I know we have many threads on the fate of cash & whether people use less coins/banknotes recently. In Canada, there's a real push to be rid of cash with the onslaught of automated check-outs (1 out of 6 may take cash but you/we who wish to use cash are in the minority now).
Just wondering how you feel about the future of forums, discussion boards or sites like Numista? I try to contribute to other forums & have found that some of them have really dried up. Is this due to collector apathy, social media (IG, FB, Reddit) taking a bite?
It may become harder (more expensive) to get the new coins from many countries, but the coins already having been issued and put into circulation worldwide will still be available to us collectors. So our hobby is far from dead, you just will have less “pocket change” coming into your collection @
I find that there are fewer new and younger collectors of banknotes than there were 30 years ago. Perhaps the same is the case for coins.
On forum traffic, perhaps there is a tendency for the instant fix out there, rather than taking the time to write posts, people snap a pic of their coin on their phone, pop it up on a social media platform (my least favourite of these is pintrest), and get a thumbs up or a smiley - all done in an instant. Feeding the mill with low quality information.
I find that there are fewer new and younger collectors of banknotes than there were 30 years ago. Perhaps the same is the case for coins.
On forum traffic, perhaps there is a tendency for the instant fix out there, rather than taking the time to write posts, people snap a pic of their coin on their phone, pop it up on a social media platform (my least favourite of these is pintrest), and get a thumbs up or a smiley - all done in an instant. Feeding the mill with low quality information.
I suspect that the phone & rise of social media platforms has supplanted the relevance of forums. These instant gratification platforms have both raised the profile of coins/currency but at the same time eliminated the expectation that one variety is more significant (rare/collectible) than others. Comments get about as complicated as “cool coin!” “hope it's not fake” or “Get it graded!”
Its a watering-down process that's a bit alarming (IMO). But what's even worse is the phasing out of marketplace cash options.
As many nations join the Better than Cash Alliance's agenda to become cashless, coins & currency have become less relevant to younger generations- so its only natural that tweens/teens don't see the history (or the appeal to collect older banknotes/coins).
I find that there are fewer new and younger collectors of banknotes than there were 30 years ago. Perhaps the same is the case for coins.
On forum traffic, perhaps there is a tendency for the instant fix out there, rather than taking the time to write posts, people snap a pic of their coin on their phone, pop it up on a social media platform (my least favourite of these is pintrest), and get a thumbs up or a smiley - all done in an instant. Feeding the mill with low quality information.
I suspect that the phone & rise of social media platforms has supplanted the relevance of forums. These instant gratification platforms have both raised the profile of coins/currency but at the same time eliminated the expectation that one variety is more significant (rare/collectible) than others. Comments get about as complicated as “cool coin!” “hope it's not fake” or “Get it graded!”
Its a watering-down process that's a bit alarming (IMO). But what's even worse is the phasing out of marketplace cash options.
As many nations join the Better than Cash Alliance's agenda to become cashless, coins & currency have become less relevant to younger generations- so its only natural that tweens/teens don't see the history (or the appeal to collect older banknotes/coins).
yeah I've learned more about history of countries from coin's than all my history classes put together. Glad I am not needing to study for history that much.
I'm not too sure how to phrase this but perhaps, the quality of coin collectors is diminishing as well. Collectors who are older tend to be the ones who truly appreciate the history, the art and the work put into the designing and minting of each coin. However, I don't think I can say the same for the younger crowd.
On Instagram and other social media platforms, I do come across people my generation claiming that they are coin collectors who are interested in Numismatics. Yet, whenever I send a picture of a coin from my collection to them, their only responses seem to be “How much is this worth?” and “Have you got it graded/authenticated?" and seem to be disinterested when I tell them that my 1961 10 kopecks coin from the USSR is worth nothing more than half a dollar.
This has kinda let me into believing that most collectors my age are only into numismatics because they hope to profit from it in the future, which in my opinion, is rather unfortunate as it erodes what numismatics was supposed to encapsulate in the first place.
Numismatics have certainly taught me more about the countries around the world than school and I sincerely wish that future collectors are able to look beyond the material value of what this hobby encompasses.
Also it could be due to inflation as well with the situations we all have been affected by, COVID, war, sanctions and shortages which in turn causes panic and hoarding.
In the U.K. the lowest denomination that you can use is the 5p because the 1p and 2p is almost useless due to inflation so most of the time they get thrown into charity collection bins. While in the UAE I have rarely seen any coins under 1 Dirham and the 1,5 and 10 Fils are virtually nonexistent even after asking many cashiers for them.
For example I went to Carrefour and bought several items and the bill was 196.90 Dirhams which I gave the cashier two 100 Dirham notes and expected 3.10 Dirhams change but I only got the 3 dirhams, so I asked politely for the 10 fills but he didn’t have any and non of the cashiers in the neighbouring checkouts did so after a long discussion I managed to get the last 25 fils coin he had in the till.
Hi to whoever is reading this. Did you know that TYPEWRITER (on a QWERTY keyboard) is the longest word you can type using only the letters on one row of the keyboard.
I'm not too sure how to phrase this but perhaps, the quality of coin collectors is diminishing as well. Collectors who are older tend to be the ones who truly appreciate the history, the art and the work put into the designing and minting of each coin. However, I don't think I can say the same for the younger crowd.
On Instagram and other social media platforms, I do come across people my generation claiming that they are coin collectors who are interested in Numismatics. Yet, whenever I send a picture of a coin from my collection to them, their only responses seem to be “How much is this worth?” and “Have you got it graded/authenticated?" and seem to be disinterested when I tell them that my 1961 10 kopecks coin from the USSR is worth nothing more than half a dollar.
This has kinda let me into believing that most collectors my age are only into numismatics because they hope to profit from it in the future, which in my opinion, is rather unfortunate as it erodes what numismatics was supposed to encapsulate in the first place.
Numismatics have certainly taught me more about the countries around the world than school and I sincerely wish that future collectors are able to look beyond the material value of what this hobby encompasses.
