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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kevin McGonigal, post: 3375603, member: 72790&quot;]One of the advantages (there are a few, very few)of being a senior citizen is the ability to bring perspective into a discussion. I will be 76 later this year. I can very well remember entering the coin collecting hobby. It was in the middle of 1957, just getting close to my Fourteenth birthday and my main hobby was shooting my BB gun at any target that would remain stationary for more than five seconds. But then I went to a local farmers market where a coin dealer had a regular set up. I purchased an 1865 nickel three cent piece and the Yeoman&#039;s Blue Book, both for about $3. I was fascinated by what the book revealed and the fact that I had a coin that might have been (maybe) in the pocket of a Civil War soldier. I had recently started to read the Bruce Catton books on the Civil War and would hold the coin in my hand as I read. I was both enthralled and addicted. I went through my father&#039;s change weekly (found a 42 over 42 Mercury dime there) and my corner grocer co-operated by setting aside any barber coins and buffalo nickels and once a week he would give them to me at face value (thank you, Mr. Gaucher). In my senior year of high school I purchased my first ancient, a splendid denarius of Nerva ($10). Now I could read about Ancient Rome and have a piece of it in my hands. A few years later I went into teaching (history, naturally) and the first thing I did was to take over the school&#039;s stamp and coin club. It was well attended and the kids made presentations and then traded material. Philatelist and Numismatists (maybe even a few vexiologists) were around then and these hobbies were almost as well attended as the school&#039;s football games (lousy team). The point is, at that time the collecting of coins was a hobby that youngsters could afford and it was not so much the investment which it later became. Once hair splitting between an About MS 66 and 1/2 and a choice BU MS 67 became common (with consequent price increases) numismatics became as much speculation as anything else and absolutely drove out of the market folks who just wanted to collect cool coins. I stayed with the hobby adding many coins and paper currency that were related to my teaching, but over the years the students seemed less interested and by the time I left teaching (2009) the kids treated the coins as little more than a mild curiosity and pretended that out of politeness to me. I am still very much into the hobby. I attend shows regularly and if you have been like me you may have noticed that many collectors look like me, grizzled, gray haired, wizened, codgers, older than the coins they collect. Is the coin hobby (or investment market) soft? Are marshmallows soft? Except for the ancients which have continued to do well, the coin market is soft and as younger people increasingly go to digital wallets, coins will become as relevant to them as spatterdashes and buggy whips to us. I see this same trend in the collecting of antique firearms and swords. Demographics and technology are going to doom both paper currency and coins in the lifetimes of some of those reading this and as that happens the niche collectors of coins and currency will go the way of the niche collectors of buggy whips. Tastes and interests change and as much as it distresses me to say this (and it does very much distress me to do so) except for ancients and medievals,&nbsp; the&nbsp; long term outlook for coin collecting as a mass hobby is trending downward. Such is my sad conclusion. Argue if you will from the charts, but my admittedly anecdotal observations, for whatever value they have, is that collecting coins is not a good way to make money anymore.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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