Digital currency and coin collecting
Bankerbob56
Posts: 1,402 ✭✭✭
With the trend towards digital payment systems will cash/coin become obsolete and therefore will our collections become basically worthless?!?
What we've got here is failure to communicate.....
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Collecting will continue, in one form or another
Mr_Spud
Agree. Something being obsolete hasn't hurt petroliana collecting at all. Just watch Barrett Jackson or Mecum when it comes to old gas pumps, signage, oil cans, etc.
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Let’s assume it happens. It would only mean no new coin/currencies being produced. People would just buy/sell numismatic and currency items via digital currency. And there would likely also be plenty of trading.
From the threads I have read Cash was King at FUN. I am guessing many don't like leaving a digital footprint.
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Maybe in large cities. But I could not imagine it in the near future due to government distrust. (and taxes)
Yes
Seems to me anytime something goes extinct the value goes up.
Rome is long gone, but I would sure like an Eid Mar.
Interest in coins will fall if their use ends. What you really need to worry about is how much will well connected types be able to skim off of every digital transaction you make.
The use of coins has already all but ended. But I still don’t understand how you come up with that assumption that the collectibility will fall as well.
For example, the last cent was produced, and now there’s a craze to collect pennies. But only because people still use coins about one percent that is.
Forget about today. Look twenty or so years down the road.
That's definitely not true. Porcelain dolls, Hummels, codpieces...
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There is a current, likely temporary, craze speculating on price. I will bet a significant amount of money that 2025 cents will be much cheaper in 5 years.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
What? That sounds like square blocks, trying to fit into round holes. Coins have been around since I don’t know forever.
Name something that’s been around forever that is now gone and people have no interest?
You said goes extinct not is ancient. [700 BC, by the way ]
Codpieces went extinct 200 years ago. Powdered wigs? Wooden buggies?
There's a lot of things that don't exist anymore and no one cares about. Phone cards. Postcards are collapsing. Reel-to-reel tapes.
I'm not saying coins would disappear. I already stated the opposite. But I am saying that it is simply not true that the disappearance of something from society automatically makes people want it more. Even if you want to exclude all of my examples.
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Most all of those things you mentioned are still collectible on some level albeit a museum or a card signed by a president.
I don’t even know what a cod piece is, but it doesn’t sound very utilitarian.
OK, I looked it up. I’m not even gonna comment lol.
There are two halves tot he OP's question.
Yes, eventually. It might have to wait until the "cash is king" crowd die out, but assuming a New Dark Age doesn't suddenly descend upon us, then yes, eventually physical money will become obsolete.
Worthless? No. Coin collecting will diminish, receding into the same "oddball eccentric hobby" currently occupied by people who collect oil lamps, swords, and other antiquities or obsolete technologies. But for coins to actually "become worthless" would require the arrival of some kind of socialist utopia where everyone has everything they could need or want and therefore every physical thing has no value and is therefore "worthless". In a free-market society, antiquities are always worth something to someone.
Worth less? As in, worth a smaller amount of money than it is now, or (perhaps more relevantly), having price increases that do not keep up with inflation and so the actual value of the coins de-facto goes backwards, even if the numbers themselves don't? This is a more likely scenario. A collapse in the use of cash can only result in a collapse in the number of new coin collectors. As the older generations die out or otherwise cease collecting, this shrinking pool of collectors can only have a negative effect on demand, which in turn can only have a negative effect on price.
Coins have one disadvantage, in terms of the whole long-term supply-and-demand - they are long-lasting. Vinyl records degrade and decompose, paper and plastic objects disintegrate - but coins (with the exception of Zincolns and similar self-destructive examples) tend to hang around. Even natural disasters like flood and fire will damage a coin, but not destroy it. This long-term persistence helps to keep the "supply" side of the equation unusually high, which in turn will lead to lower prices. To stop this from happening, you would need the government to step in and actively withdraw and destroy the obsolete coins.
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
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I’m going to the Houston coin show Friday. Maybe I could use some of these points to help get a better deal. 😆
If I buy anything (aside from precious metals) ultimately it will finally come down to something that I find pleasing rather than something I thought I could profit from or worry about losing money on. Big, shiny, possibly colorful, historical, and with a higher grade.
Bartering for services [which preceded coinage, BTW]. Nobody barters for services anymore. Try calling out a plumber and then try to pay him/her with vegetables that you grew.
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Eventually coins will just be displays in a museum... until they are stolen and then melted down.
Just remember...the advice you receive on a site is worth every bit of what you paid for it.
Good answer, although it is (trading) still used sparsely even in the coin business.
It makes you wonder how would this transaction from physical to digital could be completed. Especially with the different countries and values.
Reminds me of a long-lost friend of mine who was the barter king who basically rebuilt his house trading printers and supplies for virtually every part of the house that he needed.
I'm not sure what you mean. The change from physical to digital is already in place, it's just not complete. Banks don't ship boxes of paper checks and bags of money anymore. They settle accounts digitally. The same with credit cards. You pay digitally, the processor settles accounts digitally, and you likely settle your CC bill digitally.
This also happens internationally with automatic currency exchange. It's been going on for 50 years already. It just hasn't reached 100% yet.
The concerns with digital are less about the process and more about potential abuse of the process.
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