Regards To Your Coin Collection, What Is Your Greatest Fear?

In the scenario I previously described it's not like the prices would just drop for you to buy up the coins you want and then have them become valuable again. If coins become obsolete like stamps are now, prices will drop and stay there. Your existing collection loses much value and your new purchases will have very little potential. This can't be anything, but bad.

Coins aren't really practical as art as far as being able to enjoy them as such daily. They are a part of history, but don't really tell us much about that history. Yeah, yeah, I know ancients often will have emperors or the like depicted, but for the most part my Washington set or whatever doesn't represent history to me.

My point is that we collect coins mostly because they have value and because they are a very logical thing to collect, with them being dated and well documented and ordered.

If coins become obsolete, people won't collect them. If people don't collect them, they will lose value...a lot of value, and money that we've worked hard for to put into them. I feel like if my coin collection just wastes away (value wise) in front of my eyes, a part of me will be dying with them. That is much scarier than the obscure possibility of a fire or theft.

My biggest fear is loss through confiscation.
Modern coins may become obsolete, but silver and gold coins are real money, and have been for thousands of years.

I'm sure that might be true to you, but I doubt that sentiment is shared by most coin collectors in absolute form as you seam to subscribe to.




I think you've misjudged my intentions, just as I have yours. The money I spend on coins is all just disposable. I never think of my collection as an investment and I would never sell them. After all, all the modern GEM BUs I've ever collected will never give me a good return and I don't care. As far as sentimentality, when I discovered that the circulated dimes and nickels I collected as a child 20 years ago were corroded and destroyed by their Whitman folders, I became furious and sad and would have certainly traded their safety for their much more valuable high end BU Dansco cousins.

I really agree with all of what you've written, but whether it's a character flaw or not I don't know, but I feel like my coins also have to at least maintain their numismatic value.

You mentioned that you don't intend to have your heirs sell them either. Even if your immediate heirs don't, someone down the road will. Maybe it doesn't bother you, but it does bother me to think that nobody cares about my coins enough to pay much for them.

All that is merely a personal way of seeing things, and less an agenda for profit. The real question is, will it happen? Will coins lose value because the hobby died due to coins becoming obsolete. So far, some think yes and others think no.

A contradiction, if you think about it.

The truth is, once I quit worrying about what they were worth, I started enjoying my coins a lot more. I agree, this does not work for everyone, but it has served me quite well.


Not my problem.

If my heirs do not appreciate the sentimental value, and only want to cash them in, then they deserve what they get. The new owner will probably have some decent coins for a super good bargain; I would much rather them have the coins than any unappreciative heirs.

Yes it is.

When I say disposable, I mean the literal sense, not the economic sense (as in "disposable income"). If the money is disposable, I do not care what happens to it; I could throw it in the waste bin and forget it existed. The money I spend on my coins is money that I can afford to lose, 100%. It is not an investment, it is not savings, it is not a worst-case-scenario rainy day fund. As Conder said, it is pure entertainment.

Worrying about the coin maintaining its value means one does care what happens to it and the money spent on it. That is, the money spent on that coin was not truly disposable. Saying the money is disposable while showing concern for the maintenance of its value is a contradiction. He cares about the performance of the money spent on coins, I do not; so his money is not truly disposable (however, it may have been from his disposable income, which is something completely different).

My greatest fear is that the good friends I regularly see at the coin shows will continue to have health problems and eventually stop attending. I have learned a great deal from them and look forward to seeing them at the shows. Many of the regulars have health problems even though they are only about 10-20 years older than me. Talking to them, buying coins from them, and showing them my latest acquisitions is a big part of the fun in coin collecting for me.

I think that perhaps twenty to thirty years from now, definitely in my lifetime, it's very possible that coins for general circulation will be obsolete but I believe that the US Mint will still produce uncirculated and proof examples for collectors and in far fewer numbers. Don't know exactly how that will play out. Coins may even become more valuable as "hard assets". Maybe the new upcoming steel pennies will outlive the "Zincolns" since many of those will be corroded down to dust!

Automatic spell-check is simultaneously the best and worst thing ever.

I corrected my original post to avoid misleading anyone further.