The Lake Superior Coin Club is dying.
The 32-year-old club needs an injection of fresh blood stat, or it faces the possibility of slowly fading out of existence.
Treasurer Germain Tremblay cannot emphasize enough that the club is in its death throes, struggling to attract a younger membership. If they don’t get some fresh blood interested in the coin hobby, the club faces one of two dismal outcomes.
“We either suspend the club or hope somebody picks it up or close the club and take what monies we have and give it to local charity,” says Tremblay.
The Lake Superior Coin Club formed in 1980 and has met every second Thursday at Confederation College from the very beginning.
Today the club has 25 paid members at an average age of around 65.
Tremblay says that today’s youth are more interested in technology rather than a hobby like collecting coins. A young person will be interested in the coin collecting, however, if it is something that was taught to them over the years.
The rising cost of collecting also doesn’t help.
This year the Royal Canadian Mint is putting out three commemorative coins to pay tribute to the sinking of the RMS Titanic. One is a $10-coin that is going for a price of $65 from the mint.
“What youngster is going to buy it unless he gets it as a gift?” Asks Tremblay. “It used to be if you collected coins, it would come out of your pocket.”
That’s no longer the case.
Tremblay says today most people want to see a shiny coin, not one that has deteriorated from circulation.
The price of collecting coins or bank notes is higher than collecting other items like stamps. Tremblay says you can get many stamps for the price of one coin.
“You can probably collect the entire year’s collection of Canadian stamps for one or two coins,” he says.
But despite the cost of the hobby, what makes it interesting is the pieces some people have shared over the years.
Tremblay’s favourites are Canadian bills from 1935 and 1937 that featured British royalty. In 1935, there was a $25 bill issued to celebrate the 25th anniversary of King George V on the throne.
That same year there was also a bill with Queen Elizabeth as a young girl.
“These are nice-looking bills. They’ll always have an appeal,” he says.
While Tremblay doesn’t have any of the 1935 or 1937 bills in his possession, his collection is centered around 50-cent and three-dollar notes. His collection includes 50-cent notes from Israel, Jordan and St. Helen.
He’s particularly interested in bank notes from Czarist Russia and the Soviet Union.
He has a 200 ruble note from 1917, when Russia was still under the rule of Czar Nicholas II.
“This note was made by the American bank note company; it’s not so much a note as it is a bond,” he says, adding there were coupons once attached to it.
If a person kept the coupons attached to the bond, they would earn interest, but they could also take them off and use them as coins.
The focus of the Lake Superior Coin Club is education, Tremblay says. During a meeting, members will talk about new items coming out like the Titanic commemorative coins or the recently implemented plastic Canadian $50-bill.
They also learn how to grade – learn the value of – coins and notes and they also show items from personal collections.
Members also use it as an opportunity to buy and sell pieces to each other. And with an aging membership, Tremblay said many members are looking to downsize their collections.
They also need younger members to take over the executive.
“I’ve been on the executive for several years and I’ve come to the point where … I’m getting tired,” Tremblay says, adding he’ll always be a member of the club, but would like to turn over the reins and have a seat on the other side of the table.
“I’ll do everything I can to do things for the club, but we need a younger membership.”
The Lake Superior Coin Club next meets April 5 at 7:30 p.m. in Room C231 at Confederation College.
For more information, call 577-7475.
