Numisphere Podcast - Coins, Currency, Bullion
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Numisphere Podcast - Coins, Currency, Bullion
A look behind the curtain with Jonathan Hawes of Rogue's Island Mint
**Episode 9: Unveiling the Modern Collectible Coin Market**
In this captivating episode of The Numisphere Podcast, host Tyler O'Connor delves into the captivating world of modern collectible coins alongside the esteemed guest, Jonathan Haws, the visionary behind Rogue's Island Mint.
Join Tyler and Jonathan as they explore the intricate landscape of modern collectible coins, uncovering market trends, and discussing upcoming products that are set to revolutionize the industry. From the allure of limited editions to the craftsmanship behind each design, listeners will gain invaluable insights into what drives the modern coin collecting scene.
Drawing from his wealth of experience, Jonathan shares expert tips on navigating the market, offering invaluable advice on how collectors can maximize profits while indulging in their passion. Whether you're a seasoned collector or a curious novice, this episode promises to be a treasure trove of knowledge for anyone interested in the world of modern collectible coins.
Tune in as Tyler and Jonathan unlock the secrets to success within the realm of modern numismatics, proving that every coin has a story worth exploring. Don't miss out on this enlightening conversation that's bound to leave you inspired and eager to embark on your own numismatic journey.
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed on The Numisphere Podcast are for informational and entertainment purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. The content shared by the hosts, guests, or any participants of the podcast is purely their own opinion and not intended to be a substitute for professional financial advice. Always consult with a qualified financial advisor before making any financial decisions. The Numisphere Podcast, including its hosts and guests, does not assume any responsibility for any actions taken upon the advice given in the podcast episodes.
So it is recording. Now I'll do a quick little intro.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sounds good.
Speaker 1:You know, welcome to the Numisphere thing and we'll kick it over to you. Okay, I'm good whenever you are. Welcome back to the Numisphere. My name is Tyler O'Connor and I am here with Jonathan Hawes of Rogue Island's Mint. Welcome, John.
Speaker 2:Thank you, tyler, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, it's a pleasure to have you here, so can you kick us off? Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, gosh, industry specific, I assume, or you want the whole gamut, the whole shebang.
Speaker 2:Let's hear it out All right, I was born numb, I'm just kidding, I mean.
Speaker 2:So I started in the industry meaning the coin industry late 20s, probably about 15 years ago Very traditional, you know, kind of came up around it.
Speaker 2:When I was a kid my grandfather was in the coins, my dad was in the coins, you know they had collections and stuff and I was always kind of like into it as an amateur collector.
Speaker 2:But it wasn't until my late 20s when I hated my job which I think is not very uncommon, very relatable, working some dead-end jobs, wondering why I went to school for four years with that, you know, that dead-end bachelor's degree and all that kind of stuff and I started buying and selling coins on the side as a way not only to make extra money but to be into the hobby that I kind of had as a kid and I realized that there was some money in it and eventually that money started to be every bit as good as the money I was getting at that job I hated and eventually I just took the leap. You know you say I'm doing just as good. I feel if I pursue this full-time, there's a legitimate career here. And you just I quit my job one day and opened up a brick and mortar shop in Millbury Massachusetts that hasn't been there in over 12 years now probably.
Speaker 2:But that was the start, yeah, and did that for a few years To get very traditional. You know old world numismatics, us numismatics, paper currency bullion you know all the kind of stuff you'd see in a coin shop. And three years in a company that I did a lot of business with at the time, a precious metal refiner came knocking and said, hey, we want to start buying and selling coins and you know, we want you to come work for us.
Speaker 2:And that was one of those decisions where it's like, well, you go into business for yourself, I think to escape the corporate culture or to be your own.
Speaker 1:You know you're working for anybody else.
Speaker 2:You're the decision maker right, and you'd get kind of spoiled by that in a lot of ways. As hard as work as being your own boss is, there's a lot of you know benefit as well, and so I well there's the sense of freedom, yeah, and definitely more stress, more work, but you're your own boss.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you get used to it too.
Speaker 2:I think it's one of those things it's tough to put the genie back in the bottle when you don't answer to anybody and then you have to answer to somebody again.
Speaker 2:But it was a very good opportunity with the way it was presented to me, and so I thought about it and decided to do it, and so I sold the business, went to work for them, was there for eight years, but during the course of that time I saw the industry really shifting and changing, I mean in the sense of there were more options out there.
Speaker 2:I mean I was a very traditional, like I said, numismatic coin shop and we didn't do a lot with modern material or brand new material, even on the bullion side, and we didn't carry, you know, the latest Cucabarras or the latest you know South African Krugerans or things like that. So as we, as I was growing the coin side with this new company, we I realized, hey, there's a lot more out there and there's a lot of things that are new to the market that people are kind of like, hey, you know, they're interested and it was some of it was very bullion based, it was very, you know, spot plus and like look at all these different fancy things we can do to it. Now it's not just another eagle, it's this or it's this and customers would get excited about it. And then some of it started to progress into modern collectibles and I kind of fell in love with with that stuff over that time that I was there and really shifted my focus.
Speaker 1:And that shift was around when like pre-COVID, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I think it was the heaviest, probably in 17, 18. I think that I kind of was learning about it in 2015, 2016. My first year there was 2014. And we were very traditional. We were trying to get it off the ground and it wasn't a new mismatic thing because they were refinery, they wanted to sell a bullion.
Speaker 2:Basically, they had a well, yeah, they had a customer base that was already doing refining and those customers wanted to take back you know product on their refining out turn. So but it was something they weren't as familiar with and they just wanted somebody that kind of knew that side of the business. So it started off very bullion oriented. But once we realized the customers had an appetite for other things, you immediately, you know, you start to jump on those opportunities because, especially if your competitors aren't doing that same thing. So it was probably by 2018, 2019, right before COVID. Those two years is when we really started to get big into carrying a lot of like world mint products that weren't just your basic bullion line. And then, you know, by the time COVID hit, we were in the right business at the right time. At that point, I think. And the rest is history. I mean, you know I shouldn't say the rest is history, but the eventually you know the allure of being the business owner.
