I did buy more CLCT stock yesterday. (To the OP and Hemispherical) ^. My wife told me "no" to silver and gold (after being robbed).. or more coins (oops).
However, I'm waiting for six cents (3x 2 cent pcs.) from the BST.
Thanks to the member who listed them. (Prethen). Some more hole plugging to ensue. Buy on the cheap , brothers and sisters. Or pay up. It's a hobby. A habit. An obsession for "weenies", kings and princesses (princes) alike. And if the sky is falling, Heather Boyd's given me ample warning.
The number of people who have permanently left this hobby in the last decade is huge.
I have many historic coins which give me pleasure, but when I view the state of the hobby, well, I don't feel like getting in a big circle, holding hands and singing 'Kumbaya' either.
Back in 2008 the sky fell..........and I bought,bought, bought.I have been reaping the benefit ever since.This talk comes up every once in a while for decades both with coins as well as the paper side.I'm in for the long haul and with that mentality I've done well, especially when the sky is falling.
Collector of numeral seals.That's the 1928 and 1928A series of FRNs with a number rather than a letter in the district seal. Owner/operator of Bottom Line Currency
@BillDugan1959 said:
The number of people who have permanently left this hobby in the last decade is huge.
I have many historic coins which give me pleasure, but when I view the state of the hobby, well, I don't feel like getting in a big circle, holding hands and singing 'Kumbaya' either.
@OKbustchaser said:
Is the "sky falling" in regards to coin collecting ? One can only hope so. A return to 1960's era prices would absolutely delight me...
yes, even on the coins I already own.
I wish I had a grain of salt for every silver buyer I had when things were going up who said they ...wished... it would come back down.
Not a ONE meant it.
I got dirty looks if I suggested averaging down to them.
@numbersman said:
Back in 2008 the sky fell..........and I bought,bought, bought.I have been reaping the benefit ever since.This talk comes up every once in a while for decades both with coins as well as the paper side.I'm in for the long haul and with that mentality I've done well, especially when the sky is falling.
Since 2008, market has never gotten close to that level. Please share how you are reaping ever since?
I think people will always collect, however, it seems like slabs have killed building sets and instead caused us to go for a group of trophy coins. My collection mirrors this, in the past I built sets of everything from bust halves to Morgans. Now I only have a few PCGS boxes full of my favorite coins.
I do fear that counterfeits have, or soon will, get to the point where any cleaned or low grade coin will not be identifiable as a fake vs real. We keep seeing really nice fakes that get caught do to being muled with the wrong reverse or showing repair work to a die. How would do we identify these if they don't make these mistakes. Are we already missing many of these? If experts struggle to id fake vs real how will an average collector who is interested in coins fare?
The answer for me has been to switch my collection from sets of circ coins to a more type set approach of nice higher end coins, some of which have a traceable pedigree. If other people develop this mindset the demand for lower end stuff is going to continue to drop, while the collectors that are left are going to fight more for the best stuff.
It's definitely a bifurcated market. With all the available avenues to research and purchase coins, the common stuff just doesn't have much chance to move up in value. Simple supply and demand. What was once scarce can now be bought online by the hundreds.
The high end stuff that is actually rare will continue to advance. The stuff that I wonder about are the modern condition rarities. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out.
I wish I had a grain of salt for every silver buyer I had when things were going up who said they ...wished... it would come back down.
Not a ONE meant it.
I got dirty looks if I suggested averaging down to them.
So, who said anything about stacking silver? I collect coins. I have been collecting coins continuously since 1963. I've watched prices go up; I've watched them go down. The prices I paid are actually irrelevant to me since they are not for resale (by me). The prices I will pay in the future are irrelevant since they won't be for resale (by me).
Would I prefer to pay less for coins in the future? Of course I would since my budget would stretch farther.
Just because I'm old doesn't mean I don't love to look at a pretty bust.
