Has there ever been a study on the number of U.S. coin collectors?
Goldbully
Posts: 17,232 ✭✭✭✭✭
Is there any way to actually know the number?
You have the rare coin, the bullion, the gold, the silver, and the myriad of ‘other’ collectors out there. Can you even quantify the number of coin collectors? There are 330 million citizens in the USA, anyone want take a shot at this?
0
Comments
Government could make an estimate based on who buys silver/gold eagles along with mint sets/proof sets, I suppose.
I suppose the biggest factor is what constitutes the term collector? For example, anyone with a piggy bank that’s been sitting around a while could be classified as a collector just like the people who have a pop top registry set. Someone who inherited a collection but not sold it might be a collector, just not an active buyer.
TurtleCat Gold Dollars
I would gather that the number of collectors is around 300k but about 20-30k US coin collectors purchase directly from the US mint regularly. I get my count off the sales figures I see posted by the mint and reactions to HH limit purchase. Anyone else have a better guess?
Best place to buy !
Bronze Associate member
If you merge the entire range of casual collectors through dedicated numismatists, the total would certainly be in the millions....There really is no way to establish an evidence based figure. Estimates could be obtained through surveys, if properly conducted. Cheers, RickO
For security reasons many coin hobbyists collect their coins in secret. They fear robbery and, if they collect gold coins, they may even fear confiscation by the government as happened in 1933. How would it even be possible to count these secret coin collectors? Any estimates of the number of coin collectors would be a guess. Also, how would you define coin collector? Does someone who buys a proof set from the US Mint once a year count as a coin collector? What about someone who checks their pocket change and when they find a coin that's old or unusual, they save it in a cigar box? Are they considered to be coin collectors?
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
I think it’s been stated before, but I believe the hardest part of this question is to qualify who is a ‘collector.’ When state quarters were just hitting circulation, my wife would pick one of each state she received in change and put in her jewelry box (they are still there.) When we travel out of country, she keeps a sample of the currency and coins from that country in a ‘memory box.’ However, when I accuse her of also being a coin collector, she emphatically denies it. No way to get a good guess on a number if the definition of ‘collector’ is so loose.
I posted last time this thread came up where the mint director said the mint has under a million (maybe well under) unique customers every year. Not all people that buy from the mint are collectors and not all collectors buy from the mint.
ANA has ~25k members, and I'd say less than half of the coin collectors I run across are members.
I agree with the overall collector numbers. I think it's in the hundreds of thousands. I know a lot of people that have some bullion or a Whitman folder that I wouldn't call a collector. More than 300k people are in possession of collectible coins.
IG: DeCourcyCoinsEbay: neilrobertson
"Numismatic categorizations, if left unconstrained, will increase spontaneously over time." -me
According to the United States Mint there were 2+ Million customers in early 1990’s
According to the United States Mint there were 1.2 Million customers in 2008
According to the United States Mint Director Ryder there are “under” 500,000 customers. He has said the same "under" 500,000 number for years.
My guess by looking at the Mint's sales numbers...There are "Well Under" 500k...
In my family and extended family there are over 250 people. To date, I think I'm the only collector. I'd like to have a study done on me to see what the malfunction is.
That's why I also collect and maintain a good supply of 230 and 240 gr chunks of the "not so precious" metal Pb.
Pb, applied properly, provides an excellent defense against the theft or confiscation of my "precious" metals such as Au and Ag.
I bet Heritage has a pretty good idea.
In terms of dollar value, the base of the pyramid is pretty wide and supports relatively few at the upper layers. This base would include my mom who has a roll of buffalo nickels, a few steel cents, a Pilgrim commem, and five or six Morgans she got from her father. The pointy top is pretty small in numbers If collectors but they holds a huge portion of the total value. Those in the upper layers are is disproportionately represented here. I once brought a slabbed coin to share at my local coin club and was looked at like a snobby elitist. IIRC, it was a $250 IHC.
It’s a hard number to quantify. A lot of Americans have a casual collection going with of a few buffalo nickels or Morgan dollar. Some of my coworkers that I didn’t think even collected mentioned they went to a coin store and bought a roll of silver eagles.
I think there are different levels of collectors.
Level 1: Filling an album from pocket change or roll searching.
Level 2: Level 1 plus, Purchased at least one coin from dealer/ebay/other.
Level 3: Spends 2-10% of income on coins.
Level4: Annually Spends more than 10% of income on coins.
In my family (all relatives included) there is but one collector.
Philip Diehl, while Director of the Mint, stated there were 10 million coin collectors in the US.
It all depends on how a 'collector' is defined.
See http://www.doubledimes.com for a free online reference for US twenty-cent pieces
It’s funny how some families have like one person who collects and others have many. For example, my brothers collect, my mother collects, my grandfather collected, and my uncle collected. On my wife’s side her grandfather collected and her grandmother did a little.
And in this case when I say collected I mean actively purchasing items from the mint and/or from coin dealers on a regular basis over time.
TurtleCat Gold Dollars
Here’s a bummer of a statistic to toss on the pile: Less than 3 percent of Americans meet the basic qualifications for a “healthy lifestyle,” according to a new study published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
The study authors defined a “healthy lifestyle” as one that met four qualifications:
Moderate or vigorous exercise for at least 150 minutes a week,
A diet score in the top 40 percent on the Healthy Eating Index,
A body fat percentage under 20 percent (for men) or 30 percent (for women),
Not smoking.
Some of the qualifications were more easily met than others: 71.5 percent of adults were non-smokers (and indeed the smoking rate has been declining in the U.S. for decades), 46.5 percent got enough exercise, 37.9 percent had a healthy diet, but only 9.6 percent had what the study calls “a normal body-fat percentage.”( Though considering how few people meet this qualification, perhaps the word “normal” is misused here.)
Just 2.7 percent of people met all four.
So, 2.7% of your family and friends are “collectors”
Finally, I'm in the majority of something.
I missed this thread on the topic at hand from December 9, 2019.
Some interesting and funny comments to say the least.
https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/1029430/how-many-coin-collectors-are-there-in-the-us/p1