Speaker 1:I could never get it out of my system.
Speaker 2:I never quite got it out of my system. And then, you know, you combine that with some very fortuitous timing in terms of the company I was working for, going through some changes, and it just was like, ok, I'm doing this again, I'm doing it. And so you made the leap again, made the leap again a little more forced this time. Yeah, there was the opportunity to do my own thing was always kind of hanging over my head, right, it was like I've done it before. I know a lot more now than I knew before. You know, you make all those rookie mistakes when you start a business for the first time, right, and I was like, ok, I got that out of my system.
Speaker 2:I also had eight years to work for another company that let me, I wouldn't say, be my own boss, that would be overstating it but certainly they gave me a lot of leeway to grow that department without a lot of oversight. So it was kind of like a chance to grow and develop even further in the industry without having to worry about not having a safety net, right, yeah, the support was there to make those choices, absolutely. And then, you know, so it was always nagging in my head. It was always that little thought of like man, I should do this again at some point. But when you know, my hand was forced a bit, but back in would have been October of 21,.
Speaker 2:The company was being sold and there was other things going on. But you know, and I was like, ok, this is the right, this is it, this is the time If I'm going to go back to doing it for myself. I'm getting older, right, it's a lot of work. Oh yeah, and I said I think I got at least one more in me to build it from scratch. I don't want to be doing that when I'm in my 50s, like it's just because of the amount of the toll it takes me working, especially at first, I mean, you're when you're starting it up.
Speaker 1:It's 24 seven.
Speaker 2:It's 24 seven and you know, having done it, I knew what you had to put into it and I just said I think I'm at the right moment. I could do it one more time and that's where Rogue's Island Mint came from. It was born from that moment, so great.
Speaker 1:Well, I can tell you, we definitely appreciate Rogue's.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you. I mean geez. I didn't expect to get buttered up.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, keep you happy.
Speaker 2:That's fair. That's fair. No, you guys are great. I again appreciate you having me down. By the way, really do take good care of me, of course we have to.
Speaker 1:So Rogue's Island what's what really inspired this place in the market that you have developed so uniquely?
Speaker 2:Well I think it comes back to if you're going to jump both feet into a new business again, you've got to examine the landscape of the industry that you're in and try to find a hole. What customer base is not being serviced or is not being serviced in a way that you know it could be? There's a lot of money there that's just not being tapped. The reasons are not really that relevant, although you could help to know why that is. And certainly when I looked around I said, okay, we've got a lot of these new modern products that are coming from world mints. You know places people would have heard of and we'll use Perth or Royal Canadian or New Zealand men as examples of these types of places. And there's it's all very new. I don't want to get too. It's new, but it isn't. I mean, some of these mints have been doing this stuff for a while, but it was kind of new to the American audience. Like you didn't see a lot of stuff outside of the bullion range, you know, going back 10 years, I mean, were they doing it? Yeah, they were doing it, not like they're doing it now, but it was very limited. But it was very limited and but as it started to grow, especially as we went through the pandemic and we were like oh man, there's a lot of hunger for this, but what there isn't is there's not a way for the average dealer to get the product for their businesses, like in Europe.
Speaker 2:Perfect example of this right, you run a brick and mortar coin business. You have an e-commerce coin business. You need product to sell and in old numismatics, obviously that's going to come from buying collections. It may come from the public, it may come from auctions. You have to seek it out. In modern, you don't have to seek it out in theory because they're making it brand new. You should just be able to order it. But you can't.
Speaker 1:Well we're so small that these big mints really don't make a place for it.
Speaker 2:It's not even. Yeah, and don't trust me, don't put yourself down. I mean, you guys are a very good size coin business. It's just that mints don't want to deal with more than a few distributors. It's more of a business model than it is. Looking down on the size of a particular business. Bigger the mint, the less people they want to distribute to, and the US Mint's a perfect example. Right, we don't even do US Mint products ourselves. It's not our niche.
Speaker 2:But there's several big companies that are kind of like the distributors and when I realized that medium size and smaller size coin dealers in the US hadn't really no good access to any of this new product that was coming out, I was like there's the whole. How do we become the person that can supply them? Because the companies that were big enough to buy from direct from the manufacturers didn't want the medium and smaller size dealers to have access to the product because they would create their own competition. They wanted to be the ones that had it. If you wanted to buy it retail, you had to buy it from them. If they start wholesaling it to dealers like you, you can now have. You have an e-commerce business. You could post it up at the same prices that they can, and they're creating somebody competing again their own competition yeah.
Speaker 2:And so they all wanted to have this little monopoly and it made sense. They figured how is anybody going to break up our monopoly? Because we're the only ones that are spending and have the enough buying power to go direct to these places. That was our first challenge. It was how do we become somebody that can Buy that bulk direct from the mince and supply it to the medium and smaller size dealers in the US? So you know, so that the mince will take us seriously, right, Like because we're a brand new company. You know we don't have a track record right, and we looked at it as, Basically, let's make a union I mean it's, it's not truly a union if there's no formal you know, you know board of directors or anything like that.
Speaker 1:but it was a collective.
Speaker 2:It was a collective, better, it's probably even a better way to put it. It was again very informal, but it was. Let's get all the dealers that are interested in having this kind of product together and let's Basically give them access to everything that these men's are putting out. We can conglomerate those orders to create the buying power. We need to go to the men's and say, listen, we can buy every bit as much as the big box retailers. What we do with it, how we distribute it, that's on us. But, like, all they care about is seeing that that big order right, right, or or it's not even always a big order. They there's just certain commitment levels that you have to hit. You either have to spend a certain amount a year. You have to commit to certain amounts of their flagstone, flagstone, flagship products. Everyone does it a little differently, but ultimately it's just about. You have to be big enough to make it worth their while.
