Future of Coin Collecting - thoughts?

This has been on my mind a lot - regarding stamp collecting and coin collecting (but will limit my post to just coins).

When I was a kid, I collected coins. But, money was scarce (10-15 years old) so I only ever bought 'the cheap stuff'. I figured I'd grow up, get a job, and then I can afford Pre-1965 dimes and quarters (which at the time sold for 50-75 cents each). But, when I got older and back into collecting, the value of silver sky rocketed and again it feels like collecting dimes and quarters is so expensive.

When I go to the coin shops, a lot of coins are high-priced. But, the fun of collecting REALLY is in the "roll hunting", right? Of course, no one uses change/cash anymore so I go to the bank and take home a full box of quarters or half dollars or dollars. But, after 2002, half dollars are no longer produced for circulation. And, after 2011, dollar coins are no longer produced for circulation. Maybe I'll find 3-5 coins in an entire box of 500 dollars. Now, if I want a current dollar coin for my collection I have limited options: I can buy directly from the mint at a premium. I can let someone else buy in bulk (at a premium) from the mint and pay $3-5 for that dollar on eBay. Basically, if I want to collect half dollars/dollars, I'm just buying my collection. Where's the fun in that?

The mint is producing a penny, a nickel, a dime, 4 quarters (both clad and silver), and 4-5 dollars. Along with standard strikes, there are proofs and now reverse proofs - all at a premium for the collector.

Maybe it's unrealistic to think I should be able to collect "all" the coins - even if they are the modern ones.. but.. it just feels so expensive these days. How can kids or newcomers to the hobby ever join in? It feels to me like, with the price of metals going up, the price of older coins going up, and more and more of the new coins becoming "collector only" editions, coin collecting may die out in the next 20-25 years.

No one I know (that I know of) collects coins or understands the hobby (and I have tried to ask around a bit). Coin shops seem to be turning into "silver and gold" shops. Even the shops that sell coins seem to have a majority of their customers buying and selling silver. It just seems such a shame. Is it just a result of the times? Is the mint making it harder to collect? Am I seeing it wrong?

What do you all think? Is the hobby dying? Or can future generations join in?

I'd Love to hear some thoughts/opinions on this!

 

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Welcome to CT. I think coin collecting is strong. Most dealers have a hard time getting the right coin at a decent price.

 

Here is a post I put out a while back. I think I covers my opinion of the coin and stamp hobbies today.
2023 is the 75th Anniversary of my active Coin and Stamp collecting. I started in 1948 and have been active ever since.

My accumulations include near 90% of all US Stamps up to 2011 when I slowed because of the USPS volume of issues. I stopped getting them directly from the USPS and only collect those I find in the wild. The table below shows why I quit trying to get all issues. The first two lines cover about 50 years each. The others are by decade. It became impossible to keep up with.

USPS Stamp Issues

1847 to 1899 293
1900 to 1949 693
1950 to 1959 152
1960 to 1969 247
1970 to 1979 408
1980 to 1989 643
1990 to 1999 931
2000 to 2009 1065

In Coins I have all the Silver Dollars (all but three back to 1878), Half Dollars, Dimes and Nickels from 1900 to 2018 and many prior. I have a complete set of the Liberty Nickels and Buffalo Nickels. I am short a few of the Cents and Quarters since they were more difficult to find in circulation. I had the 1900 Lafayette but gave it to my daughter a while back. I had misplaced it and spent three days trying to find it. I know where it is now.

As a youngster I got an 1875 S Twenty Cent Piece in change. I gave it to my youngest son a while back.

I have all the modern commemorative halves and dollars up to 2018 - silver and clad.

So much stuff in the 75 years. I am still a coin collector, but I have slowed down some. I quit getting new stuff from the mint as they have flooded the market with, IMO, junk.

 

"Coin Collecting" is fun

 

I posted earlier today after going to the Fun Show coin collecting appeared to alive and well. I will say prior to me collecting coins I never knew anyone that collected coins. I am referring to people I knew quite well and were close friends. I have no doubt if they were collectors I would know it.

