Are Antiques (Rare Coins) Dead To Millenials?

Interesting article. I've thought about this issue and there's definitely some truth to it.
On the other hand, coins are not necessarily expensive. You can pick up coins by the pound for very little and enjoy! You'll learn history, culture, language and so many other things that will enrich your life just for a few bucks.

When I started the article, I was very skeptical about the premise that millennials chase experiences not items. But then the author hit the real point—millennials are broke. It cannot be overstated how the Great Recession crushed the wealth out of generations, starting with millennials. Housing costs skyrocketed with inflation. If you already owned a house, it was a spectacular gift of home equity. But millennials on down simply suffered an era where housing is way more expensive, gas prices are way more expensive, food is way more expensive, kids are way more expensive, medical care (and insurance) are way more expensive. Heck, we spent almost $1000 this year already on shots, sick visits, follow up visits for our dog. But millennials aren't making any more disposable income, their wages have been stagnant thanks mostly to globalization. If you are scraping to buy a car or pay off your kid's braces, you are not going to buy coins, antiques, or any of that other optional stuff.

I think Gen X, millennials, zoomers definitely value authentic things. For example, there is a popular push to explore traditional recipes and do more elaborate home cooking. There is a whole category of rustic decor with weathered boards, faded paint, worn metal. Look at the whole craft brewing movement, as people move away from generic megacorp beers in favor of something local. Look how many people frequent farmers markets. Podcasts about metal detecting, history, regional foods are all super popular.

Will those generations collect coins? Maybe. They probably won't be out there buying rare Morgan dollars for $500. I bet there are a ton of my Gen X peers who will do what I do—buy an $8 iPad scope from Amazon, and then CRH $20 of nickels a week. Inexpensive, low impact, calming. So much of the information is available on the Internet now.

As to antiques, meh. A lot of stuff in antique stores is detritus indistinguishable from thrift store buys for a tenth the cost. People who lived through the Great Depression and their kids (boomers) have this mentality of saving everything old because it might be valuable. My own parents have an attic, huge basement, storage rooms that are packed with junk. I think my generation just ignores that stuff, although it might be more accurate to say that we collect digital junk instead.

Just my Two Cents. =)

I think that's a cool way to approach the hobby!

Another thing that occured to me is that most older coins in the 10¢ to $1 denominations are 90% silver. With inflation driving silver prices nuts, I think it's a lot harder to buy silver coins. When the commodity price starts to compete with the numismatic value, you essentially become an involuntary speculator on the price of silver. You could buy a coin for $25 and see it get carved down to $20 or less in a few years, just by commodity fluctuations.

I was born in the very early 1980s, so I am on the older end of the Millennials. I relate to most of the author's points.

My mom collected antiques in the 1970s as a young professional. I grew up surrounded by the furniture that she collected, a full set of mahogany everything and multiples of a few pieces. It was beautiful. My dad inherited a bunch of stuff from his side of the family too. My working parents combined it in a 4K+ sqft that often felt like a museum.

I was about 1 month into grad school when the Great Recession hit. My program took me to China for the final year. Upon graduation, there were no jobs worth coming back for. New grads were being lowballed on salary because there were gobs of very experienced laid-off professionals competing for entry level work too.

Unless dumb luck comes my way (I have 40ish years of experience reminding me I'm not that lucky guy), I will never be able to afford a house like my parents had. The economy will never afford me $3-4K monthly payment for a house like I grew up in. Even if I didn't have student loans, I live in a world were the average new car price is almost $50K and a decent used car with "only 80-100K" is still north of $10K. Gas is $4. Health insurance premiums are nuts. These list goes on, but the author nails it that disposable income has dried up because wages have not increased along with costs of life. In the 1970s, my mom bounced from shop to shop on in a relatively new AMC Gremlin that cost her about $500. While ugly is a matter of taste, that car purchase wasn't a life altering chunk of her bucket. And even if it was a more economical 20mpg, gas was like $0.60 post embargo so who cared?

