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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;NovembersDoom6, post: 3710517, member: 105392&quot;]Your analogy seems a bit off though. A laptop is an appliance. It&#039;s a commodity bought with the expectation that it will have a limited useful life, and we assign it a value based on how long we expect that life to be. I&#039;d pay considerably more for a name-brand laptop that&#039;s known for lasting a long time and providing years of trouble-free usage, than for a no-name laptop that I know will probably need to be replaced in a year or two.</p><p><br /></p><p>People don&#039;t buy coins for the same reasons and with the same expectations of near-term obsolescence. To many, they are an investment (or at least a sort of hedge) as much as they are a personal collection. Most of us tend to think that our coins will last forever (or at least the next couple generations and be something we can pass down or sell in older age), and we also often think they&#039;ll hold their value so long as we keep them and they stay in the same or close to the same condition. So if we pay a certain amount for our coins and keep them for years or decades, then suddenly it turns out they&#039;re not worth anything or certainly not worth anywhere near what we paid for them, we&#039;ll tend to feel a bit ripped off or at least disappointed by the fact.</p><p><br /></p><p>As they are currently considered valuable collector items, we tend to expect that in 5 or 20 or 50 years they will still be considered valuable collector items. If the market shifts dramatically and this hobby dies down considerably, then the argument is that they simply will no longer be valuable collector items anymore, as they were when we&nbsp; bought them and expected them to remain. I don&#039;t quite agree with that argument, I think rare and unique coins will always have a market and retain a good bit of their value, though I do see many coins decreasing quite a bit in value as we are seeing happen right now before our eyes. In 5 or 20 years we may see these same coins shooting back up in value. That&#039;s the nature of collector- and investment-type markets, they&#039;re usually pretty cyclical. Still, that&#039;s the argument made by many in this hobby, and I think they have some good points. In my view, if you plan on selling most of your collection when you retire or passing it on to your kids or grandkids to sell when you die, much of the value of your collection will just depend on market conditions at that particular point in time.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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