Insight into Collector Demographics
KellenCoin
Posts: 1,230 ✭✭✭✭
I run a numismatic Instagram account called @KellenCoin. It is a relatively midsized account for one that focuses on coins, with approximately 1350 followers. Instagram allows me to see some information about my followers, which is evident in the picture below. It is interesting to me that nearly a third of my followers are ages 25-34, and another 39% are either between the ages of 18-24 or 35-44.
I am both surprised and unsurprised; the former because of the often heard mentality that numismatics is dying because everyone is getting old, and the latter because in my observations through the years this statistic is familiar. In nearly everything I have seen, middle-aged numismatists are very much present, but are present in online settings. See also @Aspie_Rocco's recent age poll and mine from a year earlier. Additionally, I find it interesting but unsurprising that my followers are mainly male. Anyways, I just thought it was something cool to share, and I would love to hear your thoughts.
Fan of the Oxford Comma
CCAC Representative of the General Public
2021 Young Numismatist of the Year
Comments
Thank you for validating what I already suspected.
The hobby isn't dying but rather technology is changing and, therefore, so are the platforms and venues.
Sometimes, it’s better to be LUCKY than good. 🍀 🍺👍
My Full Walker Registry Set (1916-1947):
https://www.ngccoin.com/registry/competitive-sets/16292/
Cool stats. I'm in the 45-54 age bracket. What's an Instagram?
What is Instagram?
Terrific info and not being disparaging, yet find it a bit difficult to believe almost one in four collectors are women. This simply hasn't been my experience throughout the years.
peacockcoins
Three comments:
1. I love Instagram and am looking forward to buying my first coin on that platform.
2. Lots of Instagram followers are bogus and bots and are likely corrupting your data.
3. Given the overall demographics of Instagram, I would expect your followers to skew younger than the typical coin collector. Heck, this old forum skews younger.
Instagram is a photo-sharing app that has around 1 billion users worldwide. There is a big coin community on there.
Fan of the Oxford Comma
CCAC Representative of the General Public
2021 Young Numismatist of the Year
Instagram is a great platform for coins. I have bought many coins on there and have had zero problems. It is true that many Instagram followers are bots, but Instagram in the past few weeks has been clearing many bots off the platform and so I am not worried that a majority of the users following me are.
Fan of the Oxford Comma
CCAC Representative of the General Public
2021 Young Numismatist of the Year
Young people are passionate. Old people have the funds. Somewhere in the middle collecting happens.
I follow your account out there, along with many others. My primary postings are also coins and the occasional vacation pictures. Those usually have my trusty Bust halves posing in there somewhere. I get pinged off and on for advice and opinions from people out there, and many of them appear to be a younger demographic. Some collect the basic Whitman albums, quite a few do the 7070 and others either stack silver or chase cool looking world coins.
I'm up to over 2300 followers and I do make it a habit to clean up what i think are bogus followers or spammers. I pretty much block anyone who has thousands of followers and has only a handful of posts. It's a cool world out there!
@KellenCoin, how did you find those stats?
10-4,
My Instagram picturesErik
My registry sets
In order to get the stats, you have to convert your account to a "Business Account". If you Google how to do it, you will a guide to do that.
Fan of the Oxford Comma
CCAC Representative of the General Public
2021 Young Numismatist of the Year
Very interesting statistics. I’m in the 18-24 bracket (my account is nsp_coins), and the age distribution seems to be fairly in line with what I’ve experienced on Instagram. As others have said, there are modern coins, world coins, and toned coins that pop up frequently. I do my best to try to spice things up by posting the occasional capped bust quarter!
I have not been to Instagram.
Where to begin...
Lots of bots and false accounts on Instagram.
Actual accounts are skewed young because most of the people on Instagram are young.
Many (Perhaps most) collectors never use Instagram.
1350 followers might sound like a lot but it is not. Consider that at the height of its circulation in the mid-1960s COIN WORLD had a circulation of about 165,000. At a large local coin show I attended last Sunday, which was very well attended, I saw virtually no collectors who appeared to be less than 40.
Fan of the Oxford Comma
CCAC Representative of the General Public
2021 Young Numismatist of the Year
I honestly do not find Instagram and Coin World comparable. They are different platforms with different purposes. As for yohr physical coin show, that also doesn't contradict my data. I believe that a lot of young collectors are moving online, such as onto Instagram, so many may not be attending coin shows in real life.
Fan of the Oxford Comma
CCAC Representative of the General Public
2021 Young Numismatist of the Year
Call me InstaGRAMPS !!
Instagram has lots of collectors and sellers...I get notices from a couple of sites and have browsed others. The myth of a dying hobby has been around for over 25 years... it is a myth...Keep on collecting... Cheers, RickO
My friends collect coins as investment; directly thru their portfolio diversification options and yes many insta daily.
so @KellenCoin sample rings some fact amongst the younger group.
None of them belong to coin collector clubs
That’s cool. Imagine if PCGS did Registry Sets and CoinFacts for investment funds?
I wonder if all those coins will now automatically be excluded from CoinFacts.
I do not do much with various media accounts. It's not for lack of interest; it's that time is valuable in research, and anything that is unproductive diminishes my return on that investment. (Almost all numismatic research is hands-on-paper work.)
For regular coin collectors and situation might be very different. As Walkerfan noted, there is a clear divide by generation of technical communication adoption. That won't change until the old folks die.
A critical point here is that Instagram is far more popular with young people than older people. Most people over 50 that I know personally hardly even know what Instagram is and certainly don't use it - So pretty much by design your followers on Instagram will skew younger. That does not mean the overall coin collecting community is young (Most are just older and don't use Instagram).
I am not saying the overall community is young, but I am simply pointing out that there are young collectors.
