and after this Margarita, I'm gonna feel some more... >>
I have to say that, though I enjoy coin collecting immensely, I do not think it has a bright future. Building the base or mountain, as some have said, requires a lot of things, but one thing it definitely requires is YNs coming into the hobby. That's a tough one these days for many reasons discussed: 1) competition from video games 2) lack of people introducing YNs to the hobby one at a time 3) in some places, a preponderance of kid-unfriendly B&M dealers 4) less use of coins in commerce 5) shortage of interesting coins in circulation
People may debate this last point, and I am not sure about it myself, but I know what got me turned on to the hobby was finding Mercury dimes, Walker halves, etc... I really don't see anything comparable floating around these days. I've asked many people if they even know about the ATB series. Not a single one has responded "yes".
Blah, blah, blah...I'll be hoping for the best and enjoying what I enjoy.
Gritsman maybe you could throw in circulation a few mercs now and them and stir up some excitement. I for one am convinced that part of the problem with finding new YN is that the younger the generation the quicker the gratification must me to keep them entertained. Coins take patients, study and a type of personality. JMO. Among with many of the comments you have made I don't see a bright future.
Winner of the "You Suck!" award March 17, 2010 by LanLord, doh, 123cents and Bear.
" lack of people introducing YNs to the hobby one at a time"
IMO, I think the State Quarter Program brought in a huge number of YN's. Those YN's are now teenagers now and are interested in the opposite sex and cars and have no interest in coins, at the moment.
I will bet many of these ex YN's will become collectors Again when they get older.
I only see a bright future for coins, But I always try to see the bright side of everything.
It will be decades at least before the middle class rebuilds itself from the economic destruction that has been thrown at us. 10 lost years in the stock market, 28% of mortgaged houses with negative equity. Glut of bank-owned foreclosed real estate that has crashed in value and cannot be sold. Negative real-interest rates on bank savings. REAL unemployment and underemployment at goodness-knows-what levels (9.1% is a joke). REAL inflation rates at goodness-knows-what levels (the official figures DO NOT include food and fuel - another joke). Federal government struggling to pay the INTEREST on the national debt. Federal unfunded entitlements off the chart ($100 trillion? Who knows?) State and local governmental debt out of control. Cities, counties and states considering bankruptcy or actually going bankrupt. Personal bankruptcies on the rise. Small business bankruptcies on the rise.
Hard to see where middle-class coin collecting fits in. Middle-class people are struggling financially, and the worst is yet to come. Only the strongest families and the hardest working and most capable people will be able to stay 'middle class'. We are in a self-reinforcing downward financial spiral.
And, oh yeah, the US dollar is toast. The dollar is not 'money' (defined in the Constitution as gold and silver). The dollar is 'fiat currency', and no fiat currency has ever survived. Inflating our way out of our debt is the only thing we can do. Unfortunately, that will destroy every dollar-denominated bond holder as well as all recipients of pensions and social security as well as those who hold any notes denominated in dollars on which the interest rate cannot be dramatically increased.
It has all happened in other countries at other times. It will happen here.
Have fun with your coins. While you can. I have fun with mine.
Bear, can you enlighten us as to what series of coins you think are doing well or will do well?
And, can advise what you mean by coins with attractive toning (that is, with toning that warrants a premium)? As an example, I see only a handful of coins on your site I would pay extra for because of the toning. Are you including the light golden toning as premium toning?
It will be decades at least before the middle class rebuilds itself from the economic destruction that has been thrown at us. 10 lost years in the stock market, 28% of mortgaged houses with negative equity. Glut of bank-owned foreclosed real estate that has crashed in value and cannot be sold. Negative real-interest rates on bank savings. REAL unemployment and underemployment at goodness-knows-what levels (9.1% is a joke). REAL inflation rates at goodness-knows-what levels (the official figures DO NOT include food and fuel - another joke). Federal government struggling to pay the INTEREST on the national debt. Federal unfunded entitlements off the chart ($100 trillion? Who knows?) State and local governmental debt out of control. Cities, counties and states considering bankruptcy or actually going bankrupt. Personal bankruptcies on the rise. Small business bankruptcies on the rise. Hard to see where middle-class coin collecting fits in. Middle-class people are struggling financially, and the worst is yet to come. Only the strongest families and the hardest working and most capable people will be able to stay 'middle class'. We are in a self-reinforcing downward financial spiral. And, oh yeah, the US dollar is toast. The dollar is not 'money' (defined in the Constitution as gold and silver). The dollar is 'fiat currency', and no fiat currency has ever survived. Inflating our way out of our debt is the only thing we can do. Unfortunately, that will destroy every dollar-denominated bond holder as well as all recipients of pensions and social security as well as those who hold any notes denominated in dollars on which the interest rate cannot be dramatically increased. It has all happened in other countries at other times. It will happen here.
