The future of the hobby
Randoms
Posts: 164 ✭✭✭
Where is the future of coin collection going? Allow me to paint a picture. Coin collecting skews toward older collectors. Coins are an advanced hobby. You typically need more income to play in the pool. This requires you to be more established. It will probably always be this way.
However; more coin content is being put in front of people. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. Younger people are being exposed to coins and starting to create content.
The past couple years people have taken to hobbies. Trading cards, comic books, video games, etc. This exposes them to grading, population reports, the things that most our hobbies have now.
What if some of these people decide to move into the coin hobby? New collectors, flippers. If they look at the pop reports. Realize that old holders, OGH, ANACS soapboxes, doilies, can be hard to find. They start posting content that brings more people to the hobby.
Coin prices have risen. What if this is just the beginning? What if this is the start of a new breed of people in the coin hobby?
Comments
I'm on the younger spectrum of collectors. As a newer participant, there are certain factors I see that have held the coin market back:
1. Many people have been burned by buying coins; whether its been people constantly losing money on HSN coins advertised as collectibles, or people thinking Mint collectible sets will be worth more one day, many people have been turned off because of lost money.
2. Because of fear of theft, many collectors don't like to advertise/share that they collect coins or advertise on social media. Idk if I'm the only one, but I've noticed that from extended family members that I didn't even know collect/ didnt share until I mentioned it.
3. Silver/Gold is the direct enemy of all governments/central banks, if silver/gold prices are going up it makes people think there is something wrong with the fabric of society/governance, and so the populace will suppress purchases, will save more, and will suppress investments. This is why both assets are suppressed. This in turn has reduced interest in silver/gold numismatics. If silver went up 3x or 4x over the course of a year or two you'd see more excitement in collecting coins. This is why the there is more excitement about crypto/ crypto collectibles (NFTs) for younger hobbists
Always emotion the future as yoda says.
My Collection of Old Holders
Never a slave to one plastic brand will I ever be.
People are going to bet burned buying trimmed and touched up cards and comic books. Fakes are rampant in the video game world. Sure this will turn some people off. All hobbies have some kind of pitfall
The exciting jump in prices isn’t there yet. What if we get that influencer who is really into coins. “Hey my millions of followers. I’m really into coins.” That’s all it could take to start a fire
Millennials came to age during some of the most tumultuous economic times since the Great Depression. Economically it is one of the poorest generations and for the first time in recent history, a generation is poorer off than its parent generation. Subsequent generations might not do much better. Unless things improve for millennials, all expensive hobbies are in trouble.
You don't need a lot of money to collect coins. You only need a lot of money to collect expensive coins. There are a lot of interesting coins that are under $5. 10x as many under $20.
And if you can squeeze $50+ the world of silver slabbed coins opens to you 😉
🎶 shout shout, let it all out 🎶
Coin collecting on a somewhat serious level requires knowledge that is boring and pedantic to the uninitiated.
That reason alone (among a myriad of others factors) will keep collecting out of the hands of the Insta crowd.
peacockcoins
This is probably the highest hurdle to jump. There may be some space for insta flippers at the lower levels. Maybe enough to cause a disruption until they move to the next hot thing.
Agree.
Disagree. As @jmlanzaf says:
"You don't need a lot of money to collect coins. You only need a lot of money to collect expensive coins. There are a lot of interesting coins that are under $5. 10x as many under $20."
Kids filling holes in a Lincoln folder have a reasonable shot at finding 62 years worth of pennies today. At face value. Back in the "good old days" of circulating silver, 62 years earlier would have included Indian cents. And a penny in 1964 was equal in value to a dime today, so the pennies today's collectors find for their collections are 1/10th as expensive to collect.
Just sayin'.
Younger generations more generally are less materialistic and don't naturally accumulated stuff. Nonetheless, there are OCD collector types in every generation. The real question is whether they will have any affinity for coins over other options. They barely encounter cash transactions and didn't grow up with two brick and mortar coin stores in every suburb. They surf the internet rather than go through pennies looking for 55 DDOs and 09-SVDBs. Doubt the volume of younger collectors, even when thry come of age, will support the broader hobby. High end rarities will always have a market.
I am 29 years old and an Assistant Vice President of a bank. I can easily have one of my employees do a withdrawal for me and snag some rolls to go through. 😃
I was not raised playing video games and have always had an affinity for sports cards and coins.
Collector of Circulated Winged Liberty Head Dimes (Mercury Dimes)
Virtually none of my students (college) carry ANY cash. They use their phone and, in a pinch, a card.