Speaker 2:And I said how do we do that quickly? Because Building up a business that can buy at that level would take a lot of time, absolutely. So we said, well, this is gonna be a win-win. It's gonna be a win for the medium and smaller size dealers that can't go direct, because now They'll have access to wholesale pricing and it'll be a win for us because we can accelerate our buying power with them very quickly and that's kind of how it paid off. I mean, two and a half years later we are distributing, as far as I know, for more mince than anybody in the US period. I mean, it's over 50 World mince that we carry their lineup of products and it's only we're only able to do that because we have this Collective of of dealers. We just do wholesale only. I don't know if I didn't say that earlier, but we're just a wholesale distribution, distribution.
Speaker 1:How many will say smaller dealers, medium dealers, do you deal with on average?
Speaker 2:in North America right now, because we do do a little bit of international. But North America right now it's about 120 Different companies that buy the product through us and again, it's not to say that those companies are Exclusively buy from us. It's not to say that they some of them only buy a few things a year and other people buy a little of everything, but there's 120 dealers that get our, you know, distribution offers. And that is a funny story. Honestly, I Didn't know the answer to that exactly, because even people sign up for accounts doesn't mean they're customers. They don't know. The customers go dormant. You know things change.
Speaker 2:But at the end of the year we made sure that, at the very least, everybody who bought at least one product from us in the year got a Christmas card. And so when I was talking to one of my employees, I said I need you to go through and look at anybody who made at least one purchase and tell me how many Christmas cards I got a order, because we had, you know, cards made. Yeah, and she said it's a hundred and twenty two or whatever. I said, oh, okay, so now I know exactly how many active yeah, I'll stir are. You know that at least bought something in 2023. But and then, yeah, we have a handful of international accounts too, although that that's a trickier, other than Canada. I mean, north America is easy, but Obviously, when you're dealing with world mint, it's a lot easier for them to try to find a source in those areas. You're right, asia or whatever.
Speaker 1:But yeah, to get things you aside and then distribute out again is challenge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we primarily. It's more for, like, exclusive products, things that they can't get over there, that we have that. Then it becomes a little more, you know, valuable to them and that's something we've certainly you know that was. That was phase two, you know. I mean, when you're first getting started, the last thing you're gonna do is start developing Products from scratch. That you have to put a lot of cash flow into, yeah, but once you build that base of dealers and you've got product flowing in and out, the next best thing you could do is have product that you can't get anywhere else. It's a, it's a double-edged sort of your dealers, that that your customers I call my dealers, but they have access now to a product that even the big competition doesn't have, which is an advantage for them Absolutely, and from our perspective, it creates an opportunity to grow that customer base, because if there are dealers out there who aren't dealing with us, who want that product, they have to come to us right, because that's the incentive.
Speaker 2:That's the incentive. So it's kind of like a good way to reward our customer base with stuff that you won't see getting plastered all over you know Wherever, and at the same time drive traffic.
Speaker 1:So it's and it's not just these large National sovereign man's or any of these big ones?
Speaker 2:not at all.
Speaker 1:When you distribute products for for garage mints.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I mean absolutely.
Speaker 1:In fact, the one is phenomenal.
Speaker 2:What are my favorite things to do, you know. You know, on one end of the spectrum you have, like Royal, canadian and Perth, these, these mega, mega, mega world mints that have been around for A hundred years, you know. And on the other end, yeah, you have, you have literally guys that started in their garage doing, you know, with either doing hand pours, doing, you know, buying a small press, buying whatever, and. But they have good ideas right and they have good quality and you know, obviously we wait for them to be a little bit established.
Speaker 1:Well, they have to have the ability to produce enough consistently to be able to provide that quality to your buyers.
Speaker 2:Huge factor yeah, that's the first thing we ask when guys come to us asking us to distribute their products is what's your capacity? Because when we put out a product to the whole group of dealers, there's a chance that we're gonna sell a lot. I mean, we never know for sure how something's gonna resonate till you get it out there. But if it does sell a lot, do they have the capacity to fill those orders in a timely manner? Right, that's a huge thing.
Speaker 1:Some that is definitely slow things. In the past. We I mean I can tell to my experience there might be product that comes out and says, okay, we expect it February, but they couldn't just quite keep up enough, so it gets pushed a few weeks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and unfortunately delays are kind of commonplace across the whole industry, right.
Speaker 1:I mean expected.
Speaker 2:Yeah, even with the big mints. But the last thing you want is to overload a guy. It's not ready. You know if a guy makes a quality product, that he has some good ideas, that's that's step one. But if you hit him with a 400 piece order, that's gonna take him four months to fill right and he's drowning you. You're not helping him like you don't even mean in a way. Yeah, so we usually let them get through the growing pains before we start offering any of their products. But that stuff with is is almost part goes to the mission that we were talking about, because it's stuff that you're never gonna see at big box stores.
Speaker 2:Okay, and Not only that, it's supporting another small business that fits in with what my dealer base is, right, so there's like a connection there where they go. Oh yeah, I mean I, we could pump people's tires, you know, if we want to. But somebody like a lockerman, for instance, you know he's been around a while. He's been around five, six years, started at his garage, right, and you know he's somebody that came to us early on and we had to make sure he was ready and everything like that. But the products were were good, his turnaround times were fantastic and the value was there. But he's also another small business. He's a family-owned business. His son works for him. His son's actually a really great hand-poor guy, honestly. I've gone to his facility in Louisiana. I've I've seen his equipment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you guys did an event down there last year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so he, he hosted event for for Industry people once a year. Well, it used to be in the spring, now it's in the fall. They call it locked over fast, yeah, because it's in October, and what a blast that was. I mean, he invites everybody to come see how everything's made. You know, you can actually pull the hand, press, you can pour stuff. Yeah, yeah, let's you do that, and it's.
