Investing In Rare Coins With Dana Samuelson

This is the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast, where we uncover the alternative investments and strategies that billionaires use to grow wealth. The tools and tactics you'll learn from this podcast will make you a better investor and help you build legacy wealth. Join us as we dive into the world of alternative investments, uncover strategies of the ultra-wealthy, discuss economics, and and interview successful investors. Welcome back, Invest Like a Billionaire podcast listeners. We got another fun episode today. This is with Dana Samuelson of American Gold Exchange. And how was our conversation?

He, he is actually, was actually the president of the American Numismatists Society. What is that? That's rare coins, rare coins. So this is the collectibles market. So there's a lot of people putting money in real estate and hedge funds and private equity and all that great stuff. But, but the billionaires also are putting money in collectibles. And lately the collectibles market is on fire. And so we wanted to bring to you an expert in coins, in rare coins as collectibles, as a potential investment. So this is an awesome little interview.

You're going to really enjoy this.

And if you are enjoying the podcast, we do always appreciate the reviews you guys give us on iTunes or Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts. Appreciate the support. Here's the episode. Welcome back to the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast. I am your co-host Ben Fraser, joined by fellow co-host Bob Fraser, and our guest today is Dana Samuelson. Hailing all the way from Austin, Texas, here on Zoom. Dana, thanks so much for joining today.

Thank you, it's my pleasure to be with you. I really appreciate the opportunity to do this with you.

Yeah, we're super excited. So for those of you that don't know who Dana is, he is the founder of American Gold Exchange, and he is a professional numismatist. Numismatist. I was close the first time. But so what is that? That's a tongue twister. And Some people may not know what that is, but talk a little bit about, um, your background, how you got into the space, what does American Gold Exchange do. We're super excited about this whole area.

Okay, so numismatics is the study of coins, and a numismatist is someone who studies, uh, coins or rare coins. So I've been in this, uh, space for 42 years. I got my first job out of college, 1980, uh, when nobody was hiring, just like uh, what happened in 2009 when nobody was hiring. And I got a job working in a vault counting, shipping, weighing. So I literally started at the ground floor, the kitchen sink, if it were a restaurant. And I've moved up. I got a lucky break working for Jim Blanchard, who was the gentleman who most responsible for the private re-legalization of gold ownership in 1974. I got a lucky break, uh, and offered a job with Jim in 1983, uh, as a numismatist, uh, and a coin appraiser trainee. So I sat in a room for 2 years and looked at coins, which is really the only way you can learn how to do the business— by doing it, appraising old vintage US coins.

And, uh, some people, that probably sounds really boring. To me, that actually sounds really fun.

Yeah, it was a lot of fun because our country has made some fabulous, uh, beautiful gold and silver, copper, nickel, uh, and, um, uh, coins over the years. They're just magnificent works of art, uh, and they are a great asset class as well. They're not for everyone. It's a supply and demand market. But I got to spend a lot of Jim's money with the industry, so I got to learn the industry and I did, did that for 9 years. I went on my own for a few years and eventually moved to Austin, Texas, where I started American Gold Exchange in 1998. We're a national mail-order precious metals and vintage coin business, but we're more of a boutique. We have 4 account managers who, uh, work— act in a consultative manner to try and help people either with precious metals or vintage coins if they want to play in that sector. And, uh, we could have a much bigger company like some of the big telemarketers that are in our space, but I didn't want to have that. It's just more of a headache, and I, I want to have fun. This is my life and my livelihood. So we try to take good care of our clients, be very fair and transparent. And I've also tried to give back to the industry by serving at the Professional Numismatists Guild board, which is the leading organization of rare coin dealers. I was on their board for 12 years and I was their president for 2 years. And that's awesome.

So yeah, you know a lot about rare coins.

Yes.

So, so the interesting thing about, about you, Dana, and this interview, why I'm actually pretty excited about this, it's, you know, there's a lot of people just talk about bullion and gold and silver, and but you're— this is really different. We're talking about rare coins. Which, which share some key attributes and characters, but it's really an entirely different market and a market that, that a lot of wealthy investors actually love and dip their toe in and make money at. So it's actually a good opportunity and extremely different from just bullion investing.

