Coin Collectin Is Not Dying Despite Some Claims

It's not a like comparison.

Gold is a commodity product.
They can absolutely go make more refined gold, at will. Whenever they want.

Prices of gold will settle based on market demand.

The supply is fixed for all numismatic coinage. It's not a commodity product. It prices based on the number of people who want to buy them. The supply is static. The demand is what fluctuates (and for the past 30 years, trendline is downward)

In the case of collectibles, price is absolutely the single most important indicator, since the markets are so incredibly simple and supply/demand based.

Interesting question.

Who do I see in the shop, as a dealer?

Well the usual over 40 crowd, is still going strong. But they are also selling their collections to finance retirement.

There IS a strong group of 30somethings that have emerged. More than casual collectors, but less than full blown "gotta have it all". Typically they collect a single thing, or perhaps two. Building that Lincoln set while getting the occasional MOrgans ( btw we sell our sliders and low MS commons for $20 now. I never thought we would see THAT again!)

We still have a large number of people of all ages coming in to sell us their "pocket change" collection. Meaning that it still is in people's mind to want to casually collect.

However; it is not now anywhere near the shape it was in the 60s. Neither is plastic modeling; or antique furnature; or antiques in general. All of which I dabble in. All except for plastic models have come down in price.

the hobby will die only if no one on the planet is interested to collect coins; I can't imagine this will happen as long as humans keep their hunter gatherer genes active and as long as anyone is interested in the history of a town, region or country.

If dying would be replaced by booming versus declining I believe the answer depends on the segment of the market:
$ the top coins break price records every year, they are moving out of the reach of most collectors, which is a pity of course
$$ the middle segment (even rare coins) seem perhaps to stagnate or become a bit cheaper than 30 years ago; good news for people interested to buy nice coins !
$$$ can't say much about the lower segment as I do not follow the prices

The most dangerous threat to the hobby is an increasing inflow of modern numismatic frauds (better and better copies). This flood pollutes the real coins on the market. The most deceiving frauds can slip through the filters of TGP, and once slabbed, will deceive future buyers for hundreds or thousands of dollars a piece. Some collectors that realize they bought fake items will be disgusted and turn away from the hobby. Others will persevere. But as we know from air or water pollution, their will be a certain toxic threshold above which the coin collection hobby will loose its vitality. Imagine the fake to real ratio would move from 1:10 to 1:1 or 10:1, a real nightmare.

The real discussion, therefore, is not whether we are in a bear or bull market (who cares?), but how a large scale effort initiated by collectors with a big heart for the hobby can stop or reverse the further spread of this dreadful poison.

They aren't even close to that simple. Bullion can be viewed as a commodity, generic saints and morgans can be as well as long as metal prices are relatively stable. Even then though you can find large price variations based on quality or toning.

Coins aren't a commodity that can be blindly lumped into one. Without actually understanding the coins themselves it's impossible to understand the market. A price guide may say x on something but guides are just a guide. The best coins sell over guide consistently, coins can have large percentage ranges in terms of their pricing. Is it graded or raw, which TPG graded it, is it CAC eligible and if so does it have a sticker if not why, eye appeal/toning or blast white, if toned is it colorful, if colorful toning does it match the right look that generates huge profits etc etc etc. One could go on and on and on about why a coin is priced the way it is and that's without even getting into the human factors for sellingsuch as how fast does someone need to sell, what kind of fees are they paying, what did they pay for it and when etc which again would be another discussion entirely. Then the human factors of buyers and how collecting behavior has changed from set building to more type collecting and world coins have been increasing in popularity and also price for a long time now.

Pricing and the market is infinitely more complicated than just I saw this chart so the hobby must be dying

I haven't seen broad "statistics" to back this up, but we find the TPGs opening offices in Europe and Asia in the last 10 years, and my personal experience in buying collectible Polish coins shows the number of auction houses/sites more than doubling in the lsat 4 years, and upward movement on prices for the majority of the coins I am looking for. Not to mention lots of flashy price records on the top rarities in this field.

Could it be true that collecting is moving upward outside the U.S. but downward in the U.S.? Maybe. I still haven't seen the data that proves anything about broad trends in collecting activity.
For U.S. collectors, my contention is that this data resides on ebay servers.

As a relatively new collector (the last couple of years), it's kind of disheartening to read such strong opinions that almost want to "will" coin collecting into a slow painful death.

I'm a 40 something dad with a 10 year old son who has been bitten by the bug bigtime. He is absolutely obsessed. I was working near the Mint in Winnipeg a couple years ago and had a little extra money, so I went for a tour of the Mint. Well, there was no way I could leave empty handed. This was the beginning. At first, my son enjoyed looking at the shiny new coins.. Lots of silver.. Then I brought home a couple gold coins... Yikes..

From then I remembered that my Mother had left me a few old Canadian Silver Dollars and 50c from the days she used to work at the bank.. (1939, 1962 etc.. Nothing crazy) I brought them out to look at one day and mentioned that there is a store about 1/2 hour away that we could go actually look at some more coins. He was thrilled and couldn't wait to go. We poured over all kinds of coins of all different countries and denominations. An almost 10 year old staring at books of coins for over an hour!
Of course, we bought a few... Nothing too expensive but still meaningful to him because he picked them out himself. I explained at that point, that I still believe to be very true... You have to support the local dealers no matter what you may see on ebay etc. They are the backbone of the community and it's more than just dollars and cents in coin collecting. This was only this past January...

Since then, I come home to a new "guess what?" almost every day. "Hey Dad, do you know the current EF40 value of a 1948 Canadian Silver Dollar? Do you know what the mintage was? On ebay, there are 8 for sale ranging from $-$$".

I think information is driving his excitement for collecting. Back 20 years ago, he would be looking through a book of values and only a few coins in person at the local shop every week or so for an hour. Now, he spends time surfing ebay looking at all different coins, PCGS and CoinsandCanada for approximate values, mintage and grading help. Seeing coins of all kinds, at his fingertips gives him the desire to collect even more!

ebay - We have purchased a few coins, usually a deal on Silver if possible or a graded coin that we aren't able to find locally at one of the couple coin shops within an hour. Also a decent benchmark on what some people are paying to know if you are getting a decent deal compared to online pricing sources

Facebook groups - We have purchased a few from "good sellers" on specific groups, again, coins that we couldn't source locally.

Although my son loves getting packages in the mail, he asks almost every weekend if we have time to go into the shops. One fellow always has a few stamps set aside for him and the other shop also sells Hardy Boys books that he is interested in. Both shops sell US coins for about 80% of what the market seems to be, which makes us all satisfied and keeps us returning for sure. He has learned a lot about history because of the coins he has purchased and vice versa. He bought (with his own money) a 1949 Canadian Silver Dollar because it had John Cabot's boat on it. He had just completed a school project on him last month. We recently went to Hawaii and he had searched google for coin shops in Honolulu. He found one and stumbled across the fact that Hawaii had their own coins at one time. He used all of his vacation money to buy an 1883 Hawaiian Half Dollar. He wanted something to always remember the trip by.

Will he stick with it longterm? Who knows. His friends all think he's crazy but his teacher at school fosters his interest as well. How many of us collected baseball cards in the early 1990's that thought we were going to retire on those babies!!

I am hopeful that he can look back in 20 or 30 years and say "dad and I had a good time collecting those coins together.. I see now why he told me not to tell mom how much we paid for those haha"