Speaker 2:It's a bunch of guys that either are other silver-poor or Silver art type of businesses or people like me that work with him in other capacities, and we all meet up there and talk biz, you know, and what's the latest thing going on, and just fellowship and that kind of stuff. So that's that has a lot of sway, I think, when it comes to like what kind of products you want to carry, if you, if you know that story and you've met these guys and you know the new product comes out, it's like, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give that a shot. You know, I want to support. Dave is the owner in this case, but it's not just him. There's so many guys on that other side of the of the spectrum in that I mean I wouldn't go as far as to say like garage, necessarily. I think hopefully they've out a lot of them about growing that.
Speaker 2:But but in terms of like Old-school US manufacturing with a small crew, you know For that six people, sometimes ten people at most you know, whether they're making pressed stuff with it, with a. I mean, there's a guy that, no joke, makes incredible stuff. He bought the same presses that Scott still uses.
Speaker 1:No, no kidding.
Speaker 2:But he only bought one, you know, obviously doesn't have the capacity. Those are very expensive machines. But if you, if you give him the right, die work. You know artwork wise, and it's all you know and that's stuff's above my head how they do it on the computers and all that stuff. But if you give him the right file type, his stuff looks every bit as good and but he's, he's just a guy with a couple employees, you know, and in a facility. But you want to support that again, I distribute for Scottsdale to nothing against Scottsdale, right, scott stills a monster.
Speaker 1:I mean they're huge, they're breaking out with countries a million ounces a week.
Speaker 2:I don't know making that up right but and they're super nice guys, but it's just like we want to have the whole breadth of that, because you won't find that From any other wholesale distribution network. I mean, you can sign up with different places and maybe get five or six minutes Worth of stuff offered to you, but you won't have the diversity of product. We want to have everything from a silver pour to an art bar to a colorized piece. You know a lot of that secondary market kind of stuff to you know your, your Staple mints, you know the bread and butter stuff which I mentioned, like Perth and Royal Canadian places like that, to your upscale.
Speaker 2:You know art mints that are doing legal tender in those bigger sizes, very, very. You know the European artistic high relief, three ounces that we want to have all that stuff because we feel like Everybody has different customers At the end of the day, I don't know who your customers are, you know, I don't know what their tastes are. If I can give you access to everything, not only can you fill what your customers like, but you have the opportunity to grow new avenues in your own market and develop those new, because you now have stuff available that maybe Either you never thought of or didn't know existed, or whatever the case might be, or you could be the only one in the area You're carrying that that too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that too.
Speaker 2:I think our biggest benefit, you know, is to a lot of the true, I call him brick and mortar or show circuit type guys, because you can have unique stuff in your store, in your case, that your competitors in the room aren't gonna have, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And Even. It's so funny too because, like, I'll go to a few shows where we're the supplier for a couple of the people there, right, and even when you go to those people's tables and you look in their cases, they're drastically different in terms of what they've chosen to carry, right, so it's like, you know, you may buy stuff from us and there may be two other dealers that buy stuff from us. You could all be set up in the same row and you look, in your case, the stuff that you bought from us is different than what he bought, it's different than the other guy, and you know, some of them may have focused on price points, they may have focused on product types, they may have focused on themes, and so you, you know, and I think it's important to state that, like, the reason you can do that Is because we are offering, on average, five to seven new Coins or products every day of the year.
Speaker 2:It's an enormous amount of stuff so you can tailor it to what works for you. It's not like, oh, I kind of have to buy this because it's the only thing I'm gonna see for the next three days. Right, not at all. You know, if something comes out and you're like, yeah, that's not gonna work for me, just wait half an hour.
Speaker 2:Every day, I check my email all day long and the diversity of products, the availability of products yeah, we really get to fine-tune it for what works for our business, our model and our customers and that's why we need a big dealer base, because in order to Make any particular product successful and to get bulk orders, you know, the average product is only bought by 10 to 20 dealers out of 120, but it's a different 10 to 20 dealers on each product, right, so it? That's what we, that's what you need to make this whole system work. You know, we're just here to to marry two people that don't want to work together. Basically, you know the mince don't want to deal with hundreds of smaller guys that they have to do the leg work on, and a lot of dealers Don't want to deal with mince, especially overseas. There's a lot of complexity to that. Yeah, it's a headache, it's a headache.
Speaker 2:There's currency conversions, trust me, there's, there's, there's customs.
Speaker 1:That don't even get me involved in all that stuff.
Speaker 2:There's delays there. They want money up front. A lot of dealers don't you know. Listen, we're in a cash flow business, right, and that's a turnoff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have to pay for it months in advance in some cases, yeah, and Then when they gets delayed, how mad are you then? Right? And then you get hit with a customs bill you weren't expecting, cuz I declared it wrong, and you know that's my job. My job is to streamline that so that you never have to deal with that part of it, right, and the mince don't have to deal with hundreds of dealers which they don't have the logistical capacity to do. So it we marry the two together, that's. That was. That was the hole in the market that we saw, and that's a really, really long way of answering that question.
Speaker 1:I mean it makes sense though, because there was nothing there before, and I mean, obviously, as dealers, we had the opportunity to get it with some of these nationals that do the bullion stuff. Yeah, oh yeah which are great and they have their purpose, but that in today's market, where the average buyers kind of shifted to that 35 to 50 year old and we were touching a little bit earlier on this is that it's not necessarily about buying eagles or Britannia's or the basic bullion anymore. Is that you?
Speaker 1:you're trying to tap into Nostalgia yeah and having that connection to get to the mince that have the licenses to do that type of stuff, whether that's Star Wars, disney or the likes. That's a new opportunity in a new market that Really didn't exist as much before and it's such a different Mentality from the buyer.