That's correct. You know, some of these coins, we measure them kind of the same way you would look at houses. How many comparables are there? How many nicer ones are there? Right. How many were made? Uh, because of independent grading certification services, there are two that the dealer community trusts. Uh, one is on the West Coast called the Professional Coin Grading Service, PCGS. Yep, PCGS. Uh, we— they've counted how many coins they've graded since they both started in 1986. Now we have known survival rates as well, so we can do much more effective comparables than we used to be able to do in the old days.

So you know what the population is. So there may be a coin that has a population of 5. There's only 5 known specimens, and each one has a provenance, right? They know the history of that coin, and they know the pricing, and they know exactly— there's really no surprises. They know the entire population of these coins.

Yeah.

Dan, I'd love to hear you go back maybe to more of the origin of the space. And someone like me who's heard the name Jim Blanchard and somewhat familiar with him, but not really the origin of this space, like you're saying, I'd love to hear just back then what it was like and where the market has developed up to this point.

Well, Jim was a history major in high school, and he got into a car accident where he broke his back. So he was in a wheelchair from 18 on. And he didn't know what he wanted to do with his life. And then We went off the gold standard in 1971 when Richard Nixon broke the dollar backing of gold, uh, breaking Bretton Woods Agreement, which established the dollar as the world's reserve currency. So Jim made it his crus— he knew that the dollar would decline in purchasing power because of that, so he made it his crusade to re-legalize gold ownership. He started a committee called the National Committee for Monetary Reform, and he actually buzzed Nixon's second inauguration in 1972 with a biplane that said "Legalize Gold" on the back, uh, but it got shooed away by some fighter jets. It didn't quite— but he helped, uh, spur the re-legalization ownership movement, which Gerald Ford approved of in 1974, which made Americans, uh, legal to own physical gold again, which we're the only country that we removed that privilege from. Gold was still available in the Asia and in, in Europe. So then people said, okay, where do we buy this from? And Jim said, well, I'll sell it to you. And then the gold price took off in the late '70s, so the silver price. And by 1980, Jim had the biggest mail-order coin company in the country. And he also started an investment conference, um, back then as well, which continues today under his successor, a friend of mine named Brian London. It's the New Orleans Investment Conference, which is a hard money conference. It's It happens every October or November in New Orleans. So if anyone's interested in hard money, this is a good conference to go to to learn about the precious metals space. But Jim was a titan in our business. He was innovative in many ways. He helped to establish our industry lobbying entity, the Industry Council for Tangible Assets, which helps to— like if a state wants to put sales tax on precious metals or rare coins, Icta will help to get that fight done. Um, so he was tremendous in our industry. He passed away unfortunately in 1999, and we lost him, but he's basically the godfather of the precious metals and mail-order coin business.

Interesting. That's fascinating. So, so going back to, to rare coins, to me, as someone who's maybe newer to the space, it seems it's more likened to collectibles such as, you know, fine art or wine versus buying bullion, which is more maybe as a hedge or against inflation or those kind of things. So for someone who's kind of new to this, you know, angle investing in rare coins and rare earth metals, you know, how would you kind of describe it for someone that's kind of new? Is that, is that a good similarity there? Or would you explain it differently?

Yeah, well, basically it's a supply and demand market. Those— that's the most fundamental equation underneath the values. So coins are— were made years ago, decades ago, centuries ago, and their surviving condition today matters. So we judge them on what their condition is today. There's mint quality coins and varying degrees of mint quality, and then there's circulated coins in various degrees of circulation. So there's— the quality of the coin matters. The date, the mint mark, and the denomination matters. How many they made at the time matter, and more importantly, their survival rate today, uh, is the most determining factor for how many are available in the marketplace. Some coins they made millions of, but we know that only a handful still live today. And some coins they didn't make that many of, and they were recognized as special back in the day, so almost all of them survive. I can give you a few examples of these if you'd like.

Yeah, give us, give us one of the coolest.

