What's the future of coin collecting?

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No, you did not. As they say, predictions are difficult especially when it comes to the future. From what I have read, yes, young people these days are not that interested in collecting "tangible objects" any more. Whether that is a long term trend or not ... we'll see.

As for coins, I don't think this is a dying hobby. But once (if!) we stop using coins in everyday life, it may be tougher to get new people interested. And flooding the market with new collector coins will not necessarily be helpful. How many people collect stamps these days?

Christian

 

I've been collecting sine the nineteen-sixties' and all the concern was about the future of coin collecting.
Fifty years from now people will be wondering the same thing.

 

While I haven't been alive long enough to be cognizant of any long term trends, there seems to be a pretty strong coin collecting community on Instagram (a picture sharing social media platform). Instagram users are younger than the average coin collecter, so I would assume that a lot of the Instagram coin collecting community is in the younger (<30 years old) range.

 

In this social media era, it's a good sign that there is interest in coins on Instagram. People who have had no interest in coins may get interested after seeing what others are posting. The internet has certainly changed the dynamic of coin collecting. Forums like CT are a great example. Instant access to information and opinions fuel my interest.

 

Wow, I had no idea.

 

Maybe. That's about all anyone can say. I also think that the claimed changes the internet brought are often exaggerated and that the internet itself is changing in ways that will make it less likely to introduce people to new things or concepts.

But first who is to say what is antiquated? Apparently, there is a huge upsurge of younger people playing board games and getting away from their digital devices. I also still see young people reading actual books when I drive through a local university. Many music stores say the banjo has made a strong comeback recently. As the world continuously speeds up, the old seems to become new time and time again with more rapidity. Maybe coins will also fall into this category?

Some internet studies have shown that many people really only interact with tiny parts of the internet. It is huge but it's also becoming too big to be useful for most people outside of their immediate spheres of interest. It presents a person with so many choices and so many options that many things get lost and marginalized easily. Even Facebook is overwhelming and posts only reach so many people. Not only that, it is largely driven by algorithms that tend to show people more of what they are already interested in, so it has become more and more of an echo chamber over time. So, if you're not interested in coins to begin with, you may not be exposed to many coin-related items, or it becomes more and more difficult to come across coin related items without someone forwarding them on to you. Which puts us back in the same situation of exposure. The internet isn't really that different from physical reality, apart from speed and the potential of exposure, but increasingly that exposure often isn't realized without large marketing budgets.

I personally don't see teenagers passing pictures of old coins around the internet en masse, but maybe some would (e.g., the mention of Instagram above)? I don't know. Plus, and this is of course a theory, in general the desire to own coins, the real passion many of us feel for them, seems to depend upon their actual tactility and immediate in-handedness. A picture of a coin has less impact than holding one in your hand, again in general. There's really no guarantee that the internet will expand the coin collecting hobby at all in a pocket change free world. But, as I said before, no one really knows.

 

Then why has stamp collecting died? I attend coin shows and get offered stamps at 70% of their face value. I hope the coin collecting hobby stays active, but my crystal ball is foggy.

 

I obviously enjoy our hobby with you and I also think of it as a way of continuing the legacy of my father from whom I inherited his collection. I recently met a rare high-school collector and asked him if anyone else in his circle of influence also collected. His response was, ''most of the people in my school don't even know it is a hobby!''. This sad but insightful observation does not bode well for the future of the hobby. Just like stamps, how can one become interested in something you don't regularly use? The ease and access to the digitalization of our financial/monetary society has played a tremendous role in the decreased interest in our hobby. Ironically, if money as we know it becomes phased out (like in Sweden), our collections will possibly become more valuable as the eternal human law of supply and demand kicks in. Have fun and stay well my kindred brethren.

 

I can give you my point of view. Im a very passionate collect, have been for years. Started when I found a wheat cent in my little change bucket.

I eventually went and started a coin club at my library. I ran it for about a year and a half approximately. There were about 4 kids who came regularly. Only one of which I would consider an actual collector (A lot of parents sign up their kids for things just to get them out of the house). I put a lot of time and effort into this club, however with such low attendance I had to cancel it. They're were more exciting programs that needed space like coding class, etc. Now that I am employed at this library (when I started the club I was volunteering) I would love to start it again.
However before that I would need to find actual people to come.

None of my friends collect coins. It kind of is an expensive hobby so I understand. I tried to get my best friend into it, but you can't force a hobby onto someone.

 

Fifteen years ago people were pondering whether the Internet with all its forms of entertainment would kill coin collecting.

It survived and will continue to do so because it's a solitary hobby. It may not appear to be because of all the activity that goes on in CT and other forums but our social graces resemble the Visigoths. I believe most of us aren't exactly "out-going" extroverts.

I believe most coin collectors are introverted and need to constantly escape some zoo in their life, especially the Internet zoo.

The biggest drag on collecting will be the drag that has always existed--lack of confidence in grading, which waxes and wanes but also need not stop anyone from collecting. TPG's can't be everywhere. There is plenty to collect in world coins, and exonumia where U.S grading has less impact.

As for the many forms of escapism offered by the Internet, I believe that may be the very thing people try to escape from the most and in the process be driven to more solitary pursuits such as coin collecting.

 

A few other things to consider:

1. Population is growing and will continue to do so barring a catastrophe. Even if the percent of the population that collects coins decreases, the total number will probably increase.

2. If coins are no longer minted for circulation, the number of such coins available per person will decrease because of increasing population and attrition of the coins. Coins will become relatively rarer which may increase their appeal as collectibles.

3. As long as folks want to own precious metals, which will be into the indefinite future, mints will coin bullion even if they aren't making coins for circulation.

