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 Replies: 54 / Views: 4,623 |
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Moderator
 United States
188660 Posts |
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The next wave of professional numismatists are arising!
Have you heard of the Stack's Bowers Professional Numismatist Program? Anyone from ages 18-25 could have applied. All expenses paid to take some classes and network with professionals.
Being one of the few accepted myself... Congratulations!  |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3848 Posts |
Thank you jbuck! I'll be going to Stack's in Costa Mesa one week and the ANA show in Pittsburgh the following week. Could be some career/life changing opportunities, and if anything significant happens, I'll write something up and post it here. You all were here when I first started  Suffering from bust half fever. Want to learn how to attribute early half dollars by die variety? Click Here: http://goccf.com/t/434955Shoot me a PM if you are looking to sell bust halves. |
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Moderator
United States
188660 Posts |
That is amazing! Safe travels and do not forget to enjoy the journey! We look forward to some future reports.  |
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Valued Member
Australia
491 Posts |
Thanks sel....1966 was a good year. Special year.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
25270 Posts |
Every day I learn more of numismatics. There's more than 3000+ years of various types of metallic monetary instruments. The more I learn, the more I find out how much more there is to know.
Inordinately fascinated by bits of metal with strange markings and figures
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Valued Member
United Kingdom
383 Posts |
The Royal Mint started issuing commemoratives in special packaging ages ago, but over the past few years they've done this with all their commemorative coins, usually the 50p and £2. I get the feeling that this is a response to people who work in shops and banks getting hold of them before the rest of us and selling them for silly money on ebay (for example). The Mint obviously thought that two could play at that game and now we get very few commemoratives turning up in our change. One result of that is that I now only very rarely bother with current Royal Mint products.
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Pillar of the Community
 United States
6512 Posts |
Late to the thread here. I think Paralyse laid out an excellent list of problem factors. Yet the post that NumisRob made about excessive commemorative stamps is what stuck home. The current avalanche of "special" coin designs made to milk collectors reminds me very much of comic books in the 1980s. When I began collecting as a kid, I collected what I liked. Transformers, G.I. Joe, some Spider-Man, Green Lantern. Once Marvel and DC realized that collectors could be milked into multiple purchases of an issue with variant covers, and dragged sideways into supporting sales by pointless crossover panels, they started to churn out way more material with no additional content. I bought a lot of #1 issues and small limited series just so I could tuck them away in sleeves in my comic bin. For a while, the price guides (published in every comic book!) kept going up, until the market got over-saturated and collapsed. As a teenager, I threw in the towel because it just cost way, way too much money and it wasn't any fun.
What paralyse described has happened in many niche hobbies, and it will keep happening. It's human nature. When outsiders conclude that they can make money without understanding the hobby, they distort the entire ecosystem. The producers will ramp up volume and variety to exploit the surge in demand. They will create limited variants to cultivate an air of rarity that mimics the truly rare authentic stuff. Resellers will sell prior products as investment opportunities. Unscrupulous people will enter the market with fakes, and also present inferior products as desirable. Third parties will arise to verify products, so that investors (speculators) will be spared the burden of self-education.
Stamps, comic books, coins, Beanie Babies, baseball cards, Garbage Pail Kids, Pokemon cards, diamonds. People can't help themselves.
I do think a lot of the current distortion is from the multiplying forces. Your purchasing power is worth less. But also, the commodity component to silver and gold coins will climb in value. I would suggest that it's a seller's market, so it's a good time to be a seller. Buyers can clean up on good deals once the market inevitably implodes.