Alright, so in 1907, Teddy Roosevelt decided he wanted to reinvigorate the design on the $20 gold coin. And he enlisted the most famous sculptor of the day, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, to create a new design to replace the design they'd used for, at that point in time, 57 years, which was a classic Liberty head. So the picture of the— on the coin was a woman standing, striding into the future. And on the back was a flying eagle. And he wanted it to be made in a high relief, uh, strike, which is enhanced depth of details on the design of the coin. But it took 9— 8 or 9 strikes of the dies to get the relief up, so the dies didn't last as long as they should. And then when they stacked them up into banker stacks of 20, they wobbled and fell over, so they were They made 10,500 of these high-relief 1907 Saints in December of 1907, and they discontinued them right away because of impracticality. I want one.

Why not?

According to the PCGS and NGC population reports, almost all 10,000 of them exist today, okay, in various degrees. Most of them are either high-end circulated or low-end uncirculated condition. And any example, even a worn one, is worth about $7,000 or $8,000, where mint quality coins can go anywhere from $15,000 to $20,000 to $75,000 per coin, depending upon how nice it is for the grade.

Um, that is, that is so cool. The thing I love about, about coins, it is a collectible. It is a collectible, right? Okay, but the cool thing about collectibles is they're not making any more of these. So that coin, there is 10,000 of those coins. There's no more. And so there's probably going to be no less either. So that's what he's saying. It's about supply and demand. So, so, but the supply is 100% limited. And so these—

if not decreasing, to your point earlier, that there's some being lost.

Right. So, so it's a, it's a collectible, but it's a collectible that anyone can get into. Right? So you can literally get a book that you can look up this coin and see what its current value is. Right? And you can buy and sell those. They go at auctions and you can, you can buy a coin for a couple hundred bucks. You can buy a coin for a few thousand bucks. You can buy a coin for a few hundred thousand bucks, you know? And, and so it's anybody can play. And so it's, it's a highly accessible market and it's also very, they're very beautiful. So they're kind of visually rewarding and they're historically rewarding.

You have a cool story.

Yeah. Everything is a story.

Yeah.

And so I have a coin collection. I actually just pulled out my coins this last weekend and showed them to a guy who was oohing and aahing. And of course, I'm telling a story every time. And for, for old guys, you know, we like to tell stories and, and, you know, it's, it's, it's so it's really it's very accessible way to it's and it's a cool hobby, right? It's cool hobby. It's very accessible collectible investing, you know, so So, but, but, you know, it's also potential moneymaker, right? And that's— this is an investment show. So, and I was, I was in the market. I remember, I think it was, I think I was in, in the late '80s. I can't remember when I got in or it was maybe the '90s, but I made a lot of money in collectibles. And so, so the market has kind of had a real run-up, you know, for a time, and then it really went to sleep and values really went down. And lately it seems like they're on fire again. So So clue me in, just give me a picture of kind of the macro picture of numismatics. How has it gone? And since you've been in since 1980, what's happened in the market? Just trace us, give us your finger chart there for the, you know, what's happened since 1980.

Well, when I first got into the market, we were coming off of record highs for gold and silver, so the market was really hot.

And this is the '70s.

Late '70s, early '80s, but that continued on until about '82, '83.

And then it, then it crashed.

It came down, but with the advent of PCGS and NGC in independent grading and certification in 1986, it gave Wall Street a level of comfort for rare coins. So from '86 to about '89, we had a red-hot coin market.

We had, uh, '86 to '89, I think that's when I was in it. And yeah, so things went up. Do you have a little PCGS coin container you can show into the camera?

A little, uh, yeah, I don't have one right in front of me right now, so I'm sorry, I should have put it—

well, just so— but it's a little, it's a little, what do they call, a little brick, a little clear brick, and you send the coin off and they rate it and they mount it in a brick that's very nice. But, but as long as it's sealed, that coin is rated, and so it has a very clear rating that is industry recognized. So that's the point.

The coins are sonically sealed inside hard-shelled plastic holders with the grading certificate on the inside, and if you try and break the holder, you'll destroy the holder in the process, which voids the guarantee, right? So as long as they're in a PCGS or NGC certified holder, we know what the grade is because the, the other things about a coin are constant— the, the date, the mint mark, the denomination— those are constants. The grade is the variable, and then the market price is determined by buyers and sellers coming and how many more.