4. As long as mints can promote and sell commemoratives at a profit, that will continue too.

Cal

 

I started collecting coins and stamps in the 1950's when I was still in my young teens. It seemed every other kid collected one or the other. When I became a high school history teacher in the 1960's I sponsored the school's Coin and Stamp Clubs. The clubs were always well attended and a lot of trading went on at the meetings. I would say that collecting took a hit when investors moved in and turned a hobby into an investment. Older collectors may recall when coin books carried two grades of a coin, VG and ExF. All of a sudden we had numerous grading differences with values doubling going from MS 65 to MS 67. What had once been a fun hobby was now a serious investment strategy. Prices were driven not by collector interest but by a frenzy to make a quick profit. Kids could not operate in a climate like this and interest in collecting as a hobby fell off. By the late 1970's coin and stamp clubs were becoming less well attended and soon disappeared. I have to admit that I was turned off by this as well and really toned down my own collecting. I continued to use my own collection as teaching tools and right up until my retirement a few years ago my students showed considerable interest in both coins and stamps as they related to the period of history we were studying. Some of this lack of interest today may be from a media that requires interaction to keep an interest alive but some of this lack of interest may have been caused by a hobby being morphed into a business that saw investors loose their shirts, something that is likely to warn off others from getting much involved. Where to from here? A more scholarly interest by those who relish the ability to touch the past through a tangible medium of exchange. A movie about Roman gladiators or one about the American Civil War is one thing, but a denarius that could have been spent by Spartacus or a piece of fractional currency used to buy a copy of the New York Herald is a literal touch of reality no digital media can replicate.

 

Probably, most of them are here to make money rather than to collect. The newer generations the lazier people. More number of people searching oppurtunities to make some easy money. In the past too, there were people doing the same, but, their number of such people are increasing especially after the internet. So, since this coin collecting field too is a kind of market for people, for youngers especially, when the market is saturated, those 40,000 members will slowly leave the field. There are easier ways to make more money, such as bitcoin, etc. A teen in our day is more busy with bitcoin generating in the computer, he is not interested in "old" things. Quite natural, isn't it. So, the trend in this collecting field is downward. If this is not good, a new approach is necessary, so that younger generation can be attracted to the coin. For this necessity of "new" approach, we "old" generation are responsible, or, not..?

 

I'm not sure I understand the analogy, as plenty of stamps are still being produced and used.

Also stamps aren't as tangible as coins.

 

I am a "millennial" myself. I just turned 26 and I began collecting ancients at 22 after having only very casually collected coins modern coins previously, mostly picking interesting things out of change. I talk to many collectors young and old and one big thing I've noticed is that many who grew up with the internet simply have different philosophies around things like coin shows, coin clubs, etc, than those who did not. Whereas many of the older collectors I speak to are members of local clubs if they exist, many younger members are content being members of "virtual clubs" and whatnot, and similarly whereas many older members plan months ahead to go to the biggest coin shows, many younger collectors are content buying coins on eBay, VCoins, etc.

A prime example of this difference can be seen on Facebook. There are Facebook groups dedicated to various types of collecting and many have thousands of members, one has over 22,000 members, and they range from groups full of pictures of coins with little discussion to groups where deep, engaging discussion is the norm and whose membership contains academics, dealers and focused collectors. I can say with certainty that these groups have made my collecting experience better because all of the local coin clubs are focused on modern coins, which I honestly do not care about and do not collect, however through these groups I've actually managed to arrange ad-hoc meetups with other collectors of ancients in the area whom I would have never met through the local coin clubs.

Now, that said, I think there's one glaring reason why you don't see a lot of younger collectors who get deeply interested in coins: money. Honestly most of the people I know that are my age have relatively little disposable income. I was fortunate enough that I could make a career out of something I enjoy doing and that that career gives me enough money to pay the bills, add to my 401k and savings, keep the wife happy and still have a decent bit at the end of the month to build a coin collection and numismatic library with. I know several people my age including some collectors, working two jobs to pay off student loans, pay the bills, put food on the table and survive until the next paycheck comes in. They can't spend much on coins and at a certain point most of the collectors I know in this category end up dropping out because they feel like they can't afford anything interesting. Maybe one day if their situation changes they'll pick up collecting again, but I can't really blame them.

 

I'm currently 25 and I've been collecting for 10 years. I can say that not very many of my friends collect coins (none of them actually). But they're all very interested. I always share my new coins with them and give some of my extras away. I'm planting seeds for the future.

I don't think it will go away, it will just evolve.

 

I can testify to that truth.

 

In my opinion, Numismatics is very close to going the way that Philatelics went.

At one time the BEP printed interesting postage and limited the yearly output of designs. Then, in the 1970's they began pumping out scores of designs, with totals of multi millions. Before that you could put one or two year's output on a single album page; now one year's output will fill four to five pages. It really got to the point that no one could keep up and the subject matter was more boring [Disney characters, cats, old cars, etc] than educational. That, plus the advent of machine postage printing cheapened the joy of stamp collecting to the point where it's nearly non-existent today.

Today, with the multiplicity of different cent, nickel, quarter and dollar designs, plus the cheaper metallic content, boring designs and decreasing usage due to plastic, I see modern coinage more as tokens than actual collectible coinage. A good percentage of the mint's output today isn't even intended to be used in commerce; it's made only to be collected by those who have been coerced into thinking that they have to have one of everything.

Part of the past joy of collecting was in the hunt for the harder to find rarities. Now, with hundreds of millions of examples being minted there are very few hard to find examples and, for the most part we're reduced to hunting for minute "errors" that require 10x magnification to see.

And, it's becoming a more and more expensive hobby that not everyone who wants to participate can afford to do so.