State Of Play (Condition Of Numismatics In Australia)

I think part of the problem is the changing attitudes of dealers. I started collecting when I was 6, I would visit the Sydney dealers all throughout my youth and most of them were very catering, eager to share knowledge, Bob Jaggards and Barry Sparkes even gave freebies from time to time. These freebies cost so little yet brings the industry a lifetime of rewards.

This is something I try to continue, whenever clients come with their kids I give them freebies, usually a PCGS graded MS later date and a subscription to the Blue Sheet. They'll look up the coin, find out its value ($10 is still a lot for a kid these days right?) and hopefully learn a thing or two about our hobby.

But when I see dealers at coin shows these days, they don't care for their youngest clientele, a $5 transaction might not do much for them when they're spending $2000 on a table, but they need to see the long term picture.

I agree totally with what everyone is saying.

HOW I STARTED: My dad got me into coin collecting when I was young. He game me an old folder with lots of PURPLE Pennies...why were they purple? Because a huge majority of them were cleaned. There were two nice coins in there though, a 1925 in gF & a 1946 in F (but cleaned). The entire set was pretty much only Pennies. When he traveled overseas in my teen years, he'd bring back some current UNC sets from Cyprus (if he went), otherwise he'd bring back some circulated coins from the countries he travelled to. When we travelled in '92, I held onto lots of circulated coins. On that trip I also got a Disney Dollar note from Disneyland, which is still in my collection. I got an Aussie 1994 $1 from a press machine at the show.
More recently I'm unsure of how I got back into coin collecting, but I went to the ACT years ago with my ex. Would've been around 2001-2003? I guess. At that time I must have purchased a 20th edition Renniks, which was published in 2002. Then I don't know what happened...
In around 2008 I started looking through notes at work. I held on to quite a few. I had some money so I could hold onto notes whilst also buying other bits & pieces along the way. A paypal account allowed me to sell stuff & utilise the money earnt to spend on this new born addiction. I met some of the right people & got some awesome deals.

DEALERS: I guess the biggest issue with the industry has already been said. A lot of the dealers are only interested in what they had probably been interested in the past. They're probably only interested in those things because there lies a great margin for profit. Maybe they have the attitude of getting the dollar in the pocket then & there rather than gaining long-term customers who are younger, who will potentially invest so much more in the future. Then again, I guess the average age of the sellers isn't exactly young (apart from the guys who took over business from their parents/families).

THE SHOWS: As for the shows. A lot of old people are there. Some tend to have really bad hygeine/body odour. With all that money in coin collecting you'd think they could take pride in themselves at least once. There was a family or two where the parents wouldn't have been older than 35y.o. I honestly don't really see many younger people at the shows in Melbourne. I'm in the 20-30 age bracket...for a couple more months.

MARKETING: What can someone do? The only people who should really be trying to push a marketing aspect into coin collecting should be the RAM & The Perth Mint (TPM). How could they do that? Through marketing via Australia Post, who generally sell a huge majority of the RAM & TPM released sets. Make the marketing catchy & appealing to the youth of today. Start again with some cheap issues. How about releases under the price of $5. Maybe have a limited colour set that has intense viral marketing where you could have a 5c issue for $1. A 10c issue for $2. A 20c issue for $3. A 50c issue for $4. A $1 issue for $5 & a $2 issue for $6.
Target the youth of today...one with a lipstick on it, one with an iPod on it, one with a hot car on it, one with a question mark on it? Who knows? Anything goes?

That's just my view.

I had a good experience with a dealer last year: I was shopping for coins with a younger family member and the dealer showed this family member an ancient Greek (I think) coin and said how fascinating it was that the coin had come so far. I think this was done more to keep this family member amused while I looked but I thought it was a nice thing to do.

Awesome idea Peter.
Something I was thinking about this evening was why not do like a buy back competition. Where kids can get started by noodling through coins & as an example, the kids look through 5 cent pieces & get paid to find 1972's or something like that. Where it'll be beneficial for the kids to really get into their searching skills, they can stat their results (with a mathematical chart). I.e, the amount of each coin of each year they find in a table. & the bonus of a bit of extra pocket money. Even moreso, on top of that, they could do an assigment on the animal on the coin. That'd obviously be targeted towards primary school kids.
Hmm...just another idea.

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You might be on to something there