Yeah, and there's a website that you can look at, look those up. So, okay, back to, back to the market. So '80, '86 was on fire as Wall Street got confidence and investors came in. Then what happened?

Well, we had a recession in '90, '91, and, uh, the prices got a little too high and the market came down, and we had a real quiet coin market for about 10 years, right? Then as the— we moved into the 21st century And more— the middle class became healthier through the dot-com bubble. You know, a lot of people made money in dot-com stocks. Not everybody lost it when the bubble burst. But then we got into a better precious metals market as well in the 2003, 2008, with two things happening. We went to war because we were attacked, and the gold price started to make— to move up in earnest for the first time in 20 years. and we had a lot of wealth effect, uh, because of the mortgage bubble that came up. So there was— the middle class was buying coins pretty heavily. So we had a pretty healthy market going into 2007, 2008, and then the crash came, which actually taught a lot of people who had never bought precious metals before to buy precious metals. Millions of people who had never bought an ounce of gold in 2005, were buying gold in 2009 and '10 because of the financial crisis. So we trained a lot of new buyers to come into the market. Um, when things started to get healthier about 2015, and a lot of those coin prices followed the market up and then down again, uh, when the gold price corrected.

Yeah, so, so the 2008 crash, what happened to numismatics? They, they went down as well?

Yeah, the rare coin market was impaired because people were more interested in buying fundamental value than rare value.

Gotcha.

So a lot of people were buying gold for gold's sake and shunning the higher-end collectibles because of the premium that you paid for those.

But it seems like, because I've been bidding at a couple auctions, and in our values, on insanely on fire right now, because I've been losing.

Yeah, uh, in the last 12 months, the rare, the real rare coin market, the high-end record market, has absolutely been on fire.

So what's the deal with that?

Uh, it's just a lot of, a lot of the wealthy people have money. They want to put it places where they can trust, uh, it's a good store of value. And the good thing about rare coins is you can put 20 coins into a PCGS box, which is not very big, and have a couple of million dollars or more depending on what coins you have in that box. It takes up very little room, completely portable, completely transferable wealth privately. Wow. So there's no buying and selling, uh, we don't have to report anything. You're morally obligated to do the right thing on your taxes, but this is private wealth. And especially in the last 18 months or so with the— all the government debt, it scared some people, then they're looking for alternative places to put money. Now rare paintings have been bringing record prices.

I mean, the collectibles market is on fire, and rare paintings, again, they're not making any more of them. They're beautiful to look at. But the values are insane. You know, is numismatics— does it track like the, the painting market at all? Is it, is it, you know, go with some of that?

It hasn't, but it's playing catch-up. So we, we didn't see our first million-dollar coin until 1996, which was a 1913 Liberty Nickel, and it's one of only 5 that we know survived today.

Wow. Oh cool.

We changed the design from the Liberty Head to a buffalo, but they made a few of the Liberty heads anyway, and we know that 5 have survived. Well, that was—

how many were in the original mint? Were there, there only 5, or—

I don't know how many they struck, but it was a limited edition. I mean, they only made a few to start with. Um, one of them was lost for decades till it finally turned up at a coin show in 2009. But not to belabor the point, By between 2000 and 2010, there were about 15 to $20 million coins. And over the last 10 years, that count has gone up to about $150 million coins. Wow.

Interesting.

Individual coins that trade for more than $1 million at auction.

Yeah. So it seems like, you know, the stuff that's more investible, and correct me if I'm wrong, is the rarer stuff. Right? If you're purely a financial investor, do you want to go rare?

If you have the ability to hold on for the long term with the money that you're going to put into that market, yes. Because rare coins have done nothing but appreciate over the long term very well. Yeah. When I was working— I'm sorry, 1982, my boss bought an 1804 dollar at auction. At that time, he paid $250,000 for the coin. It's one of 14 known. It's a classic. That coin traded hands about 10 years ago for $2.6 million, and it's probably a $4 or $5 million coin today.

Wow, this is a cute little coin. This is a little $1 gold, right?