Frank -
don't know who you are , .....but I love you !
and if I could , I would engrave your words above in gold here and require everyone to read them .
I love my coins as much as the next guy , and hope the market takes off on a tear the likes we have never seen b4 ;
but just in case ( ) ,
today I moved 175 thousand dollars of my I.R.A into Gold, Silver , and Copper !
Yep... And so long as the same government that controls the printing press also controls the official reporting of inflation, the folks counting on COLAs will get crushed... Good luck to us all.
<< <i>Coin collecting for the middle-class is toast.
It will be decades at least before the middle class rebuilds itself from the economic destruction that has been thrown at us. 10 lost years in the stock market, 28% of mortgaged houses with negative equity. Glut of bank-owned foreclosed real estate that has crashed in value and cannot be sold. Negative real-interest rates on bank savings. REAL unemployment and underemployment at goodness-knows-what levels (9.1% is a joke). REAL inflation rates at goodness-knows-what levels (the official figures DO NOT include food and fuel - another joke). Federal government struggling to pay the INTEREST on the national debt. Federal unfunded entitlements off the chart ($100 trillion? Who knows?) State and local governmental debt out of control. Cities, counties and states considering bankruptcy or actually going bankrupt. Personal bankruptcies on the rise. Small business bankruptcies on the rise.
Hard to see where middle-class coin collecting fits in. Middle-class people are struggling financially, and the worst is yet to come. Only the strongest families and the hardest working and most capable people will be able to stay 'middle class'. We are in a self-reinforcing downward financial spiral.
And, oh yeah, the US dollar is toast. The dollar is not 'money' (defined in the Constitution as gold and silver). The dollar is 'fiat currency', and no fiat currency has ever survived. Inflating our way out of our debt is the only thing we can do. Unfortunately, that will destroy every dollar-denominated bond holder as well as all recipients of pensions and social security as well as those who hold any notes denominated in dollars on which the interest rate cannot be dramatically increased.
It has all happened in other countries at other times. It will happen here.
Have fun with your coins. While you can. I have fun with mine. >>
<< <i>It will be decades at least before the middle class rebuilds itself from the economic destruction that has been thrown at us. 10 lost years in the stock market, 28% of mortgaged houses with negative equity. Glut of bank-owned foreclosed real estate that has crashed in value and cannot be sold. Negative real-interest rates on bank savings. REAL unemployment and underemployment at goodness-knows-what levels (9.1% is a joke). REAL inflation rates at goodness-knows-what levels (the official figures DO NOT include food and fuel - another joke). Federal government struggling to pay the INTEREST on the national debt. Federal unfunded entitlements off the chart ($100 trillion? Who knows?) State and local governmental debt out of control. Cities, counties and states considering bankruptcy or actually going bankrupt. Personal bankruptcies on the rise. Small business bankruptcies on the rise. Hard to see where middle-class coin collecting fits in. Middle-class people are struggling financially, and the worst is yet to come. Only the strongest families and the hardest working and most capable people will be able to stay 'middle class'. We are in a self-reinforcing downward financial spiral. And, oh yeah, the US dollar is toast. The dollar is not 'money' (defined in the Constitution as gold and silver). The dollar is 'fiat currency', and no fiat currency has ever survived. Inflating our way out of our debt is the only thing we can do. Unfortunately, that will destroy every dollar-denominated bond holder as well as all recipients of pensions and social security as well as those who hold any notes denominated in dollars on which the interest rate cannot be dramatically increased. It has all happened in other countries at other times. It will happen here.
Frank -
don't know who you are , .....but I love you !
and if I could , I would engrave your words above in gold here and require everyone to read them .
