Are There Any Female Coin Enthusiasts?

It's tedious, dry and boring to them.

I agree.

My real profession is/was in engineering, which also has a notorious gender gap. Despite the percentage of women graduating with engineering degrees increasing over the last two generations, the percent actually employed in the field remains below 20% for a number of reasons, including this self-perpetuating aspect (often just referred to as "overwhelmingly male culture"). Maybe the same in numismatics.

My dad first got me (a male) interested in coin collecting when I was about 12 years old. He brought out the Whitman Lincoln Penny folders he had assembled when he was a kid. He also showed me his copy of the Red Book. I remember being fascinated that this book had information about every coin ever minted by the U.S. mint. As I began my own Lincoln Penny collection, I yearned to talk about it with someone besides my dad. I asked some of my (male) friends at school if they collected, but none did. My little sister (who is one year younger than me) and I had always been very close growing up, so I started showing her the Whitman folders and the coins I had begun to accumulate in the hope she would catch the numismatic bug as I had. She seemed a least somewhat interested, and I can remember her sounding enthusiastic about buying some proof sets.

But, alas, that fell by the wayside. We never talked about coins again.

Outside of the good folks on this website, of all the people I've ever known--male or female--none have been coin collectors. Even the guy at the local coin shop seems more of a businessman than a coin collector.

Same observation by me here. It applies to other areas of collecting.




Can be a matter of available money to younger people?

There are bargains in coin shows. The piles of pick your coin for 1 or 3 or 5 € or $. But people who bother to attend intend to spend more than a little?

tdziemia said:

As a fellow engineer, I feel obligated to point out that what you described is a very American phenomenon. I have worked on multiple international engineering teams. Some cultures seem to have a much more gender-balanced population of engineers—notably Chinese and Indian software engineers—and others are highly skewed like us. Different demographics in different cultures chose different professions at different rates. I don't know that you could ever achieve a 45/55 gender split in American engineering, any more than you could naturally arrive at a 45/55 gender split in American primary education, for example.

Is coin collecting like that? I don't know. My gut feel is that coin collecting is plenty diverse when all types of modern coin collecting is considered (CRH, casual collecting, low budget small collections, inherited coin caches, etc.). If we view it through the lens of traditional coin collecting from 30 years ago (album filling, set collecting, big $$$ coin purchases), then maybe we shouldn't be surprised if the population looks like coin collectors from 30 years ago plus some minor fluctuations.

I'll be in the minority and disagree. Take the example outside of coin collecting, let's say skateboarding. Skateboarding has a stereotype of juvenile delinquents that cause trouble and smoke. I am not a delinquent and I don't smoke, but I skate anyway, even though I sometimes don't fit in with the crowd. Point being if someone wants to do something, they'll do it, especially if they are passionate.

I think it is simply an interest that fails to develop with the female brain. Same idea with other "manly" things such as welding, car repair, or roofing. Of course there are exceptions, but the vast majority proves that.

Perhaps there are countless female collectors out there in the world, but they are rarely seen in a professional sense. I do not recall a US coin reference that was written by a female.

Thank you all for the replies! My oldest sure liked the coins I got her at the show, and wanted to go back. So maybe we'll have another female coin enthusiast in 10 or 20 years. OK, maybe more like 20, until she can find a job to subsidize her future coin addiction. I'm going to put some of those coins inside flips for her tonight. Both of them really like flips for some reason, and compete with each other for the most number of flips.

Cheers!

I went to a coin show this weekend and paid attention to the attendees. I am happy to report it looked like an even mix.