Coin Collectin Is Not Dying Despite Some Claims

I'd say our arguments here speak for themselves. If I've 'ignored' any point you've made, feel free to let me know and I'll rebut it/

Crying 'troll' when you lose a debate... well.... that speaks for itself, too.
Stop believing irrational garbage, you won't get called out on it and won't have to feel embarrassed as a result.

What some people say when told the earth is round.

You're acting as if I didn't literally post the index composition where anyone can go see with their own eyes.





Are you lying deliberately, or just demonstrating that you have incredibly poor reading comprehension?

Interesting read here.

I was in China this past November, and every business has a QR code in front of their store or shop, people uses their phone to make purchases by scanning the QR code, and transactions is deducted from buyer financial institution, rarely money are used even for low cash items. So, in the future all activities will have a track record, not just the buyer, but other officials who wants to keep a tab for security reasons.

Coin collecting is still popular in China, but only if current collectors take time to introduce and educate it to future generations of collectors, and unless precious metal can rise to higher level, then people will be more aware of coin value and about collecting it.

Sorry getting myself off track.

@basebal, I think that you have made an excellent point that whatever is happening in coins IS part of the larger trends in society, and we really must take this into consideration in our analysis and predictions. I don't recall that point being made before in all the threads about the declining coin hobby.

Printed material, Brick and mortar stores, clubs, etc in general are declining.

@dollars, I don't have an iron in this fire, but I DO appreciate when data is brought to the table in any discussion.

My comment on air travel just had to do with the pitfall of using price as an indicator of growth. You have the budget model (Southwest, RyanAir etc) driving down prices in certain segments, regulation/de-regulation issues, etc., all the time that the number of users just keeps growing.

As for the PCGS index, I went and had a look, and it is clear that the long term trend in pricing has been upward. Prices climbed more or less steadily for the 35 years from the 1970s until about 10 years ago, where it plateaued. And yes, it has dipped a bit in the last couple of years. https://www.PCGS.com/prices/graph.a...lename=index

And to me, that still doesn't tell me much about the health of the HOBBY, which is pursued by many people who will never buy a coin that makes up the PCGS index (like me). ebay transactions make up a far larger part of the transaction volume than anything that can be found in a TPG database, which is why I would love to see that info. If it tracks like the Google chart, then I would find that highly meaningful.

Again, it may be right that the number of collectors is in serious decline, or the number of transactions is 20% lower than it was 10 years ago, but I have still not seen a number that shows this.

interesting discussion - I am not sure what will be the end verdict - but at least at this point I have two comments:

1) one of the rules of this forum is about shouting
"Internet Yelling (7/3/2007)
Do not post in all capital letters. This is the Internet equivalent of yelling and is very annoying to most people."

2) should we take the Google Trends database as a serious indicator for a dying hobby? I have doubts about that. For instance try "internet" or "computer" as keywords in Google Trends (search in Dutch sorry for that)




should we also accept that the Internet or the Computer are dying trends?

I would like to see some solid reproducible data with methods used on the number of numismatic auctions organized world wide per year and the number of lots auctioned in these collective auctions. I would not surprise me if these numbers have increased significantly over the past decades.

LOL. All due respect, but I don't think you understand how to read a 'pricing trend'.
Here. Just so we're all clear and operating from the same vantage.

https://www.PCGS.com/prices/graph.a...lename=index

And those are absolute dollar prices, not inflation adjusted, meaning that the coin that cost you $700 30 years ago that still costs $700 today represents a net loss of almost 50%. Want to get even uglier? If you had put that $700 in an index fund in 1989 rather than that coin, it would be worth about $10,000 today.

So I'd be interested to know where, from looking at that chart, you derive the statement "the long term trend in pricing has been upward".

I had to look up "bloviating".

I learn something new every day.

Coin collecting is alive and well at our coin club meeting and annual coin show attendance is up. Dealers are generally happy and return. The youngsters have a great table to pick through for free, enough coins that I am surprised the table doesn't collapse and it is busy all day. I certainly have not slowed down. I guess if it's about making money, that is one thing. If it's about enjoying coin collecting that's another.