HEY KIDS!......Under 25....

topstuf

If you are 25 or under, I am curious as to how many OTHERS you know in your age group who collect coins.

Can you post a ratio?

Like: Out of 800 at my school (job, neighborhood, prison, etc.) , I estimate ....xxx.... are coin collectors.

Think it would be interesting info.

kamehameha00

I two days away from 12 years old.I know nobody in person in that age group who collects coins too.

BTW,my school has 368 students enrolled according to its website,and i'm the only one who does.

hockeyman1717

Well, i am in 8th grade, and nobody at my school collects coins, i have a small school though, only about 40 kids. One of them found a bicentennial quarter and thought it was worth alot.

FC57Coins

I'm in 3rd grade

Tootawl

<< <i>I'm in 3rd grade >>


With a little work Pug, you too can make it the 4th grade!

Elli

<< <i>I'm in 3rd grade >>



HAHHAHAHAHAHAH FC57Coins

JrGMan2004

I'm 17, 18 tomorrow (WOOHOO!) and out of a school of 2000, I don't know any others that collect coins... 1 old lady at church who puts state quarters into a folder, one father at church who knows a little bit about coins, and sets aside things he finds, like he recently pulled a couple silver quarters from change, and his son seems to be interested... or at least interested in the fact that some coins are worth more to some people...

topstuf

SOME of the children are gonna have no TV tonite.

mgoodm3

no fair, you've been in 3rd grade for 28 years.

airplanenut

At a non-coin function, I've met two other YN coin collectors--both on a summer trip in 2002.

Jeremy

islemangu

(crickets)

adamgold

I'm 23, so I guess I fit in your definition of a kid.

Sphinx357

I'm 19 and I don't know of anyone else in my area.

Kriek

22

airplanenut

For the record, I am in a school of about 800.

1234567890

I'm 16. At my prison, errr High School of 1800 kids, I don't know of any one else that is a collector.

PutTogether

I'm 23

I dont know anyone.

I went to a highschool of 4000 and a college of 20,000. no one.

GoldCoinLover

I don't know anyone. school of 2000

DominusDeus

I only know one person who collects coins, and he is old enough to be my grandfather. His son (about my age, a bit older) rather thinks coin collecting is silly. Oh well, his loss. My coin collection is an ant hill compaired to his mountain.

XpipedreamR

Is 34 considered under 25? With the new math these days, who knows?


For the record, I didn't know any other collectors at that age

MadMarty

I hear Cameron would tell everyone that he was a coin collecting stud! After they were done beating the snot out of him and stealing his lunch money all poor Cammy could afford was sample slabs!

BBN

I hate to say it, but some folks of the older generation of collectors treat younger ones like they're second class collectors. When I was 30 I was in a coin shop and the dealer and a buyer were looking at coins. I asked the dealer how much the 1909 VDB-S cent was going for and he looked at me and said "are you thinking about buying one?" I said I was looking into it eventually and he and the customer looked at each other and laughed and the dealer said "don't plan on it in your lifetime" and that followed with laughter from both of them again. The jerkoff changed his tune when I held up five $100 bills and told him I had plans of buying some SLQs, but his a-hole attitude sent me elsewhere. He tried to ask me to come back because he was kidding, but I never looked back on my way out the door. Now the dealer I frequent is a fantastic 78 yr old man that loves to cut breaks to younger collectors because he knows that passing the hobby down is what will make it survive. Maybe I shouldn't classify all older collectors this way because that was my first ever experience with a dealer and he me with a pessimistic attitude. I found out later on the other dealers in this area couldn't stand him either because of his a-hole attitude. If someone went into his store only wanting to spend $5 he'll tell them not to waste his time.

Betta285

14 going on 15..no one else i know collects...but i'm still trying to get my friends to even show some interest in the state quater program and work from there

Dennis88

I'm 15, don't know any others in my region...

Dennis

Conder101

<< <i>In all reality, I think there are A LOT less coin collectors than some people here or the US Mint says there are. I also think there are A LOT less people collecting state quarters, even at face value, then what the US Mint or some here say there are. >>


My best guess at the number of collectors is between 500 and 750 thousand (figured three different ways). The mint estimate of over 100 million is because they count everyone who throws their change aside in a dish each night andwho doesn't load it back into their pocket in the morning as a coin collector. (Really, because with their figure one out of every three people is a coin collector. Yeah, right.)

mas3cf

I'm 23, and of the 40 or so under-25 grad students in my department, I know of at least one other who collects coins. However, when I was in 2nd-3rd grade, coins were all the rage; probably 75% of my class collected!! At lunch, we would trade wheat pennies and old nickels and talk about how cool it would be to have a 1909-S VDB... those were the days...

cladking

Obviously the mint numbers are inflated as to the number collecting the states coins.
There are many millions who collect them actively or passively, but there aren't this many.
Mintages of the states coins have been in the quarter billion range for the last several
issues and these seem to not circulate well because they are getting saved by collectors
and horders. This would seem to imply that the number of collectors has trailed off con-
siderably from the early days of the program. This is, of course, to be expected since
people are usually far more interested in novelty or something new. There has been a
less than stellar ability of the hobby to educate and retain those individuals who have
expressed interest in the coins. There have been many hundreds of thousands of new
collectors started though if sales of he coin folders are any indication. I do know young
people who are filling these up so at least some are being used.

