and just generally being salty.

    Bad dealers are an issue too but the overall the sky is falling negative mentality displayed in so many places is exhausting.
     
  4. Lawtoad

    Lawtoad Well-Known Member

    Incorrect and misleading YouTube videos.
     
  5. kaparthy

    kaparthy Well-Known Member

    Just for myself, I feel that nothing kills the hobby for an individual, but, rather, each person must find their own avenues of enjoyment. If you want to jump in and be part of a friendly club of well-wishers, then that is your hobby: Welcome Wagon, Toastmasters, Lions Club, social groups that specialize in being groups. Personal enjoyment must begin within you yourself. On that, I look to Ayn Rand's essay on stamp collecting from the Minkus Review. (Easy enough to find online. Try Kenmore Stamp here: https://www.kenmorestamp.com/why-i-like-stamp-collecting-by-ayn-rand)

    For me, the journey is the reward. I have one Whitman Folder: Mercury Dimes without the 1916-D. It was a project, searching through buckets of dimes at a local coin store. I bought some of the harder ones (22-D, etc.), but when it came to thr 1916-D, I realized that I could have one anytime: all it takes is money. And I could not afford a collectible grade, so I dropped it.

    However, that project led me to the paradigms for those "classic" coins: the actual Greek and Roman coins themselves. That proved a more durable pursuit. However, it was highly personalized. I was inspired by Carl Sagan's Cosmos episode "Backbone of the Night" to pursue archaic and ancient Greek coins from the towns and lifetimes of philosophers. I had about 50 from Thales to Hypatia. And I was satisfied. I got rid of them, though I kept the Miletos electrum and Athenian Owl. I discovered that my passion was not so much for the objects as the research and writing. And I still do a lot of that.

    So, just sayin'... Rand's theory is that hobbies bring self-perception. The rewards are internal.

    But as a quick reply to the posts above, yes, other people can be wet blankets who put out the fires of interest and passion.
     
  6. atcarroll

    atcarroll Well-Known Member

    "L'enfer, c'est les autres", "hell is other people"- Jean Paul Sartre
     
  7. Mainebill

    Mainebill Bethany Danielle

    I think the constant junk from the mint doesn’t help. Let’s redesign the coins into something nice. Crappy rotten zincolns dont help. When I started collecting I could pull a lot of later date wheaties out of circulation and nice unc looking examples of the 59-82 period though I still see them. And I could buy ihc buffalo nickels etc cheap.
     
  8. Dougmeister

    Dougmeister Well-Known Member

    From personal experience, one of the things that almost killed it for me was the lack of an honest LCS with decent items in stock within driving distance.

    A close #2 was being overwhelmed with the sheer number of coins that are over-graded, either by TPGs or in 2x2 flips at the LCS/coin shows/etc. (And when I say "sheer number", I mean that the percentage of over-graded coins seems to approach 90%, in my humble, newbie opinion.)
     
  9. justafarmer

    justafarmer Senior Member

  10. Chuck_A

    Chuck_A Well-Known Member

    Counterfeits is IMO the biggest problem with the hobby and the number of people that are unaware that don't take the time to do what it takes to learn the difference. Websites like Etsy and wish.com among others that openly sell their products and are not regulated by government agencies is a big problem, wish.com is selling fake error coins, Morgan's, and a host of other coins that are fake and cheap being resold on eBay. Numismatics for YN's seems to be focused on errors and You Tube videos for people who lack what it takes to understand what numismatics is about and they believe there's a fortune in coins. The influx of counterfeits from China isn't slowing down and IMO the US Mint isn't helping either.
     
    Paul M., john59, Stevearino and 7 others like this.
  11. -jeffB

    -jeffB Greshams LEO Supporter

    The comparison with astronomy and department-store telescopes is interesting, but I don't want to sidetrack this discussion. (Bottom line: I'll need to look for your essays on the topic, because I'll bet we're on the same page.)

    I did have to go off and read the Rand essay on stamp collecting. It was... Randian. Utopian and dystopian in turns, but with some interesting ideas.

    I came into the hobby through grandparents' collections and change-searching, with a predisposition to obsess, er, study. From that perspective, registry sets mean nothing, the spray of new novelties from the Mint means nothing (except when they're released through circulation -- cool!). YouTube is a threat, but I like to think it wouldn't have taken me long to see through the garbage posts.

    I think the big dinosaur-killer heading our hobby's way is the death of circulating change, coming in two blows:

    1) We stubbornly cling to denominations that inflation has left far behind. We abolished the half-cent in 1857 because its value was too trivial. A dime today is worth less than a half-cent then -- but we stubbornly insist on counting out pennies and nickels as change. And then we dump them into jars, or occasionally pour them into CoinStars for a quick 11% haircut.

