15 Reasons to Collect Coins

I recently talked about teen side hustles, where I said that your teen could collect coins and sell them for a profit. However, regardless of your age you could also collect coins. Here are fifteen reasons why you should start!

By coin collecting, I am talking about buying old coins (as in, older than 50 years old) and storing them, with the idea of keeping them until you die or selling them in more than 10 years.

15. Always Increasing Value

Throughout history, most coins have either been made out of pure gold or silver. The only real deviation from this is pennies and half pennies which were often made out of copper and zinc, but its the same principle.

Each year, gold and silver become rarer as humans have been mining it for different uses, not just coins. With this increasing rarity also comes increasing gold and silver prices.

So even if you aren’t interested in the numismatic (collector’s) value, you have the melt value to fall back on, which is increasing year on year. In a few years, the $20 you paid for X silver coin, the silver value alone may be $25!

You can quite easily get that $25 by visiting a cash for gold shop (who often buy silver as well) or by visiting a pawn shop.

Plus, most coins appreciate each year as well, as they become rarer and more sought after by collectors!

14. For the Challenge

I’m not going to lie to you. If you want to collect coins, it is going to be challenging. It simply isn’t something you can research for twenty minutes on the internet and become an expert.

You have to find local or online dealers who you can trust not to sell you a fake coin. You also have to find dealers who sell their coins at a reasonable price, because not all will. This takes (a lot of) time, potentially weeks or even months!

I’ve met many collectors who try to get the “perfect” coin collection. For some, this is to collect one of every coin ever minted by the US Mint, whilst for other it has been to buy certified mint state coins from 200 years ago.

But, that’s half the fun of choosing to collect coins, in my opinion anyway. The fact that no matter how much or little money you have, you will always be striving to get that one last coin that fits into your collection!

13. Declining Popularity

Many people believe that coin collecting is increasing in popularity in the Western world. And indeed it is in many places, just not “true” coin collecting- buying old coins to add to a collection.

People have seen their country’s mint produce “rare” coins for special occasions- think the state quarters or five million new fifty pences each year. And people have bought them up, believing they have true value.

Whilst they do have value beyond just their face value, it’s often not by much. Not unless they are some kind mint error anyway.

“True” coin collecting is all about buying old coins really cheaply, storing them for a (little) while and selling them on for a huge profit to buy more coins. That is dying out sadly.

This means you have less competition now than you did ten years ago, and if it continues, you’ll have less competition in ten years than you have today. This means cheaper coins.

12. Diversification

Every investor likes to diversify their portfolio no matter how big that portfolio may be. Everyone from Warren Buffett to the guy called Joe who serves you coffee each morning diversifies their portfolio.

For many investors, they hold stocks, bonds, real estate, raw land and/or gold to diversify their portfolio. However, commodity-backed currency like old coins provides that extra layer of diversification.

The overwhelming majority of investors have a certain area of expertise when it comes to investing, eg. stocks, bonds, real estate etc. By choosing to collect coins, many investors diversify away from their area of expertise.

In turn, this helps to keep your entire investments portfolio safer than it would’ve been otherwise. When stocks/bonds/real estate are down, your coins are up and vice versa!

11. Side Hustle

Many coin dealers I buy from are just like you and me. They have a normal 9-5 day job, doing quite literally anything (for example, one coin dealer I know is a lawyer, whilst another dealer I know is a teacher).

In order to make a little cash on the side, they buy coins in bulk and sell them on general auction sites like eBay or coin-specific ones like VCoin.

Essentially, their entire business revolves around buying and selling large quantities of coins on a regular basis. And, from what I’ve been told by many of them, it’s relatively cheap and easy to get started!

This brings in a little extra income each month, which can go on to help you buy that dream holiday or home, or just give you a better lifestyle. Plus, it gives you a bit mroe independence from your day job!

Who knows, if it grows to become large enough, it might one day become your full-time job, rather than just a side hustle!

10. Alternative to Other Investments

There are many different types of investments, including real estate, stocks and bonds among others. Whilst these are all good investments by most standards, they may not be right for you individually.

Perhaps they don’t interest you, or you don’t (personally) believe they are a good investment. Collecting coins on the other hand, may be a better investment for you to have.

Generally speaking, stock and bond certificates can be destroyed in a fire, or just torn up. Real estate can be set alight or trashed on the inside. New electronic stock and bond certificates can also be hacked.

Bullion metals like gold and silver often need to be stored in secure vaults or home safes, neither of which are cheap. Coins on the other hand, can be stored in a coin album and hidden in your house for free!

9. Start a Hobby

Regardless of what you do for a living, it’s always nice to have a hobby. In fact, there are scientifically proven benefits from having a hobby, both mentally and physically.

Coin collecting is among the world’s oldest and most famous hobbies. In fact, most people who collect coins only do it as a hobby, not to make a quick profit each month.

It’s something that you can do regardless of your age. In my time collecting coins, I have seen people as young as two or three and as old as ninety six collect coins as a hobby.

By choosing to collect coins as a hobby, you also find a source of…

8. Relaxation

To most coin collectors, there’s absolutely nothing better than realizing you are one step closer to completing your goal. It’s hard to describe, but there’s a certain euphoria almost, to it.

