How many coin collectors are there in the US?

relayer

Out of the 290,000,000+ people in the US, how many collect coins?

Any gueses?

Can anyone supply "offical" numbers from an organization?

cherrypickincoin

I think the Mint once reported a figure of over 100,000,000 but this was after the statehood quarters were released. I suppose it depends greatly on what we classify a collector as. One who actually pays for coins, rather than saves them from change? It's a good question but probably has no accurate answer.

coppercoins

There is certainly no accurate answer, and probably not one that's even really close. I have been stumped trying to answer this question just in my area of specialty for some time. I don't think there really is a good answer, nor do I think the official numbers of any club could tell much. Many people join clubs then subsequently drop the hablt, and many others don;t want to pay the dues but still collect.

Also the point raised before is a good one - What is a collector? Someone who competes against you for the coins you seek? Someone who would likely buy from you? In my case, the collector I am interested in counting is the collector who likes copper and would likely join my site. The collector who would likely at least paruse my eventual online store, and might buy an item or two.

The only "official" numbers I can get close to are the memberships of a few clubs and the readership of a couple of periodicals - but again, they tell little as to the actual number of collectors that are out there.

NCADD membership - between 200 and 400.
CONECA membership - between 700 and 1,000.
Coin World and Numismatic News readership is over 100,000

Krause Publications could probably shed some light (if they are willing to release the info) on readership of all their publications (to include NN) if you give them a call. I'm sure the info is released to potential advertisers. I think this information would be much more valuable than club membership.

Baley

agreed, the number depends on how you define "collector" To me the term means someone who actively saves coins from circulation, and/or buys coins for more than face value, with the intent to assemble a set or sets with some structure.

some coin buyers are more akin to "accumulators", "investors", "hoarders", etc., same genus, different species

anyway, it depends on which population the question refers to. The 100 million number undoubtably includes people who save bicentennial and now state quarters from circulation and keep them in a coffee can, as well as anyone who has a few old or foreign coins squirreled away, maybe from a relative. Another metric, the ANA has 30,000 members, there might be 10x that or 300,000 "serious" collectors, and some specialties (early mint state type, proof pre-1933 gold, patterns, etc) might have a dozen or two "collectors" and only a thousand or two people who can even own the coins, they're so rare. not to mention not that many people who can even afford them.

one way to define "collector": if you offer to sell them, say, a pcgs graded MS65 morgan dollarfor $20, do they buy it from you? I think maybe one million Americans would do it, or about one in 250.

another way would be to find out how many people shop for coins on eBay. Does anyone have this figure?

greghansen

About one per thousand, or between 250,000 and 300,00. This rough estimate of one per thousand, fits anecdotaly with my own experience.

wingedliberty

Coin accumulators and casual onlookers via the Statehood quarters program: 2,000,000
Casual interest with a few Morgan dollars and Ikes that grandma left : 1,000,000
Mild collectors: 300,000
Temporary collectors: 100,000
ANA members: 30,000
serious numismatists: 20,000
master numismatists: 5,000
coin freaks who live and breath numismatics: 1,000 ( I am in this category and probably 1/2 of board members).

Brian

JoyofCollecting

223,589 as of 10:05 EDT.

SmallTownCoins

None.... in my town this week......

FoundingFather

For the purpose of answering a typical person asking the question "how many coin collectors do you think there are" I would submit that they are asking about how many people are "regularly into" the HOBBY -- not people who JUST collect pocket change or invest and such, but real hobbyists -- because I believe that is on target with what they really have in mind when asking that type of a general question.

There's gotta be at least several hundred thousand I would think.

drainbamage

<< <i>coin freaks who live and breath numismatics: 1,000 ( I am in this category and probably 1/2 of board members) >>



Everyone thinks I am a coin freak around here......

As in.... "You paid HOW MUCH for that thing?" So I am thought of as totally NUTS. Sadly, I could show most of you the same coin and get the same exact words and get a different meaning altogether.