I am certainly not sure of this, but I would think the collecting of coins has always been a limited amount of folks that took it serious. I'm not knocking them, but I don't include those that put their state quarters found in their change in a coffee can. I do think that act brought some people to the hobby and are now active collectors.

I do think people have always liked money and coins are money. I don't know if it has always been this way, but it amazes me the number of people that come here thinking they have found an error that will make them rich, but rarely it seems are they actual collectors.

By the way, welcome to Coin Talk. I love my collection and I certainly do not have a "trophy" collection, but it is mine, my wife, and kids owning it. They all love it too.

 

We have two large vault safes with gold, silver, collectable copper coins, bars, and bullion. Tucked safely away from our residence. Like our financial futures and our CPA/PA brother, all we have to do is sign in and privately view our insured collection and finances. We consider ourselves very fortunate. We still enjoy our local coin club, dealer, and shows. Our coin interest is now very specific and enjoyable. Welcome to CT and may you have a successful collectable future. Good luck!

 

Yeah! Fun for you maybe?? You have all the good error coins.

 

@lordmarcovan : Some excellent points! Really appreciate the thoughts!

--- Thanks everyone for all the thoughts so far!

 

I do believe the mint is doing a disservice to those that want to collect modern issues. In fact I know many collectors who no longer purchase from the mint because of the premiums.

My LCS transitioned to a mostly bullion shop many years ago, though it does have other numismatic collectables, it wouldn't be the place to buy them as they price them ridiculously high.

Collecting is often a solitary venture. I knew no one growing up that collected coins either. The Instagram collecting community is doing very well and I'm even part of a chat group on there limited to collectors from KY. I think once one gets into online forums, Instagram, Facebook groups, it is easy to see the hobby isn't dieing, just transforming a bit.

Even my collecting habits have changed from former mail order coins to almost exclusively online shopping, with a coin show a couple times a year.

I'm not going to lie and say the steep prices of US coins isn't the reason I began collecting world coins. It's the #1 reason.

 

@lordmarcovan Thank you so so much!! I was just reading about that - that is beyond incredible!!! I definitely will And, I have to admit, your post really made me remember about some of the joys I had first starting out. I looked through your "holey collection" and thought - I like those too! And, it's true- collectors today can jump into niches rather than "modern coins". Though, I still feel a bit "doom and gloom" about modern coin collecting.

@Joshua Lemons - You make an excellent point - coming to the forum here has been really amazing. I may not know anyone in the hobby in person, there are definitely active collectors here and throughout the country. And, I definitely have been thinking more about world coins lately. They are really cool - for sure. (and I LOVE LOVE LOVE foreign currency) - I think I just haven't known where to even begin with them. Though, the answer may be to pick a few world niches and go for it

 

There are things I think that have changed over the years (as things tend to do). One of them being what the mint puts out and what gets circulated, etc. As a kid I mostly spent time trying to fill penny and nickel folders. To be honest, I still do only now I do it with my kids. My youngest especially enjoys it. But I just pull these out of circulation.

One thing that has re-sparked interest for me is to narrow my focus. I tend to zoom out too much and take the "pokemon approach" of gotta catch them all. That's not only unrealistic, it would be waaaaay out of my budget.

I collect on the cheap, having not spent over maybe $40 on a single coin.

As for roll hunting, I used to do more of it but everything seems so picked over at this point. I still try to fill holes from circulation in my folders though.

I've found renewed joy in Foreign coins which 5 years ago I had zero interest in. Buying a few pounds of them and then pouring through them looking at the various designs, figuring out the years, etc - great fun for me and my son.

 

We've had this discussion in other threads here, here are some of my highlights:

• We were in a major bear market for U.S. coins for years, but appears we broke out of it in early-2020.

• We don't know yet if this was a CYCLICAL recovery (dead-cat bounce) or a SECULAR bull market.

• The PCGS 3000 Index is a good place to gauge the U.S. coin market.

