Miami Valley Coin Club

The Young Coin Collector

“People just aren’t as interested in coin collecting as they used to be.”

Not true! Check auctions and coins for sale on eBay and you will find that some 90,000 coins are sold on average every day. It’s only the younger generation that isn’t as interested in coin collecting as they used to be. Kids and young adults say that coin collecting is just for “old people”.

One of the biggest problems is that today’s circulation coins are tired and boring when it comes to design. The Mint has been striking Lincoln cents, virtually unchanged, for 110 years; Jefferson nickels since 1938; Roosevelt dimes for 73 years. Okay, Washington quarters have interested some younger collectors with the 50 States program, but even that theme is getting old.

Another issue is the vast numbers of each year’s mintage. Used to be, some coins were only struck in the thousands and hundreds of thousands. Today’s coins, for the most part, are struck in the billions. It will be a rare occurrence when one to today’s coins will be worth any real value in the future. And these will probably be related to some type of error.

So how do we interest today’s younger generations? Sell them low mintage commemoratives? I doubt it. Most of these commemoratives come with above average price tags. Today’s youngsters are probably not going to drop $59.95 on a commemorative that they shouldn’t really touch with their own hands. At least not consistently.

PCGS and NGC have sort of the right idea. Their registry sets, seen and tabulated on the internet, are a step in the right direction. The only problem with their idea is that all the “sets” that are tracked involve “world’s best” or “low-ball” sets which can be costly to assemble. Some type of digital collecting, trading, and tracking system may interest our newest “online” generation.