This has kinda let me into believing that most collectors my age are only into numismatics because they hope to profit from it in the future, which in my opinion, is rather unfortunate as it erodes what numismatics was supposed to encapsulate in the first place.
Numismatics have certainly taught me more about the countries around the world than school and I sincerely wish that future collectors are able to look beyond the material value of what this hobby encompasses.
+1
-that's a great observation @qwerty844448! I've noticed this too with paper money. Many IG/Redit/FB posts of “get it graded!” or “how much do you want for that?”
hey I care about it im 15
Good to see you have resisted the trend @silvergeek! It's awesome you care about history & I'm sure there's others like you.
Also it could be due to inflation as well with the situations we all have been affected by, COVID, war, sanctions and shortages which in turn causes panic and hoarding.
Covid caused an unexpected uptick in our hobby (people were forced to stay home & some rediscovered their hobbies) & forum participation (I believe). Hoarding would have the same affect (finding old coins/cash). What's typical of most hobbyist is to dabble (be active for a day maybe a week or 2) & then put the coins back into the closet.
War/sanctions- these might cause people to sell or dispense with their collections but most impacted collectors wouldn't have the luxury of time. It has been chaos for too many people in that region & in general has disrupted lives to such an extreme that the hobby would most definitely be abandoned for survival mode. I understand that in some parts of Ukraine, citizens try to get back into it, & then they're attacked.
For the rest of the world, in general, I suspect that technology (youths' slippery slide into the gaming culture) has curbed the younger generations entry to the hobby. But worse than this is the efforts of the BTCA as they push governments to actively phase out the relevance of cash. That article was posted 8 years ago & we can hardly find a cash check out here in Canada. As soon as Covid hit the BTCA plastered posters everywhere demonizing cash (that it would transmit an air borne virus) & just about everybody I knew (who should have known better) were doing the same. Now more retail outlets have installed self check-outs with 6 Debit/Visa check outs to 1 cash check out. Our governments are also in on the act by eliminating options to pay cash.
Seth Mason's considers the BTCA diabolically named & while this may seem extreme, their presence has doubled in terms of national memberships.
Also it could be due to inflation as well with the situations we all have been affected by, COVID, war, sanctions and shortages which in turn causes panic and hoarding.
Covid caused an unexpected uptick in our hobby (people were forced to stay home & some rediscovered their hobbies) & forum participation (I believe). Hoarding would have the same affect (finding old coins/cash). What's typical of most hobbyist is to dabble (be active for a day maybe a week or 2) & then put the coins back into the closet.
War/sanctions- these might cause people to sell or dispense with their collections but most impacted collectors wouldn't have the luxury of time. It has been chaos for too many people in that region & in general has disrupted lives to such an extreme that the hobby would most definitely be abandoned for survival mode. I understand that in some parts of Ukraine, citizens try to get back into it, & then they're attacked.
For the rest of the world, in general, I suspect that technology (youths' slippery slide into the gaming culture) has curbed the younger generations entry to the hobby. But worse than this is the efforts of the BTCA as they push governments to actively phase out the relevance of cash. That article was posted 8 years ago & we can hardly find a cash check out here in Canada. As soon as Covid hit the BTCA plastered posters everywhere demonizing cash (that it would transmit an air borne virus) & just about everybody I knew (who should have known better) were doing the same. Now more retail outlets have installed self check-outs with 6 Debit/Visa check outs to 1 cash check out. Our governments are also in on the act by eliminating options to pay cash.
Seth Mason's considers the BTCA diabolically named & while this may seem extreme, their presence has doubled in terms of national memberships.
I understand coin and banknote collecting increased in popularity during the pandemic but for some time the coins and banknotes used in commerce decreased significantly.
I agree with you I‘m not a fan of self checkouts myself personally because even though there are meant to be “faster than one with people”, half the time it shouts to you “remove item from scale” or stops When I scan a movie or cd assuming I’m a 8 year old buying a 18 rated film while a clerk would instantly know if the customer is old enough to buy it unless there is tall adult looking 8 year olds in the area.🙂
Also this isn’t limited to the coinage and hobby itself some older banks are architectural marvels from Art Deco desks from the 1930s to the sleek but boxy booths of the 70s and those are being lost either by removing all but one desk (the rest being annoying machines) or the branch closing altogether.
Hi to whoever is reading this. Did you know that TYPEWRITER (on a QWERTY keyboard) is the longest word you can type using only the letters on one row of the keyboard.
I'm not too sure how to phrase this but perhaps, the quality of coin collectors is diminishing as well. Collectors who are older tend to be the ones who truly appreciate the history, the art and the work put into the designing and minting of each coin. However, I don't think I can say the same for the younger crowd.
On Instagram and other social media platforms, I do come across people my generation claiming that they are coin collectors who are interested in Numismatics. Yet, whenever I send a picture of a coin from my collection to them, their only responses seem to be “How much is this worth?” and “Have you got it graded/authenticated?" and seem to be disinterested when I tell them that my 1961 10 kopecks coin from the USSR is worth nothing more than half a dollar.
This has kinda let me into believing that most collectors my age are only into numismatics because they hope to profit from it in the future, which in my opinion, is rather unfortunate as it erodes what numismatics was supposed to encapsulate in the first place.
Numismatics have certainly taught me more about the countries around the world than school and I sincerely wish that future collectors are able to look beyond the material value of what this hobby encompasses.
I feel good that I’m not alone in this trend.
Coins and banknotes are a nations identity, cultural history and can be used to buy something that you like there. I admit on some occasion I ask what’s my coin worth in terms of selling duplicates for fellow collectors to enjoy.
Your not alone when in schools they rarely teach children about the countries of the world and when I was in secondary school they barely taught us about U.K. history and culture and only educated us about everything within a 15-20 miles radius of the school.
While my mom when she was in school from the 60s to the 80s the schools she went to taught everything important about every country in the world at the time such as Name of capital city, time zone, leader at the time, currency, history of the country among others.