I deal in both paper and coin (and am licensed for scrap as well).There was a sale..the Flynn sale in 2008 that was the pinnacle of pricing for paper....scary high prices in my opinion.Soon after, the effects of the collapsing economy caught up to the market and many people had this same "sky is falling" thoughts and started jumping ship.....prices fell quickly, in some weaker material, fell hard.I was approached by several collectors, and dealers as well, and bought up much material (several entire collections in fact) at deep discounted prices-far and well below sheet.I flipped most of the PM and I held on to the bulk of the rest for several years and sure enough, as has been the pattern in my experience, bounce-back.I have since 2012 been placing many items in HA and retailing and have done far better than my usual 10-15% that my business model requires.The bulk of this has been on the paper side but much like the paper, coins have a similar sell off when the market gets nervous.Granted,not all items I bought have done well, but enough have that I can declare that I have done significantly better than usual based on those purchases.
Collector of numeral seals.That's the 1928 and 1928A series of FRNs with a number rather than a letter in the district seal. Owner/operator of Bottom Line Currency
So there are about 200 serious Lincoln sets in the registry.
Assuming there are 200 more people we don't know about, that makes 400, the number who actually give a crap about a particular date-mint-variety penny.
10 million minus the top 400 is a lot of dreck.
Just saying
BTW...Same goes for my set which is now being called "old bullion" except the number is about 100
If the sky is falling, then why can I not find coins to buy. I look every day for coins to buy that have dropped in price. I can not find any price dropped coins today. If the market was really that bad, I would be buying coins all day long and be out of cash. I have the cash to buy coins right now, show me a good deal on what I buy and I will buy it right now.
@ErrorsOnCoins said:
If the sky is falling, then why can I not find coins to buy. I look every day for coins to buy that have dropped in price. I can not find any price dropped coins today. If the market was really that bad, I would be buying coins all day long and be out of cash. I have the cash to buy coins right now, show me a good deal on what I buy and I will buy it right now.
No you can't. Presumably the collectors who have found and use this forum are not the bulk of collectors in number.
Yes, there will always be coin collectors.
No we will not see 1960 prices again.
Dealers will simply be doing as they do with bullion and paying less as prices fall and more if demand rises.
It's the demand from the man in the street that has more effect than many realize.
Whether they admit it or not, I'd guess the majority of "collectors" consider their holdings at least somewhat of an asset and a stable or reasonably rising market is something we should all hope for.
Coins are highly cyclical and have many long and short terms trends caused by macro-economics, collector perversity, and demographics.
These all conspired along with the government and US mint to crash the coin market back in 1964 and the effects are lingering even today. It's hard to see the enormous damage that was done because baby boomer wealth and the top 1% have been creating enormous demand ever since. The damage was in the many collectors and numismatists that were lost to the hobby and even moreso the larger number beteen 1965 and 1999 who were never even exposed to collecting because there was only "junk" in circulation. People who were 7 to 12 years old during this period will always be underrepresented in the hobby. Among them were many individuals who would have been vitally important to the hobby and this current transition.
The sky isn't going to fall though because nature abhors a vacuum. If more coins are available to collect then more collectors will move in to collect them. Just remember most of these new collectors being sucked in will have been born between 1987 and 2018(+). Their goals, tastes, and means of acquiring coins will reflect their aggregate demnands which will be different in gross and subtle ways from the way we collected back in the '90's.
Other major collapses have been caused by similar demographic trends. The most dramatic was 1995 when most coins, and especially begginer coins, lost almost all their demand and real prices collapsed even though not shown in the price guides and catalogs. It was largely the return of baby boomers lost in 1965 and sucked back in by all the new coins and states quarters that pulled us out of that depression. Of course now the baby boomers will be getting back out of coins over the next 20 years.
Anything can cause the demand of a specific coin to soar or collapse but the market in aggregate is much more stable except over the very long term.
@Paradisefound said:
I also look at it this way .... with my Peace; if she makes me smile each time I take the box out for the next 20 yrs then the cost of my JOY is less than 30 cents a day ....... she is practically free to go
100% agree. My latest additions to my type set make me smile. I don't particularly care if they go down in value for now. They aren't for sale anyway...
How can we use a basket of notional coins like this to measure the market when we also understand that coins are frequently upgraded? I've said privately for years that one of the reasons coins don't seem as if they've performed well is that we tend to look at grade/price as static, when the actual coins being compared are wildly different. I know that I've handled individual pieces over the years that are worth a lot more than they were 10-20 years ago, largely because of grading. Comparing apples and oranges leads to faulty conclusions.
