Q - Is a jar of odd coins stuck in the back of a cupboard, which is occasionally added to when someone gets back from some far flung land and only to be looked at when the grandchildren arrive, a small collection or just a jar of foreign coins? The devil is in the detail. 👺
I asked the internet “how many coin collectors are there in the world today” and the internet gave these two answers:
So 125 million in the US. Numista membership shows 53,800 members from the US.
Can US members please check this data? Gather any 5 US citizens … two of them should be coin collectors !!! 😵💫
I guess “the internet” uses a very broad definition … which includes people who collect coins during their job (waiters, shop attendants, … anyone working with cash 😁)
Just call me Bram
No new swaps for the moment, still too many half-ongoing swaps to clean up!
Those US numbers must be from the State Quarter craze 25 years ago, when everyone and their mother were collecting them. Something similar happened here when the euro coins were introduced. The global amount of coin collectors might well have peaked around 1999-2005 or so.
Why must they be? The second quote seems to imply the opposite.
The point is even if the 125 million is exaggerated by a factor of 10 then 0.04% becomes 0.4% nowhere near the original guess of 3%.
And don't forget that the 53,800 US Numista members used in the example above include those that became members to ask what their wonderful error coin is worth then never logged on again. So if we're including those people in the population of Numista “coin collectors” we have to include similar “coin collectors” in the total population.
Considering how much all the various commemorative coin programs, including both circulating commemorative coin and NCLT issues, have expanded around the world in the recent years, I've no doubt in my mind that the number of collectors is growing. The only question is, how many of them remain active past the initial spike of interest.
According to Google trends which has data of popular searched topics since 2004.
In the images below is the interest in Numista worldwide in the last 5 years. The topic 5 countries which have searched Numista the most is Romania, Philippines, Croatia l, Slovenia and Lithuania. Also France is 12th, UK 38th and US is 54th.
For other topics such as “Coin Collecting“ and “Banknote collecting” it’s a little different.
The search frequency for “coin collecting“ has drastically decreased since 2004 but since 2012 it has stabilised, since 2020 Australia, UK, Singapore, US and South Africa have frequently searched that term.
Banknote collecting is not as big as the latter but it seems like Cambodia has a massive interest in banknote collecting.
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.
As LDC63 himself mentioned, it depends on what exactly do you consider a coin collector. Is someone that has a couple of foreign coins from a trip or two a collector, even though they do not really bother with the hobby?
The problem for coin collecting is that even people that actively collect coins are disproportionally very young (children) or old. On one hand children - even if they do use the internet - are generally passive content consumers. They won't find this forum, so they won't make an account. Older people on the other hand do not always have experience using the internet (minus specific sites like Facebook) or (in countries like mine) might not be procifient enough in English to join such a community.
As LDC63 himself mentioned, it depends on what exactly do you consider a coin collector. Is someone that has a couple of foreign coins from a trip or two a collector, even though they do not really bother with the hobby?
The problem for coin collecting is that even people that actively collect coins are disproportionally very young (children) or old. On one hand children - even if they do use the internet - are generally passive content consumers. They won't find this forum, so they won't make an account. Older people on the other hand do not always have experience using the internet (minus specific sites like Facebook) or (in countries like mine) might not be procifient enough in English to join such a community.
This statement resonates with me.
In 2004, I went on my first trip to Europe. I met this university flatmate & after several pints (& a tour of Dublin) he pulled out this big envelope. He had earlier told me that he had this big “surprise” for me at one of the pubs we were in. I had completely forgotten about his “surprise.” He then took out a big wad of world banknotes. Boy did that make me laugh. It was just like one of those pictures you see posted on Reddit: a huge pile of cash on some bed. The majority of it was really soiled (lots of torn notes or ones with graffiti). He said they were his note collection from his travels. I asked how many beers did he think we could get with his cash. (He didn't appreciate my joke). I wasn't into World currency at the time & wondered how many globe trotting “collectors” were out there like him (stashing circulated currency as souvenirs). In his eyes, he was “a collector” & I didn't have the heart to tell him that I collected Canadian currency.
Personally, I think that there's very few serious coin collectors who use the Internet & Numista. I may be wrong but the # of banknote collectors is just a small fraction of the # of coin collectors. But the numbers are changing & its one of the reasons I enjoy tuning into Reddit banknote subs (from time to time). Twenty-five years ago, when I got back into the hobby, I went to shows & there were only 3-4 tables that had banknotes. About 10 years later there had to be about 30% of the bourse sellers carrying notes & that has just grown every 5 years. You could say the same thing about the # of women (very scarce back then to recently seeing far more ladies interested in coins/currency + many more female dealers too). But overall, I'd say only about 5-10% of all the collectors I bump into, do it regularly & seriously (with proper supplies, etc). Most, just tune in (buy something) & tune out (forget about it) from time to time. I went to an RCNA workshop on coin/note preservation & the leader asked how many collectors had some damage occur from poor storage (almost everyone's hand shot up). So there's lots of collectors but many don't even buy the albums, sleeves, etc to keep the coins/notes well-preserved.