Hi to whoever is reading this. Did you know that TYPEWRITER (on a QWERTY keyboard) is the longest word you can type using only the letters on one row of the keyboard.
I see that some of you think it would be a loss if the US “penny” was discontinued. Actually, if your coins are irrelevant for economic transactions, then they are a burden and your defective currency system will only cause a further switch towards a cashless economy.
If the US had a real dollar coin and finally got rid of the archaic dollar bill, imagine the effect on the circulation of coins. Vending machines would become much more efficient. A healthy currency is the only way ahead, though this is not enough to change the current trends towards a cashless economy.
Mr. Midnight makes an interesting point because, indeed, a cashless society would be detrimental to the poor. This was true 200 years ago, when the elite inside the British Empire did recognize that shortages of copper/bronze small denominations was detrimental to the working classes, and in turn to the whole economy. How do you pay for a loaf of bread if there's no money? Do you rely on the credit system? But are you realistically going to rely on a system of credit notes if you don't even know how to read? And this is true not only of the buyers, but many shopkeepers as well!
As for the question in the OP, I think a problem is that many sites designed for desktops don't exist as apps for the phone. Is it not the case with Numista? I hate surfing the Internet on the phone, but at night in bed I sometimes check it out (until I buy a new iPad). So, I need a tab for Numista since, to the best of my knowledge, there is no app.
I believe, too, that mints such as the RCM don't help because they trivialize the numismatic value of coins. They have all this NCLT deluxe junk coming out all the time in all kinds of ridiculous denominations, including silver pennies and gold dimes. This is not helping the hobby because most people don't know the difference between those “things” and real coins. A new collector can easily get discouraged. More than half of Numista's coin catalogue for Canada is filled with RCM junk. This is not good.
Look at the Krause World Coins catalogue for the 2001- period. It's 1500 pages mostly filled with those cash-grab medals. I can't believe this is where the hobby is. And on top of it, there are all kinds of special finishes that are actually meaningless numismatically (cameo, etc.).
I believe, too, that mints such as the RCM don't help because they trivialize the numismatic value of coins. They have all this NCLT deluxe junk coming out all the time in all kinds of ridiculous denominations, including silver pennies and gold dimes. This is not helping the hobby because most people don't know the difference between those “things” and real coins. A new collector can easily get discouraged. More than half of Numista's coin catalogue for Canada is filled with RCM junk. This is not good.
Look at the Krause World Coins catalogue for the 2001- period. It's 1500 pages mostly filled with those cash-grab medals. I can't believe this is where the hobby is. And on top of it, there are all kinds of special finishes that are actually meaningless numismatically (cameo, etc.).
Thats why I stay away from most new mint products. These days mint sets are way too overpriced so as the BUNCS. I suppose if the BUNCS were priced at or near face value some of us might buy them.
Hi to whoever is reading this. Did you know that TYPEWRITER (on a QWERTY keyboard) is the longest word you can type using only the letters on one row of the keyboard.
I find that there are fewer new and younger collectors of banknotes than there were 30 years ago. Perhaps the same is the case for coins.
On forum traffic, perhaps there is a tendency for the instant fix out there, rather than taking the time to write posts, people snap a pic of their coin on their phone, pop it up on a social media platform (my least favourite of these is pintrest), and get a thumbs up or a smiley - all done in an instant. Feeding the mill with low quality information.
As someone who has experienced this firsthand (on reddit/coins)
This is absurdly accurate,
Trying to ask questions causes grievances from people “Who just want to see coins” .
I onced presented a online presentation on the design changes on the meiji coinage & why they stopped using the Asashi-Ryu design,
It's response was more receptive but the original poster who requested it didn't bother even checking it out or just didn't feel the need to comment further.
In my opinion a glorified show & tell with less of the tell.
I only give one of the users there credit however because they recommended people there who wanted more detailed topics to numista & I am glad I checked it out even if I read more then I discuss.
I'm not too sure how to phrase this but perhaps, the quality of coin collectors is diminishing as well. Collectors who are older tend to be the ones who truly appreciate the history, the art and the work put into the designing and minting of each coin. However, I don't think I can say the same for the younger crowd.
On Instagram and other social media platforms, I do come across people my generation claiming that they are coin collectors who are interested in Numismatics. Yet, whenever I send a picture of a coin from my collection to them, their only responses seem to be “How much is this worth?” and “Have you got it graded/authenticated?" and seem to be disinterested when I tell them that my 1961 10 kopecks coin from the USSR is worth nothing more than half a dollar.
This has kinda let me into believing that most collectors my age are only into numismatics because they hope to profit from it in the future, which in my opinion, is rather unfortunate as it erodes what numismatics was supposed to encapsulate in the first place.
Numismatics have certainly taught me more about the countries around the world than school and I sincerely wish that future collectors are able to look beyond the material value of what this hobby encompasses.
Lots of people have the profit motive when it comes to banknote collecting.
They are not interested in the ‘collecting’ aspect, or in the coins or notes themselves, just in accumulating a portfolio of assets.
Anytime anyone asks me if old banknotes are a good investment, I say ‘I wouldn’t recommend them’ - I don’t want them driving up the and spoiling it for genuine collectors, and also, I don’t give advice on investments.
I have also come across the occasional dealer or collector, new into Irish banknotes who thinks they can corner the market by hoovering up all the examples of key rarities, and then charging vastly over the odds for them. Several have failed at this.
It is easy to find faults with us collectors but that wasn't the intent of my question (or this thread). We're flawed humans prone to make mistakes (some worse than others). Today's collector may suffer from information overload but are they getting helpful/useful info from forums or from IG, FB groups, Reddit & other phone apps? If this is the trend? Will forums/discussion boards have any future for this hobby?
Recently, I registered with a Canadian coin site & could see that I was the latest member joined for over a week. I got a few replies to my first few posts & then it was “crickets” & no activity at all.
