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Will Our Collections Stand The Test Of Time?

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Pillar of the Community
United States
3843 Posts
 Posted 11/17/2015  6:47 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add Joe2007 to your friends list
Will the information on this forum be preserved so a future collector, hundreds of years into the future, can trace the provenance of a 1976 Proof Ike dollar back to the massive Ike hoard accumulated by our own jbuck?

Thought that this would be a fun topic.

Regards,
Joe2007
Pillar of the Community
United States
932 Posts
 Posted 11/17/2015  6:48 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add OspreyCoins to your friends list
No idea, I hope so
New Member
Canada
36 Posts
 Posted 11/17/2015  6:53 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add mehguy to your friends list
Very Interesting topic. Well coins have been able to last thousands of years as metioned by Osprey with ancient coins. Coins are pretty durable so I can see collections lasting in a large, metal vault located where natural disasters take place very rarely.

But then again, will all the knowledge we have now will be carried onto the people of the future? Who knows.
Edited by mehguy
11/17/2015 6:53 pm
Rest in Peace
United States
18456 Posts
 Posted 11/17/2015  7:12 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add T-BOP to your friends list

Maybe , if we put our collections in a vault and bury it 2000 feet beneath the surface that will sustain a thermo nuclear explosion then yes our coins might survive. the problem then will be; nobody left on earth to appreciate them even if found.
just love and cherish your coin collections now ; for tomorrow may never come !
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United States
189947 Posts
 Posted 11/18/2015  11:27 am  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add jbuck to your friends list

Quote:
Will the information on this forum be preserved so a future collector, hundreds of years into the future, can trace the provenance of a 1976 Proof Ike dollar back to the massive Ike hoard accumulated by our own jbuck?
Well, of course, because there is going to be this shrine, see...
Pillar of the Community
United States
1316 Posts
 Posted 11/18/2015  11:36 am  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add Collects82 to your friends list
My collection stands very little chance. These coins are not interesting to my wife. And the kids hold no sentimental value for anything, everything is either a tool for something practical or junk to be tossed. My collection is truly just me enjoying my life now, I've realized it holds no meaning beyond me and the now.
Edited by Collects82
11/18/2015 11:37 am
Pillar of the Community
United Kingdom
2624 Posts
 Posted 11/18/2015  12:11 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add DavidUK to your friends list
Well firstly one would have to ask if humans will survive the next 500 years. It is a perilous time for we now have the means to destroy ourselves. If you said the chances were 0.25% per year of our destroying ourselves then that risk multiplied by 500 years is not an insignificant one.

Likewise the survival rate of coin collections, even if it is small; given the number of collections some will survive intact.

I think if I get really old maybe I could take my coins and bury them deep in a forrest. Protected in their plastic sleeves I could imagine them being discovered long from now. It is just a thought, probably not the best course of action for perhaps I will wish to see someone benefit from them more immediately.

I am not worried by the coins, the banknotes however I am more worried by. Water will not kill my coins, though fire would make a real mess of them (the plastic they are housed in would melt...it would be carnage.

If my house was on fire I would take my banknotes and my ancient coins, I live on a hill and my room is not at ground level so I don't think flooding is an issue but the thought of my notes getting wet is an ugly one.
Pillar of the Community
United States
6130 Posts
 Posted 11/18/2015  12:30 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add Finn235 to your friends list
Gold coins have repeatedly been put into pots and buried with no additional protection, and 90% of the time they come out just fine, 100, 500, or 2,000 years later. Silver and bronze are pretty hardy, and could probably last 2,000-4,000 years in the right conditions.

As for the zinc and steel that we (the world as a whole) make our coins out of now? I highly doubt it. Just look at the average WWI-WWII coin made out of iron, steel, or zinc--most are ruined within a single human's life span. I don't think that even slabbing a MS-70 zincoln in a slab full of pure nitrogen would keep it from being a rotted, bubbly mess in 500 years.
Pillar of the Community
United States
500 Posts
 Posted 11/18/2015  12:41 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add Coinfusion to your friends list
I don't know. I have always just planned to pass my collection to my grown son for him and his family to keep what they wanted to and sell / dispose of the rest. Him and his wife do not have any children yet but plan too in a couple of years so my hope is they hold on to some of it long enough to make a dent in the future education of the next generation of our family.
500 + years. If our human race doesn't by some miracle extinct ourselves, I wouldn't expect my collection to still be around.
And I am still not sure what the counterfeiters are going to do with our beloved hobby.
Valued Member
United States
467 Posts
 Posted 11/18/2015  12:57 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add crazyglue to your friends list
I like to think my collection will still be around...but broken up in lots of different places. That is one of the fun things of coin collecting is to think about the history of the coin.