I think the OP is right, the collector market in general and coins included is picking up some momentum in recent months. Look at the prices of peace dollars and cc GSA Morgan’s - both used to be about half what they are now just two years ago. I used to get cc GSA Morgan’s in the big boxes, even graded, for 150 for 82 - 84s and 200 for rarer dates. Now they are 5 and 600 - for an 1883!!! Crazy
Kinda scary you actually know this!
"When they can't find anything wrong with you, they create it!"
I just shipped a 2021 Morgan and Peace to a student at a university this week. Carrying cash is not a prerequisite to collecting coins.
Nothing is as expensive as free money.
I am going to my local branch and plan on ordering several boxes of half dollars to start searching through. Good luck in your search!
LOL. Why? I'm not allowed to talk to the students?
Talking - Yes. Sticking your nose into their personal business is a No No
"When they can't find anything wrong with you, they create it!"
Puh-lease. I know more about their personal business than I want to.
And I"m not sure, "do you carry cash?" is sticking my nose into their personal business.
"When they can't find anything wrong with you, they create it!"
You really need a new hobby.
You chose to poke at my comment and then you get frustrated when I respond? Very odd.
[ Very odd.]
Indeed you are!
"When they can't find anything wrong with you, they create it!"
This is a totally weird comment and childish ('I know you are but what am I?') follow-up. What if he taught history, finance, or economics? What if he was doing research on student financial practices? Such discussions arise naturally if the settling is a field trip or at a field station. Anyway, these are not deeply personal or inappropriate questions or topics for discussion, IMO.
The Court of Common Sense in the Classroom finds jmlanzaf innocent of any improprieties and orders you to pay his court costs for wasting our time with bogus outrage.
I have 2 very recent college grads and a third still in college. If you spend any time in and around a college campus, it's not hard to notice that cash is a rarity amount college students. As @jmlanzaf said, you're always seeing them using a phone or card at the checkout. I think the only time my kids used cash was when I slipped them a $20.
I don't think the criticism is warranted on this one
A friend's son attends school at a Northeast Univ and they started a coin club just this year. They ask me to speak via zoom and I was happy to see 10 students show up for the meeting. There are far more young people interested in our hobby than people let on. They simply dont "hang out" the same place older collectors do. The future is solid.
Boys. Don’t make me come in there
🎶 shout shout, let it all out 🎶
I tell you where it is really weird is the vending machines. They are right down the hall from my office and I pass them all the time. I can't remember the last time I saw anyone actually put money into one.
There are some, of course. And you're right, they do haunt different venues. BUT, there are numerous studies that indicate that millennials and Gen Z are far less interested in possessions than earlier generations. There are also far fewer of them. So many fewer that one estimate is that 20% of colleges will fold in the next decade. It's not that there are zero collectors. It is that there are likely to be fewer new collectors replacing the old collectors. This should not be ignored.
The coin collecting hobby is alive and well.. both at shows and on the internet. Too many collectors isolate themselves within their own narrow sphere and consider that the 'world'. I have watched this 'demise of coin hobby' theme played over and over again here for over twenty years.... and yet, here we are.... Sure, there are old people in the hobby (I am one), however, there are many young people as well. Coin collecting will be a hobby long after most of us are gone - and our coins will belong to someone else who collects coins. Stop worrying about it.... Cheers, RickO
Do your vending machines accept Credit Cards? While I find it very believable I have never seen a vending machine that takes credit cards. Then again I can't even remember the last time I bought something out of a vending machine!
Most College campus vending machines take credit cards and/or School IDs with money loaded on them. Very few people use coins in vending machines.
Successful BST with drddm, BustDMs, Pnies20, lkeigwin, pursuitofliberty, Bullsitter, felinfoel, SPalladino
$5 Type Set https://www.pcgs.com/setregistry/u-s-coins/type-sets/half-eagle-type-set-circulation-strikes-1795-1929/album/344192
CBH Set https://www.pcgs.com/setregistry/everyman-collections/everyman-half-dollars/everyman-capped-bust-half-dollars-1807-1839/album/345572
I bet the CC companies love that if they get their usual 30c per transaction fee!
Someone needs to figure out how to market to the crypto / NFT crowd.
They have stupid money and are spending ridiculous amounts on digital art, that isnt really art.
It might not be that hard to lure them into coin collecting...
True. Not just college campuses. A lot of mall vending machines also take CC and even things like Apple Pay or Google Pay
For a fun time take a trip to an old school laundromat and watch the quarters fly. 😉
🎶 shout shout, let it all out 🎶
Me being 44 and having collected coins for 20 years now, I am younger then most and possibly collected longer then a lot.
