How Many Collectors Of Ancient Coins Are There?

Apologies if this question has been asked in the past. I did a search of the archives but didn't find any threads.

Anybody want to speculate on how many collectors of ancient coins there are currently? Meaning someone who is actively accumulating and seeking out new additions to their collection. Not including dealers or just someone who has acquired the random ancient here or there over the years while mainly collecting other coins.

In my limited experience lurking on various forums and reading what others have written it appears that ancients are gaining in popularity. Particularly it seems that they have a significant collector base in the U.S., Canada, & Australia.

Personally I find Ancients to be extremely attractive collectables since they are so varied and have so much history surrounding them. There seems to be an endless array of coins to pursue on even limited budgets.

I'm still going to collect classic U.S. coins but I think that I've found a new lifelong passion here in ancients coins.

Your thoughts?
Joe2007

 

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I have often wondered this myself. There must be hundreds of thousands of ancient coin collectors at least, judging by the vast amount of coins that are auctioned - and sold - every week by the various auction houses.

That said, I have only ever met one other ancient coin collector in real life.

 

I think ancients are gaining in popularity.. @dougsmit mentioned a while back (correct me if I'm wrong) that he once acquired a Didius Julianus for 50 cents.
My denarius of DJ, quite worn, cost several hundred dollars. There must be something driving up the price.

 

I suspect the number of active ancient coin collectors is in the low five figures but that is a pure guess.

 

I think that is a good guess. I was thinking about the same.

 

That's like asking how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?

I have no research to back my data on but I believe there are 472,346 people that actively collect Ancient Coins. The good news is, this figure is up 1.4% from the same period 5 years ago.

 

coin collecting is pretty popular in general. I read somewhere there are over 10 million people collecting coins in the U.S alone. So even if 10% collects ancients there are a million of us in this country.
I'd say 10 million ancient collectors W-W give or take.

BTW what DJ did Doug get for 50 cents? I mean, that'd still be once a lifetime deal even if he's 100 years old today

 

That US figure is vastly higy. To get there, they include people putting in quarters into state quarter books. Most of them aren't really collectors.

I would put the US number to 200,000 or so, and agree with 10,000-20,000 serious ancient collectors worldwide. Might sound low but it only takes one to completely ruin an auction for you.

 

The 10 million number probably includes all of the random jars of change and is orders of magnitude removed from reality.

Regarding ancients, the petition for the right to collect has 37,320 signatures at the moment. This likely includes some amount of world coin collectors as well and even for an important survey such as this, one can only expect to get a subset of the population.

I'd wager 3-10x the size of respondents would represent the sphere of world/ancient collectors, making it in the low hundreds of thousands which "feels" right.

 

I've asked the same question, as I'm sure all of us have at one time or another and the often stated ball-park figure seems to consistently be less than 1-2% of all coin collectors, however accurate or inaccurate that estimate may be...

Perhaps 100-150,000 ????

 

I think you guys are only counting the hardcore collectors, and trade show population only represent a small portion of those.

There are around 7 billion people in the world, seven thousand millions. If one in a hundred collects (I don't think the 1% figure counted people with piggybanks full of quarters) then we have 70 million. Discount some the places where this wasn't part of the culture, say 50M.

If the definition of an "ancient coin collector" was someone that collected coins and also keeps a number of ancients, then I don't see how that number would not account for at least 5% of all coin collectors (10% was probably an exaggeration). Ok, let's say 2%, that's still 1mil...

 

And judging by the numbers buying clearly fake ancients on Ebay, I'd say out of that million, only 50-60K worldwide have genuine coins, and the rest just got an Athenian Owl from Cyprus or a Roman Republic denarii from Shanghai.

 

For the record the Didius and Manlia (same day) sestertii came from a 50 cent junk box 50 years ago. I do not have a photo of either and seem to have lost the foil of the Manlia which was worse than the Didius. This is the foil pressing. At obverse top left you can see the faint DIDSEV. The coin was light brown and even colored so I would buy it back for $50 now but it would sell for more than that to one-per collectors I am sure.

Junk coins brought less in the 1960's than they do now when compared to mid grade coins. The seller did not identify the coins but certainly knew what they were when he threw them in the junk box with only slightly better worn out Hadrians. Shop owners did that sort of thing to encourage kids like me who would know the difference. I sold it to Joel Malter as part of the 150 coins for $500 deal but it was valued at zero, I'm sure. I was so sure then that I was finished with coins that I am amazed I saved the foils.


Below is another coin in that bunch. Tell me it wouldn't bring $500 alone today.


Sometimes we do stupid things in the name of poverty.

In the 90's I was told by a dealer that he defined serious collectors as those who spent $1000 a year on the hobby. I do not recall his saying how many serious collectors he knew. Mailing lists of serious collectors were very valuable then.

 

I'd have no problem offering $550.00 for both

 

People with more money than brain do not value things right, and usually over pay. They overpay partly because that raises the possibility of getting a genuine article. Buying slabbed ancients for ridiculous prices for example...
How can you say they don't have genuine coins? That just does not make logical sense to me, sorry.

People who paid very little for tourist coins usually know well they were buying fakes. Those would never make into the 1% (all coin collectors).

 

Yes, back in my early days dealers would buy mailing lists from each other quite regularly. I myself sold my database many times.

 

I dont like my information being sold today by big corporations but I would be real pissed if someone sold my contact information and I found out about it. I dont care if I was looking for a specific coin, its up to my dealer to acquire the coin and provide it to me at their price. You as a dealer better not be peddling peoples information with out their knowledge. Just saying, homie.

 

Uh, OK. Things were different back then. It was just a way to connect collectors with coins. But that was a different time. Now we have privacy agreements (and yes, as a VCoins member I dont give out anyones information). So, relax. Its all good.

 

In the old days no one thought much about information privacy and you never saw a privacy statement or suggestion that asking for a catalog would or would not get your name resold. I used to get an average of more than one coin mailing list a day. Half were from dealers I had never heard of let alone bought from. Some were quite appreciated, some were straight to trash but none were offensive. Then it cost good money to have a catalog printed and mailed so sellers did not send them to ten million people hoping to find ten new customers. The Internet changed everything.

 

I didn't think so. Thanks for the clarification.