Without Coins in Circulation will the hobby wither

ScarsdaleCoin

As more and more transactions become electronic and coins phase out …will the hobby slowly die out?

MasonG

No.

edited to add... I mostly collect non-US coins. Most of them are no longer legal tender. I haven't noticed the trend for demand for these coins to be decreasing.

lilolme

@MasonG said:
No.

+1
At least in any non-long term (decades plus) timeline. I don't know (anything) about the next century.

Jzyskowski1

Not as long as eBay and such remain in business. It’s rather impressive the number of eyes eBay presents to the hobby and world wide.
The US and others may be moving from coins but the rest of the world doesn’t seem to be. 😁
Old collectors die and new collectors become caretakers. Rinse and repeat. The beat goes on 🦫

Mr_Spud

It just might increase the demand, like when they moved from silver to clad, the silver coins are more desired.

VanHalen

I don't think so. It has been some time since most people regularly used pocket change in commerce and even longer since there was much of anything worth searching.

That said we should be encouraging younger people to enjoy the hobby. Dropping some wheat cents or Buffalo nickels here and there is a nice way to stimulate interest. Same for $2 bills as tips.

2windy2fish

Perhaps in a century or 3… but certainly not in the foreseeable future…

davewesen

until businesses no longer accept cash, coins will be around .... I will be dead before that happens

In4apenny

Almost every time I pay with Kennedy Halves the person is elated and thrilled to receive them. I use cash quite often. Cheers.

124Spider

I wonder about this, also. My interest in coin collecting was kindled in the 1960s, when lots of very interesting coins still were in circulation. I don't know that many interesting coins now are in circulation.

Without something to spark the interest in kids, don't know what might do it for adults. Long term, if fewer people are interested in old coins, the market will wither. Sure, wealthy people will always fight over the "best" coins, but will there be enough people who are interested in the EF45, scarce, coins to keep a healthy market? I wonder.

IKU

Because of covid 2019 (which still on goes...) virus a lot of people has turned to credit cards and online shopping instead of hard cash.

I think covid virus was the last nail in coffin for cash and coins.

We are living nightmare times for dirty cash and coins.
Also "online currency" is a lot greener than physical existing cash and saves environment.
Too many people exist on this earth.

ricko

The coin hobby will continue long after five generations from the youngest person alive today... and then as long as coins exist - whether used in commerce or not. Many people collect very old coins now... It will continue. Cheers, RickO

Desert Moon

Coins are about history which is part of their appeal to collect. I think folks will still care about history in the future.

fathom

Not close to happening so not worth the worry.

Stingray63

Not at all. Most likely will increase interest in the hobby.

privatecoin

Will create a huge black market for laundering.

jedm

Every day in my job I take payments from customers. Some of them use cash and others us credit or debit cards or some type of internet process. I handle both currency and coins with about half of my customers. I have not noticed any meaningful change over the last ten years or so in the use of cash versus credit/debit or internet transactions.

3stars

We still collect coins from 2500 years ago so…

TurtleCat

No, the hobby would likely adapt to whatever changes may come. In any case, I wouldn’t expect any significant changes for the next few decades in the areas I collect. And by then I will probably have sold it all anyway.

lkenefic

As long as there's "commerce" there will be people collecting the historical ways it's been conducted over the years. 100 years from now, who knows... coins might follow the Beanie Baby cycle but I rather doubt it.

Cougar1978

I believe Coins and Currency will continue to be collected for the forseable future.

With recession on horizon I don’t believe current US Classic market will hold up. Already many world issues absurdly cheap vs US. I do like US mods like ASE in PCGS MS69. Very affordable and have more silver than Morgan, Peace Dollars.

I believe the hobby will shift to a more global basis, the sticker game will be extinct, and WPM, especially graded notes the future of Numismatics.

savitale

No. We don’t produce illuminated manuscripts anymore but that market is doing fine.

For that matter we haven’t used gold coins since 1933, and from what I understand that market is also doing pretty well.

savitale

@jedm said:
Every day in my job I take payments from customers. Some of them use cash and others us credit or debit cards or some type of internet process. I handle both currency and coins with about half of my customers. I have not noticed any meaningful change over the last ten years or so in the use of cash versus credit/debit or internet transactions.

