Help ! I need a Attitude Adjustment
HiBucky
Posts: 631 ✭✭✭
The way I see it has lead me to start a slow exit from the world of coin collecting to pony up cash for the future of the stock market. Kids, really are not into collecting coins as we may want to believe. Cell phone, food, a place to stay and no baggage. My kids grew up in a world of coins, indian collectables and antiques and they collect nothing. I see the market as weak with many down items taking over the future of coins. ( I hope I am wrong). If we get the Tax changes that Trump wants the stock market will scream, infrastructure repairs will also make additional uptrend to the stock market. I see silver and gold as lackluster at best with billions entering the stock market that should pay real returns. Lastly, I see a limited collecting market with dinosaurs collecting till their last breath. I love coins they are my passion. Win, lose or draw. I am one of the dinosaurs who will continue to collect but in reality I see no real upbeat to the coin market for years to come. Depression Glass, Hummels and antiques is a reality that could overtake the coin market in the future. Please comment in an upbeat manner. I don't want to be right !!!!
Comments
WOW, so many ways to take this... Coin buying as an investment vehicle is trickier than ever and I don't see it improving--but I do believe some people will always collect them (I know, that's pretty weak). The stock market will crash sometime, so save some cash because it will rebound (this time is NOT different!!!). Gold is a good idea--real assets have never been cheaper compared to stocks and bonds. Finally, Pres. Trump won't accomplish as much as he says, and what he does won't be quite as good as he wants. That's my quick take on things.
Sigh...I had a similar feeling this morning myself...about exiting stage left in coin collecting. This, like most hobbies, has its ebbs and flows. With it being a buyers market right now it is awfully tempting to stay "in". On the flip side, it is not typically a good time to sell, unless you have something really special that a buyer wants. I am not a stock market guy, but I could put this money towards something else very easily.
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I don't see 'doom and gloom' for the coin market. Hey, something got us started, and we didn't have any where near the influences kids have today (advertisers on tv, Littleton ads in every magazine, the mint coming out with so many different interesting things (we had mint or proof sets only)).....This hobby will continue. Antiques, now there is a market in the doldrums. Just try and sell some crystal or furniture, This generation wants stuff in their house from Ikea.
As for gold and silver.....We owe twenty trill......Some day, and it may not occur during our lifetime, our money will be no good. Those old, antique stores of value, gold and silver, will be the only money. It sure beats 'crypto-currency'.......People will want to feel it in their hand......
Please comment in an upbeat manner. I don't want to be right !!!!
I attended Summer FUN yesterday, and was pleasantly surprised to see it fairly busy. I was hoping to have time to BS with some of my dealer friends, but everyone was relatively busy buying and selling, and dealers I spoke to indicated it was turning out better than the (low) expectations they had.
But of course you are right on many things you stated. Younger people don't seem attached to 'things', other than their cell phones, and their experiences. Will this always be the case? I don't know. I enjoy collecting and owning coins, but do so with pure discretionary income, with ~5% of my net worth tied up in them. I have been stacking silver bullion the past year or so, buying rounds and bars, dollar cost averaging as it continues to drop. I bought more 10 oz bars at $165 ea yesterday. Long term hedge, and it will always have industrial uses, most currently in the solar/photovoltaic industry, which is booming world wide. It's been over $40/oz twice in my lifetime, and that was without the US dollar collapsing or worldwide panic.
Stock market, buy high like it is now.
Coins, sell now at their lows.
I think you have it in reverse.
I am still looking for these bargains on the coin market.... I think the complaints are more that coins are not selling as fast these days... Prices have not yet been impacted - at least from a buyers perspective.....Well, of course it could be that I am looking at the wrong market level...Cheers, RickO
The reality is none of know for certain what will happen in the future. All markets with historical context tend to be cyclical, but eventually every market reaches it's termination and ceases to exist.
Collecting coins has been around hundreds of years, but primarily due to their historical perspective. My belief the 18th and 19th Century nice coins will remain a popular, and the MS 70 20th/ 21st Century coins will go the way of stamps and baseball cards.
Once the stock market takes another dump (within 5 years I believe you'll see a lot of asset transfers to rare coins again.
A hobby is different from an investment. Giving up investing in coins because you don't see a good future financially is an emotionally disconnected decision that comes to the conclusion that it's not a good investment. Giving up a hobby is more difficult, since you'd be giving up something that has given you pleasure in the past, and aside from the money part, probably still does.
