Are collectors getting old ?

[drcy]

Haze the newbie!!!!

[GehrigFan]

Having been a numismatist since age 5, and a sports collector much later (teens), I can tell you that this is one area that coin collecting blows sports collecting out of the water on.

There is a large organization called the American Numismatic Association, set up and partially funded by Congress I believe, based in Colorado Springs. Each year they host 2 weeks of seminars, and part of that is giving out Young Numismatist scholarships for kids under 18 to attend (airfare, double rooms at the Colorado College campus, food pass, everything). I won this award at age 17 and have returned again in my 30's. But as a young numismatist, it was an amazing experience. You were treated like the most important people at the event. Your teachers took special care to make sure you were well taken care of, some of the most important coin authors and scholars in the world preferred to hang out with the YN's most of the time, like Walter Breen. This would be like Jefferson Burdick taking his 2 weeks to hang out with the young collectors at an important event.

Besides this, the ANA museum and library has a sale each year and the YN's get first shot at buying any of the thousands of reference books for sale before the adults. And finally there is the YN auction to raise money. The YN's donate their own items to be auctioned, and the proceeds go towards more scholarships for the next year. Here's what is real cool. 1) The adults bid way more than things are worth, and happily so. They get into a fun competition trying to outdo each other on what they end up giving. And 2) because the teachers and other attendees know the YNs from the classes, many times they know what they collect, and they will often bid on appropriate items and then donate the item back to a TN whom they know wants it. IT's a win-win all around, and everybody has fun.

The point is, coin collectors really go the extra mile in every way to try to welcome young collectors. I have never seen this in any way in card collecting. In fact, I have unfortunately seen so much more of the opposite, where adults take advantage of the young collectors. What would it take for this hobby to capture some of the spirit of the Numismatic way of enticing young collectors?

Mark

[steve B]

Originally Posted by drcy

Haze the newbie!!!!

We could try the MLB type thing where they have to carry our stuff for us, preferably in a hello kitty backpack.

Unfortunately someone 25 can probably outrun most of us, so that might not work all that well.

Steve B

[Rich Klein]

I will say that one of my goals in the upcoming show at my synagogue is to make sure we are reasonable for the youngsters. Our "suggested donation" is only $1 which is very reasonable and with a large amount of kids in our synagogue, I hope even 10 percent of them attend. That would be about 20 kids coming in the door, most of whome probably have never been in a card show or store.

In addition, there are boards (such as Blowout) which skew much younger.

I have also noticed an uptick in people in their mid 30's who were active in the 90's and have returned. I think our future may be better then we let on a nd some of them will find their way here

Meanwhile in storage today I found some old school material I bought from Pat Quinn back in the day which included a ton of the old Frank Nagy auction lists from the 60's-70's. I have a blast looking at them and Leon will be picking those up from me in the next few days --- and he'll share them with the board. So we like the young folks and we like the old folks and try to help both of them.

Rich

[dferguso1988]

Originally Posted by steve B

We could try the MLB type thing where they have to carry our stuff for us, preferably in a hello kitty backpack.

Unfortunately someone 25 can probably outrun most of us, so that might not work all that well.

Steve B

Could probably outrun most...depending on how heavy the Hello Kitty backpack is hahaha

[teetwoohsix]

The easy answer to this is every collector is getting old-can't cheat time But seriously, I just wanted to add that I am always impressed by the intelligence of younger collectors to be going after pre-war cards!! Wazoo comes to mind first and foremost, and from the few emails we have exchanged I find him to be extremely smart, on the right path in life, and predict success in his future. And, he picked the best set to collect!!

I was off of the board for awhile-I used to try to greet any newcomers, and I like to welcome anyone new. If I missed you, it was not intentional. So, I will take this moment to welcome everyone and anyone I missed- WELCOME TO NET54 EVERYONE AND, GOOD LUCK HUNTING

Sincerely, Clayton

[billyb]

OLD!!!!!

I prefer the term........refined.