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Message:: [QUOTE="mlov43, post: 2727307, member: 16729"]South Korea. They are in the midst of a big coin "boom," from what friends and coin retailers over there tell me.It's a boom in some different ways:  People are interested in collecting low-grade coins for fun from which they make year sets, there are the searchers for "older" coins in circulation, and there's the very serious, high-grade (high-value) collectors, and even weirdos who are very, very interested in cleaning their change with concoctions of vinegar and salt!   There are also people just interested in the coins' metal content and are hoarding huge numbers of the older 10 Won brass coins minted between 1971 and 2006.  Some of these people are melting these coins into bars, even though this activity has recently (2011) been outlawed.  The occasional smelting operation bust gets on the news every once in a while. Some of the "boom" has been driven by news about coins recently:1) South Korea will soon become about the ONLY country in the world to totally withdraw coins from circulation (it just started last week, but is to be completed by 2020).2) Rare South Korean coins, and their incredible values(!) in the South Korean collector market have received tons of coverage by the Korean media, a media market where when one item of vaguely-interesting "news" gets covered, all the other media outlets pile on, including radio, internet, and cable news, talk shows, etc.[/QUOTE]