I love my coins as much as the next guy , and hope the market takes off on a tear the likes we have never seen b4 ;
but just in case ( ) ,
today I moved 175 thousand dollars of my I.R.A into Gold, Silver , and Copper ! >>
There are a lot of Americans like us. The best thing we can do is become aware, and stay aware, of what is really going on. Trust physical commodities. Don't trust paper commodities (such as futures, ETFs, deposit receipts). Do our best to take care of our families and loved ones. Stay healthy if we can. Get good educations - not the political indoctrination provided in too many of our Universities. Pray - thank God for the America we have known and for the America to come. Explain our values to other people - we need as many strong hands, hearts and minds as we can get. Teach our values to the children - and tell them to teach those values to their children. We may not live to see it, but some future generation will rebuild the dream that is America.
Sorry for the OT post. Sorry to hijack your thread HRH.
People are way too quick to write off the American economy. Writing off lower priced coins might be even more wrong actually. The last time the American economy took a big dump the coin hobby benefited dramatically. People didn't have jobs but they had the time to collect coins so they collected coins. It's a heck of a lot easier now to assemble a set of clad quarters if you don't have a job than it was to assemble a set of dimes during the de- pression with no job. Most people have more wealth now and many will just try to ride it out if it really does get bad.
A lot of foreign economies aren't hurting at all yet, or least not their middle classes so the prices of base metal circulating coinage is still exploding. Throw in the millions of states collectors returning to the hobby and even a depression might not be enough to hold these markets down.
<< <i>The last time the American economy took a big dump the coin hobby benefited dramatically. People didn't have jobs but they had the time to collect coins so they collected coins. >>
I have one counter argument for you, the iphone and ipad.
<< <i> I have one counter argument for you, the iphone and ipad. >>
There are plenty of demands on peoples' time and other outlets to spend one's time now days but some of these can be extremely expensive for someone who's unemployed and has no immediate prospects to get a job. IPhones start at $75 a month but a telephone and internet access is as little as $25 a month. The cost of a single month of IPhone usage is enough to collect every single one of the modern circulating coins with the varieties.
This isn't to say we're headed toward a crash; indeed, we may be just around the corner from boom times again. Most of our problems are financial even though there are signif- icant structural problems not being addressed or fully addressed. Many of our biggest problems would actually cost less money if they were rectified. There is certainly ample opportunity to increase efficiency and stop the destruction of wealth.
Be this as it may the fact is there are a great number of less expensive coins exploding in price. The new world coin catalog shows massive gains on the order of 240 fold for some of the early modern Soviet coins. Coins like the early 1970 kopeks are up not 240% or even 2400%, but are up 24,000%. Some of the Indian proof sets that were up five or ten fold last year are up another three or four fold this year.
Obviously a lot of this is reporting error and the coins have actually been increasing more smoothly in the real world. Some of the big gains aren't reported for various reasons like the increases Spanish moderns might not be getting reported because the Spanish econ- omy is weak at the current time.
Frankly I still think that a weakening economy would strenghten many of these modern markets rather than destroy them. Modern coin prices aren't soaring because there are masses of people getting into them. They are soaring because the coins tend to be non- existent in uncirculated condition. In many cases the coins were so poorly saved and so thoroughly melted that even low grade coins are turning out to be hard to find. A 1979 Rouble lists for $14 in VF!!! Russians didn't set these coins aside and were discouraged from collecting coins at all by the government. They did not set them aside and the mint sets have had a very high attrition. Mintages of the sets were low so they were hard to find but the values were tiny and people tore them up and dealers put the coins in the junk buckets. 30 years of abuse has made them far harder to find.
There are sill many millions of younger and newer collectors who do have jobs and where- ever these people decide to collect there will be supply constraints. This will be true whet- her they are collecting $30 apiece buffalo nickels or "common" clad. And there will be still increasing demand for world coins that seem common but are actually scarce. Just as pro- fits from gold and silver spills over into old US coins there will be spillover from US and world moderns into classics. There will be a growing base for coins for at least another generation and a half. Coins do well when the stock market isn't and there might be some time for coins to move before macroeconomic factors slow them. It could well start now but autumn seems more likely to me. Maybe even next year. My crystal ball doesn't al- ways pick up lows until they're in the rear view mirror.
A rising tide lifts all the boats not tied too closely to the dock.