As LDC63 himself mentioned, it depends on what exactly do you consider a coin collector. Is someone that has a couple of foreign coins from a trip or two a collector, even though they do not really bother with the hobby?
I don't think it matters how you define “collector” to answer the original question. However you define “collector” it seem logical that the distribution of Numista “collectors” is the same the distribution or all “collectors.” The original question asks for the ratio
CollectorsNumista/CollectorsAll If you eliminate a percentage of the 300,000+ Numista collectors because they are not “real” collectors you also have to eliminate the same percentage of All collectors because they are not “real” collectors. So regardless of your definition of “collector” the same applies to Numista members and All collectors, unless you believe those who become Numista members are somehow different than the population at large.
As LDC63 himself mentioned, it depends on what exactly do you consider a coin collector. Is someone that has a couple of foreign coins from a trip or two a collector, even though they do not really bother with the hobby?
I don't think it matters how you define “collector” to answer the original question. However you define “collector” it seem logical that the distribution of Numista “collectors” is the same the distribution or all “collectors.” The original question asks for the ratio
CollectorsNumista/CollectorsAll If you eliminate a percentage of the 300,000+ Numista collectors because they are not “real” collectors you also have to eliminate the same percentage of All collectors because they are not “real” collectors. So regardless of your definition of “collector” the same applies to Numista members and All collectors, unless you believe those who become Numista members are somehow different than the population at large.
I would say it matters, at least somewhat. Generally speaking, you are more likely to find more “dedicated” collectors in Numista, since they will be the ones that are more likely to both an account and be active here (either by logging their collections or by contributing to the forum)
As LDC63 himself mentioned, it depends on what exactly do you consider a coin collector. Is someone that has a couple of foreign coins from a trip or two a collector, even though they do not really bother with the hobby?
I don't think it matters how you define “collector” to answer the original question. However you define “collector” it seem logical that the distribution of Numista “collectors” is the same the distribution or all “collectors.” The original question asks for the ratio
CollectorsNumista/CollectorsAll If you eliminate a percentage of the 300,000+ Numista collectors because they are not “real” collectors you also have to eliminate the same percentage of All collectors because they are not “real” collectors. So regardless of your definition of “collector” the same applies to Numista members and All collectors, unless you believe those who become Numista members are somehow different than the population at large.
I would say it matters, at least somewhat. Generally speaking, you are more likely to find more “dedicated” collectors in Numista, since they will be the ones that are more likely to both an account and be active here (either by logging their collections or by contributing to the forum)
Yes that would make a difference and is good logic, except the number of members that are active according to those two definitions is a minority of total Numista members. The percentage of Numista members that have zero objects in their collection is 67%. The percentage of members contributing to the forum is harder to calculate but most likely is a very small percentage of the total. I don't think the Numista population of “collectors” is any different than the population of all “collectors.”
The question is too hard to answer and every answer will be subjective and invite both friendly and less friendly debate. But I will say I know several serious coin collectors (Ones who spend hundreds on their coins, bid in auctions, are in clubs and my rivals when it comes to acquiring stuff) and almost none of them have heard of Numista. Many more know about Numista's coin catalogue, but not its forums.
It may be a New Zealand thing though, Numista may be much more known in the rest of the world like Continental Europe, the USA, Canada, UK and India. But here in the antipodes, the numbers of Aussies and Kiwis are low.
I can only think of 3 semi serious forum posters from NZ - myself, my nemesis BC and Neilithic. I have seen 2 or 3 others do 1 or 2 posts, but I can pretty much say I am the major domo for New Zealand posting here. In the past it seemed Neilithic and Fourmack were huge posters, but the latter has been gone for years, although he's still active elsewhere.
Total guesses (Totally arbitrary).
World Population - 8.25 billion people
People who could collect coins (Excluding people under 8, disabled, illiterate, deformed, extremely old, in jail and too poor) - about 6 - 7 billion.
People who can collect coins generally from countries where they are not subsistence or hand to mouth and can be bothered (ie: actually interested in coins, beyond their use as commerce) - 2 billion at most.
People who seriously have a real interest in coins and have at least a decent accumulation of them (50 or more different/obselete) - maybe 500 million.
Serious collectors with albums, who spend money - may be generalist or collect cheap coins mostly - 100 million
Proper Numismatists like us - 3 - 10 million
People who are hardcore and intense collectors - 100,000
People who have used Numista - maybe 1 million over time
Dedicated regular posters - maybe 50 in the serious forums (Excluding the “I have a rare old coin” and “How much this Chinese fake coin from Shangdong metal works is worth” types).
Therefore Total collectors - 100 million, 1 million lookers = 1%
Forum users 100 = 0.00001% of all collectors
I love coins. Especially silver, gold and anything really old.
Member of the Royal Numismatic Society of New Zealand and the Auckland Numismatic Society
