Is The Numismatic Community Growing Or Shrinking?

I always thought that coin collectors have been successful at getting the next generation interested by sites like this one. There are 10s of thousands of people visiting sites like this one.

I think I may be biased. Except in the very earliest days of my collecting, I have only ever dealt on the internet, buying from ebay and auction houses. I only 'meet' other collectors online, so for all I know there may be many thriving shops and younger collectors I have never encountered. I've never attended a coin club - the nearest to me being 40 miles away and I prefer not to use my 'family time' of an evening that way.

Certainly ebay is full of coins and many sell. So maybe collecting is thriving .. but as austrokiwi says, in a different way from years gone by? I don't know. I've only been collecting for 10 years and, as I say, only via the internet.

We basically live in a lazy society. People do more and more things on line in the internet all the time. And companies stress for them to do so. Stocks are voted on through the internet. Bills are payed via the internet. Shopping of almost anything is being done via the internet. You loose instructions for a device and you can download new ones via the internet. And with coins, you could find almost any coin you want, need, desire on the internet.
With todays gas prices to even drive to a coin show, if to far, could cost more than the coins you purchase. And companiese like UPS are growing daily due to all this on line shopping.
Yet in defense of coin shows, it still is always better to see exactly what your buying and not hoping and praying that what you get in the mail is what you bought. If not lost in mail, that is. Very difficult to haggle prices on the internet and if it's bidding, not a chance to lower the price. At a coin show, I never pay what is listed or asked. I always haggle the price down to what I think it should be. And one of the biggest things I like about a coin show is once you get to know a dealer, you can ask for them to look for something for you.
Yet do to distances, simplicity, lazyness, you can't beat on line shopping.

All-

Is the numismatic community growing or shrinking? As mentioned here and elsewhere, the bullion business appears to be booming- the numismatic business, perhaps not so much (except for the high-end stuff- there will always be someone with deep enough pockets for the exceptional coins). I'd say it is true that more and more numismatic sales occur online- perhaps they've eclipsed person-to-person sales completely. I myself have bought most of my "serious" pieces (higher-end coins most closely tied to one of my collection's themes) online only because no one brick and mortar store would or could have the selection.

That said, even with the uptick in online sales (it's really been going on for over ten or fifteen years) I'd have to assume that the community itself is shrinking. This is directly tied to the economy- how many kids (or parents) have an extra $10 to blow on inexpensive coins that everyone realizes will never be worth more than what you pay for them? Likewise, the opportunity to physically encounter junk bins and counters full of oddities is shrinking. While it is true that you can find one of just about anything on the internet if you look hard enough, one of the primary joys of collecting for me was to come across something I never even knew existed by finding it in a junk bin or stashed away in a box. Now, junk bins are less and less profitable compared to bullion and other premium numismatic items and so are disappearing. I mean, as a kid, how excited can you get at seeing a picture of something versus "discovering" it yourself and turning it over in your hands?

Further, while online sales are replacing many of the person-to-person transactions in numismatics, they also make the least expensive coins that much more inaccessible due to postage, auction fees, etc. It's simply impossible for a kid to buy $0.50 worth of coins online. I appreciate online sales, to be sure, but call me old-fashioned. I enjoy the *experience* of going to the coin shop (much like going to a movie theater)- chatting with the owner and other customers, perusing stock that is interesting but unrelated to my collections, and simply asking questions and learning from people who know more than I do.

Finally, also due to the power of the internet, the world is full of a bazillion more things vying for kids' attention than it was a generation ago. In my little town 30 years ago you could buy baseball cards or... baseball cards. There *was* a junk shop run by an older couple that I would frequent- they mostly sold coins and antique bottles, but even then most kids wouldn't have been caught dead in there (I was different, obviously). Today they roll out new movies, pokemon cards, video games, etc. etc. virtually on a daily basis for the *exact purpose* of sucking up kids' allowances.

Again, I'm not trying to be a cranky old dude- I'm not saying all this is bad, just different. It's simply gotten harder for coins to compete for interest with kids these days...

cheers,
tbg

TGG I think your criticism of the internet is fair. For all the things that its great for, buting inexpensive coins like you mentioned is not one of them. I also think youre dead on about the economy and people having less money to spend though ebay sales seem to be pretty healthy. It does look like some pieces have come down in price over the last few years as a result which could make it a great time to buy.

To answer the is it growing or shrinking question I think it would depend on how you define the community. Does one need to be an active consistent purchaser to be considered part of it? I think it would be fair to say that the number of active consistent buyers is probably down from say 05 when everything was great, but there are a good number of people who stay active learning about things even if they dont have the current funds to be buying them.

Great conversation, I'll throw my 2 cents (no pun intended) in, I'm in my mid-20's, and I actually see coin collecting as growing... I started collecting when I was real young with my father, and had a decent collection by the time went to college... Well, when you're that age and have no money, one of the first things to go is your coin collection, and to make a little extra money, I sold off all my coins on ebay. Turns out, I did real well, and as Jimmy mentioned, I realized that I could make a little extra money on the weekends flipping a handful of coins a week online. After college, and finally having a good source of income, I went back to (re)building my collection. I have found quite a few of my friends took up collecting around this time, usually starting by putting some money into bullion and getting sucked into the collecting aspect of it. I have to meet with many people for my buisness, and many, many times, when chatting with other young/youngish professionals (those 35 and under), I've found quite a few who are avid coin collectors or at least dabble along with accumulating buillion. I just think that the way younger collectors get their coins is completely different than the older generation, and that even though the numbers are growing, the older collectors do not see the younger collectors who don't try to make their collecting into a social event

Same here! I was very fortunate in that when I went to university, the Government (UK) gave us a grant. I was living at home at the time and spent chunks of money on lithographs. I wish I'd bought coins instead!