Interest in Coin Collecting Waning

I haven't been to a coin show in about a year. I can't remember when I last visited a coin shop either. I've read in different venues that interest in the hobby is waning, and some alarm has been raised considering the collections we have will be worth only what new generations decide in the future. I think educating others, especially youth, is a terrific and effective thing to do. But creating a lesson, finding somewhere to do it, and facilitating everything seems like a tremendous effort not many are willing to carry out. My own interest is lacking at this point, so I can't even imagine inspiring others.

One cheap endeavor I always saw at the Long Beach Coin Expo was a treasure hunt and other boring activities for kids. I believe children were supposed to get a world coin from different dealers, or some such trivial task. Suffice it to say, I've never seen many children participating in these activities. The stamp area had even worse turnout.

Others may have proposed this idea elsewhere, but I believe the US Mint should create and release random error coins into circulation, intentionally. Imagine a doubled-die obverse 2017 cent akin to the 1955 DDO cent where the date is clearly doubled. Now imagine low-mintage errors like this were released each year!

Nothing would attract more interest and potential collectors than the possibility of finding an interesting and highly collectible error coin in circulation. Various errors could be released throughout the year, with different mintages like 100 to 10,000 coins. A lot of research would be carried out on all the errors, kids would find it interesting and worthwhile, and collectors would have more coins to hunt for. It seems like just the ingredients our hobby needs.

It would actually be a misnomer to label such coins as errors. If the Mint starting releasing these kinds of coins, I believe they would be called varieties, since they were not made in error but intentionally, and they offer alternative versions (or varieties) of normal coins.


In any case, I don't think there's a better and simpler way to stimulate interest in our hobby than this. We all have our pipedreams I guess.