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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;ewomack, post: 7844417, member: 15588&quot;]Sadly, adding to the challenge for collectors over investors, is that most modern coinage has become monetarily uninteresting and nearly valueless. I&#039;ve read in more than one place that a half cent from the early nineteenth century had the purchasing power of about a quarter today. What does that say about the modern cent, nickel and dime? They don&#039;t have the purchasing power of a half cent in the 1830s? Then why in the name of whatever do we still churn them out in the billions? It defies sense. Though Japan does still mint its aluminum 1 Yen coin, valued at, this moment, $0.0091 US. What is the likelihood that something with such nearly irrelevant monetary value will ever become collectible to an investment level? It certainly seems low (though I don&#039;t claim to know the future).</p><p><br /></p><p>Collecting modern change can be fun for its own sake, but no one should probably expect great future profits from doing so. Modern change exists to make change and for very little other reason, the same reason that half cents were minted well over a century ago.</p><p><br /></p><p>In contrast, my father talks about buying substantial things with a nickel or a dime when he was a kid. A whole dollar was a windfall of unimaginable proportions for him back then. Now a dollar barely buys the lowest priced item in a toy shop junk bin (at least, judging by the toy store I visited this weekend - the lowest priced item in the store, a cheap little piece of elastic, was 99 cents - a brittle balsa wood glider cost $1.50). The mint itself may see its growing irrelevance to the economy and so it began exploring other options, a la Canada, who has rolled out loads of &quot;manufactured collectibles&quot; for decades, few of which exceed the value of their release price, but people keep buying them.</p><p><br /></p><p>Modern circulating coinage will likely continue to become more irrelevant, regardless of the mass movement, already well underway, of physical to digital money. Physical money will probably continue to exist for a while yet, but if things keep going in the direction they currently are (and there is no guarantee that they will), then coinage will become pretty much irrelevant eventually, unless the US remonitizes in some way (something probably few of us want). What does that mean for the hobby? It&#039;s hard to say, but, in my opinion, it doesn&#039;t look fantastic.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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