The Future Of Coin Buying

I do see someone trying computer grading again. That may be a year from now or 10 years from now but I think it is inevitable that it is tried again in some form or another. It probably won't be in this current market boom. People always say that it was tried and failed but that was years ago and technology marches on and will continue to do so.

The other thing that I see that has been developing and will continue to develop is collector to collector buying and selling. The venues are already in place, forums, ebay, etc and I think it will become a major way of buying coins especially in a down market.

As Stujoe said, computer grading could be a means of standardizing the grading field, but the software is gonna have to be goof-proof. The current TPGs will fight it every millimeter of the way.

It's possible coin purchasing could become more mainstream than it has been in the past. We are seeing some signs of non-collectors and disinterested persons having their coin awareness levels raised by such public issues as the State Quarter series (and the Wisconsin error) and, for better or worse, by Coin Vault on TV, among other media. I think many persons have come in from the cold into coin collecting via ebay due to the lousy state of the economy and stagnant stock market. Stocks are going nowhere, so people look for alternative investments and ebay provides a convenient and easy venue to acquire this alternative. (This is not to state that coins obtained on ebay are necessarily going to be good investments.)

I do NOT think we're gonna see an overnight rush into coin purchasing any more than we're gonna see a quick changeover from gas-powered to hybrid-type vehicles. Humans are too conservatively resistant to change and not easily persuaded to go into new ventures.

/crystal ball gazing.

Fred

If you like to know, there are vending machines that "sells" coins in both Australia and Japan. In Australia, if you are leaving the country, that is the Sydney International airport, there *IS* or rather "was" (just in case the machine gets removed) a vending machine which sells uncirculated sets. (I have to get a photo of that one day...) I don't remember the prices but I had to say I would be quite disappointed if I *HAD* to buy some coin sets that I forgot to get, all to see a coin set dropping from a certain height to the bottom of the vending machines only to find some of the coins damaged from the drop - you can't even refund it!!! I am not too sure about the situation in Japan but I heard the Osaka chain in the Kansai International airport pulled off because of bad business.

Now back to the computer granding standard, I am going to heavily disagree if it will never happen but instead it will have to happen eventually. Now when you get to see millions of people trying to slab such coins, how likely will it be possible of such small little slabbing companies able to accurate proper? Not likely especially when you get smaller slabbing companies try to take a share of this "scam" market. Ironically speaking, if you can apply high resolution images when it comes to archeology, geology to depict exceedingly detailed resolution of some insane large scale fields. I cannot understand why this cannot be applied to coin surfaces. The only major problem is that a coin's surface has to be "scanned" or "photographed" 6-7 TIMES (including different angles and diffent filters) which in this particular aspect makes it VERY tedious. But otherwise, all problems should be perfectly captured and with proper manipulation, all problems should be visible including as detailed as hairline scratchs etc. But to apply this to several thousand coins at once, this might be very difficult or probably have to be done in a "converyor belt" system. Leaving that aside, that is most probably for major TPG companies to tackle as the machineries alone which I specified are too expensive.

As for the live image or more apporiately "live" video, surely a video would be able to capture quite a fair bit more details. Afterall, a video definately tells more than a single picture frame and most certainly coin edges which is almost difficult to do with a camera. Even right now, can we finally say that prices for a 8MP digital camera has fallen to a reasonable price tag and with that kind of resolution we can take very fine details of coins. But any chances for such cameras to take detailed video images? I highly doubt so as you have to get a HD video camera to get very detailed moving resolutions. Likewise, the prices of such video cameras haven't drop to a level where an average person could afford easily. Besides that issue, a file size would become gigantic where 10mbs+ per video is not a suprise. I took a video clip of my coin and that was easily over 2mb and honestly it wasn't high resolution at all. Forget people who have a 56k connection which means they would be taking 50mins just to download a video clip and double that just to upload such video... not worth it. Of course if you have a fast connection, this is a matter of minutes.

Personally I think that if the "right" company came along, the coin market could make leaps and bounds. TV is a medium used today with great success, (although ripping people off). The mainstream public still has very little idea that people buy and sell coins.
Each week I meet people who have no idea that there are such people as coin dealers. For whatever reason, no one is educating the general public. I have talked with people about buying mint and proof sets, and most had no idea that they could buy these directly from the Mint.
The government spent 40 million dollars promoting the Sac dollar, and the ads confused more people than anything else.
A few dealers place ads in the Sunday papers, but as we all know, their efforts are modeled after the TV dealers.

Just last night I had a conversation with a person that prior to meeting me had no idea that people made a living buying and selling money. There only thought on collecting had come about because of the State Quarters, yet the collecting bug had died out.
Most people still have difficulty in obtaining State Quarters. They only consider the bank as the source.

For me, the future depends on someone reaching out to the community. We need to get passed the "old white man" thinking. Today there is more disposable income for most people than ever before. The vehicle of collecting took a major leap with the State Quarter and Westward nickel, yet who will step up and take the hobby to the next level?

There was an artical yesterday in the Wallstreet Journal about the glut of investment money in the world. That glut is raising the risks and reducing the potential rewards of financial investments. Perhaps this accounts for the huge prices being paid for coins and even tokens that really are rare.

When you also consider that "capital is a coward" and when you consider the world wide instability, (see the Paris riots and todays Free Trade Area of the Americas riots for some rather illustrative examples) I believe coins are going to attract a lot of people for strickly "investment" purposes. Coins IMO, are going to be in a primary up trend for at least 10 years.

For the rest of us, I believe that topical collecting will experience the greatest growth *because* of the Internet. Because you can invent your own theme and find what you want somewhere. On-line buying and bidding will only get bigger for this reason. Those who can't afford 300k for a trophey coin can invent their unique topical collection--and isn't that a trophey?

I believe there will continue to be more trading between collectors. But I don't see an honest and business-like dealer who operates on-line having any trouble because of this. If anything, collectors buying from other collectors might drive more business to dealers. I've bought coins from other collectors--it's an ORDEAL. Dealers who are business-like, and who have never lost their "collector instinct" and are well connected to other dealers, or can somehow can get what collectors want and who operate on-line, especially in on-line auctions are not in any danger of extinction.