My family has been planning a roadtrip to Disney later this year. It's been the dream of my wife to take her kids to Disney. We've been saving up over the last year, this trip is going to cost about $7000. Yes a roundtrip to Disney is now a $7000 event. Its insane. When I was a kid, my parents could have taken us to Hawaii 2-3 times for this, and I just get a roadtrip and long lines of whining kids.

I'm grateful when I can do a $40-50 coin. Hitting a $100 spend isn't too often. I've never dropped $1K on a coin purchase. A lot of my collecting in the past three years was funded by donating plasma. My actual salary is totally absorbed by the family and some of the plasma covers those overages too.

There will be a reckoning eventually. The lack of population growth since the 1980s combined with the lack of disposable incomes is going to crash many markets eventually. It's not just antiques or rare coins. And we aren't talking drops in prices or demands of 5%. That's not a crash IMO. We are going to see Beanie Baby type crashes in markets that aren't as disposable as cute bean bags.

The Boomers did NOT setup the Millennials to have it better than they did. Sure, things are different. We are more digital. We prize a sense of authenticity maybe a little more. But we will not be economically better off or ultimately find more satisfaction in our lives. The long and slow decline has begun.

To each their own. I am 19 years old and recently spent $750 on a coin for my personal collection. Some people do not want to study coins much and enjoy collecting casually, coin roll hunting or filling their silver Washington Dansco album. I work harder, study coins everyday, and have the opportunity to get enjoyment out of the genuine rarities and more expensive coins.

I'm not really buying the doom and gloom premise of that article. Certainly not the notion that there's anything that much different with "millennials." When I got out of college in the early 80s, unemployment was in the 10% range for years. Nobody had any money. Nobody really cared (at least not among my post-hippie era cohorts). We chased those same experiences over having "stuff."

"the median net worth (including primary residence) of 30 to 34 year old households in the U.S. was a piddling $29,125. Fully 66% of younger Millennials have absolutely no retirement savings whatsoever." Well, when I was in that age group it was exactly the same! That $29125 net worth in 1989 when I entered that demographic criteria was $11789 and I was probably worth a third of that at the time, and even that was largely due to inheriting a few thousand from my grandmother. But during the 1980s I went on three separate bicycle tours on three continents for a total of about a year not working at all, living in a tent the whole time, etc. Those experiences were more valuable than anything, and chasing stuff like that instead of coins or antiques is nothing new.

The problem now as I see it, is that everyone is conditioned to having their disposal income dribbled away. Monthly internet, cellphone, subscriptions to multiple steaming services, employee health insurance taking a big chunk out of paychecks, co-pays, other insurance, memberships in this that and the other thing, blah blah blah - it all gets sucked away. Add in the YOLO mentality and it seems like people don't think cutting all those little chunks out is worth the sacrifice. I know this is all an "OK, boomer" type response...

It was an 1818 CBH with doubled edge lettering. Here is the thread: http://goccf.com/t/448123

I started seriously about four years ago, started buying and selling around the Sacramento area using primarily Craigslist. I learned through independent research, books, and forums like this one. I got into the big ticket items by committing to assemble a respectable Capped Bust half dollar collection and one day joining the Bust Half Nut Club. Progress is slow but the nice coins are worth waiting for. I continue to buy and sell using several venues, hoping to develop a business within the next year and work as a professional numismatist. Perhaps it is a pipe dream, but I will know what I will do after this summer. I will be attending the summer FUN show, Pittsburgh ANA, and the Professional Numismatist Program with Stack's Bowers in Costa Mesa.

I'm in my 20's and I guess I'm lucky to not have to experience a lot of the things the article mentions about millennials. I have plenty of free time and enough disposable income to work towards completing a pre-1933 gold type set, albeit slowly. But I guess that's mainly a consequence of what I prioritize in life. I'm single and a student and I don't have any plans to marry or start a family any time in the foreseeable future as those things to me just mean a bunch of added responsibilities that I'd rather not have to deal with. But I can totally see how people with families to provide for would have much less free time and disposable income for high-end coins. To each their own I suppose.