On another recent thread, dougsmit wrote: “Perhaps the hobby is headed to a place where people interested in studying the coins will populate their 'collections' from the online photo files without the necessity of there even being an actual piece of metal involved”. He called such people ‘crypto-collectors’. This has more to be said for it than may first appear. No buyer’s remorse, no hassle of insuring, storing and re-selling the coins, no estate problems, and plenty of opportunity to build a scholarly, world-class collection just from downloadable images, in this great age of numismatic photography. Older collectors in particular will see the advantages of being able to enlarge the image of a very small coin rather than straining at a loupe. I’m not suggesting that this will or should take the place of acquiring hard metal, but I can see every collector supplementing a collection with a crypto-collection. There are so many interesting areas in numismatics and so much to learn – if you specialize in acquiring, say, Byzantine bronzes, why not have a crypto-collection of Republican denarii or German States crowns? Do any of you have ‘tales from the crypto’? Or any views thereon?
When I finish a coin and ready it for my album I generate a Word document that has a photo of my coin and a photo of a reference coin from a reputable source. The only purpose is to allow future generations to know and understand the coin better. My finished coins are sometimes missing detail that differentiate them from other typical coins. Example: My Coin Reference Coin Is that a no-no?
there's this "digital trading card" thing going on with sports cards and stuff on a blockchain, it's a digital asset, 1/1 or 1/10 or 1/100 however many unique real items there are. Same is happening with rare paintings, they are being meticulously cataloged, down to brush strokes and identifiers and cataloged digitally, to root out fakes or find stolen art, and maybe even one day, to display the art digitally for for selling purposes. It's really new. I don't know if it catches on. I'd suppose if it does it would eventually get applied to coin collecting.
I would rather have the heft of a silver dollar in my hand than deal with a crypto or digital coin. When I hold a coin in my hand I wonder where its been, can't do that with a crypto coin.
It’s definitely already caught on especially in the art world. There’s a whole segment in art now where the nft is the actual art and no physical copy was painted. One of those sold for 69 million, even the artist thought the price was high but clearly there’s a market for that type of art
