Questions About The Hobby

My answers are pure speculation.

I believe that, given the advent of the Internet, auction venues like ebay and the popularity of special Mint issues, more coins are being bought and sold today than at any time in the past. As I write this, there are nearly 100,000 US coins listed on ebay alone. That's actually down about 10,000 from a couple months ago.

The overwhelming majority of the market must be dealer-collector transactions, depending on how strictly or loosely one defines ebay sellers. Judging from my quick survey, in the last 24 hours almost 1000 ebay auctions ended in completed transactions, covering an unknown quantity of coins considering multi-coin auctions. 1,000 completed transactions per day is a pretty sizable dealership.

Like it or not, ebay is now the 800lb gorilla for low-value coin transactions; indeed, there's a strong argument to be made that they pretty much made that market by comparison to what went before.

Then one must consider Heritage, a venue of higher-value coinage which has seen over 4400 individual sales this month alone, just from their 4 regularly-scheduled auctions and not counting Buy It Nows. And don't forget Teletrade, which has moved just over $1.1 million gross, just this month so far.

None of this was possible 10 years ago.

Hi Richard and welcome to the forum! There's plenty of expertise and experience here and everyone is willing to give friendly opinions.

You've asked a very good question. Rick is correct in that the answer is not easily quantifiable over such a long period and any answer needs to be heavily focussed and qualified. Books can be (and have been) written on the subject. And as Dave stated, the change of venues from brick-and-mortar shops to online auctions and purchases greatly affects coin sales and statistics.

Here's how I see it based on ebay observations (see? The limits have already been set.). Over the past six years, the coin market has been HOT! The overall national economy during this period has been weak (putting it kindly for a family-friendly forum) despite what has been fed to us through rose-tinted glasses by politicians. The stock market has gone nowhere and the recent blip on the charts is more politically driven than economic reality based; it may or may not stay up there. To the small investor which is most of us with limited resources looking for a means to protect what little funds we might have left, the stock market and economy is a house of cards liable to fall at any moment and is certainly not the place to invest. Small investors look to something more substantial which will maintain at least a modicum of value: coins (also art, antique firearms, and a few other collectibles). Thus, more and more people are looking to invest in coins, even now after the elections which appear to repudiate national economic policies.

The coin market is considerably more stable than the national economy over the long term although there have been dips over the past 20 years. Since the advent of ebay and other online venues, coin transactions for investments or collections have been made easier and faster. Liquidations of collections can be made in days instead of months or years. The facility of these transactions is still attracting the eyes of small investors who are coming into the hobby in droves. While there may be an upper limit, I don't think we're gonna see the end of the trend for at least a couple years. Just in the past two months alone, coins which should have sold for only one or two hundred each in August are now being purchased for double what we would normally expect. Raw coins (overgraded, damaged, cleaned, fuzzy images, undetermined status and authenticity), non-rated boiler room slabbed coins, and top TPG coins (especially high grades) are being bought by novice collectors/investors paying prices that experienced collectors would never dream of attempting to approach, let alone out-bid. Speculation is rampant, especially by uneducated, naive, and otherwise unqualified buyers. At the moment, it's a seller's market.

This could change tomorrow. However, I don't know what would change this current trend - it would have to be political and reflect the national sentiment (e.g., a radical change in direction of the national economy), but beyond this, I wouldn't want to speculate. In any instance, I do not see the end of this run for at least two more years. I could be wrong... but I don't think so.

Fred