Speaker 2:So I this is great. I'm glad you're called numus fear, by the way. Here's why I think there's a lot of different wedges in the numus fear. Absolutely and Obviously, the biggest wedges are traditional numismatics, exanumi, a currency you know those types of things. And then bullion is a big wedge, and substantial bullion is True bullion. Buyers are more concerned about the investment than about the specific theme of the product. Necessarily, their goal is to buy metals at a reasonable price that leaves them not a lot of premium to where they're. They can sell it when the potentially when the price goes up, even if they're holding long term, they want to be able to have the lowest costs Over the price of the metal. Oh, the lowest premiums they can get. That's, that's a traditional stacking mentality.
Speaker 1:We want to keep the cost average physical matter.
Speaker 2:Physical metal investor. Look the stuff that we sell. Just to be clear, we really don't deal in bullion. I mean we deal in some we call premium bullion, which is One-off type coins or license type coins that are still priced based on the spot I mean there's still spot-plus or whatever but they tend to be quite a bit higher than a, than a Government round or certainly than a than a like a buffalo round or something like that. So what's interesting is that the mentality behind that collector a lot of people think you know, it's certainly the nostalgia, it's certainly what's tugging at them, you know, emotionally when they see it, but it's also they don't want to lose money either. I mean, anybody who's buying this type of product wants to think that they're making a good investment.
Speaker 1:Right. And the hope is that over time those collectibles will grow in value.
Speaker 2:This is the best analogy I can use and I truly believe this. Traditional numismatics is like investing in traditional stocks. Modern collectibles is like crypto. Okay, there's much, much bigger swings, much more volatility, but you can also, you know, hit home runs much quicker or potentially buy a dud much more easily. Right, I was just going to say there's a lot of those, absolutely so, and I could go into a million examples.
Speaker 2:But literally in a given month, there could be three, four, five coins that are so hot right out of the mint press the day they're made that they're overallocated. Right, meaning the mint gets way more demand than the amount of mintage there is. Right, they, at that point, obviously they cut back the orders from distributors like myself who were saying, hey, I need 500, and they're saying, well, I can't give you 500. I can give you 300. I can give you 250 because we got so much demand. Right, we get those. We have more demand from our dealer base than what we can fill. So you guys get allocated and it kind of trickles downstream that way.
Speaker 2:But the interesting thing is some of that product sells for two, four, five, six times the retail within one to three months, like that crazy of a spike and it's not a fake number where you can't liquidate it. You can easily liquidate it at those prices, either as a dealer who has one in stock or as a customer who bought one, you know, either by, you know, just going back to your dealer or going, you know, putting it on eBay or doing whatever. The money is real and what I like about that, like I said, it's almost like it is a very crypto analogy there, right, where there's a lot of very, you know, spiky things. If you get good at picking the right things as a retail buyer, you can do something you can't do in regular numismatics. This is not to put down regular numismatics. Regular numismatics have held value for you know, hundreds of years. But even before the US existed, there was coin collectors in, you know, europe and Asia that were buying in the Middle and Middle Ages, I mean it's the Javier Kings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, ancient coins whatever.
Speaker 2:So that is a tried and true way to put your money in something that's going to maintain or increase in value over time. But it's more like the stock market. It's a slower crawl right and with the modern collectible, if the right thing resonates with a certain customer base, it all has a very limited minting. It all has a very limited mintage, you know, unlike a Morgan where you know they okay. So what I was going to say is you know you buy a nice, rare Morgan, certain grade, something you're looking for. That's a great, you know way to hold value. And of course you know you're assuming that 10, 20, 30 years down the road that's going to have increased in value. And if you look back they almost always do right. You got to go back at any old numismatic coin, far enough, and you see the auction records and you see a steady increase, other than some, you know, downmarket blips, but over the long term it's usually a very safe investment Coins themselves also have cycles right.
Speaker 1:So as that inventory is accessible, you do have a supply and demand aspect to it. Generally, over time, they perform.
Speaker 2:But if you can get good at picking the right modern numismatic piece, the returns are crazy and again it's more of a wild west than modern I mean, than old numismatics is. But you're basically constrained by these limited mintages. That's what drives the whole thing. What I was going to say about a mortgage is they were made in the millions. Now obviously things have been, you know, melted over time and there's different conditional factors and all these other things. But a new modern collectible and this is something I know that your brother, tj, had mentioned something about a floating coin he had asked me about it before we got on the air, and the reason I'm bringing that up is that's a perfect example of this.
Speaker 2:There's a coin that was made by the Mint of Poland very recently and it's a UFO. But the UFO actually floats. It actually hovers with nothing under it, because they built magnets into it and the box. They built the opposite magnets into it and if you put it over the box it floats.
Speaker 1:So the coin is essentially levitating.
Speaker 2:The coin levitates and it's seven ounces of silver. It's big and they had it on display at the Berlin show in February and everybody went crazy over it. But the mintage of that piece I want to say was 500. I mean, it's very, very limited. Now it's expensive because it's seven ounces, you know.
Speaker 1:And that's a very unique manufacturing, very unique. The base, the housing, everything else, yeah, and it's a three-dimensional object too.
Speaker 2:I mean it's flat on the bottom where they could stamp the effigy and so on, but it's still a pretty three-dimensional object. So what's interesting is, of course, they got flooded with orders after the Berlin trade show and to the point where it 10 times the mintage was requested. And you know, I remember our wholesale pricing was somewhere around $725, I want to say, was the cost we were charging dealers. Now, what the dealers were selling it for I don't Like. Originally, before it got extremely hot, I don't know what. I'm assuming, a normal margin markup, you know, somewhere between $900 and $1,000, was probably the retail.