Comments
Right now, they are saying to take my coins , scoot under the bed
and stay there until everything blows over. Oh yes, and bring some
food and water along.
Camelot
Empty Nest Collection
and you get the coins available. You look to buy on the cheap and you end up with the
dregs of the market place.
Camelot
and after this Margarita, I'm gonna feel some more...
"Senorita HepKitty"
"I want a real cool Kitty from Hepcat City, to stay in step with me" - Bill Carter
<< <i>I've got a feeling also....
and after this Margarita, I'm gonna feel some more... >>
I have to say that, though I enjoy coin collecting immensely, I do not think it has a bright future. Building the base or mountain, as some have said, requires a lot of things, but one thing it definitely requires is YNs coming into the hobby. That's a tough one these days for many reasons discussed:
1) competition from video games
2) lack of people introducing YNs to the hobby one at a time
3) in some places, a preponderance of kid-unfriendly B&M dealers
4) less use of coins in commerce
5) shortage of interesting coins in circulation
People may debate this last point, and I am not sure about it myself, but I know what got me turned on to the hobby was finding Mercury dimes, Walker halves, etc... I really don't see anything comparable floating around these days. I've asked many people if they even know about the ATB series. Not a single one has responded "yes".
Blah, blah, blah...I'll be hoping for the best and enjoying what I enjoy.
IMO, I think the State Quarter Program brought in a huge number of YN's. Those YN's are now teenagers now and are interested in the opposite sex and cars and have no interest in coins, at the moment.
I will bet many of these ex YN's will become collectors Again when they get older.
I only see a bright future for coins, But I always try to see the bright side of everything.
It will be decades at least before the middle class rebuilds itself from the economic destruction that has been thrown at us. 10 lost years in the stock market, 28% of mortgaged houses with negative equity. Glut of bank-owned foreclosed real estate that has crashed in value and cannot be sold. Negative real-interest rates on bank savings. REAL unemployment and underemployment at goodness-knows-what levels (9.1% is a joke). REAL inflation rates at goodness-knows-what levels (the official figures DO NOT include food and fuel - another joke). Federal government struggling to pay the INTEREST on the national debt. Federal unfunded entitlements off the chart ($100 trillion? Who knows?) State and local governmental debt out of control. Cities, counties and states considering bankruptcy or actually going bankrupt. Personal bankruptcies on the rise. Small business bankruptcies on the rise.
Hard to see where middle-class coin collecting fits in. Middle-class people are struggling financially, and the worst is yet to come. Only the strongest families and the hardest working and most capable people will be able to stay 'middle class'. We are in a self-reinforcing downward financial spiral.
And, oh yeah, the US dollar is toast. The dollar is not 'money' (defined in the Constitution as gold and silver). The dollar is 'fiat currency', and no fiat currency has ever survived. Inflating our way out of our debt is the only thing we can do. Unfortunately, that will destroy every dollar-denominated bond holder as well as all recipients of pensions and social security as well as those who hold any notes denominated in dollars on which the interest rate cannot be dramatically increased.
It has all happened in other countries at other times. It will happen here.
Have fun with your coins. While you can. I have fun with mine.
<< <i>Coin collecting for the masses is toast. >>
The masses are toast.
And, can advise what you mean by coins with attractive toning (that is, with toning that warrants a premium)? As an example, I see only a handful of coins on your site I would pay extra for because of the toning. Are you including the light golden toning as premium toning?
Thank you for your knowledge and help.
Frank -
don't know who you are , .....but I love you !
and if I could , I would engrave your words above in gold here and require everyone to read them .
I love my coins as much as the next guy , and hope the market takes off on a tear the likes we have never seen b4 ;
but just in case (
today I moved 175 thousand dollars of my I.R.A into Gold, Silver , and Copper !
<< <i>Coin collecting for the middle-class is toast.
It will be decades at least before the middle class rebuilds itself from the economic destruction that has been thrown at us. 10 lost years in the stock market, 28% of mortgaged houses with negative equity. Glut of bank-owned foreclosed real estate that has crashed in value and cannot be sold. Negative real-interest rates on bank savings. REAL unemployment and underemployment at goodness-knows-what levels (9.1% is a joke). REAL inflation rates at goodness-knows-what levels (the official figures DO NOT include food and fuel - another joke). Federal government struggling to pay the INTEREST on the national debt. Federal unfunded entitlements off the chart ($100 trillion? Who knows?) State and local governmental debt out of control. Cities, counties and states considering bankruptcy or actually going bankrupt. Personal bankruptcies on the rise. Small business bankruptcies on the rise.