So I have a complete LWC collection. I hope they all stand the test of time-- but I hope they somehow dispersed (my wife will disperse of them in one fells swoop once I'm dead, haha, I am talking after that)...and fall into the hands of LOTS of collectors. So they won't survive the test of time in tact, but they will survive the test of time individually all over the place.

Or at least I hope
Pillar of the Community
United Kingdom
548 Posts
 Posted 11/18/2015  4:14 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add Demarco Bishopp to your friends list
Unless I bury my coins I seriously doubt they will last 1,000 years. Best case scenario is that some of the less valuable ones survive as historical curiosities.

The gold and silver will probably get melted down at some point.
Bedrock of the Community
United States
20753 Posts
 Posted 11/18/2015  4:55 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add just carl to your friends list
I intend to keep most of my collection in safe places regardless of Weather, wars, taxes, etc. However, if, for some reason my collection is not still intact in about 500 years, I'll let you know. Of course that would depend on if your still on this forum then.
Pillar of the Community
Canada
1269 Posts
 Posted 11/25/2015  1:51 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add orfew to your friends list
I collect ancient coins. Most of my coins are already around 2 thousand years old. I cannot see why the cannot last another 2 thousand years.
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Australia
16868 Posts
 Posted 11/25/2015  8:04 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add Sap to your friends list
Your question has two parts, which have different answers. "Will they survive?" is primarily a question of chemistry and physics. "Will any survivors still be valued" is primarily a sociological question.

As for survivability, it does depend on what the coin is made of. Coins of high purity gold will survive indefinitely, until and unless someone melts them down, because gold does not corrode, melt or evaporate under normal Earth-surface conditions; it's been said that if the dinosaurs had made gold coins, we'd be able to dig them up and they'd still look as good as new. Silver is almost as good, though will corrode eventually. Other alloys generally do not hold up very well over time, though some are worse than others. Coins made from pieces of dissimilar metals, sich as clad or plated coins, are least likely to survive for long periods as such objects are particularly prone to corrosion.

There is, of course, a social aspect to survivability. We've all seen on the news the fanatics of ISIS systematically destroying the pre-Islamic history of Iraq and Syria, and there's no telling whether or not a similarly fanatical revisionist regime of the future might take a disliking to the existence of your coins. In the excellent Alex Benedict novels by sci-fi author Jack McDevitt, set 20,000 years in the future, a totalitarian government on Earth in the 26th century had attempted to eradicate all of history and only two coins from the pre-3000 era were known to have survived: a Roman sestertius of emperor Nero and an American quarter from the 1990s.

Which leads to the second part of the question: will people want them? Part of the attraction of coins today is that they're an ancient invention that we still actually use in much the same way as the ancients did: we use coins to buy things. If people of the future still have a concept of "coins" in their everyday experience (ie they use them as money), then coin collecting will still be popular and your coins will be in high demand. If, on the other hand, coins have become as obsolete as swords and olive oil lamps, then only a tiny minority of history buffs and antiquarians will appreciate them.

This also assumes that the people in that future era are sufficiently "civilized" to have an appreciation for history. Another Jack McDevitt book, "Eternity Road", is set in post-apocalyptic North America; in one passage, some travellers scavenge the ruins of a bank, noticing but ignoring the piles of coins made from a mysterious yet totally useless and worthless alloy.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
Pillar of the Community
United Kingdom
548 Posts
 Posted 11/28/2015  02:43 am  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add Demarco Bishopp to your friends list
Sap, your last paragraph reminded me of the part in Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" where the man finds two entire handfuls of Krugerrands in a shelter and leaves them behind Of course he knows what they are, but he also knows that gold is worthless in a world where most people are dead or starving.

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