Is Coin Collecting Dead As An Investment?

Craig,this guy purchased a couple of Coins off me about 5 years ago and left the same FB,so He is still around.
I wouldn't worry just this person being a smartarse or having a Joke.My Coins weren't cheap so its probably a stock FB response.

Just my opinion but nothing has changed regarding Coin Collecting since I was at School in the 1960's,Key Dates,Unc. Coins and Gold/Silver are the priority if you wish to make money.
The time to buy is generally now,Jan.-Feb as most people are careful with their money post Xmas,time to sell is August-Oct. when people get Tax refunds.
Hard to make money out of the Perth Mint releases,just too many Coins these days and the Gold/Silver Coins are just too expensive.
As I've posted before the general public are at a huge disadvantage re price,Dealers get a discount plus no GST for many so you are 20%+ discrepancy before you even start.Also the Mint clears stale stock to O/S Dealers at bargain basement rates,that's why you see Oz. Gold/Silver Coins on US/Euro.eBay at cheaper $ than the Mint sold them for originally.

Your question was about Australian coins, but I believe that it applies to coins in general.

I don't believe that coin collecting was EVER alive as an investment.

It is true that some collectors who started in the 1930s had fabulously valuable collections for their estates many decades later, but that was quite a different era with few collectors.

It is possible that some might do well today by buying scarce classics in high grade, but that is hardly something you can be sure of. In any case, with so many people chasing these rarities, the prices are already high. Is there much room for further increase?

Certainly the vast majority of modern mint products will likely never be resold even at the original purchase price, let alone at anything resembling a profit. The main problem here is that there is so much product, collector interest is seriously diluted for any given item.

I have collected coins for only fifty+ years and am not sure how well they will do when it is time to sell them. You might look at how Eric Newman did since he started collecting and recently passed away at 106 years old. Coins as investments long term only work if you buy rare coins. "Rare" meaning something so difficult to obtain and so in demand that you typically see it offered for sale just once in your collecting lifetime and at an abnormally common cost. Junk even if purchased long ago is still junk and not a good investment. I know I squandered the first twenty years of my collector time on coins that were not "rare" but more "liquid" and any I still have are not making me happy now. If you were to by only one or a few coins a year and bought them according to a theme that interests you and looking back cannot be duplicated anywhere near the same price now, then you may have exercised "taste" in selection that will have created lasting value. Think about the end game fifty years from now and be extraordinarily selective and "lucky" meaning work hard to be knowledgeable enough to recognize those once in a lifetime deals on the instant they fleetingly appear. The result may be a specialized collection that is museum worthy, and which your notes help in defining the collection for others. Like art, there are Old Masters and Velvet Elvis's so buy what you like, but try to buy what no one yet appreciates. Anything sold as a "collectible" isn't. Value is in the journey, not in the mass of metal you leave to unworthy heirs. In Eric's case he bought a US 1894-S dime for $4750 in mid career in the 1950s. This is a rare coin. It cost half a house in buying power back then. He sold it for $6000 soon after. That was an investment. If he had kept it it would be worth over a million dollars today which would buy a full house and nicer than what he would have got back when. But Eric already has a house, the same one he bought back in the day. What would you have done? That may help sort out the difference between investors, collectors, and the hybrid "investor-collector" we all think we are.

Pistareen is precisely correct.

If you want to consider your coin collection to be an investment, then you have to treat it as such. That means you purchase the best quality in classic material you can afford, preserve it, and put it by for decades. I'm of the opinion that it's not really 'my' coin collection, it belongs to the family. It may not be sold for 50 or 100 years, in order to get the full benefit of appreciation. You can obtain a great deal of satisfaction in building a collection in that manner, even though I will be long gone at the time it is sold.

It also means I'm not buying anything from the world's mints that was issued after, say, 1965. If I want to have a secondary collection that is just for my personal enjoyment, and not to be considered as an investment, that's fine, but we should not delude ourselves or our families as the worth of our collections. The album of Lincoln pennies is fun, the slabbed items are the investment.

Like others have said: Unless you're a professional dealer or trader....forget it! If I had to make a living out of coin collecting or investing in coins, I would have starved long ago.

I never met a financial advisor that said but coins in your portfolio. If it was, it's at the bottom of the list. I would venture to say, it's not on the list at all.

I would dump my entire collection into a slot machine before I would ever consider it as an investment.

The more you study and the more you learn, the better equipped you'll be to actually "invest" in coins for an above-average long term return. Many, many intelligent collectors have done so for decades and even centuries. It's no different than in any other hard-asset field (fine paintings, sculpture, and so on) or even financial assets. You have to know your subject, and if you do, you can make money.

Stamps are very much dead as an investment unless they are the elite stamps that are sought after, and well as to coins - maybe not so much.

I do it because I seen my first 1930 penny way way back when it was a few hundred bucks and was captivated and been collecting ever since.

I don't have a big collection, I place the focus squarely on quality and will scout for months (and save) until I find a premium example of what I want, then I spend a small fortune on that coin.

I have all Australian key dates except the mule halfpenny and I guess I will bequeath them to someone in the family.

One coin I that is not an investment is the 1923 halfpenny - mine purchased 10 years ago is cheaper today, maybe that's a recession thing, I don't know.

Best of luck to you.