They're little teeny-tiny silver dollar. Oh, silver dollar.

Okay.

Yeah.

Wow.

The last silver dollars they made in the classic design. They didn't make any other dollars for about 25 years till 1834.

Wow. And he, he probably thought he was overpaying when he paid a quarter million dollars for it, right? But this is insane, you know. I could buy a large house for this at the time, you know, and I'm buying a little coin.

Another example, more, more recent, is, uh, the Carson City Mint opened in 1870. It was only open for 23 years. Most of the coins that they made at the Carson City Mint during that time got— had low mintages and they were put right out into circulation. So survivors in higher quality are hard to find. It's a very popular mint. So the 1870 Carson City $20 gold coin is another classic rarity. They made about 3,800 of them. Today we know that there's only about 75 that exist in all different qualities. Wow. One of our clients bought a circulated Extra Fine 45, which is modestly circulated, for $475,000 a year ago, just before the auction prices really exploded. I was just at a coin show in Chicago last weekend where the exact same coin— different coin, same date, mint mark, and grade— was offered for $575,000. It's gone up $100,000 in a year. That's how hot the coin market is. Wow.

So, so it is— I mean, it's, it's collectibles. It's collectibles. And, you know, so collectibles is, is a great market to be in. And I think, you know, over the long haul, as, as you said, if you've got a long time horizon, you want to own a piece of history. So it has— is numismatics always trade stronger than bullion or does it really track bullion over time? I just love to see the data.

Well, there's, there's different classes of numismatics. So I do a lot of my bread and butter business of the old vintage $20 and $10 gold coins that I would call semi-rare. They're scarce, but they're not truly rare coins. They tend to track the bullion price, but the premium can wax and wane. So we like to sell these things when the premiums are low relative to their intrinsic gold value and trade out of them when the premiums expand relative to their gold value. Now, the rare coin market, the truly rare coin market, is a separate, uh, entity to itself. It's supply and demand, and the marquee coins tend to get the most attention. But there are a lot of secondary level coins that are now getting a lot of attention because of the values have exploded so much on the marquee coins that people are looking, okay, where can I participate in this market and spend $200,000 instead of $2 million for a coin. Yeah.

Yeah. So what are the real drivers of value? So someone's looking at, you know, this coin versus that coin. What is going to make one coin more valuable than others? I think there's obviously some clear things, as you mentioned, but just break it down a little bit more. Is it, is it kind of the story behind it? Is it the more limited mints?

The, you know, obviously there's the grade, but that's, you know, you already mentioned survivorship and grade.

So what else, what else would you say?

Well, there's historical significance.

Okay.

There are— there's popularity. Some issues are just more popular than others. Like the heavy, the bigger, heavier coins tend to get more attention first just because if you hold them in your hand, they're more impressive. That's true. It's simple but true. So in 1792, before the U.S. Mint officially opened they made a coin called the half disme. It's D-I-S-M-E, or a half dime. And they made a handful of these. Some were allegedly struck out of Martha Washington's personal sterling silver. This is a tiny little coin, and it's got a scrawny little eagle on the back that looks like a chicken. Really, they're really rare. Now, a nice uncirculated example of this sold 20 years ago for $35,000. The same coin just brought $350,000 recently. But it's not a coin that you would think of as a really popular rare coin to start with because it's a little bit obscure and it's small. But as we move into a better, um, financed market or more popular market, people are seeking out coins that have low mintages or low survival rates. A lot of gravity goes towards the gold coin market. Um, there are some issues where there's only a couple coins known to be tradable outside of private hands— in private hands. Like, Mint— Smithsonian has the world's best coin collection for the U.S. coins right now. So some coins, there may be 3 or 4 known, but we know that 2 or 3 of them are museums, so only 1 may trade in private hands.

Wow.

