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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cladking, post: 838414, member: 68&quot;]I&#039;ve been warning about this for decades but most people don&#039;t take this very real threat to our hobby very seriously and a few even work to exacerbate the problems.&nbsp; In a nutshell the problem is that the hobby did a very poor job of attracting new collectors between 1965 and 1999 because most people get their start for circulating coinage and there was a perception that circulating coinage was dull and uninteresting during this long period.&nbsp; We simply lost a generation and a half of new collectors.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Now we&#039;re swimming in newbies and willbies but we&#039;re about to start shedding experienced and knowledgeable collectors in huge numbers.&nbsp; Historically most collectors sell off their collections when they retire and the oldest baby boomers have just started retiring.&nbsp; They&#039;re 64 years old now.&nbsp; Each year a large percentage of existing collectors are going to retire since a very large percentage of all collectors were born between 1946 and 1964.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>We do have one thing working in our favor and that is that people are living longer now and in better health at retirement.&nbsp; This will probably translate into more collectors staying active in the hobby after retiremnent even if they aren&#039;t spending as much on coins.&nbsp; This will mean that at least the supply won&#039;t increase as rapidly and the interest and excitement of coin collecting can remain high.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Investing in collectibles is always risky because tastes change.&nbsp; It&#039;s can be especially risky to invest in anything where demographics or progress might work against you.&nbsp; Dot coms were on the right side of history and look what happened there.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Coin collecting will stay around for a long time and will likely be even more vibrant in twenty years than it is today.&nbsp; The question is what will things be like in between.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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