Speaker 2:If you try to find one of those now and they haven't even, by the way, they haven't even come out yet, like they haven't even shipped to the US yet. This was just a presale the prices are already 50% over what that retail cost was and by the time they're live, that's when you see the real spike. Right when the product hits the stores and it's already all accounted for, it's not like most of your dealers aren't going to have any for sale because they've already pre-sold the product. So now the demand is this high but the supply is super low and you're going to see people probably paying $2,025 to get one of these, if they can find one, right? Because out of the 500, how many made it out of Europe? How many were shipped to Asia, australia, different, different? Coin collecting is big everywhere. So, out of the 200, out of the 500, how many came to the US? Half, if we're lucky.
Speaker 1:And then how many are actually available for?
Speaker 2:sale and how many will be available for sale once they're finally shipped here. And one of the biggest guesses if the US got 250 of 500, which is again being generous 10% of those might still be available like uncommitted sales Right by the time it hits. You know your shelves, there's just none. So those people can ask the moon for it because and it's there it's a legitimate supply and demand discrepancy. And if you can get good at kind of figuring that out as a retail consumer, if you have a dealer that's offering you steadily a stream of products and you can figure out to some extent and again, they're not all going to be things that are worth 10 times in a week, of course, but there are some that are, you know, worth 50% more in a month or two, or 100% more in three months, and you can avoid some of the opposites things, which is always the goal, right, you can actually have a really good time playing in that arena and buying stuff you actually like. It's not just like, you know, if you're into sci-fi, what's cooler than a floating UFO coin? Right, absolutely. And if you can turn that around and double your money in a short period of time on top of that all so much the better. Or if you were able to get it in the initial offering at the normal retail and you put it away as a collector yourself. How good does it feel to know that that piece has already appreciated that much in value and you're not waiting 20 years to see that? You know in your bottom line, you know. So it is interesting.
Speaker 2:But I will say this too Obviously we have to talk about the downsides, the potential pitfalls, the dud coin that doesn't go up but goes down. But the one thing that is helpful is you're never going to see the same level of down as you would see up. So if there's a coin and I'll give you another good example, germanium mint people are familiar with Germanium mint okay, they came out with a new product line maybe two months ago of these colorized cast bars. They're not coins, they're just silver bars Beautiful artwork, well packaged, but a very basic thing at the end of the day. And the first one they did is a series called Goddesses and the first one was Freya, and the mintage was $1,000. And they sold them at a very reasonable price, I think. Like I said, I don't remember what they charged us, but our wholesale was in the high 80s. The retail was probably $110,000, something like that when it first came out. But boy did people go crazy for this thing. The reasons, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, that went right into allocation, didn't it?
Speaker 2:Oh, it went to allocation absolutely, so we got orders. We alone got orders for almost $500, the whole mintage is only $1,000. So, like, needless to say, we were going to get $500, I mean it's not going to happen. But what was interesting about that is when they finally were live. You could jump on any secondary market, whether it's you know, obviously eBay's the big one. But look at, you know just secondary markets, like whatnot, or you know wherever, where people are selling new products, very consistently selling at $400. That's not. You can look that up. You can go on eBay today. I encourage anybody to do it. Look, hey, did you hear that?
Speaker 1:Yep Freya $400. Oh yeah, let's throw it on whatnot tomorrow Completed sales completed sales right, just boom, boom, boom boom.
Speaker 2:I believe it and they are legitimate people jumping on this. At that price. It's four times the value right Now. The flip side of that what if you buy something that's not desirable, that doesn't click with people, right, and the supply and demand goes in the opposite direction. Where they? It's a 3,000 mintage and not that many people want it and you got one. Okay, you're never going to see the same level of downturn. You're not going to see a $100 coin selling for $25. Right, okay, which is the inverse of the four times right, so it's not going to sell for a quarter of what you paid for it. So the highest highs are higher than the lowest lows. Is all I'm saying.
Speaker 2:But you can still make mistakes. You can still buy stuff that, unfortunately, is going to decrease relatively quickly. However, the good news is, you're still able to buy stuff you like. If you buy a product as an investment and you don't care about it and it goes down in value, that's almost a double stinger in a lot of ways. Yeah, because now you got something that's just a brick that you don't care about and it's worth less than you paid for it, at least if you're buying something that has a appeal to you personally. In some way you're more willing to ride out the low. You can say you know what I love Star Wars, maybe. For whatever reason this coin, I bought it. It's got Darth Vader on it. It didn't resonate and I paid $100, but the market's $75 now that's what people are paying for it. Sure, you still like having it.
Speaker 1:Right, and you can hold it longer. That softens the blow. It softens the blow and you just hold on to it because you like the piece.
Speaker 2:Yes, and just like traditional numismatics, if you ride it out long enough, the market comes back. The market will shift, because what has to happen is all the supply that was manufactured whether it's a supply and demand discrepancy has to get soaked up Right, and it takes time for that to happen on a piece that's not red, hot right. But once it happens, if you fast forward a year or two years down the road and you go back and try to find one of those coins, well, now they're all in the hands of collectors and they've been put away, so there's not a huge supply, and you'll see that that retail price will creep back up and usually exceed what the original retail was. I run this test all the time. I have my employees. We always tell them like you want to check market trends, you want to see what's going on. I said, when we get an old coin and something from 2020 or earlier, stuck in four years or older, I want you to look up what it's selling for now. If you can find one sometimes they're very difficult to find because there may only be a handful out there they go on eBay and they go.
Speaker 2:I got this 2019 Marvel Venom coin. Whatever it is who knows making stuff up. And oh, there's only two guys on eBay that have them and they're selling them for $125. It seems reasonable enough for a one ounce silver. That's tough to find, right? But what was the original retail on that coin five years ago? It was certainly lower than $125. Right. So it's really a matter of if you make a mistake on something that you like it is, it softens the blow, and now you're just treating it almost like the modern numismatic where you're going to play the longer game of investment.