Out of curiosity, what business are you in? The only daily retail transaction I make is buying lunch, and the place where I do that has moved to electronic payment only in the past couple years. No cash allowed. I have not heard any complaints. I would think most retail businesses would have the same trend.

savitale

@124Spider said:
Sure, wealthy people will always fight over the "best" coins, but will there be enough people who are interested in the EF45, scarce, coins to keep a healthy market? I wonder.

I do wonder about this part. Ave circulated 20th century coinage may languish until they are old enough to be cool from a historical point of view. Maybe 200 years old.

vulcanize

While I would love to stay very optimistic and say it would continue as before, part of me feels that it would probably go partly in the way stamps did when the world wide web with it's assortment of e-greetings, e-mail etc. changed the way people communicated in the mid nineties.

JWP

It will continue. The younger generation and society uses plastic and can't ID the denonination or the country of origin now and that won't change. However there are new collectors every day and more and more people are turning cash to gold and silver. Coin collecting is here to stay. I t may have smaller numbers of collectors, but it is here to stay. IMHO

Crypto

There will always be a hobby, the real question is will collectors enjoy the liquidity and price appreciation they have over the las 30 years over the next 30,40,50+? I doubt it, the stratification of collectibles and blue chips has already begun. The saving grace for many of the common coins is their intrinsic value, that will keep some sort of market viable for generations.

When was the last time we saw a sub 50 year old whale, I think that is the echelon at most risk not to be replace. It trickles down from there.

conrad99

@JWP said:
It will continue. The younger generation and society uses plastic and can't ID the denonination or the country of origin now and that won't change. However there are new collectors every day and more and more people are turning cash to gold and silver. Coin collecting is here to stay. I t may have smaller numbers of collectors, but it is here to stay. IMHO

Yeah, I've had the experience of younger people absolutely unable to figure change, for example what might the change be if you're buying $4.65 worth of 'x' with a five-dollar bill?

I had to figure it for them. And I didn't even say 'x' which might have triggered an algebra allergy.

Some recent events where (in)famous personages get debanked for certain utterances may give people pause about going totally electronic.

TitusFlavius

Even though coins don't make up as much of the circulating medium as they did before the rise of electronic transactions, I think bullion coins have created a new market for the medium, independent of its use in cash transactions. Economic anxieties are driving renewed interest in precious metals, and bullion coins hold a prominent place in that market. Some percentage of those bullion buyers will find they can explore history, geography, and other interests by collecting these coins, and their historical predecessors. While I don't know how long it will last, I believe interest in coins will prove more enduring than interest in stamps (I collect both), even though both are less a part of daily commerce than in the past.

PeakRarities

I’m on the low end of the age spectrum for coin collectors, and I can say without a doubt that my interest in coin collecting was not initiated by clad circulation coins

jedm

@savitale said:
Out of curiosity, what business are you in? The only daily retail transaction I make is buying lunch, and the place where I do that has moved to electronic payment only in the past couple years. No cash allowed. I have not heard any complaints. I would think most retail businesses would have the same trend.

I work in a cellphone store.

jedm

@vulcanize said:
While I would love to stay very optimistic and say it would continue as before, part of me feels that it would probably go partly in the way stamps did when the world wide web with it's assortment of e-greetings, e-mail etc. changed the way people communicated in the mid nineties.

I must respectfully disagree. There is a segment of our population that does not have access to the banking system or who choose not to participate in it. The difference between cash and stamps is that just as there was a segment of our population that did not use the mail (possibly never reading or writing a letter or a book for that matter) those that did choose to utilize the system can still do so by other methods or in the traditional way. There will always be people who choose to pay with cold hard cash for their purchases.

MasonG

@savitale said:
The only daily retail transaction I make is buying lunch, and the place where I do that has moved to electronic payment only in the past couple years. No cash allowed. I have not heard any complaints. I would think most retail businesses would have the same trend.

I have not encountered any such businesses. If I showed up for lunch at one, I'd excuse myself and find another business that really wanted my business.

IKU

Here is for example a English chart about cash's future. (I found it when searching new Charles coins.)
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63413134

WCC

@Crypto said:
There will always be a hobby, the real question is will collectors enjoy the liquidity and price appreciation they have over the las 30 years over the next 30,40,50+? I doubt it, the stratification of collectibles and blue chips has already begun. The saving grace for many of the common coins is their intrinsic value, that will keep some sort of market viable for generations.

