How do you see this hobby/business in 20 years?

[BCNumismatics]

Mike,
  It would be extremely difficult to know what will happen in 2030 regarding numismatics.

Hopefully,there will be some improvement in cataloguing banknotes,coins,&,of course,community currencies.

Aidan.

[mmarotta]

Hopefully,there will be some improvement in cataloguing banknotes,coins,&,of course,community currencies.

Well, yes, good point, Aidan.  The past looks organic when we find order in it, but we all know the unfulfilled daydreams of science fiction. Did we go to the Moon?  Yes.  Does anyone live there?  Not yet...  But Herbert Spencer was brilliant thinker and he outlined certain broad empirical rules of thumb about social progress.  One of them is differentiation and speciation.  ANA President Clifford Mishler spoke on that several times when he was with Krause, though not explicitly.  He said that the hobby will continue to specialize. 

I have a 1947 Red Book: it has two grades for most modern coins: Fine and Unc. In America, since then, we grew thriving collector societies for Early American Copper, Capped Bust coins (John Reich Society) and Liberty Seated (for James Longacre's works), and many others, but still only one for all Paper Money.  That will change; it must.

As for community currency, it was always just a footnote, the final volume of specail and local issues in the Krause Standard Catalogue of World Paper Money. It never made the other books for US at all.  But I agree that this, too, is bound to change, as paper money collecting differentiates and speciates.

[BCNumismatics]

Mike,
  There is already a lot of community currencies mentioned up on http://www.mainstreetcash.org .

I wouldn't be too surprised if there were community currencies put into circulation in most countries within the next 20 years.

The time to start studying & compiling catalogues of both obsolete & current community currencies is now,in my opinion.

Aidan.

[coinsarefun]

Anyone else want to add their thoughts