Speaker 1:I mean I was going to say I know many dealers that actually take that strategy where they'll buy a large quantity upfront, whether it's a dud or not, because they know that if they hang onto that product for that 18 to 24 months that it's going to come back on the other end and again after that's been kind of absorbed and the accessibility of that material isn't there, they can strike it in that value back out A thousand percent.
Speaker 2:I see it a lot and it's actually some of the best stuff we get is when one of those guys that held a couple cases of product back it's two years later and he wants to now distribute that product and he comes to us to do that. Our customers love that stuff. Old stuff is new again. You know what I mean. It's like they haven't seen this coin in two years, if they ever saw it at all, because who knows what they were doing two years ago. And a lot of times that stuff has more demand than a brand new thing that came out yesterday. We see it constantly and I love that when that happens, I think it proves the validity of the wedge of the new hemisphere that I'm in.
Speaker 2:It's like we don't have a 200 year track record with this type of product. I mean you could say that US mint commemoratives technically kind of fit into that arena and they were making US mint commemoratives in the 20s and 30s, right, and they were not designed for circulation and so they were collectibles and they were modern when they were issued and of course those have stood the test of time. But that's the idea on just a massive scale, with new technologies being instituted all the time, things to dress them up and make them something you haven't seen before, instead of just another stamp piece of silver which, listen, if it's the right design, it's still awesome We've been having licensed products issued.
Speaker 1:I mean 2000s, 90s, disney's doing it back in the 80s. So, that type of stuff's been around, but the way in which they can do it today is just unseen.
Speaker 2:So something I would say and this is an example I use all the time Last year, new Zealand Mint produced a Star Wars kilo for the anniversary of whatever movie was hitting its 40th anniversary. Like I can keep track right Empire Strikes Back, or New Hope, or whatever one it was, and it was. So it was a 2023 dated. So what came out in 83? Return of the Jedi, sure, so maybe it was Return of the.
Speaker 1:Jedi.
Speaker 2:We'll go with that. So big kilo, colorized, gorgeous, obviously very expensive, and the mintage was $299 or $199. It was a very, very limited piece, hard to get and everybody was going crazy over it. So we've never seen a colorized Star Wars kilo with the super low mintage. Like what a cool, cool thing it was. It was tremendous piece, thank you. But what they didn't realize is it had been done before it was done. In 2012 by the same mint, they made a colorized Star Wars kilo for a different movie.
Speaker 2:Maybe that one was the one for Empire Strikes Back or a different one, whatever but that piece was 11 years old and if you tried to find one, good luck. The only record I could find of one was a graded 69 that somebody had sold in I think it was a heritage auction, like in 2015 or something. So it's interesting how fast stuff falls out of the public zeitgeist, if you will right, like it doesn't take long, because so much new stuff comes on the market all the time for us to kind of forget the things that we sold two, three, four, 10 years ago. And that kilo, if it came up for sale the 2012 one, if that came up for sale now in any place, I would take $5,000 out of my wallet because I'm never gonna see one. And that comes back to that supply and demand. If you're a Star Wars collector and you've got this amazing collector that you started putting together five and six years ago, you probably never saw that piece. And now one comes on the auction block.
Speaker 2:Oh, you're gonna have a lot of people jumping on it and it's gonna sell for three times what that one that came out last year sells for because it's so rare. But mintage-wise it's not any rarer, it's just rarer to find in the market. And I think that's the other thing that people don't understand the difference between rarity and scarcity. They think they're synonymous and they're not. Rarity is how many are produced, Scarcity is how many are available, and a lot of times the hottest things are always scarce, even if the mintages are a hair higher, because no one ever lets them go, no one ever pulls them out of their safe and puts them up for sale. So it because they're so desirable. That's the stuff that you know. I'd rather have a scarce piece than a rare piece, I think.
Speaker 1:We see that not just on more artistic and licensed pieces but mints will do exclusive privies for specific regions.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And that stuff really doesn't leave that market and come stateside or go to Europe or become available to others.
Speaker 2:Awesome example. Perth is actually notorious for this. They make versions of their coins for coin shows, specific shows that are in Australia only. So there's a, you know, we have obviously the fun show here, and the ANA is a big show here in the United States. Well, in Australia it's called the ANDA. That's their ANA show and they do one. It's four times a year, it's quarterly, and they hold them in the big cities. So there's a Perth one, a Melbourne one, a Sydney one and a Brisbane one.
Speaker 1:This is usually the Cucabura that they do different varieties and so they make.
Speaker 2:they take the regular Cucabura and they'll either do a colorized version or a privy mark version that comes in a nice card from that show. It's the Perth ANDA show, cucabura, and the mintage of that is usually one to 2000 and most of them never leave Australia. So as a collector if you're into the Cucabura line, that's like a really rare bird to get. No pun intended, it was intended actually, but you know, and they do, that there's even an even more obscure show in Australia called the Perth Stampin' Coin Show. Actually, yeah, I mean, we don't even see hardly any stamp shows here anymore, right, very few, but over there I guess it's still a thing. And they do a colorized koala for the Perth Stampin' Coin Show. And boy are those hard to find, I'll tell ya. And they're not expensive. They're one ounce colorized coins in a nice card. But to get them here, that's where that scarcity is Like. If they make 2000, I would guess 15, 1600 never leave Australia.
Speaker 1:So I think the only ones I really saw come to the US market in any volume were the COVID year, where the shows were canceled.
Speaker 2:Bingo, bingo, and you know what helped that. So, yes, the COVID year they made them, they had them ready to go. Covid canceled all the shows, so a lot of them. The point is to sell them at the show. It's a draw for the collector who goes to those shows. They can pick up a unique. It's the only place to get them Exactly. But the shows were canceled, so now they're sitting on the stock of these and Perth made them available to their distributors. And what was really cool and what helped sell them even more is NGC got involved and NGC was willing to grade them with a emergency COVID designation on the label, which changed the game from a collector's perspective.