    2) Nearly everything is moving toward electronic transfer. Fewer and fewer people want to deal with coins and even paper money when they can just carry a card, or use the phone they already have with them.

    If a child never sees coins in daily life, or sees them only as something to be carried around until you can dump them, why on Earth would they seem like something to collect?

    Some still will collect them, just as some collect rocks, or insects, or thimbles. But the hobby will be a lot smaller.
     
  12. atcarroll

    atcarroll Well-Known Member

    At the first LCS i ever dealt with, if a coin was F when I was selling it to them, it'd be at least VF when it was in their case for sale.
     
  13. atcarroll

    atcarroll Well-Known Member

    I feel pretty confident buying raw coins in the serieses I'm experienced in, but the flood of Chinese counterfeits has made me extremely hesitant to branch out into other serieses.
     
  14. Dafydd

    Dafydd Supporter! Supporter

    I collected milled coinage when I was younger and moved into Ancients almost by accident by starting to trade with someone who had a large collection. I posted a few at the beginning and was mortified to find that some were fake and I had no real idea of what I was doing. I then bought a fake coin from Ebay at around $200 and had trouble returning it and seriously thought about giving up. I stopped trading and buying coins for a while and bought books instead and spent hours trawling through this site and the Forum website and regained confidence.
    Other collectors were a problem as they were quick to condemn but there were others who were quick to encourage and I hung on and now really enjoying the hobby and putting a collection together that will give me a lifetime hobby of research and photography as I am approaching retirement and too busy to post at the moment as I would like to.
    So my answer would be Fakes and other collectors in that order.
     
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  15. Collecting Nut

    Collecting Nut Borderline Hoarder

    Naturally uTube videos and more importantly, other collectors demeaning what the newbie is collecting.
     
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  16. Seated J

    Seated J Well-Known Member

    Here in the United States, I think the deterioration in public education, history in particular, makes coins much less interesting to young people. For telescopes, anything sold on the basis of magnification is garbage.
     
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  17. cpm9ball

    cpm9ball CANNOT RE-MEMBER

    "Strike It Rich With Pocket Change"

    BoobTube
     
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  18. Inspector43

    Inspector43 Celebrating 75 Years Active Collecting Supporter

    Young people starting up need a lot of positive feedback and encouragement. And, they need to know that they can concentrate on a line that is stable and reachable. I collected everything and was able to find anything and everything in my pocket change. There were no surprises from the US Mint. They made mostly circulating coins with only the annual proof. Today, for example, the mint instead of making 3 quarters a year, makes about 30 different ones. And, most of them are not available in circulation. If you want a complete set there are big premiums.

    New and, as far as I am concerned, pseudo collectors, have been smitten by the TPG's and their unrealistic and ingenuine attribute assignments - First Strike, First Release, etc. We know these attributes have nothing to do with the quality or collectability of the coin itself. Plus peer issues - mine is MS-65 and yours is only MS-60. Whatever happened to G, VG, F, XF, etc.? It was always good enough for the coin world.

    I have collected since 1948 and have been purchasing from the mint since 1959. I recently stopped getting new stuff from the mint. There is room for just so much junk.
     
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  19. GDJMSP

    GDJMSP Numismatist Moderator

    All of the above ! ;)

    But will the hobby ever die ? Nahhhh, it'll no doubt last another 2,000 years. Oh, it'll wax and wane in popularity just like it always has. But there's always gonna be somebody out there collecting coins. Collecting things is simply what some people do.

    For 20 years I've said that you and I think a lot alike Mike. It's as true today as it was back then. ;)

    I've often put it that it was the study of coins that I discovered I loved, not the collecting of them - pretty much the same thing you're saying. And even though I haven't collected coins in many years now, you'd be pretty hard pressed to say that I'm not still heavily involved in the hobby, perhaps even more so than I ever was.
     
  20. Inspector43

    Inspector43 Celebrating 75 Years Active Collecting Supporter

    I feel the same. I am no longer 'accumulating' coins, but, I am still very interested and involved. Trying to clean up my sets with the best I have. Trying to fully understand what I have, variations, errors, etc. Grades, I have never been interested in grading my coins. Eye appeal is my only grade.

    I am passing groups on to grandchildren and great grandchildren, hoping they will get interested.
     
  21. The Eidolon

    The Eidolon Well-Known Member

    One more thing I would throw out is the high cost of urban real estate.
    Coin shops like to be where there's enough foot traffic to attract potential
    sellers. Two of my local coin shops have closed or moved over the last year
    or so due to rent increases. It's hard to compete with online sellers who may
    be able to work out of a home if you have to pay $11,000 a month on rent.
    (An actual figure. The shop moved out of a local shopping center and to a small
    former jeweler/watch shop 20 miles away where they only pay $2000 per month.)
     
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