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Message:: [QUOTE="V. Kurt Bellman, post: 2359959, member: 71723"]Look, I grew up in the 1960's in the town of Reading, PA, whose population ran in the 85,000 to 100,000 range most years. The county is about 400,000. When I got around on my Schwinn bicycle, there were 4 coin and stamp dealers in town, all with really full inventory. By 1985, they were all gone, ALL of them. None have reappeared since. That wasn't due to a bad economy or the internet, that was the demise of a hobby, in fact, two of them. Coin collecting is already a corpse, it just hasn't had the common sense to fall over yet. It survives as it is now by continuing to delude itself by denying that it's over, and that today's coin values, EXCEPT AT THE VERY HIGHEST END, are simply unsustainable. The perception of rarity can only substitute for actual rarity for so long, then the house of cards collapses like the stinking Ponzi scheme it is. Coin collecting and its prices are the epitome of the "greater fool" theory of value, and we're demographically and economically running out of fools. The only category of fools that seems unlimited is the Bullionista Fools. They'll take about 10-15 years longer to implode, but they will. Their ranks are being temporarily replenished by dishonest politicians and ideologies, but they too will collapse when the underlying ideology behind the bullionistas is revealed for the lie it always has been.[/QUOTE]