Will Coins Continue To Appreciate In Value?

Since Covid prices have increased a lot. I think more time and money brought many new people into the hobby.

Like Beanie Babies?

...and those "rare" MS-68 Ike dollars! I always chuckle a bit at condition rarity on common coins, but to each his/her own!

Brandmeister: Why do you think that coin shows are on the way out but not coin collecting? I think coin shows are great because of the superior convenience. I can easily visit multiple dealers in one place. If it hadn't been for the coin show, getting offers on the coins I was trying to sell would have required driving all over the place.

I'm aware that people buy and sell coins online, but I don't like that idea. At the coin show, I was able to hand the coins to the dealer, and the dealer was able to hand the coins back if I didn't want to accept the offer right away. There was no need to mail/ship anything and no need to get insurance on the coins. There's just so much less that can go wrong when buyers and sellers physically meet.

If I had been interested in buying coins, I would have asked each dealer how much he/she was charging for the coins on my wish list, and I would have been able to inspect the coins myself to verify the claimed condition of each one. Again, there's just so much less that can go wrong when buyers and sellers physically meet.

I can log onto ebay and view coin shops from all across the country. I can do that at my own convenience at any time of day or night, comparing quality and prices from the comfort of my couch. Most good stores take decent pictures, so I can examine the coins with much better detail and lighting than a loupe at a coin show. Many shops offer a full, no hassle refund on coin returns. When examining coins online, I have full access to historical sales prices on similar coins and all my reference websites and books. I can refer to them without any space or time pressure.

Online, I also do not have to navigate aisles packed with people, breathing the same air that might carry flu, COVID, or whatever other contagious junk is floating around that month.



If that's your starting point, then your remaining options are physical coin shops and physical coin shows.

I stand by my belief that online coin shops and ebay will be the preferred coin shopping method for everyone under 50 or 60 years old. As the old timers fade away, coin shows will also fade, except perhaps the huge ones like the World Fair of Money.

I can not argue against Brandmeister opinion. You have to remember that the younger generation weather good or bad prefers to shop on line and never leave their home. As the boomers get older and die off this will be come the way most shop. And it has already begun to happen.

A large driver of "where coin prices will go in the future" depends to a large part on what happens with coins themselves - will they remain a visible, viable part of the economy and in people's daily experiences, or will they become a curious anachronism like swords and oil lamps, relics of a bygone era with little to no practical function in modern society?

Coin collecting is popular because it's super-easy to "get started": all you need to do is sort through your change. That's how many of the "old guys" got their start as kids back in the previous century, and will continue to be the main "recruiting ground" for future coin collectors. A proportion of those fishing-coins-from-change collectors will go on to become those "spend big bucks on rare coins" collectors. But if coins essentially disappear from public view (if everyone goes cashless or if the dollar becomes so worthless that the only "cash" anyone normally uses is notes), that means fewer new collectors to replace those old ones. And that will inevitably lead to lower demand, and lower prices.

I've often said that one of the reasons I like collecting coins is that coins are a tangible continuum of history - they are one of the few ancient inventions that are still in use today. Suppose you were to travel back in time, kidnap a random Roman citizen, and dump them on a 21st century street. They'd be totally confused by everything they saw around them - the culture, the language, the fashion, the technology - but show them a coin, and they'd not only know exactly what it was, but roughly how to use it.

Sadly, unless something drastic happens with our modern culture, I think the 21st century is going to be the last where that first sentence in the above paragraph is going to be true. And "people who become interested in curious anachronisms" are always going to be smaller in number than "people who are interested in everyday objects".

I'm 75 and have collected coins since I was 7. In that entire time I have read countless letters to the editor about the need to get young people intrrested in the hobby, and here we are, still chugging along.
By the way Brandmeister, thanks for the anecdotal evidence about flying. Exactly one month from today I'll be on a 10 1/2 hour flight to Paris. Good luck to me I guess. Au revoir.