If you're looking for kids getting together to go through change to find Indian cents as a sign that the hobby is healthy, you won't find it. Instead, look at major coin shows on Saturdays and talk to the kids that are there as part of the YN activities that have been set up. Sure, not everyone is excited about coins, but there is still a lot of enthusiasm. Many of them are being exposed to the hobby for the first time and while they're at the show. They will get to see cheap coins from around the world from places they never new existed (some no longer do). They will get to see big, heavy, expensive coins. They'll get to see coins that have specific events in history attached to them. They'll get to see coins that are hundreds and thousands of years old. Hopefully, they'll get to see the enjoyment of the hobby (walk them quickly past the tables occupied by crackout dealers grumbling incessantly about bad grades). Talk to the kids and their parents about their experience. Tell them about other resources, shows, and clubs that might be available to them. Give them a simple bit of advice to prevent a beginner from being burned.
I'm convinced that people are either born as collectors (in general) or not. While you won't be able to make the people without the collector gene into coin collectors, good experiences will plant a seed in the collectors that will be much more likely to take root, even if it's not until they're adults.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
Grading is subjective. There are only 2 grades. Fine and refine.
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My gut says you want me to tell you coins are a great investment. I can't. I love coins and collecting them , but they are a poor financial tool in my opinion.
Coin collecting on the other hand is in great shape. Never before have we had such a wealth of information, books , coin pictures and depth of choices. I can remember when my issue of coin world and a few fliers from dealers accounted for my entire link to coin collecting.
I too live in a household where I am the odd fish that loves coins. I base little of the future of coin collecting on this. I live in a household of females who all think coin collecting is beyond boring. at least for now. consider this recent conversation though. My oldest daughter recently informed me that, "I always hated sour cream. now i love the stuff. Did they change how they make it?" "No", I replied, "Your tastes changed, that happens as you get older." the kids of today will also see their tastes change. They will, as most people do, develop a taste for knowing their past." Coins are a gate way drug. the fact you can find them online, trade photos with friends, and now learn tons more about them are all seeds for the future. My advise, "Lighten up".
If you buy coins like they are an investment, then that are.
If you buy coins because you like to look at cool coins, then you may not have coins that are an investment.
Coin collecting is a hobby nothing more nothing less. You'll win some, lose some if you come out even at the end. Well your OK.
noun
noun: hobby; plural noun: hobbies
1.
an activity done regularly in one's leisure time for pleasure.
"her hobbies are reading and gardening"
synonyms: pastime, leisure activity, leisure pursuit; sideline, side interest, diversion, avocation; recreation, entertainment, amusement
"writing poetry is just one of my hobbies"
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IMO, the market is just going to move more into coins with some historic or rarity interest.
"Run-of-the-mill" stuff is going away.
I don't think it will be as "investment" oriented, but the collectors who remain and any I see entering the hobby will, I think, tend to go for "better" coins compared to what might be popular now.
I've said this before. I better get off this one trick pony.
You must have missed all of the GC threads where consignors detail their results of getting less than 50% of wholesale. I don't know how much cheaper you think you can buy. If you as a buyer think these levels are too high, the market is in trouble. Those who feel they need/want to get out of coins should do so now while the getting is not a bad as it's going to be.
Thanks for selling me your coins at these prices. Please keep preaching gloom and doom. It's legalized stealing lately.
@djm..... Correct... I do not go to GC very often...Auctions usually go high...Perhaps I should revisit this. Cheers, RickO
Add in the 10% eBay bucks promos that seem to come out every week.
You and I are obviously at different stages in life. I need to keep an income flow in order to survive. Coins are the thing that can be disposed of no matter what the price. To quote numerous other threads "Don't die with coins in your possession, you are only causing problems for your heirs"
If you can afford to buy and hold waiting for a market turn around, then I wish you success in your endeavors.
It is not about buying and holding, it IS about buying right in the first place.
If you buy right, then you should be able to sell what you just bought next week for a profit.
Of course this is a different scenario. If one needs to survive, you do what you have to do.
In my 52 years, it has been my experience that when the sky is falling, buy, buy, buy. The sky is falling right now and guess what I have been and am doing?
Who are you going to sell it to at a profit? If the person didn't buy it at the price you bought it for, why would they pay more to buy it from you? Your statement makes no sense unless you are ripping off widows and orphans!
I buy undervalued coins from ebay usually with horribly photos.
I then take fantastic photos, flip and make a profit.
I have been using this formula for years and built a business on it.
Random ramblings:
For the past 200 years bad markets have been followed by good markets in irregular patterns. When fear sets in, people tend to sell low and buy high. It is intellectually and emotionally VERY difficult to fight this natural response.
Young people have never been the lifeblood of the expensive side of coin collecting. Old people with disposable income who need a sedentary hobby will always be the demographic.
What's hot and what's not is always changing.
Those who tend to do well when they dispose of a collection are often those who aren't necessarily trying to. They have a great eye and collect only the best. I don't see this changing.
If you spend money you can't live without on coins (or any other hobby), you might get burned. Coins do not pay quarterly or yearly dividends.
