"This Dying Hobby"

An interesting perspective that has likely been beaten to death in the past...but I'm a relative newbie here.

Unlike most articles, I especially enjoyed the reader comments that followed, especially one I'll post along with the link. Halloween just passed and I have tubes and TUBES of old wheatie pennies and nickels, odds n ends accumulated from childhood that rightly could be better passed to a younger generation

https://dirtyoldcoins.com/Roman-Coins-Blog/2019/9/16/this-dying-hobby

Joe 9 months ago · 0 Likes

"The best thing that you can do is put some old but cheap coins into the buckets that come to your door at halloween. Tell the kids that the coins are a hundred years old or some other cool story. Watch their eyes light up. I've had parents tell me that this is what their kids remember from knocking on my door.
In addition I've also set up a website about my collecting interest - Irish gunmoney. The more social media in this day and age the better.
As an aside I also started collecting at a very young age through the change that I received when visiting different countries. We should make kids aware of coin collecting as a hobby whenever we can."

 

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I tried passing out 2.5/2.5 flips with wheaties and common date Buffalo
nickels at Halloween for a few years in the 90's. Each year some kids
brought them back wanting candy. They got the wretched Candy Corn.
Now I spend my wheaties and partial dated Buffalos thru out the year
to raise interest in the hobby.

 

Yeah I think kids at Halloween see coins as something they could get candy for. Skip the middleman, give me some candy.

 

While I always check my change and still enjoy finding something old, I spend any common wheat cents and 40s-50s Nickels I get. My kids never became interested in coins, and stuff like that just sits around taking up space and is no fun to move (I've just moved for the 3rd time in the last 12 years).

I figure that if they go back into the wild, somebody else might enjoy finding them.

Side story - When we were in high school, a friend and I used to go to the local coin club meetings 40+ years ago. They seemed so happy to have some young members to help save the dying hobby. While I think it's important that we encourage new collectors, I don't believe all is doom and gloom portrayed by some. I heard many of the same concerns from the old guard back then, too.

 

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

 

Those who write about the “dying hobby” don’t know what they’re talking about. Since most of them can’t write in the first place, that isn’t surprising.

 

From my perspective the hobby isn't dying at all and it's most likely growing.

Kids may or may not have interest in coin collecting, but many people do get into it when they are older and have money to spend rather than buying toys or cards or candy with their disposable money as they did as a kid.
I'd say this year was a good year overall for dealers who claim to have trouble keeping inventory and auction houses looking for people wanting to sell. Is the hobby dying? From my perspective, no worse than it was 40-30-20-10 or 5 years ago, it might actually be better right now.

 

The hobby is alive. Come to the Fun Show in January and see if you agree.

 

Quite the opposite . Lots of interest I see in the hobby .

 

My local coin club currently has four active YNs among the crowd of old, white members. The YNs are all excited and are at every meeting. There is a separate YN meeting for 15 minutes prior to the start of the regular meeting, run by one of the members.

There are also a number of adult members who at one time were YNs in the club.

We also had a Hispanic (hope I got the right word there. Don't want to inadvertently insult anyone) guest at the last meeting and he was welcomed warmly and I think he has joined the club.

Our club is active (we are having our sponsored Coin Show this coming weekend) and the meetings are full of interesting and sometimes fun presentations and activities.

I can understand the concern people have for the future of the hobby but I think that "the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."

 

Is that unusual for your region? The last coin show I attended there were tons of "non-white" people there browsing and a few with tables. Women too. Maybe clubs draw a different demographic; haven't been to a club since I was a kid.

 

I was only referring to my coin club. I used to belong to another coin club and it was entirely old and white and without even a YN contingent. I quit that club primarily because there was little intellectual interest or curiousity and the entrenched leadership was actively hostile to any new initiatives.

The coin shows I attend (local and FUN) have a healthy representation of genders, races, ethnicities, etc. but is still dominated by an older, white and male population.

And, yes, I think shows draw from a much wider portion of the population than clubs do. Clubs require a commitment of time and social capital that is much more available among an older, mostly retired, population. Plus, clubs aren't primarily pecuniary in nature unlike shows which are mostly about the commercial aspects of coin collecting. So shows draw from a broader swath of the population.

 

Yeah this comes up all the time. If it's dying the stuff I want should be getting cheaper. Instead it's going the other way. In some cases, quickly.

 

If you want to see a "dying hobby", take a look at philatelics (stamp collecting).
For 90% of stamps sellers are lucky if they can get 10% of catalog.

I've been (very) slowly getting rid of my stamps collection.
I list them for sale at 10-15% of catalog.
If they don't sell I give them away.

 

Then it appears 'catalog' pricing needs updating, eh?

 

Really? Interesting.

 

Try telling that to Scott or Stanley-Gibbons.
I lucked out.
I sold the lion's share of my collection when catalog values were still representative of retail values.
It got me enough money to buy a 1907 High Relief Double Eagle in AU-50.

 

I sold off most of my stamps back in the 90's and am really glad I did. Still have one stockbook that probably would have brought $500 back then. Worth so little now I'll save in case a grandkid gets interested.

 

I've never been a stamp collector but the appeal, I imagine, is much like that of coin collecting: history, artistry, economics, etc.

So, with the decline in philately in both financial and numbers terms, I have often wondered if the causes of that decline can be recognized within numismatics. If so, what would that bode for our hobby?

Anyone care to hazard some comments on this comparison?

 

Is the answer to be a U.S. based analysis, or worldwide analysis (Europe/Asia)?