Actually, of much more concern is the mintage numbers for proof and especially mint sets.
These should be increasing as more people gain interest in the states coins and old-line
buyers continue their collections but instead they are falling. Mint set sales are continuing
the drop they were experiencing even before the states program started. Most collectors
know that these make an excellent source for choice coins so the sets should sell themselves.
The price of the set has increased dramatically, and most people know that in the past these
were money losing ventures so this may be much of the cause of decreased sales. There is
ample evidence that in the past the vast majority of sets went to people with little interest
in collecting the coins and now days these sets go mostly to collectors.

There will be more opportunities to entice new collectors to join our ranks.

These opportunities will not be endless, but the circulating coinage may get increasingly in-
teresting. There will be 163 different clad quarters circulating in a few years of 52 diffferent
designs. These will exhibit varying degrees of wear and usage stretching back for nearly
half a century.






typos

Elli

I'm 11 and i'm having fun collecting coins.

anablep

I'm a high school science teacher and from my experience, most students are not interested in coins.
Once a year I take a zinc cent and scrape the edge with a file and drop it in hydrochloric acid. The single replacement reaction yields ZnCl and hydrogen gas, leaving an empty shell of copper. The students are amused when I say only cents after 1982 will do this. Only one student (this year) in my 8 years of teaching mentioned that a 1943 steel cent would not do that because the zinc is on the outside. He offered that information and seemed to know a little about cents. I was impressed.

Growing up (I'm 31 now), three of my other friends collected coins with me and there may have been some others. I went to a school on Long Island with about 900 enrolled.

Pistareen

I'm glad to see a thread on young collectors here.

Much of my childhood was spent playing with coins, this despite the fact that the vast majority of my "coin friends" were multiples of my age. I'm 26 now and, while the multiplier is somewhat smaller these days, for the most part the song remains the same. Most of the folks I know that are near my age I met through YN programs at regional shows on the East Coast or through the ANA Young Numismatist Programs, including the annual ANA Summer Seminar every July. Some of these folks work in the business (including at places like Stack's, Spectrum, and Carter Numismatics), but many who collected in their youth went onto fantastic non-numismatic careers: a doctor at Mayo Clinic, a PhD candidate in Asian Studies at Harvard, an investment banker, etc.

For those young collectors that don't know about it, if you are active in a local coin club, or write articles on coins, or exhibit your collection at shows, you can earn a FREE scholarship to study under some of the finest numismatic minds in the country for a week. You do have to be an ANA Member though. Many of the instructors (and regular students) are on the boards. You can find more information here.

While the scholarship deadline appears to have passed last week, I would still contact the ANA Education Dept if you are interested. Of course, there is plenty of time left for those (including adults!) that want to pay.

Anyone who would like more info on the ANA Summer Seminar is welcome to message me.

BBN

BTW, I'm 33

ealandg

BBN, I'm 33 also and had a similar experience when I was about 28 or so. I was "on the hunt" for a flowing hair $. I asked a local dealer if he had one. He told me he did, but that it was "out of my league".

I am always amazed by the poor business sense of some dealers. Don't they realize that in this technology based era there are a whole generation of extremely wealthy young people? I have also seen folks who aren't so wealthy go to ridiculous lengths to buy an expensive coins they really wanted.

BBN

<< <i>BBN, I'm 33 also and had a similar experience when I was about 28 or so. I was "on the hunt" for a flowing hair $. I asked a local dealer if he had one. He told me he did, but that it was "out of my league".

I am always amazed by the poor business sense of some dealers. Don't they realize that in this technology based era there are a whole generation of extremely wealthy young people? I have also seen folks who aren't so wealthy go to ridiculous lengths to buy an expensive coins they really wanted. >>



It's unfortunate that this moron and his buddy left a bad image in my mind about advanced, older, well off collectors. Fortunately Gene(my current dealer), the older gentleman that I trade with now, appreciates younger buyers and helps younger buyers. He even takes care of wish lists for people when he goes to bigger auctions and doesn't want a profit. He sells the coin on the wish list exactly what he paid to get it.