The conversation started something like this:

John: Bill, could you PLEASE get me a blog article by the end of the month?

Bill: On what?  Coin market?  Grading?  The economy as it applies to coins?  What?

I’ve been thinking this over for a few weeks now.  Where does one start? I don’t know. I mean, there are a lot of things to discuss, but I was drawing a blank.

So I started doing what I always do when I don’t want to do something else, something that needs to be done.  I started playing with one of my many collections.

This time it was one of the “weird” ones.  Americana relating to coin dealers.  You know, those that paved the way before us.  Mehl, Stack’s, Guttag Brothers, to name a few.  And then it hit me.  While I had looked at this stuff many times before, this time I recognized a pattern I’d never picked up.  I’ve got lots of catalogs, pricelists, and correspondence from the “Big Boys”.  But I’ve also got tons of items from relatively unknown dealers, those lost to time.  And guess what…most of it is dated between 1930 and 1940.  Huh?  The Great Depression?  Who would have thought…

What does that mean?  Well, I knew that game companies like Milton Bradley flourished during the Depression.  People didn’t have the extra money.  So they went back to the basics.  Things that the family could do together that didn’t take huge amounts of money.  Like playing board games.  I just didn’t think about coins and the Great Depression.  I had heard that certain coins, like matte proof gold, had sold for little more than face value in auction during this period.  I guess the high face value must have had something to do with it.  But I never thought about the meat and potatoes.  The coins that the everyday collector wanted.  Circ large cents, obsolete denominations, Confederate currency and commemoratives.  Ironically that is what was selling seventy years age.  Kind of like today…except for the commems.

Today, mega coins are selling for record numbers. Local and regional shows are filled to capacity with collectors looking for that special coin.  Yet everybody is talking about the economy and the coin market.  If you don’t have anything to compare today’s market with it can seem sort of scary.

Record unemployment numbers.  Bank failures.  Home foreclosures.  Run-a-way government spending.  And coin collecting….

So what does this mean?  I don’t know.  I do know that this isn’t uncharted territory we’re in.  It may seem like it, but it’s not.

So get out your collection.  Sit at the kitchen table with some of your family members.  And enjoy them again.  Both your family and your coins.

We’ve just finished up with two consecutive shows, the first being Long Beach two weeks ago and the smaller St. Louis Numismatic Association show this past week. Both shows revolved heavily around the search for gold. As gold becomes an increasingly popular haven for those seeking refuge from the dismal world of traditional investments, prices of generic gold have started to react to the rapidly increasing demand. In fact, dealers are having an increasingly difficult time maintaining reserves of generic gold as it continues to leave the market at a dizzying pace.

We went to Long Beach not entirely sure how the coin market would react to what had been another month of dismal financial news since our last major show, the FUN Show in Orlando. Gold proved to be an adequate buoy to the rare coin market providing a nice launching pad into what turned into a very successful show. While the weather did its best to dampen the mood by doing a very Un-Southern California-like thing and raining almost the entire week, inside the convention center the activity level remained brisk.

The regional St. Louis show saw its usual frenzy of collectors descend on the quaint bourse floor. About the only thing more difficult than walking down the crowded aisles was finding a significant amount of fresh, quality material. Generic gold continued a week long march upward in value and was certainly the primary focus of many dealers. As usual this show saw above average demand for attractive collector coins by the retail customers in attendance.

While the two shows we attended are quite different in terms of overall size, location and participants, one thing has begun to crystallize across the entire spectrum of the rare coin market; quality is becoming more and more important. At both the auction in Long Beach as well as the smaller one that took place in St. Louis, coins that are not particularly nice for the grade are selling at noticeably lower levels than their higher end counterparts. The old adage that says, “buy the coin, not the holder” seems to be gaining footing in the decisions of collectors. The reasoning behind this is in my opinion two-fold. The first is due to the evolution of the collector as a more informed, more well-educated individual. Second is the evacuation of untold sums of discretionary income from the coffers of coin collectors due to the recent stock market slide. Collectors are simply going to be pickier (as well they should be) in their purchases for the foreseeable future.

Overall the rare coin market is being steered by gold for the time being. With the global economy continuing to sputter, the renewed focus on gold as a safe haven is definitely creating a shift in the way many dealers and collectors move through the first quarter of 2009. While high-end, low population rarities continue to bring extremely strong prices in both auction and private sales and the always steady sub-$1000 collector coin market marches right along, it is clear that for the time being gold has taken center stage. Generic gold is serving as a conduit between the rare coin market and a new breed of individuals looking to buck the downtrodden traditional investment world.