Coin collecting dying out?

If your main interest in the coins is whether you will make a financial profit, I doubt you will be happy in the hobby. However, if you buy now and plan to sell in 50-80 years, you may find you could sell for a profit but don't want to because you realize that you don't need that money enough to send them down the river. If you want to make a profit on coins, study hard, become a dealer and replace Harlan Berk. If you want to enjoy a hobby and don't care as much for the money as for the coins, come play with us. We have members here who spend $100,000 on a single coin and others who will not spend that in a lifetime of collecting. Both can enjoy.

BTW, I am rooting against your plans for profit. I would prefer the bottom fall out of the market and coins sell for a fraction of what they do today. Those who are in it for the money will dump their holdings to the dealers who did not jump off high buildings and I'll buy twice as many with the money I have for hobby use. I'm not planning on living to see you reach my current age and I know I can't take either modern money or ancient coins with me when I go. That being the case, I don't care if my collection is worth $100 or $100 million. You have to sell coins to 'profit' and I'm not in it for profit.

I heard of an interesting survey taken by some psych school. They divided the online/electronic experience into sections like Social Media, Search Engines, Online Shopping and eMail. They asked people to tell how much cash they would take to give up these sections for one year. How much would you need to be bribed to give up all Social Media (that includes Facebook, Twitter and Coin Talk). I don't remember all the ranks but the average showed Internet search (all varieties as a group) was most expensive. What would you require to drop out of the coin hobby (buy, sell, read, study, Coin Talk, clubs, looking at your collection or even thinking - everything) for a year? 21 year olds might be cheaper than 101 year olds???

 

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I really dislike when people take this point of view. It's really rooting for other peoples misery for personal gain.

I would much rather wish I could afford more than hope for others to lose out.

 

Since I last responded I got an e-mail mentioning a coin-- this one:



on my VOTA website:

http://augustuscoins.com/ed/VOTA/

telling me it was in a Sternberg auction from November 1975, which I had not known. I happen to have that catalog and looked it up. There it is, with a PR of 1000 Swiss Francs! (in 1975!). I had known the same coin was sold in M&M D auction 13 in November 2003 with a PR of 220 euros.

It is probably the most interesting vota type. Someone in 1975 thought it was worth a lot. In November 2003 the Swiss Franc was $1.16 and the euro $1.18. So the coin went for about 1/4 what it sold for 28 years earlier. (A search using acsearch suggests it has not gone up since 2003)

Now, many coins do not go down in price like that. But, even if some ancient coins will go up, the chances any one of us can predict which ones will be the ones that go up are slim. And, they have to go up at least 30% before you can break even (because of the costs of selling coins).

Buy coins because you love them and they light up your intellectual life, not because they are an "investment."

 

I'm a poor man's Harlan Berk...
Welcome to the Ancients Forum, @Charles1997 ! You've raised some great questions. An investment coin collector should have a few high end ancients in their collections. I'm not qualified to advise you on that. I'm no Harlan Berk although an old friend on the CoinTalk Ancients Forum referred to me as "a poor man's Harlan Berk" and I treasure the comment as a high complement considering that I greatly admire this man's (SteveX6) ancient coin collecting career.

Ancient coins are definitely an investment but not alway in the monetary sense. Something that brings you great fun and joy is not always something you can put a price tag on.

 

I believe Doug (@GDJMSP), one of the moderators, said that the average age of a cointalk member is under 30. Sounds like a youth movement to me. As others have said, the internet, including forums like this one and online sales, is playing an increasingly larger role. I think shows and clubs will continue to have a place because of the live social aspect. The main motivations for me to go to shows these days are the social and educational aspects; most of my purchases are via the internet. But most of those internet purchases are from dealers and auction houses with whom I visit at shows.

Cal

 

While I agree with what Cal says for CT as a whole, remember you are posting to the ancient coin section of CT and GDJMSP statistics are not separated out for this group. I suspect the numbers of young people who frequent the modern, bullion and other sections is somewhat higher than here on ancients. We do have some under 30 active members but they are not average.

 

Coin collecting supposedly has been dying since I was a kid. I’m in my mid 60s now and it’s still trucking along.

 

I see them as an investment because I have always found good deals on coins and bought them, them sold them when I wanted a more expensive coin! I don’t do it for monetary gain, only to fuel my hobby!

 

Don’t believe anything you read in the mainstream media about “the future of coin collecting.” I’ve yet to see a single article where the writer had the foggiest notion of what he or she was talking about.

 

I am actually not even a year older than the OP. There are a few more younger than I am, and several in their 20’s.