I know that when I started collecting coins I had an outdated library book & my only idea of a computer was of some mysterious blinking machine (incorporated into the console of a rocket) from watching Star Trek. I stumbled along catching a ragged banknote from each denomination happy to find a different signature combo. There was no Charlton catalogue back then & it took me years to add to my collection. Then I got a copy of a catalogue, registered with the CPMF & really got to know which notes to collect. It is crickets (dead) over there now too!
I believe we can find a happy balance between collecting to learn history & collecting wisely (so it won't lose value over time). My approach to this hobby isn't just about acquiring either. It's about fact finding, discovering what's up with the above social media outlets (even though I don't enjoy them) & to just learn what else/resources are out there. It is about participating here, working on my own site & keeping connected with other collectors.
But each to his/her own & once again I wonder how these forums will fare if the social media apps take over. Our government says it wants Canadians to have cash & yet established electronic payment systems similar to every retail outlet. It says one thing & does the opposite? Nobody seems to be alarmed over our rapid transition to a cashless society (in fact most people I know seem ready to embrace it!)
Aren't some of these systemic cultural-economic changes part of the problem to our declining hobby?
There is very little good quality info on any of those groups.
We are in the age of fast info, like a blipvert
I do think that a few of the better coin and currency forums will keep going, as long as there are serious collectors around to put time and knowledge into them.
I find most of the forums I joined up on over the past few years are generally dead, with just a few active members and little take-up in topics.
Some don't even have active moderators, PMG forums for example is full of spam.
The fate of phonecard collecting might be a pointer to the future of coin and note collecting in general. Around 30 years ago phone card collecting was hot. They were great for young collectors, as you could grow your collection from scratch without it costing anything - very like stamp collecting. You become a bit older, you start filling in the rare ones.
When phonecards were out-evolved by the mobile phone, which also pushed phone kiosks into near extinction, the hobby of phonecard collecting died. Quite quickly. I think its decline came because they fell out of use, kids started collecting other things, and the base fell out of the collector pool.
I see coin and note collecting going the way of phonecards for the young collectors if a cashless society grows to largely replace replace cash use. If coins and notes are not a familiar item to people, much fewer people will become collectors.
I agree with you I‘m not a fan of self checkouts myself personally because even though there are meant to be “faster than one with people”, half the time it shouts to you “remove item from scale” or stops When I scan a movie or cd assuming I’m a 8 year old buying a 18 rated film while a clerk would instantly know if the customer is old enough to buy it unless there is tall adult looking 8 year olds in the area.
In my experience they are faster - but only because 1) they take up so much less space that the shop can cram in more of them than it has cash registers, and 2) all the people with their carts full of groceries go to the cash registers because they couldn't fit all their stuff on the tiny bit next to the self-checkout anyway, making the lines there take longer. And to an extent 3) a lot of people pay with cash and can't use the self-checkouts, further diminishing the lines.
In other words, they're faster because at a cash register I usually have to stand in a line, while on a self-checkout I almost always don't.
I don't think I've ever had any of them scream “remove item from scale” at me. AFAIK a lot of shops these days have separate scales for getting bar codes on your weighed products that you're supposed to go to before you actually reach the cash register (or self-checkout) - then the self-checkout doesn't need a scale at all. Even in places where that's not a thing I often don't remove the item from the scale until it's time to weigh something else (or until I'm finished, if that comes earlier), and there's never been any screaming.
I don't buy movies or CDs so I don't get that problem with those; I do, however, get similar problems for alcoholic drinks (including beer), and there's a separate request-for-assistance if I accidentally scanned something twice (or chose the wrong weighed item from the list) and have to cancel. It's still faster than normal cash registers because of the aforementioned line disparity.
Incidentally, funnily enough, the vast majority of coin-selling places I've been to only accepted cash.
It's true that in Ontario at least, early on, you got this loud “Remove your item from scale!” and “Put your item in bag!” ─ very annoying. And if you committed the capital sin of re-arranging your items in the bag, it sounded like the next step would be them calling Security. This was very off-putting, and they got to understand it because now, indeed, the loud commands aren't heard any longer.
I try to avoid self checkout, but it's usually the fastest way out. It actually happened just last evening that there was a long lineup at the 12-or-less cash register (with several people over 12 items…), so I used the self checkout and waited less than 15 seconds for one to be free.
I agree with you I‘m not a fan of self checkouts myself personally because even though there are meant to be “faster than one with people”, half the time it shouts to you “remove item from scale” or stops When I scan a movie or cd assuming I’m a 8 year old buying a 18 rated film while a clerk would instantly know if the customer is old enough to buy it unless there is tall adult looking 8 year olds in the area.
In my experience they are faster - but only because 1) they take up so much less space that the shop can cram in more of them than it has cash registers, and 2) all the people with their carts full of groceries go to the cash registers because they couldn't fit all their stuff on the tiny bit next to the self-checkout anyway, making the lines there take longer. And to an extent 3) a lot of people pay with cash and can't use the self-checkouts, further diminishing the lines.
In other words, they're faster because at a cash register I usually have to stand in a line, while on a self-checkout I almost always don't.
I don't think I've ever had any of them scream “remove item from scale” at me. AFAIK a lot of shops these days have separate scales for getting bar codes on your weighed products that you're supposed to go to before you actually reach the cash register (or self-checkout) - then the self-checkout doesn't need a scale at all. Even in places where that's not a thing I often don't remove the item from the scale until it's time to weigh something else (or until I'm finished, if that comes earlier), and there's never been any screaming.
I don't buy movies or CDs so I don't get that problem with those; I do, however, get similar problems for alcoholic drinks (including beer), and there's a separate request-for-assistance if I accidentally scanned something twice (or chose the wrong weighed item from the list) and have to cancel. It's still faster than normal cash registers because of the aforementioned line disparity.
Incidentally, funnily enough, the vast majority of coin-selling places I've been to only accepted cash.