And if that coin comes to market, then you have, you know, an incredible rarity. There have been a couple of collectors over the years who have tried to buy a single one of every single U.S. coin. The only person who was able to do that was a guy named Louis Eliasberg, who was a banker out of Baltimore. His collection was a fabulous collection of rare coins. So some of these, some of these historical pieces They have lives of their own that we know where the coin's been always since the 1870s, '80s.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, so, so it sounds, so it sounds like there's two kinds of investment classes. One is the, the, the less rare coins that trade at a premium to bullion. So you got an ounce of gold coin, you know, an Eagle or something, or a Cougar, and it just goes up and down with the price of gold. And then you've got these go probably accelerated, right? So they're— they sell at a premium. They never sell at a discount, right? But they sell at a premium. But that premium is either high or low. So you could— when you buy it when the premium is low and you sell it when the premium is high, is that right?

Right, right. So it's a feast and famine market. When we're in favor, we're really in favor. And when we're not in favor, we're really not in favor. Now, you understand that because you've watched this long time. So when the economy is doing well and stock market's doing well and people are feeling like they don't have to worry about anything, our market tends to suffer a bit. And we went through one of those phases for the lesser, uh, the more common coins, 2017, '18, and '19. In fact, I saw premiums for some of the coins that we like to trade come to their lowest intrinsic, uh, value over intrinsic value ever. And with the last 2 years, with the COVID blossoming of the precious metals market and the debt increasing, this market has re-expanded dramatically. So one of the coins I like is a $10 Indian made, uh, in the— from 1907 to 1933. There's only 2 common years. There's about 50,000 of them that we know survived today in Mint State 64 condition. We sold these to our clients in 2019 at $995 a coin, which was a low price. And today they're trading for about $1,600 a coin. So that's a $600 increase, but it's only a half ounce coin. So it's gone up relative to its content. If it was 1 ounce, $1,200.

Is it still a buyer's market right now for those? Would you be buying right now?

Yeah, I, I still think they have a chance to move into the $2,000 price level, $2,100 to $2,500 based on their rarity, overall scarcity. I mean, there's really not many of them. They were spent more than they were saved. Um, so I still think there's an opportunity there, but they're more fully appreciated today than they were a couple years ago. We track these premiums on our website. If people go to our website, you can actually pull up these coins and track the premiums over their intrinsic content.

That's cool.

Nobody else does that.

We'll put that in the, in the show notes. So, so the other, the other, the other class of coins is the, is the very rare coins. And, and those, they're only— they only seem to go up. I mean, I think they do go down in value, you know. We— well, when do they— when do these really rare class of coins, when do they go up in value and when do they go down in value?

Um, it's a function of the economy, it's a function of you know, how many collectors are looking for those coins at any given time. Uh, and it tends to be a little bit feast or famine. So it tends to follow economic cycles and almost a bit inversely, actually. Things are going well, the rare coin market could do fairly well, but when things are not going well, the rare coin market can really move higher as people look for investments.

Yeah.

It just seems, you know, it's just, I think it's a great place to park a little bit of money, especially you want to pass things on, onto your, to your kids and This kind of thing. I mean, it's stuff that really just generally goes up in value. And I mean, I'm super curious. I'm a data guy, right? I'd be super curious to see the data relative to, to the stock market and relative to bullion. But my guess is the collectibles market, the rare market, has, has outperformed a lot of investments over the long haul. Yeah.

If you, if you just think about it fundamentally, every 5 years we have X many more people in the country. Right? And as the population continues to grow, the supply of these coins stays fixed or actually diminishes a bit. So over time, there's just that many more potential buyers than there are available pieces to be bought, which is where the pressure squeeze comes for the price. So that's typically the longer cycle. The shorter cycles, it depends what's happening in the world.

Yeah.

So I have never seen a coin market go on fire like the rare coin market has gone. It's not the last year in 20 years. This is a—

it's nuts. And, you know, so, you know, you, you love the American coins, which I think are really cool too, but I'm a huge fan of the ancients. And, um, and so I've been, I've been buying the uber rare, uh, Roman coins and, and Greek coins. And, um, so they're, you know, I've just bought the, the Jewish War shekels. You're familiar with those? They're, they're super rare. There's only 5 years they were issued. And, and I, I think the year 5, there's only, uh, like 13 known specimens or something. I mean, it's super, super rare. So, you know, yeah, I know. And here's a 2,000-year-old coin, for crying out loud, that is, you know, just, you know, I just, I just bought some old Greek coins that are the most beautiful coins I've ever seen as well. So talk about just the, you know, so the non-US, the non-US mintages, uh, You know, what do you know about those? And, you know, and I know there's a worldwide market for those, right? So the US coins, I think, is much more limited to the US market, but there's a worldwide market for very rare, you know, strikes.

