Does coin collecting have a future?

"Does coin collecting have a future?"

(Title of article in Saturday Evening Post in July of 1827)

 

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As long as there is an interest in history, engineering, metallurgy and art, there will be a history for coin collecting.

 

Yeah, it was like that when I tried to join a coin club as a young collector back in 1973 or 74. The first meeting was held in small room in what used to be medical clinic. There were only 3 of us YNs there, and about 30 adults. And nearly all of the adults were puffing away on cigarettes during the whole meeting, making it very uncomfortable for us kids. I never went back, and that coin club dissolved some time after that. However, now there is a new coin club in the same town with a no-smoking rule and it's being managed pretty well. I've only seen a couple of kids there, though (one is a real wheeler-dealer), and nearly everyone else is an old geezer like me. I wonder how many of those other guys were collecting back in the '70s?

 

Coins will not be minted forever.
What will happen when coins stop being produced? Coins will be turned in and redeemed. The remaining coins will make this a more specialized niche hobby,
and people who rarely or never even used coins will have no use for it.
It is a dead end. Ask a kid about a record player.
Eventually the hobby will go the way of Sears.
Huge and unstoppable for a century and then the next day gone.

 

Ride the Wave like its your last !!!! It may be.

 

I am unable to go to coin shows and have decided to give what I have collected for 58 years to be split with 5 young grand kids to give them a chance that I had to be a coin collector !

 

I am not so sure. While I think that the preponderance of older people at coin shows and societies is normal ( It was the norm when I got active in 1971 at the age of 19) and not to be too concerned about, the lack of exposure to coinage in the modern marketplace may start to have a negative effect. Every time I shop even for small items the most common way most people pay is with a debit or credit card. I still use cash and I find that I am in the minority. This is a bit worrisome. PS on a lighter note; last January I spent a number of "wheaties" as well as an Indian head cent in the NYC area. I had fun doing so, and maybe I started a collection.

 

I always read this outlook and view it the exact opposite way. I personally feel when coins are no longer minted the older coinage will be more collectible and spark more interest. Very few enter the hobby from filling albums out of their spare change anymore it hasn't been that way for a long time so when coins stop being minted I don't think that effects much and may even have the reverse effect in sparking interest in these old dinosaur chunks of metal.

Also the record player example isn't a great one in general because it's apples to oranges but vinyl sales are huge right now for the record and kids who never owned a record player growing up are collecting them. Who would have predicted that 5 years ago? An obsolete item that has sparked huge interest from the younger generation...

 

As long as coin collectors kids sell off their parents collections at face value after they die there will be coin collectors.

 

I hope that all of you "The sky is falling; the sky is falling." people will get out while you can. Go ahead and dump everything right now. The resulting glut on the market will depress prices to the point that I can better support my habit.

 

Lads, im quite young so if im the last one im going to save this hobby or die trying XD

 

If you double it has a future, look at the Ancient collectors. Grade rarities may drop, but rare coins will be collectible by future generations.

 

This is the future for crowd that's been asking the same question every year for the last 40 years.

 

I’m sure this is true, but when will that be? The US Mint continues to produce more and more coins every year, even though we have more credit cards and electronic payment methods. I was reading an article yesterday that millennials are using cash more frequently than older adults. Link:https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/509963002

Turns out young people have a difficult time qualifying for credit cards and often don’t trust electronic forms of payments: identity theft, data breaches etc. I think we’re still a long way off from being a cashless society.

 

I wasn't saying this was going to happen tomorrow.
But it is going to happen.

 

I am 13 and have all sorts of coins, I get made fun of though becouse other kids I know, don’t collect coins! All that they do is invest in video games which they can’t sell for more money. I put all of my money to coins though.

 

Fair enough. You might be right, I would think this is many decades down the road. Sweden passed legislation to phase out the use of physical currency, and that is expected to not be complete until 2030. The US passed legislation in the seventies to convert to the metric system, that’s still ongoing....

 

A reoccurring thing, we officially went metric in 1866 but never enforced a changeover.