For the most part, I am always busy, be it maintaining this site or through running my other businesses. Generally speaking, this is quite loud and involves me running around from place to place doing a million things at once.

However, when it comes to my coins, I can sit and look through my collection. Doing this affords me a certain amount of peace and quiet, before inevitably something happens and I need to run around again.

It may sound weird, but there’s also a certain relaxation that comes from looking for a specific coin. For example, I was trying to find a certain 5 franc coin (from France), it may sound odd, but it was relatively peaceful.

And most other coin collectors I know would agree!

7. Have Something to Share With Your Kids

As a kid, my father, a banker by trade, collected currency certificates (a form of paper money collecting, similar to collecting notes). Personally, I never understood the allure of it, and still don’t to this day. Sorry Dad.

However, when I was growing up, every Sunday evening, we’d pour over his collection of certificates. This is where he’d add any certificates he’d bought from clients over the week, or those that had arrived through the post.

Whilst I never understood the allure of currency certificates, my younger brother did. Even today, my brother, who is over thirty, still visits our Dad each Sunday evening to pour over their combined collections.

Through my Dad collecting currency certificates, I began to collect coins. Today, I do the same thing my Dad did with me, just with coins and my own children, as well as teaching them how to invest.

6. Legacy

Right now, you probably don’t think that your coin collection will ever amount to anything. However, if you continue to add to your collection each year, it will grow exponentially.

If you continue doing this throughout your working life, and yes, maybe even during your retirement, you’ll amass a small fortune in old coins. Both in terms of their face and numismatic value!

And these collections could be your legacy. No one remembers Harry W. Bass or Virgil M. Brand or Louis E. Eliasberg did. However, they do remember the enormous coin collections they left behind.

Today, these coin collections are among the largest in the world, worth millions of dollars. The only thing that their founders are remembered for is their coins, not the contributions they made to their fields. So could you.

5. Tangible Asset

What do copyright, cryptocurrencies and trademarks all have in common? They’re intangible assets. Nothing backs them in any way shape or form. Coins on the other hand, are tangible assets.

You can touch them, you can hold them, and if you wanted to, you could destroy them. Other types of investments like stocks and bonds are becoming digital, and therefore intangible.

By their very definition, coins cannot be intangible. This makes them (arguably) a safer investment. The only real way you can lose them is by someone destroying them or stealing them, which are both things you can prevent.

Hacking has become quite prevalent in recent years, with several people having their entire portfolios wiped out, and many more investors spending millions to prevent hackers. But you can’t hack coins!

4. Education

Most coin collectors start out by collecting coins from a certain era, or a certain denomination, or coins from a certain country. For example, I started out collecting 19th century Bourbon dynasty coins (France and Spain only).

Personally, I really like history. However, I don’t know everything about the Bourbons from the 19th century, not even now. But I know more than most.

Before I started spending my hard-earned money on coins, I had to learn a lot about the time period, in particular, I had to learn about their coins. This saw me buy book after book after book on France and Spain in the 19th century.

And this is what most coin collectors have to do. They have to learn. Whilst it may sound boring to most, once you get into it and finally buy the coins, you begin to see the history you read about in the palm of your hand!

Trust me, there is no feeling like it!

3. Become an Expert

Expert is a word that often gets thrown around quite a bit, often without regard to the word’s true meaning: Someone who has spent over 10,000 hours studying a given area.

For most people who collect coins, they might be considered an expert on maybe three or four things. Coin collectors may be considered an expert on the coins themselves, the era they’re from and the family of monarchs on the coins!

Many coin collectors have two or three different eras or types of coins that they buy, or may buy sets of coins from all over the world. The same applies here too.

A lot of the coin collectors I know are potentially considered experts in two or three or maybe even four different eras. However, most of them would never think of themselves as experts as they can always learn more.

2. Trivia

For whatever reason, my wife enjoys taking our kids and I to pub quizzes. What relevance does this has to coins you might be thinking? History. Through my coins, I have learned a lot about the 19th century in particular.

And this isn’t just about the Bourbons in Spain and France, it’s about the 19th century as a whole. This includes the various monarchs of Europe at the time (as they all inter-married) and the numerous wars they fought.

This has given me a rather sizable fountain of mostly useless knowledge. However, it has had one major benefit in terms of these pub quizzes. We have won many of these quizzes simply due to the history trivia section.

On top of that, I could sit and bore you to death (probably literally) with the amount of useless facts I know about the 19th century and their coins. And so could most other people who collect coins (at least from those I’ve met).

1. Accessibility

200 years ago, the vast majority of people were too poor to afford rare coins. During this time, only the upper echelons of society, the Kings and Queens of Europe and the nobility, were wealthy enough to collect coins.

Today, this isn’t really the case. Assuming you have a good enough job, or a side hustle that pays well, you can probably afford to start collecting coins. Let’s put it this way, if teenagers can do it, so can you!

Chances are, with the spare change in your wallet/purse right now, you could start collecting coins. All you need to do is find your local coin dealer (which is common in most major cities around the world) and look for cheap coins!

Even if your town/city doesn’t have a coin dealer, you can still start collecting anyway! After all, we have the internet, and sites like eBay where you can buy coins from all around the world!*

*Just make sure to buy from reputable sellers so you don’t get scammed with a fake or altered coin.

Got any more reasons to collect coins? Tell me in the comments!