Which countries have healthy collector communities?

[Zoins]

Which countries producing moderns have the healthiest collector secondary markets? To me it seems that the US leads the way, China is doing okay and Canada has a few winners (but I haven't looked too closely). Mexico created a number of commens in the 1990s with their pre-Columbian series which seems to have done okay. Any others or comments on the above?

[satootoko]

Lots of collectors in Japan - prices are generally higher than here, especially for US coins.

[Hoot]

I think this is a great question. Greg and James should have a good sense about this.

 

From what I understand, most western European countries have healthy collector communities. Germany, Italy, and France are particularly strong groups of collectors. I would also think that Great Britain and Ireland have a fair number of active collectors. I've sold a few U.S. coins to people in GBR.

 

On the other side of the world, I believe that Australia has a fairly strong collecting community, but far fewer people in their own country that collect their coins than elsewhere around the world.

 

Hoot

[toyonakataro]

Roy-san

I won't say Japanese coin market is healthy.

Avid collectors are mostly 60years or older and this hobby is getting less and less popular among younger generations. I wonder what this hobby will be in next 20 years.

[World Colonial]

If the original post is referring to the pricing of coins from other countries, then I would say that for the most part, it is much weaker and so is the demand.

 

Based upon my experience, the countries with the strongest pricing for high grade coins across the board are Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. In a recent auction, several early Australian proofs sold for more than scarce and rare US proofs such as capped bust even though the coins have higher mintages if not survival rates.

 

Pricing for most other coins is weak in my opinion even though there may be exceptions for certain individual coins or groups of coins. Compared to US pricing, most German and Japanese coins are cheap although I must say that I see these coins in high grades more often than most others. Same goes for the UK.

 

There are a few really expensive world coins such as some Korean gold but not many. That's why I focus on world coins instead of US because they are a relative bargain.