COIN COLLECTING AND INVESTING - ULTIMATE CRYSTAL BALL

Trends That Will Shape Your World Through 2041

- JOSHUA MCMORROW-HERNANDEZ

What will our hobby look like in 2041? Thinking many years into the future can be all at once frightening and exhilarating. Attempting to look ahead 20 years from when this was published in June 2021 may seem like a fanciful notion. But if we put those two decades into historical perspective, we realize that 20 years is the same span of time that has elapsed since 2001, a period that for many of us may seem like only yesterday.

Sure, a lot has happened in the past two decades: the 9/11 attacks, the Great Recession, and the COVID-19 pandemic, just to name a few major milestones. But in hindsight, we can safely say we already saw shades of 2021 back in 2001. At the time, modern social media was in its infancy with the rise of instant messaging services and early interactive websites such as SixDegrees.com and blogging website OpenDiary.com.

With the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., we entered a new era of counterterrorism awareness that continues to this day in countless areas of daily life. In 2001, Americans were already replacing their bulky cathode-ray televisions and videocassette recorders (VCRs) with massive flat-panel TVs and digital video disc (DVD) players. Meanwhile, the Toyota Prius was already harkening a new era in the low-emission cars that have since become ubiquitous on American highways and byways.

And while much has changed in the numismatic world since 2001, it’s easy to see how we got from where we were in the hobby 20 years ago to where we are today. By 2001, the United States Mint was well into its 50 State Quarters program, which ushered in a new era for the hobby and has since been parlayed into the numerous other multi-design coin programs the U.S. Mint embarks on today.