I have found that Ancient Chinese coins have been steadily rising in price lately. I have put all other collecting interests on hold right now so I can get as many of the coins I want at prices that will seem cheap in the future. I am not buying for investment, though.

 

If you buy a several hundred dollar coin and you enjoy it for the next twenty years, you will have gotten your money's worth out of it. And twenty years from now it won't matter much to you even if you sell it for a $100 loss. Buy what you enjoy, buy the best you can afford, and have fun.

 

Not ancients, but this is a free subscription to a newsletter that shows how certain coin prices have gone up/down...take a look, it is eye-opening.
https://www.ngccoin.com/news/ngc-weekly-market-report.aspx

 

Back in the 80's I was also one of the youngest people you would see at a coin show. Its nothing new, though I would suggest that there are far more younger collectors now than then or at any other time in the history of this hobby. More money, more availability, more exposure, etc., so I dont think the hobby is dying off. Coins shows are another matter. I do believe they are dying off, or at least will shrink to the point where they will be once a year and regional in nature. Why would I spend $1,000 plus in expenses for a coin show with perhaps no sales at all? I can stay home and sell more than in the average show. Dont get me wrong, I love shows. They add a entirely new dimension to collecting, but I fear the younger collectors would rather stay at home and browse on their phones for coins.

As for values, investing, potential material coming to the market... most has already been said, but consider that a great many of these coins will likely not re-enter the market through the usual channels. Often when someone passes away their collection has been sitting in a safe deposit box somewhere and the heirs know nothing about them nor care and a lot of them end up at a local coin show, pawn shop, jewelry store, etc. Such coins will be dispersed very widely and the impact on the market will usually be negligible and unnoticed.

Specialized collections however do make an impact in the short term. Take for example the RBW Republican and the BCD Greek collections. Those had an impact as a huge number of them came to market all at once but the impact was not severe. The higher quality material sold for good prices, the lower quality for lower (which is how they were bought in the first place).

Investing....again already covered, but my opinion yes, it can be done but only if you really know what you are doing. Like anything else you must buy as low as possible and know when to sell at the right time for a higher price. Like anything else, you must diversify. Stocks, bonds, mutual funds, real estate, cash, you need an overall plan and should not place too much in one place. I myself have a small portion of my assets in coins, but only a small portion. The best part is I get to enjoy them whenever I want up until the day I sell them.

 

Being a young collector, I wholeheartedly agree. I'm browsing coins on my phone while doing some biking at the gym right now.

 

And there is nothing wrong with that. But going to shows allows so many more opportunities than browsing does. Dealers rarely have all their inventory online, but often bring much more to shows. There is also that human contact aspect. Speaking to another person, exchanging ideas more freely. The written word is far more difficult than people realize. Context, tone of voice, much is lost when writing a post to a place like this.

 

The biggest reason I have not been to a coin show yet is because they are rarely held in my city. There was one last year but I missed it because I didn't know about it. Unfortunately I can't travel to other cities freely yet (school), but when I do, I'll definitely want to go to coin shows.

 

That is a good way to 'upgrade' especially if you are on a limited budget. Of course if you get it wrong, you will be stuck with a coin you potentially don't want or will sell for a loss. If you do it for long enough however, at some point you will get coins you will not want to sell because they are too hard to replace for your personal likes assuming you are selling the more expensive coin.

I much prefer to go to a show, I could spend all day there if there are ancient dealers of course. I do online shopping because I have no other way to see their inventory due to the distance from me.

 

I suspect shows will last as long as I do so there is no problem for me. What I see as a problem is the trends all take the coin out of the loop. Rather than handling the coin, we buy from a photo. Rather than handling a coin, we buy it in a slab. Rather than wanting coins we can afford, we want things that only come in fakes in our price bracket but many of us seem driven to buying a chance of a fake turning out to be real and can't tell the difference anyway. Maybe we are nearing the point in the hobby when what you really want is a bunch of photos of other people's coins and mass market new bits on wonderful things in museums we might visit. This would be music to the ears of those who oppose private ownership of coins. The hobby is not dying but it is getting hard to recognize. Come to think of it, the world in general may be getting hard to recognize for old people who are not willing to change with the times. It has worked that way since ancient coins were new. Situation normal.

 

I love going to the monthly local show in Marietta, GA. There’s only 1 ancients dealer there but he’s great. His “new arrivals” box always has coins from old collections he hasn’t attributed yet. They still include the previous collector’s tags. Now that I think about it you guys should stay away from coin shows. This way I get first look at the new arrivals boxes.

 

Dying out!!!???! I'm just getting started!!
I hear dealers at the shows grumbling about falling coin prices. Bad news for them, great news for me!!