Fan of the Oxford Comma
CCAC Representative of the General Public
2021 Young Numismatist of the Year
Interesting information, thank you for sharing !!!
How many people responded? I am shocked by the 23% female statistic. I would have guessed 5-10% at best.
Those stats are probably created by instagram user data on each account, not data from a poll. Since he has a “business account” those stats are available to him as a value add for marketing and understanding the users who follow him.
I’m not surprised by the 23% women either. Women tend to gravitate to Instagram more than men from my experience (and from my wife using it). Instagram is owned by Facebook in case people didn’t know.
Savvy young people are becoming much more selective about what they post on Facebook and Instagram. They know they are being watched by marketers and potential employers, among others.
over half your followers under 35 sounds about right. As others have said, your are sampling Intsagram.
over 55 also looks DEAD ON
I love seeing your quarters!
Everywhere you look you can see young collectors. There are even lots of collectors under 13 years of age but few of them show up on instagram. They show up in many ways but the preferential removal from circulation of better dates and grades of clads is a significant one as is the high sales of folders for all circulating coinage.
People rarely see changes until they accumulate sufficiently to make the "news" but the reality is, just as John Prine says, "time don't fly, it bounds and leaps". Change is a process composed of cyclical components.
I suspect your demographics profile may be closer to Instagram users than coin collectors
I think your way ahead of the curve on marketing coins and numismatics .
Keep it up and let us know if your following grows.
I give away money. I collect money.
I don’t love money . I do love the Lord God.
This isn't actually a survey. When people signed up, they marked their age and gender, and so Instagram can see who is following me and what they marked, and then they compile it here. I was also surprised by the high female percentage.
Fan of the Oxford Comma
CCAC Representative of the General Public
2021 Young Numismatist of the Year
Very interesting and informative post, @KellenCoin.
Thinking about switching my Insta account, @RAB.coins, to business as well so I can see those stats. Curious, what business category did you choose? Thanks!
Roseanne Barrett I - CAC Morgan Dollar Basic Set, Circulation Strikes (Retired)
Roseanne Barrett - CAC Basic Seated Liberty Type Set, Circulation Strikes
Maybe, but this also shows that there ARE in fact active younger collectors.
Fan of the Oxford Comma
CCAC Representative of the General Public
2021 Young Numismatist of the Year
I personally chose education because that is what I hope my posts will accomplish. However, if you are on the more business side of things, you could choose Business or some related category.
Fan of the Oxford Comma
CCAC Representative of the General Public
2021 Young Numismatist of the Year
I have been collecting for years and just went to my first coin show last weekend. It was interesting but reaffirmed that I enjoy this hobby through other means and do not see the value in attending a show. Won't say it will be my last but I have no desire to go out of my way to seek out another. Like most others of my generation or younger, we just experience things differently. I would make show attendance no measure whatsoever as to the involvement of younger people in this hobby.
I’m a old collector. This is music to my ears. I love the fact that many collectors are young up and coming numismatists. At the FUN show I just attended I met many young up and coming collectors that are VERY savvy to this hobby. This is the oldest hobby in the world and will NEVER die off. Now, if the mint would allow some beautiful designs to our coinage it sure would help. At this point in time our coins are drab and stale . How much longer will we have this ugly coinage? Don’tcha think it’s way past due for a change in our change? I’m totally burnt out with coins of today.
Great thread and great information that makes me feel pretty good.
Thanks for sharing what I already knew but now confirmed.
Happy hunting, Joe
Thanks! There are a lot of bust halves, dimes, and half dimes posted on Instagram... but I think I’m the only account that semi-regularly posts bust quarters. Ah well, I guess someone has to do it!
I don't know if anyone else feels this way but I wind up un-following folks simply because of the volume of posts they create.
More than one a day every day is too much for me.
"Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working" Pablo Picasso
The OP and this post speak the gospel.
I despise Facebook, don't care for Twitter, and don't have an Instagram account.
That needs to change.
BST: KindaNewish (3/21/21), WQuarterFreddie (3/30/21), Meltdown (4/6/21), DBSTrader2 (5/5/21) AKA- unclemonkey on Blow Out
Facebook owns instagram
"Got a flaming heart, can't get my fill"
I am a casual Prine fan. I had never heard that song. I just did. Thanks!
Me too. I am active on facebook but not Instagram. I think I will start a new account.
Sometimes, it’s better to be LUCKY than good. 🍀 🍺👍
My Full Walker Registry Set (1916-1947):
https://www.ngccoin.com/registry/competitive-sets/16292/
I would suggest brushing aside any internet generated data and say that probably 70% of collectors are aged 55+ and that 95% of collectors are white males.
I agree entirely and am sad to do so, but the truth is the truth and "The Emperor's New Clothes" seems to factor in. If you look at entirely random pictures from show or club meetings, the demographics are a bit sad. Add on to that the absolute RELATIVE lack of interest in younger folks is astonishing. As I have written numerous times before, not only are their precious few YNs at shows and club meetings, but in schools very low interest. For the last 10 years I have kept up a campaign of doing presentations, Show & Tells, giveaways, etc. at my son's school and local schools but also at my office where I see a pretty decent sampling of kids from 5 up. I try to encourage interests and have done giveaways at the office. There is astounding lack of interest despite bringing passion and trying to bring fun into it.
Quite frankly, video games consume these kids as well as other instant gratification activities.
Well, many on these boards may have vested interests in appearances and refer to faulted studies such as the OP which is apparently so very biased. Anyway, no convincing them of the truth of the matter - we constantly see trotted out extreme examples that are NOT the norm as de facto proof of widespread interest in kids. Women, well, not so much either even though it would be great IMHO.
Anyway, best to not entertain fantasy and adapt to what is and see what we can do to keep a bit of interest....
Well, just Love coins, period.