The Economy And Coin Collecting

Every coin shop I've been going to has been jammed with people lately! They've all had to hire new people to handle their extra business (one big dealer has added four new employees in the past 3 months!).

There has been such a huge increase in the last six months in the market for any form of physical gold and silver bullion that the U.S. Mint has had to ration and delay some of their gold and silver bullion coins! Just try to find any physical gold or silver for 'spot' price nowadays....

If I had $50 million dollars worth of gold coins and wanted to sell them, I could sell them all to my local dealers in a couple of hours. (I'm not joking!)

I have personally seen in the last couple of months, customers of shops buying $30K to $100K of gold coins in a single transaction!

Historically, ownership of gold and silver has been of great benefit in times of financial crisis. This is why there's been such an unprecedented "bull run" on physical silver and gold in 2008, even with some big drops in the 'paper' gold/silver futures markets. It is true that manufacturing slowdowns are a valid cause for 'paper' precious metal futures to drop, but most of the recent 'paper' drops were paper futures being sold by stock owners to pay for margin calls when the stock market was taking that big slide downhill !


I'd say a little of both: It's a great time to buy any collectible coins containing gold or silver, and keep what you have 'on the shelf'! If gold & silver take off, you won't have to wait for 'the economy' to improve to benefit from owning your coins!

I would also say that collectible coins in general would still be a relatively good investment, but a depression would lower prices of coins that are mostly 'numismatic' value (although they should come back strong after the economy improves).

Okie,
I currently live in Silicon Valley, where everyone assumes the economy will somehow continue as before.
While people are supposedly "wealthy" here, my dealer friends whose business comprised perhaps 60% bullion transactions have seen a huge slowdown already. And in two weeks, there will be a local coin show, where I expect more inventory/less traffic. I've always been a frugal collector, so my buying will stay about the same. That's not to say I'm not deeply concerned about the availability of money for business renewal. I'm currently in a product development phase, and I don't know whether I'll see any money--but I won't dismiss the power of optimism. Best wishes to all my friends here.

I recently relocated to Sunnyvale from up North.
Yes, the "google effect" here too--people are blowing crazy money on sticks and stucco, lol. I've seen sales at $800-1000/sqft even over the past few months. However, that may be coming to a close.

I have ceased buying all coins for now, the stock market seems to have a ton of bargains right now.

wd1040:
Hey, you are on Long Island?

Same here, East Meadow, but I lived in Lynbrook years ago.

The coin show I went to this weekend was seemed to be less inventory and less traffic.

Based on the dealer directory map, there were some no-shows. Some of the guys I talked to hinted (but never really admitted) that they "packed light" expecting to be taking more back with them (i.e. people selling their things in hard times).

I did notice that junk silver was selling at 10-12 times face. Not sure what they were paying though; I was not lucky enough to witness any of those transactions.

I live in NH and they are having a Job fair this week for jobs in Wyoming.

Anaconda is no longer in buisness. Adrian and Brandon parted ways. Adrian ran off to Costa Rica. And Anaconda's coins were consigned to Heritage to sell at the Summer FUN auction