Worthless Mint Products?

Regardless, it's still a great way to teach kids about the states, the national parks, and get them into a hobby all at the same time. My grandsons can't wait to put an AU state coin in their books. I'd also bet some of our more youthful forum members, who may be on a tight budget, feel the same way. "Loose Lips, Sink Ships."

Interesting...

I have counseled the Coin Collecting merit badge to nearly 50 scouts over the past year. Many of them had their own collections started before I started with them.

The newer coins aren't "over produced" - they are simply produced in the quantities needed for commerce, which has always been the case. They are just produced in larger quantities than greedy collectors and dealers can make immediate profit from...that's all.

Back in 1960 there were coins in circulation going back 75 years or more. It wasn't all that uncommon to find Barbers in change. Now we have people pulling brass cents out of change thinking they will somehow be shorted if they spend a cent with Two Cents worth of metal in it.

Simple truth is this - greed has gotten the best of a lot of people, and if there's not some immediate rarity or immediate profit to be made in something, it is considered 'worthless'. Wrong attitude, I think.

I have to agreed that younger people don't "collect" things as much. There's so much more to do today with free time. Hobbies, and collecting have been on the downturn. I'd even venture to say stamp collecting is all but dead except to the few hardcore collectors out there. If you tried to sell a block of random old stamps, you'd probably be offered %60 of face for them. You're better off using them for postage lol.

I also notice that most coin collectors are older. What's to say in another 30-50 years that coins don't fall off too? The one thing it has going for it, is that it's an "old money" type thing to collect. Many big coin collectors are amongst the highly privileged. Not many hobbies have 1-20 million dollar pieces. Bullion will always be bullion, but numismatic value would fall if the hobby falls.

gasman - That's actually the right attitude to have, and the attitude they intended to appeal to when they came out with all these different designs. The profiteering from coins was originally just for those who dealt in coins for a living - made the hobby possible for the collectors. Now the collectors have the internet and a different mind set about how to build a collection - not that they are wrong, it's just much more greedy than it had been in the past.

Bottom line - if you like what you are collecting and enjoying it, then DO it. Don't worry so much about what everyone else says about it - just DO it. If you like proof sets, collect them - and quit listening to the people who whine about having bought dozens of them just to lose money on them later. They obviously bought them at the wrong price trying to do something with them they shouldn't have been trying to do (because they didn't know what they were doing) and are sour because they lost where they thoguht they would gain.

Take a look around the Mint's website - NOWHERE on their site do they pedal the coins they sell as "investments" or as "money makers" - they just design coins and sell them. They just mint the coins we need for commerce. They profit from what they do because they are in the business of providing coins to this country - and to its collectors while there is a demand for such thing.

Your not really reading everything posted here at all. For example there are lots of people like me that never sell coins at all. I've been collecting for well over 60 years and never sold a coin. I've given many away to kids though. Just never sold any so no idea of what a profit in coins even means.
For Christmas I usually give a Proof and Uncirc set along with the latest Red Book to many people. HOPEFULLY they think of them as presents and for something to keep to remember me by. NOT something to make a few dollars from the sale of them. My way of thinking is doing that would be like trying to sell a cake your Mom made for your Birthday.
I give things for presents in hopes the people that get them think of them as presents, not something to sell the next day.
As to the values of Proof or Uncirculated sets from the Mint, just check out pages 335 and up in the Red Book and see how even in that overpriced listing many have gone down, down, down in value. So what?
It is really a shame when so many only think of this hobby as an invesetment. It is supposed to be FUN.

And for a LONG time they have been. When I joined my first coin club 35 years ago the average age was 55 years old. Now 35 years later the club is still the same size, most of the members that were there when I joined have died, and the average age is 55 years old. I'm a member of two other large local coin clubs and over the past thirty years they have increased in size and the average age in one has held steady at 54 years and the other has increased from 55 years to 56. You never see that many young collectors because most of them only collect for a short period. then their collecting goes dormant for years while they raise a family and start a career. Once the kids are grown and finances are easier (Money coming in and expenses paid down) the collecting bug comes back. This often happens in their forties and then they stay active as collectors for the next thirty ot forty years. SO you always see lots of older collectors and very few youngsters.

Coin collecting is kind of like shingles. You get exposed to the virus when you are young and have a brief outbreak, and then it comes back when your older and your resistance is down.

A lot of collectors get disappointed when they try to interest young people in collecting and it doesn't seem to take or they only collect for a short time and quit. The don't realize that the exposure they made today will pay off in some new serious collectors thirty years from now. And not every one exposed will come back. Maybe only one in five. You have to have the right inborn inclination. If they don't have it, nothing you can do will have more than a short term effect. If they do have it and they get the exposure, it is unlikely that they will not return to the hobby.

I gotta agree wholeheartedly with Conder101. Almost everyone I know that collects coins were exposed when youngsters, dropped the hobby while raising kids and such, and picked it back up as soon as life slowed down enough to enjoy stuff again.

I don't know, I collect to collect. Selling is something very difficult for me. I'm sure that in the grand scheme of things; after poles have shifted and the earth swallows me and all I own and calms again, some one will say, "What the heck is all this silver doing in this Sedimentary Rock?"