Also, I suspect that the elimination of coins will probably see at least a short term boost in coin collecting, although I doubt the government will eliminate coins in my lifetime.
What is now proved was once only imagined. - William Blake
If it's a hobby, enjoy it. If it's an investment, you've always been in trouble. If coins are your livelihood, if you're skilled you can make a killing in a bad market.
If the market eventually rebounds, those who bought strongly now will own coins they can no longer afford. In history, such times are called buying opportunities.
If you're building a collection, pray for weak prices. If you're selling a collection, pray for high prices. The single greatest advice from Warren Buffet is to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.
Finally, there a tremendous number of factors that play in to this. If the stock market tanks, gold usually goes up, coins often follow gold...... This bull market in stocks won't last forever. Yes, the average collector is an old guy. Old guys have both time and money. Fortunately for us, there will be a new crop of old guys in 2019. The US coin market is reasonably mature. The availability of information and instant access to coins has really changed the perceived scarcity of "rarities." What is cold today will be hot tomorrow. The market will slowly digest all of this.
Most lay people wouldn't know the difference between a collection of coins worth $10,000 and a collection worth $1,000,000. More than a few collectors here wouldn't know the difference without plastic and stickers. That's food for thought. If you're the type of person who just has to have the best..... well, chances are you'll never be satisfied. There's always someone with more.
Mark Feld and I have discussed how very unhappy many collectors seem at coin shows. It's like they're bound and determined to be miserable. If prices go up they complain about not being able to buy anything. If prices go down they complain about their collection suddenly being worthless. They even complain about the mustard. Perhaps some would be better off to find a way outside of this pattern of thinking and just have a good time.
Could the coin market have been a victim of it's own success? Everything from investor money coming in (pushes collectors out. Why start a series if you will never be able to finish it because the "keys" are crazy high); to counterfeits; to some bullion offers; to mints producing (add event only four people care about here) commemorative coins. All come from people wanting to cash in on the success of the hobby and all lead to some of the fatigue that make people leave it.
The doom and gloom about coin collecting/market/future has been going on for decades....It is a favorite theme here and at shows and shops. If people listened to it and acted accordingly, the hobby would have died twenty five years ago....If you like coins, collect and enjoy them, if you do not like coins, find another hobby....I am going to look at my coins... Cheers, RickO
The market is changing, not dying.... Look at the growth of the Instagram market, and other online venues. Mucho dinero changing hands outside of the old formats. Cheers, RickO
The greatest danger to the coin arena is the element of history not being taught to young people in school.
I learned a lot both in school and through my stamp collection commemoratives about history and thus developed an interest in whatever more I could learn about not only American history but also that of the world.
It all manifested in my interest in coins.
Find a kid today who can tell you who Virginia Dare was. Find one who has the slightest idea of where the gold rush happened. Find one who has even heard of the American Revolution or the Constitution other than snippets of it being selectively installed by special interests meddling in the entire "educational" ( ) system.
Coins, stamps, and historic mementos only mean something to people who have any idea of the origins of the meaning of the items that are collectible.
Education breeds the interest. The educated continue with interest in what they're taught.
@FSF .....You see the market going down in the venues you watch....because less people are dealing in those venues..... the online market has a very large following and prices seem solid there. Cheers, RickO
I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s the savy collector that will come out alive in the end. Being able to see or predict a series or grade rise and build before it tops out and and not buy when the market is hot and show a little patience and restraint to buy when the microscope isn’t on something. Or build promote interest in something yourself over time. Has this ever been the entire market all at once? I see things go hot and cold, but it’s a moving tarket.
It’s not the coin markets job or the economy strength or the mint, or the wind to protect your position, it’s yours.
If you don’t care about such things, then no complaining when your buried or have to put forth a little more effort than one phone call to sell. The effort is up front or at the end or both but the privilege of ownership has a cost in both money and time.
Look around. There is entire platforms set up to sell coins. A bazillion dealers and shows. This isn’t here because ther is no interest. Overseas markets are firing on all cylinders. If your just watching the US market to temp the waters that isn’t the whole picture. If you put a pin on a heyday market back in the day and pine for that, then I don’t know what to say really.