You beat me to it. This is the actual inferred question in the OP, sometimes also indirectly asking it in the context of the future resale market for their collection.

@124Spider said:
I wonder about this, also. My interest in coin collecting was kindled in the 1960s, when lots of very interesting coins still were in circulation. I don't know that many interesting coins now are in circulation.

The coin profile you are inferencing is mostly interesting to beginning collectors at or near FV. That's how it was mostly collected at the time. I don't know what the market for it is now, outside of silver bought as a bullion substitute.

My opinion is that there is a huge excess supply of this material now. It just isn't mostly available for sale. Decades from now, I expect the vast majority of post 1933 US coinage (circulating) to sell for less than the slab fee or nominal premiums to silver spot even in grades up to MS-66. Same idea for higher grade proofs.

It's really common and collectors aren't limited to what they could buy pre-internet. I also expect it to be driven by the end of our current era of fake credit driven affluence.

@124Spider said:

Sure, wealthy people will always fight over the "best" coins, but will there be enough people who are interested in the EF45, scarce, coins to keep a healthy market? I wonder.

Not sure which coins you have in mind as scarce, but I'd probably describe these coins as (very) common and relatively overpriced for the actual collectible merits. Definitely applies to every widely collected US 20th century key date. These coins aren't that common if limited to mid circulated grades but far too expensive for the relative collectible merits. Also really easy to buy in AU or MS.

Example is the 09-S VDB and similar Lincoln cents. Measured by constant value, the relative preference has collapsed since 1965 when I was born. It's higher priced now (because everything is too) but lost noticeable value in "real" money while being left "in the dust" by many coins which were cheaper or similarly priced.

MasonG

1960 Redbook value of an UNC 1909-S VDB Lincoln: $97.50
2000 Redbook value of an MS60 1909-S VDB Lincoln: $675.00

Using the BLS inflation calculator, $97.50 in 1960 was equal in purchasing power to $561.71 in 2000, so it appears that over that 40 year period, the value of the 09-S VDB increased.

Anybody have a recent Redbook? What's the year and the value of an MS60 09-S VDB?

IKU

It is funny how in 2022 USA mint says they can not afford to produce some coins like: 2022 morgans "because price of silver is so high".

Well price of silver won't surely be any lower in 2023 so good bye to that.
Produce copper morgans then.

Future people will think that we were somekind of idiots in early 2000.
Everything seems a big mess right now.

FrankH

Seems like a large segment of the younger <35 people don't recognize any advantage to privacy in their purchases.
............Or lives.
And... gosh... they sure don't have much privacy.

WCC

@MasonG said:
1960 Redbook value of an UNC 1909-S VDB Lincoln: $97.50
2000 Redbook value of an MS60 1909-S VDB Lincoln: $675.00

Using the BLS inflation calculator, $97.50 in 1960 was equal in purchasing power to $561.71 in 2000, so it appears that over that 40 year period, the value of the 09-S VDB increased.

Anybody have a recent Redbook? What's the year and the value of an MS60 09-S VDB?

I was comparing 1965 to about 2016 when the Red Book "UNC" price was $335 and recent Heritage sales for an MS-63 BN were about $1200. The relative value did not peak in 1960.

Maywood

Stop and consider what seems to make up most of the Hobby --- obsolete coinage --- and tell me why you think it would die if the Mint never made another coin after today.

WCC

@Maywood said:
Stop and consider what seems to make up most of the Hobby --- obsolete coinage --- and tell me why you think it would die if the Mint never made another coin after today.

The hobby won't die but the collector base will almost certainly shrink noticeably over time even beyond casual collectors and low budget collecting. If there is no circulating coinage, then new collectors will presumably predominantly come from precious metal buyers and most of these from US Mint and bullion dealer marketing.

There is a very limited physical footprint versus the past. Fewer LCS and almost no book stores where the non-collector can come across coin publications and coin folders,

I see internet banner adds but that's presumably only because I am a coin collector visiting coin sites. Earlier this year, I didn't visit any coin sites for a time and the banner adds disappeared.

This leads me to believe the non-collector doesn't see anything either.

conrad99

@IKU said:
It is funny how in 2022 USA mint says they can not afford to produce some coins like: 2022 morgans "because price of silver is so high".

Well price of silver won't surely be any lower in 2023 so good bye to that.
Produce copper morgans then.

Or just stop producing Morgans?