Going to shows over all this time the collecting age seems to have stayed the same from my observations. I think younger kids collect things, maybe not the same things older generations collected but they often still collect things.
I agree that you can collect with a lot of money or you can collect without a lot of money. Collecting the knowledge to collect takes time and requires patience to learn. Some will do this, some will not. Those that would not, would not be "good" longterm collectors anyways. Any hobby requires patience.
This !!!
They know about rare coins. Crypto is always referring to "a store of value" comparison with gold/ precious metals. They are aware of other investments.
The trick is to get them educated before running the dealer gauntlet.
I too can't remember the last time I used a vending machine, but yes all three vending machines in our cafeteria except credit cards and have WiFi capabilities. I'd say that maybe 1 out of every ten people that use the machines use cash. Most use a card. I know this because my office is in the cafeteria.
Edited to add:
As far as coin collecting goes, I think there will be future generations, but a less serious coin collectors.
Donato
Donato's Complete US Type Set ---- Donato's Dansco 7070 Modified Type Set ---- Donato's Basic U.S. Coin Design Set
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It depends on the location of the machine as far as ratio. Some take bills and give change as well.
Yes and no. The thing to consider is that they are perfectly content with DIGITAL art. They might well be perfectly happy with virtual coins. Their mind set can be very different than the pre-digital crowd.
NFT's can be block chained to physical objects.
Imagine a metaverse were you have people come to your virtual house or gallery and you share your virtual coin collection with the caveat of saying, "oh yes I do own the physical coins"
In my experience after having spent the last several years working a retail store front, my opinion on the matter is that the hobby is currently at a point of greatest potential expansion. This is due to a couple of factors.
First and foremost, there is a new generation of collectors coming on board, both young and old. Older individuals are retiring from their longtime careers and picking up the hobby, starting almost right where they left off as kids growing up. Young numismatists are cropping up among the youngest generation, those kids aged about 8 to 12 years old and their reasons for getting into the hobby are better derived from looking at how video games are enjoyed or why dinosaurs are liked by so many.
I bring up dinosaurs because of the studies that show kids who like the ancient reptiles end up being smarter, earning higher scores on tests, going into fields of science, math, and engineering. At the same time, those kids love to impress their parents, teachers, and other adults with their knowledge about the subject. Kids getting into coins is practically the same thing, especially when you stop to consider that the parents' generation is the millennial generation. Millennials grew up watching the Internet go from being a dial-up phone connection to a smartphone in their pocket, and they're always eager and focused on the next big thing. Digital payments have been a big part of the digitization of modern culture, thus as noted above, millennials are using less and less cash. Along with being strapped for money to invest in hobbies, which is another factor. The children of millennials are already born in this increasingly digital world and are inversely attracted to physical, tangible objects. When they see round, shiny objects, they learn about them, and then learn some more, and then have knowledge to impress their parents just as they might learning and talking about dinosaurs.
On the video game front, it's not just about collecting the games themselves which has become a recent trend. The act of playing a game is conducive to collecting because video games often task or at least encourage the player with collecting something. Coins and tokens are common collectibles in games, but this collectible can take any form from Pokemon to gems to ribbons, you name it. Players collect digital objects in video games the same way numismatists collect physical coins, it's a virtual stepping stone.
The important task for established collectors like ourselves is to cater to this growth, to encourage the new collector, to pass on the information and skills we have learned onto the next generation. Teach them not to just flip, but to learn the history of coins, the thrill of the hunt, how knowledge can lead to exciting discoveries in die varieties, in errors, toning, and archiving the most tangible format any culture can exist in.
It's worth taking the time to invest in the next generation.
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But they don't have to be.
I’m not sure about that. Slabs and now internet auctions can give the Insta crowd their adrenaline rush they crave from the action of a live auction and once the addiction sets in they’re hooked. All it takes is that shopaholic Chromosome.
Except they prefer (on average) experiences to artifacts. I'm not sure we could turn them into us, even if that is worth doing.
Why do we want to prevent progress? Change is good. It is pure selfishness to want to turn them into clones of ourselves. For what? To prevent our collections dropping in value?
The only reason "generation gaps" exist is because we old folks can't let go of our assumptions and biases about how the world should be. Why isn't a future of experiences and digital information flow as good or better than a past rooted in artifacts?
None of us here have ever used a drachma to purchase groceries. Yet many here still collect Ancient Greek coins.