/biz/ - Business & Finance

>>57708930
We've talked in the past about what it would take for ancients to gain popularity in the US, and I think this touches on it.

In my experience most US coin collectors aren't buying coins because they're interested in the topic on the coin, or in the history of the time or whatever.

We buy coins because we're OCD/autistic completionists. We want the full set. The collection is about completing the set, whatever that set might be. So a lot of US numismatists (maybe even most of them) will buy coins they don't really care about or want if it completes the set they're trying to collect. It's normal to see collections consisting of a large pile of crap coins with one or two really amazing pieces mixed in. Because we want the whole set. The US mint knows this, and they know that low-mintage, unpopular coins are going to wind up being the valuable ones, the ones everyone will need to finish their collections.

This is also the reason ancients and exonumia and foreigns and generic bullion have never really caught on in the US. Either it's impossible to complete a set because some pieces are too rare, or the set is too large to complete with any finality.
Picrelate- The only complete set of Stumptown Colorado saloon tokens in the world. There is only one. Nobody else can complete this set unless I sell or die. Which makes it a lot less fun for people to try.