I think its some of the best times ever to collect. You can find and locate about anything in the world with the web. Fly cheap to anywhere in the states to a show and back home in a weekend. Things you never dreamed even existed and you can connect a world apart at a whim. Pretty darn cool.
Pros for coin market strength:
1) TPG - Coins, grades and prices that are assigned have a legitimacy never before experienced thanks to TPG.
2) Technology and internet - Instead of relying on the local dealer or an auction house that printed catalogs, collectors have
immediate access to the whole world both buying and selling.
3) Coins are pieces of art, history and money. Everything collectors love and we are collectors.
Cons for market strength:
1) TPGs - the flipside with the TPG is now we know with verifiable data that a lot of coins thought scarce or rare are really not
so much. We are buying a lot of widgets believing they are scarce. In the past coins did seem rare when they were only
found at the local shop or regional or national coin shows with coin shows being fairly infrequent events. Not anymore
with the internet.
2) declining collector base - most likely the largest contributor to declining demand and prices.
Lifeless looking widgets are going to get creamed, but the choice coins (you know them when you see them), even commoner dates will do better that are strong for the grade and are a joy to look at and own.
The only existential threat to the survival of coin collecting is the development of counterfeit coins of such high quality that a human can not detect the forgery.
This does not exist yet, but it would be naive to think it won’t eventually. Then the sky can fall.
The only existential threat to the survival of coin collecting is the development of counterfeit coins of such high quality that a human can not detect the forgery.
This does not exist yet, but it would be naive to think it won’t eventually. Then the sky can fall.
Thirty years ago I showed off the nicest, cleanest , most beautious 1935 Walker PCGS 66 I ever owned and someone said: "When they are that nice I question if they are real" ..............I felt sick at the thought
Virtually undetectable.
In some instances the only indicator is stamped on the ....battery cover.
I tried to organize the toy dealers to get toys into the Hobby Protection Act but no one was interested.
Now....no one is interested in collectible toys.
Comments
If everyone stops collecting coins - more for me! I'll be able to complete all the series I want to complete!
I knew it would happen.
I did buy more CLCT stock yesterday. (To the OP and Hemispherical) ^. My wife told me "no" to silver and gold (after being robbed).. or more coins (oops).
However, I'm waiting for six cents (3x 2 cent pcs.) from the BST.
Thanks to the member who listed them. (Prethen). Some more hole plugging to ensue. Buy on the cheap , brothers and sisters. Or pay up. It's a hobby. A habit. An obsession for "weenies", kings and princesses (princes) alike. And if the sky is falling, Heather Boyd's given me ample warning.
Based on the graph that cameonut2011 posted the dip is a normal yearly occurrence.
All hobby industries (especially indoor types) have 8 busy months and 4 slow months.
The number of people who have permanently left this hobby in the last decade is huge.
I have many historic coins which give me pleasure, but when I view the state of the hobby, well, I don't feel like getting in a big circle, holding hands and singing 'Kumbaya' either.
Is the "sky falling" in regards to coin collecting ? One can only hope so. A return to 1960's era prices would absolutely delight me...
yes, even on the coins I already own.
Back in 2008 the sky fell..........and I bought,bought, bought.I have been reaping the benefit ever since.This talk comes up every once in a while for decades both with coins as well as the paper side.I'm in for the long haul and with that mentality I've done well, especially when the sky is falling.
How about a few rounds of "COME BUY THIS?"
I wish I had a grain of salt for every silver buyer I had when things were going up who said they ...wished... it would come back down.
Not a ONE meant it.
I got dirty looks if I suggested averaging down to them.
Since 2008, market has never gotten close to that level. Please share how you are reaping ever since?
.
I think people will always collect, however, it seems like slabs have killed building sets and instead caused us to go for a group of trophy coins. My collection mirrors this, in the past I built sets of everything from bust halves to Morgans. Now I only have a few PCGS boxes full of my favorite coins.
I do fear that counterfeits have, or soon will, get to the point where any cleaned or low grade coin will not be identifiable as a fake vs real. We keep seeing really nice fakes that get caught do to being muled with the wrong reverse or showing repair work to a die. How would do we identify these if they don't make these mistakes. Are we already missing many of these? If experts struggle to id fake vs real how will an average collector who is interested in coins fare?