From what I have observed at checkouts different countries (France where I was just over a month ago and Dubai where I am currently at the moment) the ones there are similar to the ones you have experienced. But the ones in the U.K. (in my local area at least) have scales where you must put your items after scanning them. Although between 60% and 80% of them are older self checkouts from the late 90s to mid 2000s. But even some of the newer ones as late as 2019ish have scales.
Thats why we don’t have separate scales although there is separate scales in my local Lidl but thats for bagging up nuts I meant the ones you consume unless your allergic to them. :)
Lastly most coin and antique shops in my area accept cash, card and contactless, but in some cases like in fairs or markets some dealers might only accept cash and that might be the case if you make a small purchase at a shop.
Hi to whoever is reading this. Did you know that TYPEWRITER (on a QWERTY keyboard) is the longest word you can type using only the letters on one row of the keyboard.
There is very little good quality nfo on any of those groups.
We are in the age of fast info, like a blipvert
I do think that a few of the better coin and currency forums will keep going, as long as there are serious collectors around to put time and knowledge into them.
I find most of the forums I joined up on over the past few years are generally dead, with just a few active members and little take-up in topics.
Some don't even have active moderators, PMG forums for example is full of spam.
The fate of phonecard collecting might be a pointer to the future of coin and note collecting in general. Around 30 years ago phone card collecting was hot. They were great for young collectors, as you could grow your collection from scratch without it costing anything - very like stamp collecting. You become a bit older, you start filling in the rare ones.
When phonecards were out-evolved by the mobile phone, which also pushed phone kiosks into near extinction, the hobby of phonecard collecting died. Quite quickly. I think its decline came because they fell out of use, kids started collecting other things, and the base fell out of the collector pool.
I see coin and note collecting going the way of phonecards for the young collectors if a cashless society grows to largely replace replace cash use. If coins and notes are not a familiar item to people, much fewer people will become collectors.
-Hibernia
- I think you articulated my concern precisely. I often wonder how hurtling towards a cashless society will impact the hobby. No checks or balances seem to be impeding the rapid transition. And don't get me wrong- I don't want to see us go back in time (I enjoy the technological conveniences of online banking & paying by Visa just like everyone else). I worry about our unabashed tendency to take on more debt (we don't see damage). I often find I no longer have the option to pay cash at many places where I had that option just last year!
Losing the option to pay with cash should be everybody's concern (we're still struggling with our Roger's fiasco here in Canada).
I hope that the currency/coins hobbies doesn't perish like phone cards & wish that our forums (discussion boards) persist despite technological revolutions PLUS the blows our governments throw at it (like fast-tracking digital & taxing collectible banknotes/coins!)
There is very little good quality nfo on any of those groups.
We are in the age of fast info, like a blipvert
I do think that a few of the better coin and currency forums will keep going, as long as there are serious collectors around to put time and knowledge into them.
I find most of the forums I joined up on over the past few years are generally dead, with just a few active members and little take-up in topics.
Some don't even have active moderators, PMG forums for example is full of spam.
The fate of phonecard collecting might be a pointer to the future of coin and note collecting in general. Around 30 years ago phone card collecting was hot. They were great for young collectors, as you could grow your collection from scratch without it costing anything - very like stamp collecting. You become a bit older, you start filling in the rare ones.
When phonecards were out-evolved by the mobile phone, which also pushed phone kiosks into near extinction, the hobby of phonecard collecting died. Quite quickly. I think its decline came because they fell out of use, kids started collecting other things, and the base fell out of the collector pool.
I see coin and note collecting going the way of phonecards for the young collectors if a cashless society grows to largely replace replace cash use. If coins and notes are not a familiar item to people, much fewer people will become collectors.
-Hibernia
- I think you articulated my concern precisely. I often wonder how hurtling towards a cashless society will impact the hobby. No checks or balances seem to be impeding the rapid transition. And don't get me wrong- I don't want to see us go back in time (I enjoy the technological conveniences of online banking & paying by Visa just like everyone else). I worry about our unabashed tendency to take on more debt (we don't see damage). I often find I no longer have the option to pay cash at many places where I had that option just last year!
Losing the option to pay with cash should be everybody's concern (we're still struggling with our Roger's fiasco here in Canada).
I hope that the currency/coins hobbies doesn't perish like phone cards & wish that our forums (discussion boards) persist despite technological revolutions PLUS the blows our governments throw at it (like fast-tracking digital & taxing collectible banknotes/coins!)
Yeah sorry about that.🫡 (moderators can you move the affected posts to the relevant tread please)
In my opinion it would be hard to kill Cash in any form because us humans have evolved round it for the last few thousand years and in other forms such as coco Beans in Mexico and knife money in China.
Also like other people said apart from Numista and a few other sites such as Coinhelpu and coin brothers most other forums and catalogues are virtually lifeless. Unless Numista has killed off the competition.
Finally one thing that most people has forgotten to notice is the decline in items, storage and services that involve cash.
Hi to whoever is reading this. Did you know that TYPEWRITER (on a QWERTY keyboard) is the longest word you can type using only the letters on one row of the keyboard.
Human nature + long thread almost inevitably lead to going off topic.
It's much like real conversation. You're discussing your favorite Indian restaurant and 15 minutes later you find yourself arguing about the causes of the “fall” of the Roman Empire.
As for automated check-outs, they do indirectly contribute to the change of attitude towards coins and hard cash generally, and therefore, inevitably, about the future of coin and currency forums.
I think there is a significant difference between coins and, for example, phone cards or even postage stamps. Coins will remain a primary source for the historian. Stamps can be relevant for the historian, but rarely so, and they go back to only 1840. But if we look at postal covers, then we can go back much further. Yet, even postal covers can contribute only very modestly to the historian's work… unless his/her interest is the history of the postal service.
Coins have been around for over 2500 years. They can be very useful to the historian of the Ancient World since the quality of our sources for the Greeks and Romans is quite low. We have no archives from the Ancient World ─ zero, zilch.
