By Laura Sperber – Legend Numismatics Market Report

THE COINFEST SHOW

First, I’d like to thank my partner, visionary (creator), and manager of COINFEST, Jon Lerner (Scarsdale Coins) for working his tail off to ensure the show was a total success. COINFEST is definitely THE BEST REGIONAL SHOW in the biz! Also, a big thank you to everyone who attended or worked at the show.

Several thousand collectors attended the three day show (the exact totals are not in yet). There were 150 dealers with tables. ANACS, CAC, and PCGS, were there as well.

Stacks ran a VERY successful auction. We thank them for their support.

Even before we opened the doors, wholesale activity was strong. Several dealers had arrived the night before and did business privately. When the doors did open to the show for the public, several hundred collectors attended the first day. The majority of dealers we spoke to said the show had exceeded their expectations by the end of Friday!

CAC began accepting coins before the doors opened Saturday. If anyone has any question as to whether or not the public accepts CAC, this show had to clearly answer oh yeah! They had to stop accepting submissions shortly after noon. We are told they viewed well over 1000 coins.

Even on Sunday, there was a small decent “buzz” from the collectors who attended. Much to our surprise, there were some very serious players who showed up. We promise to keep COINFEST open on Sundays-with more than just a handful of dealers setting up. We are reviewing how to improve Sundays especially.

COINFEST IS a show seriously dedicated to the collector. This is why you do not see many “national wholesale” dealers set up. We invited dealers who felt would have coins in their cases and for the most part be willing to deal with collectors. Plus, we want to try and bring back the “romance” of having a show in a beautiful hotel ballroom. COINEST is never going to be the biggest show, just the best! (more…)

Market Report by Laura Sperber – Legend Numismatics

With all the turmoil in the financial markets you would think the rare coin market would be on its death bed. NOT! Without a doubt, even though we have been harping the coin market has been going through what we will call a “quality correction” of 10-20% (probably more like 30-40% now), nice, fresh, original, and truly rare coins have NOT decreased in value by any noticeable measure. Do note: you MUST have FULL quality and TRUE rarity to be safe. People do still need to sell and raise money, but for every person who had to sell, we seem to have found a buyer.

While we have had millions of dollars worth of surprisingly great coins sold to us in the past 30 days, we have also SOLD millions of dollars as well. The 1893S PCGS MS67 Veremule piece came to us not out of financial desperation, but because the owner had personal issues. We wired the money. The coin was sold instantly to the first collector we mentioned it to. He had no fear of spending over $1,000,000.00 and fully understood that he had the opportunity of a life time to acquire the piece. In fact he did not understand why a person that has “passion” and money why they wouldn’t be aggressive buyers today.

We told everyone in our last report to watch the Heritage Auction results. With one day to go, we thought things were going to be very bleak (the sell through at that point looked very weak). However, sitting in the office watching the bidding live and coin by coin being outbid, we saw strong signs of stability. From what we understand, the sell through was over 80%. Many coins that did not sell were (of course) over reserved dealer retreads or, they were “off” quality pieces.

For a better understanding, lets compare two coins from that sale. Lot 256. 1864 Small Motto PCGS MS65RD CAC. Sold: $21,850.00. Lot: 1197 1880S $1 PCGS MS68 CAC. Not sold. The 1864 was a monster. Its reserve was either low or none. The coin blew away ALL records for an MS65 RD when bidding closed! We also believe there was highly aggressive multiple bidders. The 1880S was a monster also. BUT, it had a reserve of $6,000.00 (or a total price of $6,900.00). You can buy a VERY nice high end GEM MS68 for $4,500-$5,000.00 these days. Plus, even in high grade, its still a widget. Did these come down? Yes and no. The reserve probably was based on people spending freely in a rising market. Now that the music has slowed, people demand value for their dollar. They do not seem to be paying multiples for commoner coins either. However, when a coin like the 1864 pops up, their is still a frenzy of bidding. If the market were truly declining, the 1864 would not have sold for what it did. (more…)

Anyone who spoke to us last Monday knew we thought the sky was falling and the coin market like all the financial markets was going to die. We were trying to figure out if a minimum wage position was next for us and just how much we’d really lose (dollar value) of our inventory. The financial markets were in such turmoil people were paying little attention to things like coins (its funny, the few who did buy early in the week-were Wall Street types).

Thank goodness for Congress stepping in to try and calm the mess. Apparently word of action did sooth the general public. As the week went on, collectors started calling. From Wed on the phones and emails were non stop. Activity was almost overwhelming! If you had asked us Monday how much we’d thought we’d sell for the week, our answer would have been $50,000.00-if we were lucky. Happily, we can report sales in the many multiples of that-including one six figure transaction! Whew!

Only one smaller collector and one six figure collector (bailing for personal reasons) sold coins to us last week. That ended a 45 day run of unprecedented Legend buying (or coins being consigned to us) worth OVER $3.5 million total. Prior to that we had no luck buying from the public. Now, it seems the tide has turned and we are back to sensing a drip of fresh coins or less.

Collectors now want to buy-and buy with a fury. However, they are being picky and want real value for their money. Probably because we do not deal in them in quantity, we did not get any requests for generics. It is our understanding the major telemarketers are now flooded with orders for things like MS64+65 Saints (vs. MS 61-62’s the week before). If we had the coins-truly rare and high end, we could easily SELL $10,000,000.00 today! We’re talking coins like a Bust Half in MS67, An MS66 twenty Cent piece, just about ANY Choice to GEM Early Large Cent, a GEM white 17S Walker, or a killer PR65 PR higher 2C piece. (more…)