Hard to see where middle-class coin collecting fits in. Middle-class people are struggling financially, and the worst is yet to come. Only the strongest families and the hardest working and most capable people will be able to stay 'middle class'. We are in a self-reinforcing downward financial spiral.
And, oh yeah, the US dollar is toast. The dollar is not 'money' (defined in the Constitution as gold and silver). The dollar is 'fiat currency', and no fiat currency has ever survived. Inflating our way out of our debt is the only thing we can do. Unfortunately, that will destroy every dollar-denominated bond holder as well as all recipients of pensions and social security as well as those who hold any notes denominated in dollars on which the interest rate cannot be dramatically increased.
It has all happened in other countries at other times. It will happen here.
Have fun with your coins. While you can. I have fun with mine. >>
Check out my current listings: https://ebay.com/sch/khunt/m.html?_ipg=200&_sop=12&_rdc=1
Washington Carver and the Booker T Washington.The golden 1888 Seated Liberty Quarter I
did not pay extra for the gold toning. Also I will not usualy pay more then 20 - 30 % premium , even for the
most beautiful toning. However, as every collector knows, there are exceptions to even the best of intentions
where you might go 2X. I know some folks go crazy with multiples of 4X to 7X but that is just too much money
fore a single coin. The word buried always flashes in my mind.
Camelot
<< <i>It will be decades at least before the middle class rebuilds itself from the economic destruction that has been thrown at us. 10 lost years in the stock market, 28% of mortgaged houses with negative equity. Glut of bank-owned foreclosed real estate that has crashed in value and cannot be sold. Negative real-interest rates on bank savings. REAL unemployment and underemployment at goodness-knows-what levels (9.1% is a joke). REAL inflation rates at goodness-knows-what levels (the official figures DO NOT include food and fuel - another joke). Federal government struggling to pay the INTEREST on the national debt. Federal unfunded entitlements off the chart ($100 trillion? Who knows?) State and local governmental debt out of control. Cities, counties and states considering bankruptcy or actually going bankrupt. Personal bankruptcies on the rise. Small business bankruptcies on the rise. Hard to see where middle-class coin collecting fits in. Middle-class people are struggling financially, and the worst is yet to come. Only the strongest families and the hardest working and most capable people will be able to stay 'middle class'. We are in a self-reinforcing downward financial spiral. And, oh yeah, the US dollar is toast. The dollar is not 'money' (defined in the Constitution as gold and silver). The dollar is 'fiat currency', and no fiat currency has ever survived. Inflating our way out of our debt is the only thing we can do. Unfortunately, that will destroy every dollar-denominated bond holder as well as all recipients of pensions and social security as well as those who hold any notes denominated in dollars on which the interest rate cannot be dramatically increased. It has all happened in other countries at other times. It will happen here.
Frank -
don't know who you are , .....but I love you !
and if I could , I would engrave your words above in gold here and require everyone to read them .
I love my coins as much as the next guy , and hope the market takes off on a tear the likes we have never seen b4 ;
but just in case (
today I moved 175 thousand dollars of my I.R.A into Gold, Silver , and Copper ! >>
There are a lot of Americans like us. The best thing we can do is become aware, and stay aware, of what is really going on. Trust physical commodities. Don't trust paper commodities (such as futures, ETFs, deposit receipts). Do our best to take care of our families and loved ones. Stay healthy if we can. Get good educations - not the political indoctrination provided in too many of our Universities. Pray - thank God for the America we have known and for the America to come. Explain our values to other people - we need as many strong hands, hearts and minds as we can get. Teach our values to the children - and tell them to teach those values to their children. We may not live to see it, but some future generation will rebuild the dream that is America.
Sorry for the OT post. Sorry to hijack your thread HRH.
.....wasn't there a wise ole' Bear that paid over 5 thousand dollars for a certain 1958 MS 66 Franklin ??