Modern Numismatics is also a thriving field though probably representing only about a tenth of all numismatic research every year. Ancient coins are by far the most researched category. And the subset of Roman imperial coins is the most studied of all ancient coins, the reason being that Roman imperial coins are the most informative to the historian (detailed legends, depiction of imperial ideologies, narrow chronology, etc.).
Perhaps countries with a longer Numismatic history will keep an interest in coins longer. On the French Numista, there is a good percentage of posts on Middle-Age coins (more than on the English side), and both sides have regular posts on ancient coins, and especially Roman since they are easy to obtain.
I'm not too sure how to phrase this but perhaps, the quality of coin collectors is diminishing as well. Collectors who are older tend to be the ones who truly appreciate the history, the art and the work put into the designing and minting of each coin. However, I don't think I can say the same for the younger crowd.
On Instagram and other social media platforms, I do come across people my generation claiming that they are coin collectors who are interested in Numismatics. Yet, whenever I send a picture of a coin from my collection to them, their only responses seem to be “How much is this worth?” and “Have you got it graded/authenticated?" and seem to be disinterested when I tell them that my 1961 10 kopecks coin from the USSR is worth nothing more than half a dollar.
This has kinda let me into believing that most collectors my age are only into numismatics because they hope to profit from it in the future, which in my opinion, is rather unfortunate as it erodes what numismatics was supposed to encapsulate in the first place.
Numismatics have certainly taught me more about the countries around the world than school and I sincerely wish that future collectors are able to look beyond the material value of what this hobby encompasses.
I've often said it in those words to my brother that numismatics taught me more about the world countries and different cultures than school ever did. Great to see someone who says the same.
Just as a counterpoint, although I wasn't deeply involved in numismatics when I was younger, my experiences with coin collectors in past decades were largely change sifters hoping to find error coins or other rarities to make an “easy” buck. You could meet people who were genuinely enthused about history and had cosmopolitan taste in coins if you went to a coin show, but you could do the same thing today, and you can also just log online and find such people instantly. But then as now, most “collectors” were treasure hunters with dollar signs in their eyes rather than appreciators of historical relics.
If anything the internet has made more collectors aware of the strange and wonderful - and not terribly expensive - coins and currency available and also made it much easier to research where these things came from. After all, owning a coin from Katanga costs a few bucks, but knowing why there was a coin from Katanga is priceless.
I see that some of you think it would be a loss if the US “penny” was discontinued. Actually, if your coins are irrelevant for economic transactions, then they are a burden and your defective currency system will only cause a further switch towards a cashless economy.
If the US had a real dollar coin and finally got rid of the archaic dollar bill, imagine the effect on the circulation of coins. Vending machines would become much more efficient. A healthy currency is the only way ahead, though this is not enough to change the current trends towards a cashless economy.
Mr. Midnight makes an interesting point because, indeed, a cashless society would be detrimental to the poor. This was true 200 years ago, when the elite inside the British Empire did recognize that shortages of copper/bronze small denominations was detrimental to the working classes, and in turn to the whole economy. How do you pay for a loaf of bread if there's no money? Do you rely on the credit system? But are you realistically going to rely on a system of credit notes if you don't even know how to read? And this is true not only of the buyers, but many shopkeepers as well!
As for the question in the OP, I think a problem is that many sites designed for desktops don't exist as apps for the phone. Is it not the case with Numista? I hate surfing the Internet on the phone, but at night in bed I sometimes check it out (until I buy a new iPad). So, I need a tab for Numista since, to the best of my knowledge, there is no app.
I believe, too, that mints such as the RCM don't help because they trivialize the numismatic value of coins. They have all this NCLT deluxe junk coming out all the time in all kinds of ridiculous denominations, including silver pennies and gold dimes. This is not helping the hobby because most people don't know the difference between those “things” and real coins. A new collector can easily get discouraged. More than half of Numista's coin catalogue for Canada is filled with RCM junk. This is not good.
Look at the Krause World Coins catalogue for the 2001- period. It's 1500 pages mostly filled with those cash-grab medals. I can't believe this is where the hobby is. And on top of it, there are all kinds of special finishes that are actually meaningless numismatically (cameo, etc.).
The US has had “real” dollar coins for decades . Most people don't want the weight or size banging around in their pockets. I've been collecting US dollars for many years - but you don't see many in circulation because of the above mentioned sizeand weight.
If you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything
If the US had a real dollar coin and finally got rid of the archaic dollar bill, imagine the effect on the circulation of coins. Vending machines would become much more efficient. A healthy currency is the only way ahead, though this is not enough to change the current trends towards a cashless economy.
The US has had “real” dollar coins for decades . Most people don't want the weight or size banging around in their pockets. I've been collecting US dollars for many years - but you don't see many in circulation because of the above mentioned sizeand weight.
The US will have a real dollar coin only when it gets rid of the dollar bill. The same arguments about the weight and banging around were raised 35 years ago when Canada announced it was moving to replace the dollar note with a real dollar coin. We had one till then, but it was just a collectors item since well over 99% of transactions were done with the note, not the coin. Within weeks of the release of the “loonie”, which was smaller than the Voyageur nickel dollar, all the arguments had vanished. Nobody complained about the weight of the metal in their pockets. Millions of the 1987 loonies are still circulating. A dollar note lasts only 10 months in average.
When Canada also replace the $2 notes with a coin in 1996 I don't remember any complaint. If there were any I didn't hear about them.
About 10 years ago I travelled through New Jersey and had to carry quarters to pay toll. I never used so many coins in my life. I actually had saved a number of state quarters for my collection but had to use them…
A sound metallic currency is the best guarantee that coins will still be used in decades from now and that coins and currency forums will still be relevant.
A sound metallic currency is the best guarantee that coins will still be used in decades from now and that coins and currency forums will still be relevant.
And as long as the design doesn't change drastically for a country's coins, hopefully ALL of the coins survive to the future as well, and not get sucked up and destroyed like the ARP did to Canada's coins! I totally envy the run of coins still available in Switzerland's pocket change…
The US will have a real dollar coin only when it gets rid of the dollar bill.