The answer for me has been to switch my collection from sets of circ coins to a more type set approach of nice higher end coins, some of which have a traceable pedigree. If other people develop this mindset the demand for lower end stuff is going to continue to drop, while the collectors that are left are going to fight more for the best stuff.
It's definitely a bifurcated market. With all the available avenues to research and purchase coins, the common stuff just doesn't have much chance to move up in value. Simple supply and demand. What was once scarce can now be bought online by the hundreds.
The high end stuff that is actually rare will continue to advance. The stuff that I wonder about are the modern condition rarities. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out.
So, who said anything about stacking silver? I collect coins. I have been collecting coins continuously since 1963. I've watched prices go up; I've watched them go down. The prices I paid are actually irrelevant to me since they are not for resale (by me). The prices I will pay in the future are irrelevant since they won't be for resale (by me).
Would I prefer to pay less for coins in the future? Of course I would since my budget would stretch farther.
I deal in both paper and coin (and am licensed for scrap as well).There was a sale..the Flynn sale in 2008 that was the pinnacle of pricing for paper....scary high prices in my opinion.Soon after, the effects of the collapsing economy caught up to the market and many people had this same "sky is falling" thoughts and started jumping ship.....prices fell quickly, in some weaker material, fell hard.I was approached by several collectors, and dealers as well, and bought up much material (several entire collections in fact) at deep discounted prices-far and well below sheet.I flipped most of the PM and I held on to the bulk of the rest for several years and sure enough, as has been the pattern in my experience, bounce-back.I have since 2012 been placing many items in HA and retailing and have done far better than my usual 10-15% that my business model requires.The bulk of this has been on the paper side but much like the paper, coins have a similar sell off when the market gets nervous.Granted,not all items I bought have done well, but enough have that I can declare that I have done significantly better than usual based on those purchases.
So there are about 200 serious Lincoln sets in the registry.
Assuming there are 200 more people we don't know about, that makes 400, the number who actually give a crap about a particular date-mint-variety penny.
10 million minus the top 400 is a lot of dreck.
Just saying
BTW...Same goes for my set which is now being called "old bullion" except the number is about 100
My Saint Set
If the sky is falling, then why can I not find coins to buy. I look every day for coins to buy that have dropped in price. I can not find any price dropped coins today. If the market was really that bad, I would be buying coins all day long and be out of cash. I have the cash to buy coins right now, show me a good deal on what I buy and I will buy it right now.
No you can't. Presumably the collectors who have found and use this forum are not the bulk of collectors in number.
Yes, there will always be coin collectors.
No we will not see 1960 prices again.
Dealers will simply be doing as they do with bullion and paying less as prices fall and more if demand rises.
It's the demand from the man in the street that has more effect than many realize.
Whether they admit it or not, I'd guess the majority of "collectors" consider their holdings at least somewhat of an asset and a stable or reasonably rising market is something we should all hope for.
But....realistically, dump the dreck NOW!
Coins are highly cyclical and have many long and short terms trends caused by macro-economics, collector perversity, and demographics.
These all conspired along with the government and US mint to crash the coin market back in 1964 and the effects are lingering even today. It's hard to see the enormous damage that was done because baby boomer wealth and the top 1% have been creating enormous demand ever since. The damage was in the many collectors and numismatists that were lost to the hobby and even moreso the larger number beteen 1965 and 1999 who were never even exposed to collecting because there was only "junk" in circulation. People who were 7 to 12 years old during this period will always be underrepresented in the hobby. Among them were many individuals who would have been vitally important to the hobby and this current transition.
The sky isn't going to fall though because nature abhors a vacuum. If more coins are available to collect then more collectors will move in to collect them. Just remember most of these new collectors being sucked in will have been born between 1987 and 2018(+). Their goals, tastes, and means of acquiring coins will reflect their aggregate demnands which will be different in gross and subtle ways from the way we collected back in the '90's.
Other major collapses have been caused by similar demographic trends. The most dramatic was 1995 when most coins, and especially begginer coins, lost almost all their demand and real prices collapsed even though not shown in the price guides and catalogs. It was largely the return of baby boomers lost in 1965 and sucked back in by all the new coins and states quarters that pulled us out of that depression. Of course now the baby boomers will be getting back out of coins over the next 20 years.
