How Has The New Generation Changed The Game?

Gxseries summed it up perfectly I think, especially on point one. I'm in my early 20s and at most of the coin related events I go to, I'm usually the youngest by 2+ decades. I think the idea of it as a hobby is dying - most people my age who know I collect assume I do it for investment purposes (I am a collector, I have no interest in profit or selling).

I think part of the reason you dont SEE a lot of the younger collectors is also logistics. No car or limited driving means less of a chance to go to shows or shops. Plus, I've always thought of coin collecting as a bit of an introvert hobby (thus its appeal to me), so the folks who tend to collect would be less social than someone whose hobby is, say, golf or whatever, especially in a younger crowd. I know that I have a lot of social anxiety, which means the internet and websites like this are a godsend to folks like me. I get extremely anxious the first time I'm in a new shop. After a few times around the same person, I'm much more relaxed, but it is still the least enjoyable thing about this hobby to me. I'd much rather be at home CRHing or organizing or researching!

I'm in my mid thirties and pretty much any coin related thing I've attended I'm obviously on the lower end of the age scale. I teach for a living and any time I find out about one of my students (that would appreciate it) having a coin collection I usually give them a few low value but highly interesting coins to add to their collection, usually Roman or English copper. My way of encouraging them to keep going and also a great way of investigating history which is what originally got me into it.

I agree with many of the opinions for the reasons of decline that have been stated here.

Using myself and the people I know as a basis (not very scientific), I think the internet is potentially one reason it appears there are less collectors today. What I wonder is- are there really as few new collectors as it seems, or are the collectors collecting in a different way? I am 43...so I grew up without internet until my mid-late twenties. But I still prefer to shop for coins over the internet than to go to coin shows or coin shops. I can see much more variety much more quickly. I can compare facts and look up other prices. And as someone said earlier, being an introvert, I like not having to haggle. I never go into a coin shop or coin show and see the price of a coin anywhere near as low, or even competitive with what I can find online. And since I do not like to haggle, I rarely buy in person. Maybe (but probably unlikely) there are more collectors out there than we think-- they just aren't hitting coin shows and local shops as much as us older pre-internet people expect.

But I can also say that I don't know anyone young who is into coin collecting and I certainly haven't been able to pass the bug to any of my kids or anyone else in my family.

And I am only speaking for myself, but I think one of the problems is that we have too much variety out there for coinage. The variety might be great for getting really young people first involved...but for me it doesn't hold much interest. I don't enjoy digging through 50 different State Quarters and soon to be 50 different state park quarters and tons of different dollars to try to figure out if I have everything. I like the old Washington quarters because I had 50+ years of the same quarter to look at-- I just tried to find different dates and mintmarks. It just seemed more of a hunt. You could find worn quarters and they were still potentially worth keeping. Not very many ATB or State Quarters out there that are worn that anyone wants to put in their book. I'm not looking forward to the day in which we see 10 different dimes put out every year for ten years on end. I am coin variety fatigued. I like Kennedy and Roosevelt because they haven't changed.


For me it used to be fun to buy a mint set, a proof set and a silver proof set, once a year for a while and look at it with the kids. If I just tried to collect one example of each product the mint put out each year nowadays I would go broke in a single year.

Wow, I sort of went on a tangent, sorry. But the point I was trying to make is that maybe the way coins are collected might be changing enough that it makes it seem like it declining even more than it really is.

I am also in my early 40's got into after finding a Wheat penny in my change and looking it up. Too me it seam the younger generations are moving towards, varieties and errors collection. At my local coin club most older generation members collect for albums or being date complete and they buy silver eagles. In LCS I see older guys asking for dates in ms in slab and see younger guys with loupes picking threw the bargain buckets and asking to see dates of coins with know varieties. That whole time checking and searching there tablets.

I am 27, started seriously collecting when I was 25. At first I just wanted to stack as much silver as I could, then got into Morgan's and large cents. It seemed with each coin I was buying they were slowly getting older and older. Mainly because of the history behind the coins and the history of the times they were made during. My collection now mostly consists of foreign coins from the 18th and 19th centuries. My oldest coin to date is 1613.

Wow, them were the good ol' days. I wonder what collectors will say about this period in time years from now. It might go something like this......

When I was a child we could still get 95% copper pennies in change, and every once in a while you could get a clad Washington quarter. 1940-1950 nickels were everywhere. You could still find Eisenhower dollars at the bank if you asked....

What coins that are in circulation will not be in 20 years?

In 20 years all 95% copper pennies should be gone along with wheats. Clad Washington quarters? Nickels prior to 1964?