I don't know what you are talking about here exactly, but the US do have circulating dollar coins. I'm sure you are aware.
rather than being pedantic and narrowly picking one sentence, it is clear from the context what he means by “real dollar coins”. Most of us who live or travel regularly to the US would be hard pressed to find any dollar coins in regular change. You’d have to try your luck perhaps at certain vending/parking machines. the Sacajawea dollar does not circulate anywhere as widely as a loonie does in Canada. The presidential series are even rarer (the last few not even being released into circulation)
will be to the US in a few weeks and will distribute some 150 golden Dollar coins into circulation - so the chances to find some might significantly increase 🤪
in the end everything will be good - if it's not good, then it's not the end...
Back in 1983 when the U.K. replaced the £1 note in England with the pound coins, People adapted to it very easily apart from some complaints that it is a little small.
Anyway back on topic the only other forums I have joined is Coin brothers which is mostly a buy and sell site with a coins catalog and Coin help u which is mostly about US coinage and grading so I only respond where there is Questions about Mexican and European coinage.
Hi to whoever is reading this. Did you know that TYPEWRITER (on a QWERTY keyboard) is the longest word you can type using only the letters on one row of the keyboard.
The US will have a real dollar coin only when it gets rid of the dollar bill.
I don't know what you are talking about here exactly, but the US do have circulating dollar coins. I'm sure you are aware.
rather than being pedantic and narrowly picking one sentence, it is clear from the context what he means by “real dollar coins”. Most of us who live or travel regularly to the US would be hard pressed to find any dollar coins in regular change. You’d have to try your luck perhaps at certain vending/parking machines. the Sacajawea dollar does not circulate anywhere as widely as a loonie does in Canada. The presidential series are even rarer (the last few not even being released into circulation)
I thought it was clear as well. On top of it, I then gave the example of Canada, where we had a dollar for decades before 1987, but it was used for less than 1% of transactions ─ actually, certainly closer to 1‰.
Before 1987 I paid two or three times in my life with 50¢ coins (one time by mistake) but never paid anything with a dollar coin. It does happen that such coins are used, but mostly by people who are short of cash. My son used to work at a coffee and doughnut parlor well-known here ─Tim Horton's─ and in July 2019 was paid with a 1973 nickel dollar which he saved for me. It was UNC so it had never circulated for 46 years; it is now in my collection. At the same place, a couple of years earlier, I heard two guys behind the counter talking about a Sacagaewa dollar which one of them had just received in payment.
The introduction of the Eisenhower and Susan B. Anthony dollars were monumental failures if they were meant to progressively replace the paper/cotton dollar. The only minor exception were casinos where both the dollar and the half were used, in some cases into the 1990s, but they now all have their own tokens.
A real circulating dollar coin will be introduced after the government talks with the banks, with the industry about introducing a dollar slot in vending machines, and along with a major advertizing campaign to the public of changes to come, preparing them for the withdrawal of the paper dollar. There will be unhappy people, but a sound currency system cannot live in the past.
How do you bring the people around to accept the change? I suggest using movie stars and singers in social media and TV commercials. Another cool way would be to use old clips from western movies where they pay for a drink with a silver dollar. {Coin dropped on the counter →] *Cling!* [Deep voice →] "Paying with the dollar coin… the real American thing to do." Ah. Ah.
The US will have a real dollar coin only when it gets rid of the dollar bill.
I don't know what you are talking about here exactly, but the US do have circulating dollar coins. I'm sure you are aware.
rather than being pedantic and narrowly picking one sentence, it is clear from the context what he means by “real dollar coins”. Most of us who live or travel regularly to the US would be hard pressed to find any dollar coins in regular change. You’d have to try your luck perhaps at certain vending/parking machines. the Sacajawea dollar does not circulate anywhere as widely as a loonie does in Canada. The presidential series are even rarer (the last few not even being released into circulation)
I was travelling the USA a few years ago, and in Seattle I barely saw a single 1 dollar note, ut was all coins there, so that's why it sounded really weird to me.
I was travelling the USA a few years ago, and in Seattle I barely saw a single 1 dollar note, ut was all coins there, so that's why it sounded really weird to me.
i see, hope you played the lottery too while you were there ;) Count yourself extremely little lucky. My experience in Seattle was nothing like that when it came to cash. If anything, I dumped some sacagaweas into the machine to get a train ticket from the airport into the city. im reasonably confident if you do a poll, 9 out of 10 would not have shared your experience
Was in Vegas three months ago with a bunch of US coins I pulled from Canadian rolls - used a couple of dollar coins in a vending machine but no one really interested in them so I just cashed them in with the quarters and dimes at the casino cashier’s cage into banknotes to be used everywhere
There were 9,882,000 of them struck. While this, at first sight, looks like an impressive number, for comparison there were 1,058,500,000 circulating dimes struck in the same year. This means that there was less than a dollar coin struck for every 100 dimes. In 2013 the number of dimes struck almost doubled to 2,112,000,000… for zero circulating dollar coin. By comparison, Canada struck 120 330 000 dollar coins in 2013 (see here in the catalogue) compared to 104 775 000 10¢ coins. More dollar coins were actually struck than dimes…
Interestingly, I found an article which exactly points to the problem: “Some coins experts say the Sacagawea won't really catch on as long as the paper $1 bill is around”:
The last time a US struck a dollar coin that anyone wanted to use, it was 90% silver and worth over $20 in today's USD. They then went nearly four decades without being minted, and what replaced them was a coin of the same size as the large silver dollar but made of base metal and worth a little under $5 in today's USD. Even this was quite unpopular, so it's unsurprising that the current coin worth between a third and a fifth of that during its circulating history would fail to catch on.