It is possible that the human tendency to collect things is dying off with the new generation, but I doubt it.
It's possible that the market will never recover and that we're in a slow slide to some new normal, but I doubt it.
It's possible that humanity will entirely abandon physical currency and change, but I doubt it.
Grading standards are not stable. Neither are human preferences. Toning wasn't always cool. The appreciation of "originality" is still evolving.
If you own one of the ten best X today, you'll still own one of the ten best X tomorrow regardless of the number on the insert label or number of stickers on the slab.
I've been collecting coins since 1967, as a young teenager I drooled at pictures of 1914-D and 1909-S VDB Lincolns in magazines, fantasizing if one day I would actually see or own one.
Those are great memories........I can not part from them. They are a part of me.
So are my coins.
I've watched the good ones I bought years ago double and triple in price. I've watched them fall also. There are coins I have that I can tell you where they came from..........like when I searched Auntie Barbs penny jar and found the 1911-D UNC brown Lincoln. That is only one memory.
The coins I have define me. They are a part of growing up. They were there then....and now.
There is a special place in my heart where Markets, prices, grades and margins mean NOTHING. And sentimentally, there is a place in me where my years as a collector and my coins mean EVERYTHING.
Just my personal story, folks.
I feel better now.
Pete
Well said Pete!
I feel better now also knowing there is someone else who feels exactly as I do about my coins.
A: The year they spend more on their library than their coin collection.
A numismatist is judged more on the content of their library than the content of their cabinet.
What has bothered me lately is the poor modern coin decisions being made at the US Mint. They need to get someone in there that knows where demand is. Almost no one wanted expensive gold coins with 100 and 200 year old dead President's wives on them. Seriously, do they really think that is what most people are interested in these days? Truly pathetic how out of touch they are.
The baseball coins were quite popular but they didn't understand the potential. If the US Mint wants to get the ball rolling again they need to make modern coins, ......modern. Over a reasonable period of time mint a coin for every baseball, football and basketball team with logos out of silver and the demand for modern coins will skyrocket. Then it is my belief that many of these new collectors, will see the value and pleasure from other quality classic coins as they grow older and get into the history and quality that keeps this hobby going long term.
My US Mint Commemorative Medal Set
The Canadian mint has already done this for the Canadian Baseball and Hockey teams. There maybe licensing issues if the Canadian coins were done under agreement with the NHL and MLB. It would also look like a me too rather than a new idea.
Of course it is not a new idea, but I still think it would generate much needed new and younger interest in the hobby. If they keep minting coins that are basically the same, or if all they can do is vapor blast off all the detail and make 5 different finishes and 3 mint marks of the same PC design then even I will quit buying them and I have been actively collecting for 52 years.
My US Mint Commemorative Medal Set
You're story and the feelings you have are nothing new.
Folks have been saying this for at least the past 50 years and look where we are.
All those old farts that are collecting coins, probably collected girls, records, tapes, CD's when they were young.
Neither of my kids collect although one keeps what I give him.
Does it bother me?
Not in the least because both my brother and I experienced the same collecting situations as kids yet, I collect and he does not.
Does that bother me?
Not in the least since I know that not EVERYBODY can be a coin collector nor have an appreciate for that which we spend so much time with.
Don't worry so much.................
The name is LEE!
Believe it or not, many young kids collect "Magic" cards that they use in tournaments and to play with their friends. They buy, sell and trade them with cards selling in the hundreds if it is the right card. I would not say this generation does not like to collect rather many people don't understand or know what they collect
Magic:_The_Gathering
Man, this place is a real bowl of cherries lately. So many negative threads about coin collecting. I have never bought so much in all of my life. Mostly civil war tokens and medals, but close enough to "coins" just the same. Round metal discs.
The market may be down, but if you don't get swept up in all of the pessimism, a down market is exactly the right time to expand ones collection.
Dead Cat Waltz Exonumia
"Coin collecting for outcasts..."
We can quote the past till the cows come home, times have changed so drastically that any rules we apply now is toast. I have a few interest and one is flipping stuff. I buy out estates, work a half dozen or so estate sales a year and pretty much see the bulk of what John and Mary American buy and sell. Frankly I find the trends amazing. The Y Gen are minimalists.
I live in the Pacific Northwest so I don't know about anywhere else, but if you want nice art, antiques, furniture, stereo's, collectibles, etc you can get it here for next to nothing now, I mean nice stuff. One example, I picked up a beautiful roll top desk with a upper cabinet for $275, the people I bought it from paid $1800.00 Why? nobody wants the stuff anymore. This is not a trend, it is here to stay. Does this apply to coins? I don't know other than as a whole the collectible trends tend to follow each other and I will bet my last widget that the biggest permanent change in coin collecting is coming soon. Stay tuned