• Some U.S. coins that are tied to PMs -- i.e., Saints or Morgans -- could rise based on the movement of the underlying metals prices.

• Demographically, it appears we do have a rising headwind into coin collecting numbers and new entrants into the hobby. There's simply so much more to do today than there was 40 or 60 years ago for a young teen. Attendance skews 50-and-older at many shows or conventions.

• At the same time, attendance at some coin shows -- notably the big national shows like FUN -- seem to be doing better than ever. Unfortunately, alot of small or local or regional shows seem to have bit the dust.

• Attendance figures at shows, online memberships and bidding activity, coin club memberships (yes, they are still around apparently), and other data points.....this should be kept by the professional trade organizations because without hard numbers it's tough to figure out how to grow the hobby or if it is growing.

 

Wow @JDcompy …… Deja-vu. I did a post almost identical to yours shortly after I joined CoinTalk. I been collecting coins since the late 1960’s and my fear was that we were pricing coins out of reach of the newer collectors. However, having been here a few years now and being that I am older and settled now, I find I can make my way to coin shows again…. And you know what I found? The kids are at the shows and are as engaged with dealers over the two dollar coins as I am with the $200.00 coins. Take a look at the membership here on CT. We have a very active younger group regularly posting here…. I have always had no-date buffalos in my pocket and routinely hand them out to kids. Sometimes they don’t appear interested but more often than not, youngsters absolutely glow over being handed a coin from a bygone era….. I have revised my thinking. I now believe that coin collecting will thrive long after I depart this party.

 

I got a bit of a laugh that you had the same post when you joined- and what you wrote is really inspiring to hear. That's awesome and hopeful. Because, I definitely feel like collecting costs have gone up so much.. To hear that kids are at those shows is so cool And, you're an AMAZING human for giving out buffalos. My first "coin shop guy" would slip me a buffalo every now and then in my change. That small gesture meant so much to me and 30 years later I still remember!

@Randy Abercrombie - what type of coins do you collect these days?

 

Thank you. I been a type coin guy my whole life. I was perfectly satisfied collecting ten dollar coins most of my life. Only been the last 8-10 years that I been able to enjoy some of the coins I dreamed of my whole life. My favorite series is seated coins.

 

As a somewhat younger guy here, 39, I’ll share some thoughts. Culture is changing rapidly, more and more people are connecting over niche subjects over the various social media platforms. For example, the r/coins subreddit has 180,000 members. There is a Facebook group for Jefferson Nickel collectors with 19,000 members. There are numerous other groups with varied focuses. Not to mention the numerous buy/sell groups.

The landscape of collecting culture has changed since my grandpa took me to my first coin show thirty years ago. It certainly does not seem to be dying though.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I wouldn’t mind if things slid a bit and made the key dates I need a little less expensive. When I inherited a 1909 S VDB cent in F12 from my grandpa it was worth about 600-700 bucks. I see these routinely sell for $1000 recently. Now that’s just one very specific example, but indicates to me that the hobby is doing fine.

 

I had a friend asking, he was looking to buy some silver us coins or .999 rounds.
He also was thinking about cents, maybe start a collection.
He said he was looking at a bag of 5000 wheat cents and if that was worth buying?

I told him to really do your research on Unsearched coins...most are no where close to being Unsearched these days...those had a tag that read 40's and 50's.
Definitely searched if the seller knows what year they range.

As for silver buy what you like and buy by weight if you can rather than Xtimes face value.

 

When I was seven in 1967 I got a Christmas gift. The J.C. Penny Let's Collect Coins kit. A fellow named Kenneth Bressett wrote the intro and said that if people like me didn't take up coin collecting by 1987 there might no longer be such a hobby. It is still here.
Consider this. How many people do you specifically know read James Patterson novels? they sell in the millions. people do things without broadcasting it.
Money is a fluid thing. Look at one of those lists of the price of things from a certain year in the past. Is the price of coins out of line with the changes in other costs in life? NO.
Tastes may change and fads may come and go but if you have any common sense you will tend your own garden and collect whatever you like. Happy hunting. James