Anything can cause the demand of a specific coin to soar or collapse but the market in aggregate is much more stable except over the very long term.
100% agree. My latest additions to my type set make me smile. I don't particularly care if they go down in value for now. They aren't for sale anyway...
My YouTube Channel
Not on my lap though
@Paradisefound I have the 1921 Peace dollar on my to-do list.
Probably between MS63-65 range...
My YouTube Channel
They don't get much better than the one PF has.
Pete
@asheland That '32 is awesome, depression era gold is so cool. To think how much that one coin could have bought back in 1932, amazing.
My Collection of Old Holders
Never a slave to one plastic brand will I ever be.
Indeed! Despite being the most common, I love that date for those exact reasons.
My YouTube Channel
I have this MS62 in OGH
That's a nice one!
My YouTube Channel
How can we use a basket of notional coins like this to measure the market when we also understand that coins are frequently upgraded? I've said privately for years that one of the reasons coins don't seem as if they've performed well is that we tend to look at grade/price as static, when the actual coins being compared are wildly different. I know that I've handled individual pieces over the years that are worth a lot more than they were 10-20 years ago, largely because of grading. Comparing apples and oranges leads to faulty conclusions.
Also, I suspect that the elimination of coins will probably see at least a short term boost in coin collecting, although I doubt the government will eliminate coins in my lifetime.
What is now proved was once only imagined. - William Blake
@Regulated
Agree 100% it's like the Government determining "Cost of Living" based on loaf of white bread, value grade beef, white eggs, corn oil etc
If the government did away with coins, everyone would have to buy washing machines.
They are still selling stamps...........so much for that idea!
I don't think anyone's talking about the post office.
Nobody knows what will happen. I promise.
If it's a hobby, enjoy it. If it's an investment, you've always been in trouble. If coins are your livelihood, if you're skilled you can make a killing in a bad market.
If the market eventually rebounds, those who bought strongly now will own coins they can no longer afford. In history, such times are called buying opportunities.
If you're building a collection, pray for weak prices. If you're selling a collection, pray for high prices. The single greatest advice from Warren Buffet is to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.
Finally, there a tremendous number of factors that play in to this. If the stock market tanks, gold usually goes up, coins often follow gold...... This bull market in stocks won't last forever. Yes, the average collector is an old guy. Old guys have both time and money. Fortunately for us, there will be a new crop of old guys in 2019. The US coin market is reasonably mature. The availability of information and instant access to coins has really changed the perceived scarcity of "rarities." What is cold today will be hot tomorrow. The market will slowly digest all of this.
Most lay people wouldn't know the difference between a collection of coins worth $10,000 and a collection worth $1,000,000. More than a few collectors here wouldn't know the difference without plastic and stickers. That's food for thought. If you're the type of person who just has to have the best..... well, chances are you'll never be satisfied. There's always someone with more.
Mark Feld and I have discussed how very unhappy many collectors seem at coin shows. It's like they're bound and determined to be miserable. If prices go up they complain about not being able to buy anything. If prices go down they complain about their collection suddenly being worthless. They even complain about the mustard. Perhaps some would be better off to find a way outside of this pattern of thinking and just have a good time.
Is the sky really falling????
If you have to ask then no.
Could the coin market have been a victim of it's own success? Everything from investor money coming in (pushes collectors out. Why start a series if you will never be able to finish it because the "keys" are crazy high); to counterfeits; to some bullion offers; to mints producing (add event only four people care about here) commemorative coins. All come from people wanting to cash in on the success of the hobby and all lead to some of the fatigue that make people leave it.
The doom and gloom about coin collecting/market/future has been going on for decades....It is a favorite theme here and at shows and shops. If people listened to it and acted accordingly, the hobby would have died twenty five years ago....If you like coins, collect and enjoy them, if you do not like coins, find another hobby....I am going to look at my coins... Cheers, RickO
When the poor man says "I'll take those Indian Head Cents for a buck each ".... that's inflation
and he left, walking in a cloud.
