The Future Of Coin Collecting?

More.

https://goccf.com/t/102343
https://goccf.com/t/182418
https://goccf.com/t/231856
https://goccf.com/t/260423
https://goccf.com/t/313749

I was just giving you something to read while waiting for replies.

This topic was due for a refresh, seeing as how it has been six years and whole pandemic since it was last discussed.

As far as the one dollar and two dollar coins over paper money I doubt it. Unless there is silver in them. Which I would bet against. As far as the future if it happens the way you describe I think fewer collectors fewer coin dealers and more expensive coins.

The dollar coins, which have been in continuous production for a quarter century, will not be accepted while the $1 bill is printed. Sad, but true.
But, a dollar today has the purchasing power of a Quarter Dollar in 1980.
Coins can last generations, lower denomination notes last years at best. Economically, the coins make more sense.
The common argument against them is that, 'nobody wants a pocket full of coins', right? But, how many Dollar Bills do you typically carry? My guess is you probably carry as many, or more, Quarter Dollars.

I'm an old man, jbuck. But things change. I haven't written a paper check since the 1990s.

I think it's now too late to do the "get rid of $1 and $2 notes and introduce $1 and $2 coins" thing. The cashless movement is continually growing, meaning less need for physical cash, in any form. Your paper money might turn into pieces of polymer (plastic) as is happening in most advanced countries where colour photocopying and printing has made counterfeiting a piece of paper relatively easy, but I think the introduction of new circulating coins is now unlikely. Coins are simply too inconvenient, specially for a population that's been conditioned into thinking that coins are a worthless heavy nuisance that you toss into a jar at home when you're given them in change, rather than actually using them for money.

I don't think cashlessness will be some kind of top-down demand from government that abolishes physical cash. I think cash will go out with a whimper, not a bang - it's normal, regular people that are choosing to go cashless, simply because cash is less convenient than paying by card. As demand for physical cash falls, they'll simply make less and less of it each year, until one year the NCLT mintages will exceed the circulation mintages - by which point the government will have certainly downsized the mint to perhaps just one facility. At some point around there, the government may decide it's cheaper to outsource coin production to a foreign mint rather than pay to maintain a mint that's barely used.

As for the "will coin collecting become more or less of a common hobby" question, the logical answer is "less". Fewer people exposed to coins in everyday life will inevitably mean fewer new collectors becoming interested in coins.

Just look at stamp collecting. Postage stamps are becoming a rarer and rarer thing, as more and more of our correspondence goes digital and the few remaining envelopes and parcels that arrive in our physical snail-mail boxes usually don't have stamps on them. The net result has been the collapse of stamp collecting, as the next generation of stamp collectors simply isn't there: with young people not seeing stamps in their everyday life, it simply never occurs to them that collecting stamps is a hobby they can do.

Phonecards are another numismatic-like collectable that has gone through a bust: "everybody" has got a mobile phone these days, so "nobody" uses pay phones any more. With phonecards now functionally extinct (payphones have all switched to using credit card directly so you don't need a separate phone card), phonecard collecting is also now functionally extinct, and prices for phonecards have collapsed as old phonecard collections have gotten dumped onto the market but there's nobody left who wants to buy them.

Now, coins (and coin collecting) are a much older part of civilization, and have that "attachment to history" aspect that will always attract the tiny minority of the population that's interested in history. Coins are always going to be a relatively cheap, historical artifact that represents a bygone civilization: if you, right now, want to physically own a piece of ancient Rome, an actual genuine ancient Roman artifact, then buying a Roman coin is pretty much the cheapest and easiest way to do that. The same will probably still be true in a thousand years time if people in the future wanted to buy a genuine piece of the ancient United States. So I don't think coin collecting will collapse quite as badly as phonecard collecting, or even stamp collecting, but it certainly will shrink compared to it's current level.

Early 2000s for me. I think I wrote my last one when we moved to the new house almost 24 years ago. I still have my checkbook. The address is my old house and the credit union has changed names and/or merged three times since.