At this point even if the US gov't attempted to socially engineer Americans into begrudgingly accepting the dollar coin by removing the dollar banknote from circulation, it would more likely hasten the demise of coins than popularize the dollar coin. The very fact that you'd have to remove the preferred alternative (the banknote) is good evidence that nobody actually wants to use this coin. Inflation eventually makes something as heavy as metal a really silly store of value for daily transactions if the denominations are never updated to reflect real world values. Today's USD is worth the equivalent of a nickel from the 1930s, when silver dollars were being minted!
Indeed a nickel in certain periods of US economic history was worth actually more than a dollar in 2022. There was deflation in the 1930s so that a nickel in 1938 ─the last year of the Buffalo type and first year of the Jefferson type─ was worth a little over $1, at $1.05. If you use
enter whatever year you'd like on the first line and try 0.05 (= nickel) on the second line… The dollar was even stronger in 1937. And if you try the first year available, 1913, the nickel was equivalent to $1.50 in 2022 money!! A penny in 1913, therefore, was the same as 30¢ now.
But I disagree about the switch to a dollar coin. If done competently, it will take no time until people realize how sound this is. Given comparable inflation rates, all Western countries minus the US have gone this way because it's the sensible thing to do. In Canada opposition vanished within months if not weeks of the introduction. (The crazy idea of having both the paper and coined dollar side by side also vanished in no time.) A big problem in the US is that some retarded conspiracy theory is likely to rise out of any attempt at reform.
If the government ever decides to attempt the change, I think some of their best allies could be the ANA and ANS. Numismatic experts would be able to at least instruct small segments of the population (coin collectors) about the change. More importantly, members of ANA and ANS executives who are good at public speaking would be great guests in the media to present a balanced view of the change, i.e. the short term minuses and long-term plusses.
The fate of such forums depends on us as enthusiasts of the interest. I have watched on utube the channel of SilverSpegtacular who does interviews with The Coin Guy, an LCS owner in Florida. One thing The Coin Guy does is go to schools in his area and speaks to kids about coins. He also takes low value coins and gives them to the kids. So he spreads the word of numismatics and does a sound business investment at the same time. It is up to each one of us to do a similar thing if we want the hobby to continue or grow.
But I disagree about the switch to a dollar coin. If done competently, it will take no time until people realize how sound this is.
You give Americans an awful lot of credit.
Given comparable inflation rates, all Western countries minus the US have gone this way because it's the sensible thing to do.
Do you see us using metric?
In Canada opposition vanished within months if not weeks of the introduction. (The crazy idea of having both the paper and coined dollar side by side also vanished in no time.)
Canadians are easily sold on anything they believe makes them smarter than Americans. It's practically part of the national identity.
A big problem in the US is that some retarded conspiracy theory is likely to rise out of any attempt at reform.
There's no need to stereotype, now is there? But seriously, nobody here needs a conspiracy to avoid coins, most people already throw everything smaller than quarters into the gutter and even quarters are regularly refused. Americans just don't want change, in either sense of the word.
In Canada opposition vanished within months if not weeks of the introduction. (The crazy idea of having both the paper and coined dollar side by side also vanished in no time.)
Canadians are easily sold on anything they believe makes them smarter than Americans. It's practically part of the national identity.
Canadian exceptionalism?
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure, that just ain't so. Mark Twain
Was in Vegas three months ago with a bunch of US coins I pulled from Canadian rolls - used a couple of dollar coins in a vending machine but no one really interested in them so I just cashed them in with the quarters and dimes at the casino cashier’s cage into banknotes to be used everywhere
Did people refuse to let you pay in change? I’ve never ran into that problem before. Maybe It’s because I live in middle of nowhere
Actually, to be fair, I didn’t really try to use them now that I think about it.. i went there with around 3 rolls of 25c, 15 rolls of 10c, a few nickel rolls and 10 rolls of pennies - all US pulled from Canadian rolls. I was getting them cashed in for bills (saving 30% in exchange!) and just added the dollar coins right away.
Could I have found some action for them out and about? Maybe, but my priority was converting everything easily and quickly, so I’ll never know.
So I guess my contribution to this should be boiled down to “the cashiers at Planet Hollywood in Vegas were ok with them..” ;)
I remain convinced that a sound metallic and paper currency system is the best way to guarantee that hard cash will remain relevant in the future, and therefore that numismatic forums will also remain relevant.
Canada did not readily accept the dollar coin. It's only once the switch happened that its benefits could be appreciated. Strong feelings about coinage existed long ago as well. The British switch from copper to bronze in 1860 made the news. In this case, however, most people welcomed the innovation. They despised the large coppers and embraced the new smaller fiat bronze coins. Here is just one example of the clips I have collected on this:
In Economics there is not much room for nostalgic sentimentalities (note that I don't say there isn't any). It's interesting that the US moved to a decimal currency back in the 18th century when most of the world currencies were still based on the double/half system:
1⁄16 ← 1⁄8 ← 1⁄4 ← 1⁄2 ← 1 → 2 → 4 → 8 → 16 etc.
On the road to a real decimal system, the eighth part (1⁄8) or “bit” became the 12½¢ token (in spite of the fact that eventually there were no ½¢ coins struck after 1857). In some places the sixteenth became the 6¼¢ denomination, i.e. the half-bit. Because of the lack of half cents, the concepts of “short bit” (= 12¢) and “long bit” (= 13¢) eventually found their way in common language.
A very nice numismatic fossil was “la locha” of 12½ centimos in Venezuela. There were no other denominations with the value of ½ centimo, so you would pay with the locha at a loss or gain of ½ centimo unless you used another locha in the transaction.
When Canada obtained the right from the Crown to determine its own currency policy in 1853, it was decided that the American dollar would be the model to follow. This made sense since there were more US coins circulating here than British coins. In archive.org there are pamphlets and other short pieces of writing by people who objected to the decimal system, mostly for sentimental reasons. Fortunately, they didn't win the day. One commentator agreed reluctantly with the decimal system except that he wanted Canada to be different from the US by expressing values in a three parts system. So, instead of $1.79 he would have wanted something British-looking such as 1/7/9.
