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 Replies: 12 / Views: 1,809 |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3843 Posts |
***Saw this topic on another forum and thought that it would make for a good discussion here*** Just to clarify, I'm talking about in numbers of active collectors, casual collectors/accumulators, as well as popularity in mainstream society. In the U.S. the hobby's peak seems to be in the 1950's and 1960's with widespread participation and excitement about the hobby. The late 1990's to early 2000's seemed to see a resurgence in coin collecting with the introduction of the State Quarters program, although the popularity quickly waned. Your thoughts? |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
7390 Posts |
I don't think any previous era can beat the post Internet era of the early 2000's. Interested in other more "seasoned" opinions from the older guys though  |
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Rest in Peace
United States
18456 Posts |
I'm thinking more like late 60's to mid 70's . Local coin shows and flea markets occupied most of my time . Great times ,At least for me .  |
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Rest in Peace
United States
17900 Posts |
Anyone attending small local auctions would be amazed by the strength of collectors right now. Most collectors today don't need to go to a show or have a LCS or depend on a quarterly dealers list or wait for advertising in a monthly magazine. They walk 10 steps (or less) to their computer. I've spent the last 50 years listening to people whine about no new buyers and the hobby is 'slipping away'. If you look at the polls taken here on the age range of collectors you see that the ranges between 35-50 being the very strongest with a good percentage younger than that. If coin collecting is dead then it should be easy to find a 1921 Peace dollar in TPG 63 for $350 or 64 for $700 or 63 1859 IHC for $650 - and the list goes on and on. If collecting is down why aren't these prices easy to find? Why am I continually, over the last 4 years, needing to raise my expected price to pay for coins I want? The answer is simple. Collecting is very active right now. But many collectors are hiding in the woods of ebay land. |
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Bedrock of the Community
United Kingdom
17965 Posts |
In the UK I think it peaked around 1968-1971, when people were checking their change for pre-decimal coins on the run-up to decimalisation. In those days many small towns had their own LCS, big stores like Boots and Smiths sold their own brands of coin albums and folders, and there were 3 or 4 monthly coin magazines. "Coin Monthly", which ceased publication in 1992, had an Audit Bureau of Circulations sales figure of about 60,000 in 1969. Saying that, coin collecting has definitely been enjoying a revival over the past 5 years, especially since the Olympic 50p coins were introduced. However there are very few coin shops these days, and just one monthly magazine, which is to a large extent a sales brochure for one big dealer.
In France, where I have lived for two years, I would say that the hobby peaked around 1999-2001 for the same reasons as in the UK 30 years earlier - people were trying to collect all the older coins from change before the Euro was introduced. I don't remember people there being particularly interested in coins back in the 1970s. Coin collecting is still enjoying quite a boom there - there seem to be far more coin shops there than in the UK, and there are two fairly serious monthly magazines plus others that are basically just price lists.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
94367 Posts |
I think mox says it very well. With ebay, on-line auction bidding and hundreds (if not thousands) of internet coin dealer websites, it is difficult to really judge the scope of collector activity today. There was a time when the number of brick-and-mortar shops and the circulation figures for the rags and mags meant something, but no longer. Personally, I think coin collecting as healthy today as it has ever been in my long life.  |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
589 Posts |
Agreed with everything posted above.
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Pillar of the Community
 Canada
5397 Posts |
Today is the best time EVER. Collectors today are ( or Should be) better informed due to the incredible amount of info available on line . You can shop the world from MOMS basement thanks to coin web sites and ebay. I would venture that there are more collectors today than ever before, they just do not attend shows or LCS . Also they value their privacy more than in the past. |
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
20753 Posts |
Unfortunately one problem is there are more coin collectors than the coins they need. Of course China is helping out there. |
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
5246 Posts |
This is a very interesting question. The answer depends partly on what we mean by peaked.
There were 3 criteria of the original poster:
"I'm talking about in numbers of active collectors, casual collectors/accumulators, as well as popularity in mainstream society"
It is possible that these different criteria could peak at different times.
In Canada the popularity in mainstream society probably peaked, overall, no later than 1980. The number of active collectors probably peaked later.
A number of events caused a spike in the number of casual collectors/ accumulators: The provincial quarter series of 1992, the millennium quarters of 1999-2000 and the Olympic quarters a few years later. So this number has probably been fairly steady ignoring the spikes.
This is not to say that the hobby is dead. In some ways, it has never been easier to get information or the coins themselves, given the internet and modern means of payment.
People collect in different ways, now. While we can't pull out a date set of silver from circulation, interest in varieties is much higher.
The collecting instinct is strong in people, so people adjust their coin wants to what is reasonably available within their budget.
That being said, I see rather few young people in the shows or the clubs, so who can say what the hobby will be in thirty years with all the competing interests and our increasingly cashless society.
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Valued Member
United States
62 Posts |
When I started collection I had very few optins, so collecting was difficult. Now with internet and 3 coin shops nearby its so much easier.
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New Member
United States
12 Posts |
I agree with the statements that collecting has migrated to the internet. I collect bust dollars in VF/XF. I go to a show and there's maybe 2 in the whole show. I go on ebay and there's 6 to choose from. The same for anything else that is moderately tough to find. |
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Pillar of the Community
Russian Federation
5174 Posts |
I've heard that coin collecting was not very popular in the Soviet Union, and that the peak of Russian coin collecting is either the 1890s/1900s or very recently (I wouldn't quite say "today", but it might as well be). Stamp collecting was really popular though.
(There's a lovely scene in a Soviet sci-fi novel where money is abolished, and there's a huge outcry from stamp collectors who think that stamps are going to be abolished too. Yet there's nothing about coin or banknote collectors; in fact, IIRC, no coins are mentioned at all - the last pre-abolishment currency seems to consist of paper money only.)
Returning back to the I say it's probably the latter (i.e. the 2000s, or perhaps 2010s) - in part due to the internet, naturally - but I just don't know enough about what coin collecting was like in the Russian Empire. I doubt, though, that it was anywhere near as popular; back then, most coins tended to be high-value, and 99% of people could not afford using them as anything other than spending money.
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Replies: 12 / Views: 1,809 |
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Posted 02/26/2016 3:12 pm
