Coin Collecting News

Sorting Out Sub-Categories in the Field of Professional Numismatists by Rusty Goe

The term coin dealer evokes about as many images as does the terms car dealer, hardware dealer, book dealer, or just about any other avocation with which the word dealer is associated. There is no one-description-fits-all for the label of coin dealer. Just as in any profession there are different degrees of separation between those coin dealers at the top of the competency chain and those at the bottom.

Consider for example the computer industry. If a person tells you he’s into computers; is he at the level of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, or is he an assistant on the Geek Squad at Best Buy? Likewise, when you consider 2008’s crop of presidential candidates, do Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckaby seem to be on equal footing with Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, Fred Thompson, Ron Paul and Bill Richardson?

So it is in the world of professional (or semi-professional) coin dealers. Some are front-runners, some are consistently solid performers who will always deliver, but never sit on top of the heap, and some are perpetual wannabes. Continued

(Bill Bugert - Editor: David Lange, Director of Research for the Numismatic Guaranty Corporations sent me this note on January 23, 2008.)

“I received the following bulletin from Ray Czahor of Cookie Jar Collectibles, and we agreed that it should be reprinted in the E-Gobrecht. I was just talking to a good friend in Manila Philippines this morning on a couple of Philippine issues. He attended a local auction this weekend.

He said Moslems were offering to local dealers, some of whom bit, 80 to 100 SCARCE to RARE US Liberty 50 Cent pieces. They included dates 1847, 1857, 1857-S, and 1857-O. He said the pieces were the correct weight, high grade UNCs, nice reeding but rounded edges. One dealer there bought 65 pieces for up to $250 for the rare date. Maybe you have already seen them but thought I would pass this info on.”

Robert Palmatter’s passion for coin collecting first began in grade school when he gathered and cataloged coins as a hobby. It reignited with a new intensity in 1987 when he went along with his nephew to a coin store to advise the boy; and the next thing he knew, he was coin collecting and soon was a coin dealer.

“I call it the collector gene; you’re either born with it or not,” he said. “There is no explaining it.”

That all changed Jan. 26. That was night Palmatter was attacked by at least two robbers who had targeted him and his coin collection as he returned to his home in an exclusive neighborhood in Spring Lake Township. Read Full Story

A worldwide financial panic fueled by tight credit and the collapse of the real estate boom spread from country to country. Meanwhile, the president promised to veto any legislation he considered inflationary and damaging to the economy.

That’s the way things were 170 years ago for the fledgling Republic of Texas.

“It was eerily similar to today,” said Merrill Lynch vice president James Bevill, who is president of the Texas Numismatic Association.

Money printed by Texas while it was an independent country will be on display in Houston starting Friday at the association’s winter coin and currency show. Read Full Story