State Of Play (Condition Of Numismatics In Australia)

In my defence I couldnt help myself seemed like the right thing to write at the time

Starting to feel like a fool around now

I would have to agree with all three of the OP's observations: the average age of collectors is increasing; the gender balance is anything but balanced and attracting young people to the hobby is getting more and more difficult.

Items one and three are of course related; if no new, young collectors are coming onboard, then of course the average age will be high and getting higher. Explanations are myriad, though I doubt one single cause is predominant.

Some blame the Internet Age; back in the 1950s, a kid who didn't like sports had few alternative pastimes; coin collecting was one of them. These days, computer games, social media etc. are giving kids many more options to choose from, so fewer of them are choosing coins.

Some blame the general apathy of young people. "Kids these days just aren't interested in history, and you really need some kind of appreciation of history to enjoy being a coin collector". Of course, any student of history ought to recognize that criticizing the younger generation for not being more like the older generations is nothing new. The ancient Greek and Roman philosophers whinged about the same thing, and it took a lot longer than a single generation for those civilizations to collapse.

One factor that I think severely limits the participation of young people, is cost. Back when I was a young numismatist (we're talking 1980s-1990s here), a copy of the Yeoman world coin catalogue cost $10; it's equivalent these days is the Krause catalogues, and to get the same coverage as Yeoman you need to buy two or three of them, at $100 each. I bought my first Sear Roman catalogue for $25; I'd need $800 to buy the full set of five Sear catalogues now. The cost of the coins themselves is constantly going up, too, at higher than inflation rate. This is great for those of us that already got the stuff, but makes it much harder for newbies, especially young people, to get in at the ground level and buy good coins for low prices. Perth Mint sells it's "Young Collectors" coins for $15-$20 each; how many YNs on a tight budget can actually afford that kind of thing, especially if' they're supposed to buy all ten or whatever to "complete the set"?

As for the gender imbalance issue, I can confirm it; whether it's coin forums, coin club membership, or coin show attendees, the male:female ratio in organized numismatics in eastern Australia is 20:1, or worse. I can also confirm that this imbalance is not constant worldwide, but is different from country to country and even within a country. Western Australia is not as bad as the east coast states, and New Zealand and Britain are even closer to parity. But in America and Germany, the ratio is much the same as it is here. Explanations for this are much harder to come by, but seem to revolve around the cultural expectations: is coin collecting seen as a "guy thing", or not?

For a hobby that is purely voluntary, the presence of either or both biases, anti-youth and anti-female, is self-reinforcing. If you're a young person and go to a coin show and only see old people, you're going to think, wow, there's not going to be much here I'm interested in. Further, the dealers at the show simply won't have much experience in engaging with young people, since most of their customers are not. Given time, the stereotype evolves into prejudice: a dealer assumes that a young person can't possibly be a serious collector, because they've never met one that is before. People who are suffering prejudice are going to go away and find something else to do, somewhere else, where they aren't prejudged so much.

Pretty good summation, being a young collector I do agree that the average age is quite high (i'd say 50-70 on average). I haven't been collecting for too long so it's hard to say if that has changed over the last 5-10 years or not.

There are a few younger collecters I have noticed at coin shows, one problem/issue I do notice personally about being a younger collector is that dealers/collectors assume you a) have no money and/or b) assume that you don't know what you are talking about.

I'd be inclined to say everything is great (or good anyway). Coin shows that I go to seem to draw a crowd and the fact we have two different coin catalogues to choose from shows that there is reasonable interest in the hobby.

Maybe the lack of new collectors is an issue though, but as enworb said, maybe the youngsters just don't show themselves (I know in my case I started collecting when I was young and it was more than a decade before I went to a coin show/made an expensive purchase).
Hostile dealers don't help, and it seems the friendly ones are a minority (and I'm confused by the ones who are - surely making the effort to turn up and showing some interest says more about you than your age).

Also, I get the impression that coin collecting initially became pretty big in Australia because of decimalisation, and nothing like that has happened since 1966.

I have also tried to encourage YN's (particularly Aussie ones) in the past whenever I could, even it's just sending them a few coins that they need to fill some gaps. I haven't done so lately, as I've been pre-occupied, but when / if I see an opportunity, I'll resume my encourage YN activities.

It's my version of 'Paying it Forward'.

Great question OMF.

I agree that many dealers seem to have no people skills and I have found many of them in retail shops to be quite surly. There have been times when I've quite innocently asked them a question and they've treated me with contempt. Maybe we could get ANDA to provide some "people skills" training to dealers.

As for the age bias, there is no doubt that coin collecting is an expensive hobby. I was a very casual collector up until my mid forties when I had paid off my house and was looking for something else to put my money into. I'm glad this passion has developed late because there is no way I could have afforded this hobby in my 20s.

My prediction is that as the population ages there will be more people drawn to collecting.