Just as it appeared that gold was making a major recovery and moving north once again it backed off last week and is now (as this is being written) hovering just above the $320 an ounce mark. This is only one of the factors that has led to a small but perceptible slowdown in some areas of the market in recent days.
"I believe that the war has slowed business a little in the last week or so," says Mike Printz of Larry Whitlow, Ltd., in Oak Brook Terrace, Illinois. "To put it simply, people are watching TV and not looking at web sites. Some collectors have stopped spending money because of uncertainty about the near future."
What about the supply problem that almost every dealer is talking about? "What people need to understand is that there are lots of coins out there, but the examples with good eye appeal are much tougher to find. That is especially true of the early material, such as XF Bust dollars or MS64 Bust half dollars."
Are you buying coins back from customers who have big profit positions? "At times we do, but most collectors have no interest in selling. You can't force people to sell their coins, and as long as they're enjoying them then that's what numismatics is all about."
Santa Clara show is "steady, but smaller than usual."
The Santa Clara coin show took place last week and received mostly positive reviews. "The show was steady, but slightly off normal as far as activity went," said Dale Larsen of Spectrum Numismatics in Irvine, California. "It was smaller than usual because a lot of the major players didn't show up. There have been a lot of shows in recent weeks, but now there's nothing until Central States, so I'm sure that that show will be smoking."
How is the activity in gold coins? "Actually, it's pretty quiet," Larsen said. "Two months ago the phone was ringing off the hook with calls about gold, but the volume of inquiries is down about 85%. There's still buying and selling going on, of course, but the frenzy is out of the market for the moment."
Well, what coins are doing extremely well? "Patterns continue to be hot. We are buying and selling a lot of them. There's also a lot of demand for Liberty Seated Proof type and Carson City dollars."
139,000,000 collectors can't be wrong.
"The rare coin market continues to be wondrous for us," says Van Simmons of David Hall Rare Coins in Newport Beach, California. "The collector base is absolutely huge and more people are putting together sets than at any other time in history."
What has created all of the action? "The U.S. Mint has said that 139 million collectors are now buying coins from them. That number covers not only the U.S. but also 54 foreign countries. The Mint is now the 30th largest e-retailer in the country.
"Some of those collectors never buy anything else, of course, but a number of them are asking, 'What else is there to collect?' Speculators aren't driving this market. It's active because collectors want to buy coins for their collections and they're branching out into type sets and date sets and the historic early issues."
Are you as bullish on the rare coin market as you sound? "I can't think of a better place to put your money in the next six years. David Hall's prediction about 'rare coins becoming pictures on the wall' might really come true," Simmons concluded.
Bruce Amspacher has been a professional writer since the 1950s and a professional numismatist since the 1960s. He won the OIPA sportswriting award in 1958 and again in 1959, then spent eight years in college studying American Literature. This background somehow led him to become a professional numismatist in 1968. Since then he has published hundreds of articles on rare coins in dozens of publications as well as publishing his own newsletter, the “Bruce Amspacher Investment Report,” for more than a decade. His areas of expertise include Liberty Seated dollars, Morgan and Peace dollars, United States gold coins, sports trivia, Western history, modern literature and the poetry of Emily Dickinson. In 1986 he was a co-founder of the Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS).
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