What hurts the coin collecting hobby

TreasureHunter

TreasureHunter

Well-Known Member
Came across this video - strong points made:



There's a profusion of poor quality coins with terribly high price. Investing in them is a waste of time, as their price tends to go down over time.

Countless themes for coins (e.g. Star Wars and Star Trek), huge mintage... they're being sold like donuts.

Indeed, it's not like 20-30 years ago. Nowadays it's a very expensive hobby and what's on offer is nearly worthless. This is why I think many of us tend to avoid numismatic coins.

You pay a huge price in the beginning and 20 years later it will be worth the same price (or even less!!!), because every buffoon at every street corner has one...
 
There is not a problem with coin collecting, the problem is that you and I do not have the money to actually invest in coins where the metal it is made of is of little consequence. There are tiers in which we move. We are down there with investors that buy Royal Doulton etc. The only profit we make is when metal prices move up. What we buy is not particularly scarce. The only way to make them scarce is to buy them all and melt them down. Good luck with that.
 
They are making "a dime a dozen" coins that are at most as good as any coin in your pocket. Junk.

Countless coins are rolling out on the bandwagon. It's like fast food with countless additives and flavorings.

Every time I go abroad I go to local coin shops. What do I find? I bunch of local coins (ordinary uncirculated or almost uncirculated coins) pakcaged and sold at 10x the price and, countless "families" of coins of flowers, birds, various events, soccer players and Star Wars...

It's worse than collecting fake stamps!

I call them "collector's fiat".

This is why collecting old genuine coins has a lot more value to it. Not just financial value, but also historical, emotional, cultural, aesthetical value.
 
I don’t think the popular coin market is any different than the fashion market or toy market. There are some things that will hold and gain value but most will become basically worthless or in the case of coins their base spot value.

If you are collecting modern coins thinking they are going to hold value then you better know your market well. Any other approach is a dream.

Any real coin collectors have to be buying coins that have an established value like the 1930 penny (preferably proof!)

Complaining that your mass market items are not holding value is simply naive in its thinking and approach imho.
 
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Now I am pissed....I tried to outbid him with 11,600 with 10 seconds to go but my internet crashed at the last second..
 
If you're collecting modern stuff collect it because you like it. Don't expect an ROI. If you want to collect something interesting then learn about an older coin series with limited mintage and grade rarity. In time if you understand grading and get to know the market around that series you may see ROI. If not, you'll certainly put together a kick ass collection.
 
I think one of thing is hurting coin collecting is spot price.As Court jester would say it is/was going sideways for a long time and people just lost interest(crypto came along and other things).The other thing is mints,generally just pumping out too many so called "collectable" coins with "low" mintage.Low mintage for me is 500 and under. You need to know why are you collecting,what do you wanna collect,know the market a little bit and finally know when to sell.
 
What is hurting the coin collecting hobby the most is lack of new collectors. The younger folks today, don't care about coin collecting like in the past. The coin shows I attend as a dealer each year have grown smaller and smaller attendance-wise.

Some of that I believe has been falling PM prices and excitement since 2011, but I believe there is more of a loss in interest because these younger folks would rather do things on their smart phones, computers, or video games. Online coin stores have hurt show attendance too, but not as much as lack of demand in general.

As the old collectors die off and their collections hit the market, there is not sufficient buyer demand to buy them up. I don't consider metal "stackers" like myself to be coin collectors per se in a numismatic sense. By collector I mean buying coins because of their value without regard to the metal composition.

I have been able to acquire a few ancient coin collections (really high quality stuff although not extremely "rare") over the past couple of years at about 25% of the going retail prices. Since ancients are a true "collector" market (nobody is buying them because of their metal value, etc), I consider them a good gauge of coin collector interest. What got me interested in them originally was a knowledgeable dealer friend telling me how bad that market has become price wise. I like to buy cheap so I'm glad I became aware of this. But if the trend continues (lack of new collector interest), I may be selling these at a loss in 10 years?

My numismatic coin collector friends have told me premiums on old US collector coins have fallen in a general sense as well. There will always be the coins that are currently en vogue and bringing high $$$, but in general the trend is way down.

Like anything else it is supply and demand plain and simple. Maybe some millennial youtuber will start a channel about coin collecting to brainwash these younger folks to think it is cool and the "in thing"?
 
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its no longer a trend, those dealers with high mark up to survive but with low sales volume
not many people are really into coins anyway, premium will continue to be eroded for sure
the in thing, batteries bikes, they cost a fortune, like burning house down
games play cards electronic version
 
Jim4silver said:
Maybe some millennial youtuber will start a channel about coin collecting to brainwash these younger folks to think it is cool and the "in thing"?
Click to expand...
That is a crazy good idea...........it is all about how it is all presented. You need fresh blood to create fresh concepts...
It is not about money that is for sure. The young folk will not bat an eyelid when they spend $$$$$$ on a new phone. They pay hundreds of dollars for tokens on these online games. Thats right, paying for things that don't actually exist. Maybe thats what we need to do. Create a fantastic online game where a players strength is measured by the amount of real coin held in official depositories. They have to buy real coin.....instead of fake coin. Every silver coin will have an official strength. Pandas, Kookaburras, Maples etc are 1000 points. From there it goes by relative abundance.
 
Jim's nailed it. The issue is demand. Older stackers remember a time when silver was money and saw the price go very high when the Hunt brothers tried to corner the market. As they grew older, they could manage internet but when they hit their later years, the pundits being a prime example, they could not abstract to new change like they used to.

There aren't many new silver stackers because of the greater convenience and security of digital tokens as well as much greater potential for quick profit. Silver has an expensive difference between buy and sell for raw bullion product. It is cumbersome and demonetised with no near term prospect of becoming a trade unit unlike blockchain.

Silver crashed in the GFC and only several years later hit the peak, on speculation. The industrial case use for silver should expand to see some demand action. The money supply seems to have expanded by several zeros and silver remains at half the price in AUD from its peak in 2011.
 
Jim4silver said:
What is hurting the coin collecting hobby the most is lack of new collectors. The younger folks today, don't care about coin collecting like in the past. The coin shows I attend as a dealer each year have grown smaller and smaller attendance-wise.
Click to expand...

Perth Mint and Royal Mint have very clearly shifted their focus in the last 5 years from numismatic to bullion coins. Collecting silver has become very affordable and very popular with younger folks hence the premiums and pretty good ROI. Unlike say the high risk of proof coins, the risk of losing on bullion is very low. And there is no GST or CGT in most jurisdictions. Clearly it is about being affordable <$500 because the premiums are mostly on silver not gold. Bullion is definitely hitting a better supply and demand(desirability) balance for collecting although I'm skeptical whether this is sustainable and how much head rooom it has to grow.
 
jultorsk said:
Afraid so... :eek:
https://www.eater.com/2017/4/17/15327054/mcdonalds-mulan-szechuan-teriyaki-sauce-ebay-rick-and-morty
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/man-makes-more-11500-after-10225882

A British man is lovin’ it after making more than £11,500 by stumbling across a pair of vintage limited edition sauces from McDonald’s .

The eBay seller, from Ipswich, found the pair of Asian inspired sauces while cleaning out a “really old car”.
Click to expand...

That's mental (collecting vintage sauces). It's so totally ill.

Years ago eBay banned people selling pictures/photos of objects. Many fraudsters were tricking buyers into bidding for "photos of this and that", you name it... they put a picture of it on eBay with some tiny mention somewhere that it's actually a picture, nothin' more!
 
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