I don't see the money draining out of the high end, though. Someone will eventually create the rare coins ETF, where you can buy tiny fractional ownership in a curated holding of old coins. It happened with fine art, so it can certainly happen with coins.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2205 Posts |
I have simple tastes, which is why I still enjoy collecting. Slabbed coins? Not for me--too corporate. I prefer raw. Counterfeits? None of the coins I like would ever be counterfeited. Commemoratives? Never was interested--they're not real money. No, for me right now, I get joy out of filling up a Whitman "Quarters" folder I bought to fill in the gap between my Washington quarters folder Number Three (1960 through 1979) and the first State Collection folder (starting in 1999). It's a generic quarter folder with no dates. I've already hand-written in the dates and mintages from 1980 through 1998. This adds up to 38 coins (P and D mintmarks). I have 24 coins accounted for so far. Obviously, none of these coins will never attain any kind of value above face. But the lure of the empty hole still resonates with me. Checking my change regularly combined with an occasional trip to the bank for a roll or two will help me eventually complete the folder. And if not? Whatever holes remain will always serve as a challenge waiting to be fulfilled. This will help me remember why I love collecting coins.     |
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Moderator
United States
188660 Posts |
That folder brings back some memories! Yes, I do have fond memories of my folder days. Too bad I ruined it with my Dansco albums. I still have the folders though.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
807 Posts |
I really enjoy going through my accumulated coins, taking them out, laying them on a tray, looking at them. It's something I haven't done nearly enough of lately. As a collector of mostly world type coins, the uncritical sort of fellow who buys things because they look pretty or have an interesting story behind them, I guess I'm less vulnerable to the ennui that affects the date-and-mint US collector who's always searching for that one "key" in a micrometrically better state of preservation, who sees the price going up and up as pieces go into slabs, and get broken out of slabs and sent for re-slabbing at a higher grade as the TPGs compete with each other, reminiscent of the way that ratings agencies rushed to give AAA+ to mortgage-backed securities in 2007. (Most people don't even seem to know about the origin of the 70-point scale, which is not correctly used to assign grades of preservation to modern US coins, much less any other kind.) I mean, the other day I paid $11 for a Slovakia 50 korun 1944. It's a coin with an interesting history — ugly, but interesting! And the excellent workmanship one expects from the Kremnica mint. (I must visit there someday.) It had a small green spot on the obverse which came off with the application of a Q-tip dipped in distilled water. It made me happier than any Jefferson nickel I could buy for that price would! A few weeks ago, a friend-of-a-friend gave me a handful of "old foreign money" she had rattling around. Nothing valuable by anybody's standards, but the surprisingly large octagonal Malta 25¢ piece from the 1970s is a fascinating contrast with the thick slug of the 2003 Swedish 10 Kr. The deluge of modern collector-bait, and the low standards of design and workmanship of so many modern issues, are certainly depressing. When I'm in Europe, I find that I usually spend the commemorative €2 coins. It's the regular issue pieces from the smaller countries that I pick out to save. Some of them are beautiful as well as novel. |
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Moderator
United States
188660 Posts |
An interesting perspective. Thank you for sharing it! |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2205 Posts |
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That folder brings back some memories! Yes, I do have fond memories of my folder days. Too bad I ruined it with my Dansco albums. I still have the folders though. Mind you, the quarter folder isn't the only thing that keeps me going. I'm going on 50 years of collecting and am still working on several other folders, namely Lincolns, Jeffersons, Roosevelts and recent Washingtons. Living in MA, it's mostly modern "D" dates I'm missing. Every time I think I'm going to give up hope, a missing "D" does pop up. That's the fun of it! |
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Moderator
United States
188660 Posts |
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Every time I think I'm going to give up hope, a missing "D" does pop up. That's the fun of it! Living in SC for 35+ years, I get it!  |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
5189 Posts |
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mean, the other day I paid $11 for a Slovakia 50 korun 1944. It's a coin with an interesting history — ugly, but interesting! Don't think that is an ugly coin. However, the Franklin half.... well....  |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
7942 Posts |
I think it is easier for world coin collectors to not get bored or discouraged. There is always some niche that is overlooked. You can always learn more about world history even if you aren't buying the coins from the place.
I don't collect modern coins, so the proliferation of all those shiny objects that have been mentioned is irrelevant to my
collecting habits, and amuses me more than bothers me ("to each their own").
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Replies: 54 / Views: 4,623 |
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Posted 05/19/2023 2:39 pm