Right. I'm not an ancient coin expert, so let me give you that disclaimer right off the bat. But there are some very popular issues like the 12 Caesars in gold, which are— Wow. Roman coins that cover each of the 12 different Caesars. And that, that set is— I think there can only be 20 or 21 of those sets put together in the entire world. Wow, is that— one or two of the issues are very, very limited. And these are popular worldwide. Anyone can appreciate a coin no matter where you are— Asia, Europe— that's 2,000 years old or older. And some of these coins are incredible works of art considering the technology they had to work with time, which was extremely crude. And, um, I, I, it's a market that I'm learning about myself because a numismatist keeps studying throughout our entire lives. Yeah.

So, so where do you normally recommend someone that's newer to this space? Maybe they, they own bullion, they like hard assets, you know, where's a good entry point to kind of get into the numismatics? Is it kind of say the semi-rare, as you said you do a lot of trading there? What do you kind of recommend for folks especially this market where it is maybe really hot and, you know, hard to kind of know where to stick the fork in?

Well, a couple of, uh, observations I would make. Number one, we are an unregulated business and there are opportunists that can come into our market. Look up with the wrong dealer, you will be behind the 8-ball right out of the bat. So I'm a member of the Professional Numismatists Guild, the PNG. We are the lead dealers in the business, so look for a PNG dealer, Professional Numismatist Guild dealer. That'll help you, uh, eliminate most of the problems you're ever going to run into, number one. Number two, stick with PCGS, Professional Coin Grading Service, and Numismatic Guaranty Corporation, NGC-certified coins. Uh, I would say start small. And don't jump in with both feet until you have a bit of a feeling for how these coins are bought and sold, because they don't have buy-sell spreads that are 1% or less like a stock. You know, rare coins can have a 20% buy-sell. Wow.

So if you buy and sell the same day, you lose 20%.

That's possible. So these are buy-and-hold coins for the most part, especially the really rare ones. Look at the PCGS and NGC websites. They have a lot of information that'll help you understand how coins are graded for the different quality ratings, and you can see some of the survival rates there. And then just find a couple dealers that you can call and talk to on the phone. With the internet, it's very easy to do, uh, some shopping around, which didn't exist until, you know, 1998, and when that started, uh, in earnest. So these are just fundamental do your own due diligence before you really step in and make sure that you have a comfort level, uh, with what you're trying to do. Now you can buy certified coins for $100 and, you know, test the waters without really spending any real money and test your dealer, see what— how they treat you, what the buy-sell spread is, um, do they deliver the coin, what does it look like in person, and then try and sell it to somebody else and see you know, what happens. So that's the, that's the true test of the market. If you buy a good coin at a fair price, it'll be sellable to somebody else at a reasonable discount to what you paid for it immediately.

This stuff is all done through, through dealers, right? Is there, is there really an online market? You know, there's this thing called the internet that's now been invented, and, you know, is, is there a way for, for, you know, uh, you know, the eBay of coins kind of thing, or, you know, that kind of thing going on anywhere for, for buy, you know, buying and selling and pricing?

I would look at reputable auction houses, okay? There are 3 or 4 big auction houses that do a lot of volume, which is where the true market is really set. I have to give you a warning: be careful of online auction platforms because we do have a small but, uh, modest problem with counterfeits, right? There is a There is a problem with Chinese counterfeits coming into the U.S. They're faking the coins, and they're also faking the PCGS and NGC holders. When I was president of the PNG—

there's a hologram on there too. Are they replicating the hologram?