The market is changing, not dying.... Look at the growth of the Instagram market, and other online venues. Mucho dinero changing hands outside of the old formats. Cheers, RickO
Not all coin collectors are suffering! Coin Dealers, auction houses, flippers, investors..........are probably hurting.
There's not a whole lot of money to be made in this game right now.
That's why I never played it. I collect because I WANT or NEED the coin. I got my hands full with just doing that.
Pete
I think you're a Bill Jones alt!
"Got a flaming heart, can't get my fill"
The greatest danger to the coin arena is the element of history not being taught to young people in school.
I learned a lot both in school and through my stamp collection commemoratives about history and thus developed an interest in whatever more I could learn about not only American history but also that of the world.
It all manifested in my interest in coins.
Find a kid today who can tell you who Virginia Dare was. Find one who has the slightest idea of where the gold rush happened. Find one who has even heard of the American Revolution or the Constitution other than snippets of it being selectively installed by special interests meddling in the entire "educational" (
) system.
Coins, stamps, and historic mementos only mean something to people who have any idea of the origins of the meaning of the items that are collectible.
Education breeds the interest. The educated continue with interest in what they're taught.
@FSF .....You see the market going down in the venues you watch....because less people are dealing in those venues..... the online market has a very large following and prices seem solid there. Cheers, RickO
so far, so good!
I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s the savy collector that will come out alive in the end. Being able to see or predict a series or grade rise and build before it tops out and and not buy when the market is hot and show a little patience and restraint to buy when the microscope isn’t on something. Or build promote interest in something yourself over time. Has this ever been the entire market all at once? I see things go hot and cold, but it’s a moving tarket.
It’s not the coin markets job or the economy strength or the mint, or the wind to protect your position, it’s yours.
If you don’t care about such things, then no complaining when your buried or have to put forth a little more effort than one phone call to sell. The effort is up front or at the end or both but the privilege of ownership has a cost in both money and time.
Look around. There is entire platforms set up to sell coins. A bazillion dealers and shows. This isn’t here because ther is no interest. Overseas markets are firing on all cylinders. If your just watching the US market to temp the waters that isn’t the whole picture. If you put a pin on a heyday market back in the day and pine for that, then I don’t know what to say really.
I think its some of the best times ever to collect. You can find and locate about anything in the world with the web. Fly cheap to anywhere in the states to a show and back home in a weekend. Things you never dreamed even existed and you can connect a world apart at a whim. Pretty darn cool.
Sure they know, its on the discovery channel.
But I do agree that the loss of history will have a big impact going forward.
My Collection of Old Holders
Never a slave to one plastic brand will I ever be.
Pros for coin market strength:
1) TPG - Coins, grades and prices that are assigned have a legitimacy never before experienced thanks to TPG.
2) Technology and internet - Instead of relying on the local dealer or an auction house that printed catalogs, collectors have
immediate access to the whole world both buying and selling.
3) Coins are pieces of art, history and money. Everything collectors love and we are collectors.
Cons for market strength:
1) TPGs - the flipside with the TPG is now we know with verifiable data that a lot of coins thought scarce or rare are really not
so much. We are buying a lot of widgets believing they are scarce. In the past coins did seem rare when they were only
found at the local shop or regional or national coin shows with coin shows being fairly infrequent events. Not anymore
with the internet.
2) declining collector base - most likely the largest contributor to declining demand and prices.
Lifeless looking widgets are going to get creamed, but the choice coins (you know them when you see them), even commoner dates will do better that are strong for the grade and are a joy to look at and own.
The only existential threat to the survival of coin collecting is the development of counterfeit coins of such high quality that a human can not detect the forgery.
This does not exist yet, but it would be naive to think it won’t eventually. Then the sky can fall.
Only on Wall Street. > @Nap said:
Thirty years ago I showed off the nicest, cleanest , most beautious 1935 Walker PCGS 66 I ever owned and someone said: "When they are that nice I question if they are real" ..............I felt sick at the thought
MIke's Train House did it to collectible toys.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTH_Electric_Trains
Virtually undetectable.
In some instances the only indicator is stamped on the ....battery cover.
I tried to organize the toy dealers to get toys into the Hobby Protection Act but no one was interested.
Now....no one is interested in collectible toys.
I like it when the market drops.
I just got this coin at 18% off