Doug Winter Market Report - How’s Business?
Coin dealers are lousy economists so I don’t want to waste your time discussing the economic background of the last few days. What I would like to share with you is my take on how it’s impacted my business and what I see are the short term effects of the credit crunch, liquidity crisis, Dow meltdown, etc. on the coin business.
My business was screamingly active in July and August. It slowed down considerably in September and it has been extremely slow in October. I have read on a few dealers’ websites that they are still selling lots of rare coins and that they have people calling from out of the blue purchasing items from their inventory. I think this is a crock. Unless you are a dealer selling bullion right now, you probably (there are exceptions…) are not doing much coin business. You might be purchasing coins from clients who bought them a year or two ago but selling your existing inventory right now? I doubt it.
That’s not to say that the coin business has shut down entirely. It definitely has not. I’ve sold some nice collector grade coins in the past week and my wholesale business is actually a bit better than I would have expected. But my regular clients are taking a wait and see attitude towards the coin market, as am I. With the Dow dropping hundreds of points every day, it’s hard to be excited about the coin market right now.
As recently as a few weeks ago, I commented that the generic gold market was very weak and that premiums for $20 Libs and Saints were as low as at any time I could remember. You literally could not give away double eagles. Three weeks later and the world of generics is a very, very different place. As I write this, gold has a spot price of around $863 but Brilliant Uncirculated (MS60 to MS61) double eagles are worth between $1250 and $1300 each.
I actually recommended in one my recent blogs that it might be a good idea to stock up on gold as the premiums got so low and, for once (!) I was right. I think the moral of the story is that it’s a good idea to have a small position in double eagles for your personal protection and to move in and out of as premiums ebb and flow. My guess is that the premiums will stay very high for a while.
Here are some more thoughts and suggestions for rare coin collectors in these uncertain economic times: (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).
By Pinnacle-Rarities.com
On Sunday, Sept. 14, a 1796 Large Cent sold for $690,000 at an auction held at The Crowne Plaza Beverly Hills hotel. Before the mid 1850s, pennies were about the size of quarters.