Yeah, they can get them so that you won't be able to tell that the coin's a problem. I'll be able to tell because I look at these all the time, but you may not. And most of the stuff enters the marketplace through online auction, private online auction platforms or private sales like Craigslist sales or other places. So stay away from that. That's a real minefield. So when I was president of the PNG in 2016, I conceived of and helped to establish the Industry Anti-Counterfeiting Task Force, which now works with Homeland Security and Secret Service to interdict shipments of these coins coming into the country. And, uh, the task force has a lot of work to do because it's, this, it's a steady ongoing problem. It's low level But that's why it's important that you find a reputable dealer to do business with, because that's where the market really is made outside of the auction houses.

Gotcha.

And we have about 300 of us in the country, so there's plenty of choices.

This is kind of maybe a stupid question, but talking about survivorship, where do these coins go? Like, over time, do they just get lost? Do they— do people not realize what they have? Does it, you know, falls down the crack in, you know, someone's house and they can't get—

like, where—

how did these get lost? That's just— I don't know. So I can't reconcile that.

It's money after all.

Well, most of the attrition that we've seen, uh, for the vintage coins has been over time. Like, uh, we confiscated gold in 1933 from the public.

Sure.

And those bars—

they melted it down.

Yeah, they melted it down. Those bars of gold that are in Fort Knox are melted gold coins. That's where they came from. That's where they went. Okay. And sometimes they just get lost. Sometimes people, you know, they don't tell their heirs where they are. They leave them in a hidden place in the house. That can happen sometimes.

I know I had this old, ancient, beautiful old ancient Greek silver coin. Well, it looks a lot like a silver dollar, and I got it mixed up with my silver dollars. I'm like, dang, someone's got to get a silver dollar and find this Greek coin, you know? So, you know, yeah, you got to Can't let the kids into your coin collection.

Yeah, if you have, if you have coins, it's important to tell your heirs where they are.

Yeah, you think about it, what are you doing? You bury it? Well, dude, what if you have Alzheimer's? You don't forget where it is, or, or you, you know, have a deep sleep you don't wake up from and there they sit.

Yeah, there's a classic rarity, there's an 1894 San Francisco minted dime They only made 5 of them, to the best of my knowledge. The Mint Director got 3 of them, and he gave one to each of his daughters. And one of his daughters probably ran down the street and bought an ice cream cone with it.

Oh no.

In 1894. Now that's a half a million dollar coin today.

Wow. Okay, so as a professional numismatist— I think I said that right.

Well done, Benny.

I'm sure you have your own collection. That you're very proud of. So tell us your favorite coin, the story behind it that you own personally that's kind of your flagship coin.

Well, I like coins that have interesting appearances to them.

Okay.

So I tend to collect— I like the Indian design gold coins that I mentioned earlier, the $10 Indian. I like the $20 Liberties minted before that a lot because I just think that they're a classic rarity. Um, but I tend to like tarnished silver coins, which— silver is a reactive metal. Now, you, you call it tarnish, we call it toning. Sometimes it can be incredibly pretty. So there was a hoard of silver dollars that came to market in 1980 that were thousands of, of hundreds of bags of 1,000 coins of silver dollars. That were minted back in the 1880s. The sulfur in the bags causes the coins that touch the bag to react and get a film on it. And as the light passes through the film, hits the coin, and refracts off it and comes back off the film, you see different colors— reds, blues, greens, yellows— that are fiery and vibrant. I like toned coins that have these tarnish on them that is very pretty. You know, these used to be coins that would trade at, you know, $50 coin would trade for $100 if it had pretty toning on it. Some of these coins trade for $4,000 or $5,000 each day just because of the color on it, when the basal value of the coin might be $100 today. So I like coins like that.

Very cool, Dan. This was really, really fun. A totally new space for a lot of people, including myself, but What's the best way for folks to, uh, you know, hear about American Gold Exchange if they're interested? What's the website? Best, best place to find you guys?

So our website is, uh, American Gold Exchange, www.com or www.amergold.com. Our phone number is 800-613-9323. And our general email address is info@amergold.com.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming and joining us on the podcast. It's a really fun time.

Well, thank you for letting a nerd like me on. I really appreciate it.

Hey, we love you.

We love fellow—

we love fellow numismatists.

Numismatists, yeah. I'm a budding one, so.

All right, thanks so much.

Thanks so much.