Current state of Coins magazine (mixed feelings)

All right, here's the thing. I really enjoy the content of Coins magazine as they're the only mainstream monthly newstand puplication that features articles about my areas of interest on a regular basis (EACs, Capped Bust and Seated Liberty coinage.) However, I remember as recently as 2008/2009 the issues were a lot meatier, with 60 to 80 pages or more of articles and today it's basically just a monthly price guide with barely 20 or so pages of articles. So basically I still like the magazine but wish it still had the amount of content per issue it used to. Anyone else feel the same way?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I do. The same with COINage. I don't think either of them are worth the paper they're printed on these days. I skimmed both on a recent visit to Barnes and Noble, found they didn't have anything for me, and put them back.

 

I like the content of the magazine itself. The content itself is not the problem. There's just not as much content per issue as there used to be.

 

I think I started noticed a decline in the amount of content per issue when they decided to stop allowing print classifieds in the back after the price guide section. I wonder if that is somehow connected.

 

When you only have ~20 pages to work with, the articles have to be very general and of wide interest. That leads you to an issue that has articles about the 09-S VDB cent, 1804 dollar, and one or two other not terribly exciting things, which, if I'm remembering what I saw correctly, is roughly what was in the most recent issue.

When you have 60-80 pages to work with, you can include a much broader variety of stuff, and, at that point, something is almost certain to catch my interest.

 

I agree with you. I read whatever is at my Barnes and noble and they seem pretty skimpy. I used to subscribe to numismatic news and really had a problem with it. It seemed like 80-90 percent of it was ads, and if it was less, the reading material was uninteresting at times. I remember the editor or someone once saying it's hard to lessen the ads because some readers want it. I highly doubt a majority or even half favor the amount of ads in there. It's pretty cheap, like 15-20 for 6 months (weekly mailed I think) but at even that rate it wasn't worth it to me.

 

I don't browse NN very much, but I find it hard to believe that readers want 80% of the publication to be ads. I would be willing to bet most of those ads are for scummy dealers offering "monthly acquisition programs," and such.

I will say that I'd actually prefer more ads than to have half the issue taken up with a useless price guide.

 

Yeah maybe. I think they send out a price guide with the mag once a month. It's probably the best issue each month, since i didn't care for much else in there

 

to many damn ads. I noticed that with CoinWorld too.

 

As I stated in the first post, my main areas of interest are early american coppers, capped bust and seated liberty coins. Coin World monthly almost never talks about them except in passing, opting instead to discuss modern bullion and commemorative issues, Morgan dollars and popular early 20th century issues such as WL halves and Lincoln cents and basically acts like pre civil war american issues aren't worth writing about except as featured coin types in the coin grading section or maybe in the news section about auction sales. But never as a main article feature. Coinage discusses those areas a lttle more frequently, but not by much.

 

Yeah. I get annoyed by their price guide for some reason. World coins get the last few pages after the guide. I know it couldn't have a price guide for all countries but there's something misleading about calling it Coin World with just a US price guide. Maybe they could have key coin prices from a few dozen countries. I'd like that better.

 

A question I have is why does Coins magazine have a price guide to begin with, when the same publishers also put out Coin Prices magazine? It seems unnecessarily redundant.

 

If there weren't any ads, there wouldn't be any magazine.

Chris

 

Yep, it's the same for Camping World. They should include more information about Africa and Southeast Asia instead of just the US.

Maybe someone should publish a magazine called World Coins or World Camping.

Chris

 

If you don't already, you and others who are interested in a specialized area would find content you want in a club periodical. Since most US collectors focus on common US classics and (US and world) moderns, it makes sense for general purpose coin magazines to write articles about these series.

Since I don't collect any of these series and have zero interest in most of them, I don't subscribe to these magazines. I am actually more interested in the ads.

 

And since it's a lot tougher to get print advertising these days, you have to charge less per ad and stuff more of them in to recoup your production costs. I'm sure there will be an equilibrium point where the printed word can still be profitable, but the field will be far narrower than it is even today once that point is reached.

 

The ANA's monthly publication is over 100 pages and always covers a broad range of stuff. I get the digital issue on my phone and always enjoy reading the articles even if its an area I don't collect. Free with membership.

Sent from my XT1093 using Tapatalk

 

How is the content of Coin World weekly compared to Coin World monthly? Is it more diversified or just more of the same? Right now I have a lot of reading I want to catch up with, (Lowball estimate, not including magazines of another 30,000 pages to go), so weekly publications are out of the question at the moment. But When I've caught up with my reading, I want to subscripe to additional periodicals.

 

I had Ana for a year. I enjoyed the mag but since we're being critical in here, I admit I didn't like their multiple page adds for their coin show and workshops. I'd imagine most collectors cant attend a show in another state so having several pages about what's offered at them was wasted space IMO. It was also an expensive mag considering the other benefits didn't appeal to me. The ability to submit coins to NGC is a nice addition but being short of money that year precluded sending coins in. So I was left with a 50 dollar subscription. Needless to say I didn't renew. Sorry if I offended anyone supportive of the ANA but I'm being honest

 

yes but over 50% of it is ridiculous. I understand you need ads but... if you are buying the magazine that should cover the cost of it.