If you counted up every soul that has a wheat penny or Mercury dime then almost everyone is a coin collector. No way to truly count.

I thought it was a requirement to be a coin freak before you were allowed on this board....

Conder101

First the governments figure of over 100 million collectors can be thrown out the window because they are counting everyone who puts aside a state quarter or two as a colletor. Since most people have a change jar from when they empty their pockets, most people have put a few quarters aside. That doesn't make them collectors.

I place the number somewhere between 500 thousand and one million.

Coin World has atempted to calculate the number of collectors in the past using the combined paid subscribership to the major numismatic periodicals. After doing their best to eliminate duplicate subscribers they had a total of about 120,000 unique subscribers. From their own surveys of their subscribers they found that each issue is seen by on average three people. If that holds true for the other publications as well then that would imply 360,000 people

Another way to get an estmate is to look at the mint mailing list. They have about three million names on their list. When they do a mailing they have about a 10% response rate (Which for a direct mailing is an amazing rate of return. Industry standard is 1 - 3%.) So that would be 300,000. Now since not everyone buys from the mint we can probably estimate that those who do account for 1/2 to 1/3 of the number of collectors. That gives a collector figure between 600 and 900 thousand.

A third possible way may be to use the membership of the largest club in the country, the ANA. They have a membership of about 36 thousand. Now I find that in any group the number of truly "active" people runs at about 5% (Out of the membership of a club, 5% do the work. Form a committee and the work is done by 5% of them. This seems to hold true no matter what the group size or what subsets of subsets are selected, the active members are between 3 to 5%.) If this holds for the number of collectors with the "active" being those who join the ANA then the number of collectors would be about 720,000.

Fourth way to estmate would be to look at the mintage figure of moderns or proof sets etc at which the aftermarket has difficulty supporting prices. Long term to me this figure seems to be around 1.2 million. Now supposedly about 10% is purchased or held by non-collectors and I would guess another 10% or so are held in dealers stock. That would seem to imply around 900 thousand or so for an upper limit.

Baley

I have a theory that when the coins change, a wave of collectors is generated, and the bigger the change, the bigger the "collector boom". for most of us, the formative years as a collector are like 10 to 15 yars old, and some of us serious collectors were that age when the bicentennial coins were minted. others of us were that age when they went from silver to clad, and I think an amazing number of today's kids are going to be buying older US coins in about 10 or 20 years, when they can afford them. of course, if even a small fraction of the kids filling state quarters maps graduate to "real" coins, the supply/demand curves will rise, won't they?

Bear

the number of coin collectors in the US of A is 311,227. 4157 approximately.

MAULDEMALL

311,227. 4157 ?????

cladking

Five years ago there were probably about 2,000,000 Americans who considered themselves
coin collectors and another 4,000,000 who saved some coins because of a numismatic interest
from time to time. Perhaps 400,000 of these were serious enough about collecting to seek out
the assistence of others and/or to pay substantial premiums for needed coins.

Today there are probably around 20,000,000 who consider themselves colllectors, another 40
or 50 million just playing around with the states coins or sacs or the like. The ranks of those
willing to pay premiums is likely swelling and the numbers in the other categories may actually
be starting to drop.

NJCollector

While clearly we all agree that the term collector needs to be defined, it is also important to differentiate between a collector (once defined) and an investor. Many out there trade coins strictly with a profit motive without any regard for the ability to build a collection.

Most of us started out with coin collecting as a hobby. While hobby represents one extreme, the other extreme is investment. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle (some pay for a coin in G condition while another will pay up for that coin in MS65).

In either case, you need to know where the hobby part ends, and strictly investment begins.

Cam40

Well, If the speed at which the 2001 $1 Buffalo(s) sold out at is any indication of numbers there are in the
buying end of the hobby, its gotta be something over the 500,000 mark.

I like Conder101s #4 idea as a way to exstrapilate the answer.

I thought of `keys` and their supply and demand levels.
Surely that could be an indicator as to how many `collectors there are out there.
If not just in that series, maybe look at many s / d ratios of keys in different series.