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Message:: [QUOTE="GDJMSP, post: 1758225, member: 112"]Simply put, natural way of things more than anything else. Coin collecting in the US has undergone many periods where its popularity increased, even back in the 1800's. But back then and even still today that popularity is relative to the extreme degree. What I mean by that is this, even if the number of collectors increased 10 fold over a short period of time, say a decade, after the increase the total number of collectors would still be but a tiny, tiny, fraction of the general population. That is still true even today. But imagine if you will what the world was like even as recently as say the 1970's, let alone before that. Even in the 1970's travel outside of the country was something that only the rich or the reasonably well off did. And travel outside of the country was the only way there was really for people to be exposed to foreign coins because the US is bordered by oceans. Sure some would see some Mexican or Canadian coins in border towns but that was about it even for those. And most of them soon made their way back across the border because they could not be spent or easily cashed in in the US. And that problem still exists today. Now imagine even in today's world how few foreign coin dealers there are compared to the number of dealers in US coins. Then imagine how very few there were in the 1970's and before. You could probably divide today's number by a 100 and still not get close to what there was then. So people simply didn't collect foreign coins because they couldn't, it was too difficult. Let me give you an example. My grandfather is the one who got me started collecting coins in 1960. He himself collected foreign coins. The town we lived in was fairly small, about 16,000, and of all the coin collectors in our town, and collecting was really taking off in the '60s, (Coin World started in 1960) he was the one and only person who collected foreign coins. Back then you could walk into Woolworth's, Sears & Roebuck, Montgomery Wards, JC Penny's - any department store - and buy coins. They all had them. But none of them had any foreign coins for sale. Back then I could save my money, walk into any bank, and buy a roll of Morgans - for face. I used to do it all the time. Most other coins that we collect today were still in circulation. That's how easy it was to get US coins. The reason my grandfather collected them was because they were the only ones he could afford, and that was because he got them for free. Mainly from his friends who had come back from overseas during WW II and had a few of them laying around. My grandfather worked at the State Liquor Store and when his friends came in, they'd give him a few. Over the years word spread and others he didn't even know would give him coins, simply to get rid of them. They didn't want them, couldn't spend them, so they gave them away to him. So, the natural way of things, if you wanted to collect coins you collected US coins or you didn't collect at all, because they were all you could get. And it had been that way for a hundred years. Also you need to remember how resistant people are to change. If something has been 1 way for a hundred years, it's not likely to change, and certainly not very quickly. So most new collectors that came along after the 1970's collected US coins because that what everybody else did. But with increased travel & trade things did start changing, the world got smaller, slowly. And it has taken 50 years just to get to the point we are at today, where we have a few collectors of foreign coins. But compared to the total number of collectors, still a small fraction. Now imagine trying to break that small fraction into even smaller groups, by country for example. It's a lot easier now because there are more - but 50 years ago ...................... The natural way of things.[/QUOTE]

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