Camelot
.......how about senility ?
might be even more wrong actually. The last time the American economy took a big dump
the coin hobby benefited dramatically. People didn't have jobs but they had the time to
collect coins so they collected coins. It's a heck of a lot easier now to assemble a set of
clad quarters if you don't have a job than it was to assemble a set of dimes during the de-
pression with no job. Most people have more wealth now and many will just try to ride it
out if it really does get bad.
A lot of foreign economies aren't hurting at all yet, or least not their middle classes so the
prices of base metal circulating coinage is still exploding. Throw in the millions of states
collectors returning to the hobby and even a depression might not be enough to hold
these markets down.
If you are correct as time and events occur.
Camelot
<< <i>The last time the American economy took a big dump
the coin hobby benefited dramatically. People didn't have jobs but they had the time to
collect coins so they collected coins. >>
I have one counter argument for you, the iphone and ipad.
<< <i>
I have one counter argument for you, the iphone and ipad. >>
There are plenty of demands on peoples' time and other outlets to spend one's time now
days but some of these can be extremely expensive for someone who's unemployed and
has no immediate prospects to get a job. IPhones start at $75 a month but a telephone and
internet access is as little as $25 a month. The cost of a single month of IPhone usage is
enough to collect every single one of the modern circulating coins with the varieties.
This isn't to say we're headed toward a crash; indeed, we may be just around the corner
from boom times again. Most of our problems are financial even though there are signif-
icant structural problems not being addressed or fully addressed. Many of our biggest
problems would actually cost less money if they were rectified. There is certainly ample
opportunity to increase efficiency and stop the destruction of wealth.
Be this as it may the fact is there are a great number of less expensive coins exploding in
price. The new world coin catalog shows massive gains on the order of 240 fold for some
of the early modern Soviet coins. Coins like the early 1970 kopeks are up not 240% or
even 2400%, but are up 24,000%. Some of the Indian proof sets that were up five or
ten fold last year are up another three or four fold this year.
Obviously a lot of this is reporting error and the coins have actually been increasing more
smoothly in the real world. Some of the big gains aren't reported for various reasons like
the increases Spanish moderns might not be getting reported because the Spanish econ-
omy is weak at the current time.
Frankly I still think that a weakening economy would strenghten many of these modern
markets rather than destroy them. Modern coin prices aren't soaring because there are
masses of people getting into them. They are soaring because the coins tend to be non-
existent in uncirculated condition. In many cases the coins were so poorly saved and so
thoroughly melted that even low grade coins are turning out to be hard to find. A 1979
Rouble lists for $14 in VF!!! Russians didn't set these coins aside and were discouraged
from collecting coins at all by the government. They did not set them aside and the mint
sets have had a very high attrition. Mintages of the sets were low so they were hard to
find but the values were tiny and people tore them up and dealers put the coins in the junk
buckets. 30 years of abuse has made them far harder to find.
There are sill many millions of younger and newer collectors who do have jobs and where-
ever these people decide to collect there will be supply constraints. This will be true whet-
her they are collecting $30 apiece buffalo nickels or "common" clad. And there will be still
increasing demand for world coins that seem common but are actually scarce. Just as pro-
fits from gold and silver spills over into old US coins there will be spillover from US and
world moderns into classics. There will be a growing base for coins for at least another
generation and a half. Coins do well when the stock market isn't and there might be some
time for coins to move before macroeconomic factors slow them. It could well start now
but autumn seems more likely to me. Maybe even next year. My crystal ball doesn't al-
ways pick up lows until they're in the rear view mirror.
A rising tide lifts all the boats not tied too closely to the dock.
If the Doily makes a comeback, I am a dead man. Heck, I am already buried in these things . . I might as well be dead and buried . . . .
Drunner
<< <i>OK . .I just got down to page 2 . .
If the Doily makes a comeback, I am a dead man. Heck, I am already buried in these things . . I might as well be dead and buried . .
Well, at least that is better, then being alive and buried.. .
Drunner >>
Seriously though, most doilies and green labels have been pretty well cherry picked. They are valuable if you
collect copper though. Since that are decades old, if the copper looks nice in the holder, it means that the coin has
probably not been doctored and the color is stable. That is a very important consideration when you spen hundreds
or even thousands of dollars for a coin. For silver coins, I believe that the premium for Green labels and doilies is really
too high. 10-15 % would be the top premium for a really nice coin. For average coins, I would not pay any premium at
all because the coin is probably at the bottom of the grade.
Camelot