PREDICTING THE NUMISMATIC FUTURE

Can the E-Sylum readership make high confidence predictions about the future of coin collecting? How might a coin dealer, specialist, general collector, investor, or accumulator best survive if not thrive? This might be a good thought experiment for the readership.

I think we ought to look ahead at future anniversaries such as the 250th of the American Revolution in 2025 and publish a “future timeline” of events for coin collectors, to gauge likely events and popular interest in the years ahead, as they may plan to sell their collections using a countdown to the target year. They say coins tied to great historic events are worth the most the year before a major anniversary happens. Think of the surge in interest in Titanic items in 2012, or 1715 Fleet coins and the recent 2015 auction by Dan Sedgewick. What’s next? Who will fall from favor like Columbus, popular at his 400th and ignored at his 500th anniversary? Would a readership poll of interest in historic events by Boomers, Gen-Xers and millennials help? Also see predictions of dwindling natural resources including certain precious metals if industry continues at pace.

Nostalgia follows in a somewhat predictable manner, about twenty-five years after, when those who lived the event as children have money and leisure to pursue all those things they wanted, but were denied in youth. Also consider future problems such as new and pending understandings with foreign governments who claim ownership of all historic coins, and which now require collectors of certain ancients to document their collections to prove they were not exported recently in violation of treaty, or from restricted sources. Third-party graders do not slab ancients very well, but what is needed is recent provenance on paper.

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web