Coin Collectin Is Not Dying Despite Some Claims

ANA membership is down and has been going down for a long time. That's an antiquated measure though. Many people feel they don't get a benefit from the ANA and younger collectors especially aren't interested in the organization. Organizational memberships are down in general in today's world as the internet has replaced a lot of what they did with the magazine, but many collectors have very legitimate issues with how the ANA has been managed and how it has failed to keep up with the times.




The problem with it is that it doesn't account for anything. It assumes the same supply the entire time, it assumes static metal prices which yes do impact pricing in areas, it doesn't account for new hoards that are discovered, doesn't account for private sales, doesn't account for in person sales etc. The real flaw with that PCGS chart and trying to do any analysis off it, it captures a minuscule amount of overall sales. The prices realized page is a good research tool but it's nothing where you can draw hard conclusions from and misses a lot.

That counts even for the high end. Many of those high end coins bought at auction are sold privately for more after the auction which gives us a falsely low value for them plus some of them never get the chance to make it to the open market. Look at the Del Loy set trying to redo Elisaberg, MANY of his purchases have been private and unless someone says something prices are just guesses and don't reflect what was actually the market.




Already passed 700 level courses in it and that's the last I am going to say about this issue.




Which makes perfect sense. The metal run up increased interest, then when it came back to earth the market slowed down. But this is also one of the points I have been making, everything else matters. The economy will have a big impact on the price of luxury items like a collectable. Better economy better prices, slower/bad economy less money to spend collecting but it doesn't mean the person is no longer a collector.




ebay absolutely does encourage a downwards pressure on price. It's even worse now with their search engine changes and now promoted listings. They don't even show every listing to everyone. You don't really have a choice as a small seller but to try and undercut people on items that have a lot listed. You are right the internet brought the market into one, but ignoring the impacts that ebay's policies have on sellers and thus on pricing leaves out a big part of the picture.




Heritage sells plenty of coins under 4 figures. Legend is the one that only sells rarities.

Well, I could not even find data or a link on that. I am not a member, so maybe members have access to that info? If so I wish a member would post it here to this discussion so we can see some actual facts on it.

DOes ANA have data about activity levels in the hobby? If not, it really puzzles me.




I disagree. I think it is tried and true economic theory, that applies very well for rare coins, "hot" types or themes, and so on. When there is fixed supply and demand increases, prices are guaranteed to rise. This is also true of high end wines where supply is fixed by law, and the prices have skyrocketed over the last 30 years as demand from Asia and Middle East has grown.
Where I take issue is with common coins, where we can measure inventory levels, inventory turns, etc. on ebay, which starts to sound a lot like commodities (even though they don;t fit the definition of commodities put forward by dollars).

It's a good debate, despite the rather strong feelings all around.

That would be true if we assume the number of true hobbyists stays the same. What if the decrease in price is due to there being fewer true hobbyists? I think both prices and market activity must be looked at together not separately. You can have many large collections or hoards put on the market thus generating lots of market activity. If prices move lower and continue to slide, I think that would provide support to the declining collector interest argument. If prices recover and move higher, I think that will help bolster the argument that coin collecting is not in decline.

I do agree that much data is lacking to provide strong support to either side. It has been mentioned in this thread but I wish there is data on the number of collectors and the average age over a long period of time. I think both pieces of data are needed to get a sense if the population of collectors is remaining stable. I do understand that most coin collectors are older but as long as the number of collectors is not decreasing and the average age is not going up, I think the hobby will be just fine.



Perhaps it is more of a downward pressure in dealer margins than just price. A small seller may be receiving the same amount on ebay net of costs that they would otherwise receive if sold to a dealer. An item that a dealer would usually buy at $30 and sell at $40 can be sold on ebay for about $38-39 and still net the same. When I look on ebay and search for the term Morgan dollar, I get around 222k completed listings of which about 158k are sold. Of the sold listings, about 123k are auctions. With the term Peace dollar, I get about 58k completed, 42k sold, and 33k sold as auctions. It doesn't seem like to me that sellers are only trying to undercut each other.

Yes. I have said the same thing upthread. This is why I have posted the graph on the volume of transactions, rather than price. The PCGS index only shows price.




I think hoards and collections would affect only a narrow slice of the market (the slice represented in the hoard/collection.

And again, I think that what currently gets measured is the tip of the iceberg. The base of the iceberg is low value ebay sales, and lots of local activity (LCS, shoes, etc.). There is a chance to measure the ebay stuff, but not the aggregate of all the local activity.

So, a couple of things Dollars.

The first is that for the most part your point is valid.

However; the last person you quoted has a point. ONE data point does not establish a price level. I have people come in the shop and find the cheapest sold price from ebay and use that to try to get me to sell them an item. When I point out that the median price was well above that outlier they get upset. Lets remember that ebay MEDIAN prices are what we are talking about.

The second is the absolutely strange phenomenom of Auctions. Real live auctions. Here in the midwest, it is well known to any dealer that auctions are the worst places to get a deal. Why? Because coins there typically sell for RedBook or even multiples of retail. I've seen common walkers go for $60. I just don't get it. Although some of it is surely bidding fever, ect.

The only way I have made money at an auction in the last few years is to find a VAM or some other variety that is unknown to the average bidder. Even then I walk away from most bids as people will sometimes outbid you just....to outbid you!

Would be grateful if you can share info on sites that have old ebay data ... or pm me. Would love to do any data mining I can, unless you're already into it.

Speaking of which, I added in the 1881S Morgan to my chart with the 1909SVDB. I don't know what went on in 2018 with sales volume (and is continuing into 2019), i.e., whether PCGS started collecting the data differently, or whether traffic in these two types (dominated by ebay in the PCGC database) really jumped by over 100%. As with previous chart, the 2019 number is an estimate by taking four times the 1st quarter.