Speaker 2:Cause this is the thing about what I was saying, where we forget the things from just a few years ago sometimes because there's so much new stuff all the time. Well, how do we capture that moment so that we don't forget it? Right and now, when you go back, and if you were a customer who bought one at that time and it's a 2020, right and it's 2020, kukabara, covid, emergency cancellation of the Perth show and it's on the label, that's gonna be on there forever, 20 years from now, they're gonna know the reason that this coin exists in its form that it's in is because of a very special event that I shouldn't say special. I mean, covid was awful, obviously, but a very unique set of circumstances that led to it in its form. It adds such an additional premium over the previous years, like if you could buy a 20, you know, 20, 2015, a&a Kukabara and a slab and a 70, and yeah, you're gonna pay a decent amount for it. But those COVID emergency labels were just so hot.
Speaker 1:I think I still have the set of four yeah it's a set of four.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a set of four.
Speaker 1:I have that tucked back somewhere.
Speaker 2:Now this year God bless them they're still doing the privy Mark Kukes, but they're also because it's the Year of the Dragon 2024. That is, I mean Perth's, known for Lunars, right, everyone knows they make the Lunar series, the Ron series three. It's always a popular thing, but the Dragon is the most popular and so they go all out in Year of the Dragon and so they are also doing colorized A&DA show dragons. Oh cool. And what's even crazier about that is normally what they do is they take the base design for that year and they colorize it or put a privy on it just for that show. For the dragons they're actually doing a different design for each show, so they're actually minting totally different coins for each A&DA show and colorizing them All dragon motifs.
Speaker 1:They'll still distribute them in the card as well.
Speaker 2:They still come in the card and the Perth one was yellow. It was a yellow dragon. The next show was a blue dragon. There's gonna be a purple and, I believe, a pink. Those haven't come out yet. The yellow one came out but the other ones haven't come out yet. And they also did do a carded version of the standard bullion dragon colorized. But it was not for a particular show, it was just as a way to kind of have a completion piece because they were doing actual different die strikes for these different shows which they've never done before. That's like unheard of Because obviously there's a lot of cost that goes into doing different dies, different designs, artists, all those different things. So to only make a thousand or 2,000 of a coin for them is kind of like. But for the year of the dragon they wanted to do something special. I mean, the dragon's been hot everywhere.
Speaker 1:I think at the beginning of the year Canada did that red carded release with the dragon on it. We got a small batch in and I think we were one of the first out online instantly gone.
Speaker 2:These are the examples that we want people to know about, because if you see something that really appeals to you and you start to get into the hobby of modern collectible coins, you can pretty quickly figure out these things are the right things to buy. And it doesn't have to be the only thing you buy. It can be in addition to the type of collecting you're already doing. If you're a traditional numismatic collector, if you're somebody who buys bullion as a hedge against inflation or somebody who wants to just, you know, speculate on metals markets or whatever the case might be, this could be a great add-on to what you're already doing. Because it's a very different market. They're not tied together. Silver goes down. Your collectible doesn't go down. If silver goes from 25 to 20, your UFO that floats hasn't changed in value, right, you know, if anything, it may have gone up depending on demand. So they're very separate markets and we all know you want to diversify you know in any investment line and I think those are three ways to diversify.
Speaker 2:If you buy traditional, you know old numismatics with history, with track record, that's a different market than metals. Buying metals is obviously a different market. And then you have the modern collectible coin, which is different in its own way. It's never gonna-.
Speaker 1:I think it's kind of a melding of all of those right. So generally a numismatic collector is getting into a specific kind of because they appreciate it, they like the history, the story. I would say the majority aren't at investment level numismatics right, yes. So you take that aspect of I really appreciate this piece and you pair it with the fact that it's still a commodity and you have a tangible asset with it. Is that's that bridge of how that bullion collector and stacker becomes numismatic collector or collecting coins in some form?
Speaker 2:Well, and I also think the other bridge is you know what makes the old world coins the most valuable? What's the single thing? It's condition. Absolutely Conditional rarity trumps general rarity in a lot of ways. Like you could have a common date Morgan in what we would call, you know, unk loose, not great, it's just Unks and there's kind of a set by price out there. Everyone knows what those are worth, right? And but if you have that same common date Morgan in an MS67 holder, it's a different game, totally different game. I mean, you're talking 10 to 100 times the value, depending on the date and everything that goes into it, and so there's conditional rarity there. In modern collectibles they flip it around. Obviously there's no conditional rarity because the stuff was all made yesterday I mean it's they should all be coming out of their quality.
Speaker 2:They should all be. Yeah, you know you can send a batch of any new, as long as it'll fit a slab, which you know a floating UFO won't. But you know, I don't know interesting might come up.
Speaker 1:They figure out a way to do it.
Speaker 2:If they can, if they can trust me, they'll call it. You know a fancy mega magnetic slab or something you know. But if you can get it in a slab and it's modern and you send out a batch, you're always gonna get 69s and 70s and it should be predominantly 70s. If it's a good mint that can strike well. So there's no conditional scarcity from that perspective, but there's mintage rarity which you don't see on the old world stuff. You know, again, morgans were made in the millions and millions and millions, and I'm just picking on Morgans because they're the most common collected coin. So there it's. You know they made a lot of them, but the condition can determine value because it's tough to find them in good condition. On the modern collectible side, the condition is always good but it's tough to find them because there's just so many.
Speaker 2:Because there's just so many. So that's where the melding comes from. And if you put those two things together in your collection, you've hedged yourself on both sides. You know you've got conditional rarity items that you've created the supply and demand discrepancy by having one that's tough to find in that condition, and on the other side you've created it by having something they just didn't make a heck of a lot of, but it's popular. And then you've got the bullion in the middle. Now that, now that is, I always look at that as a completely different animal, because I think the reason that people buy physical metals when we're talking about generic is totally different than why people buy world coins, old US coins or modern collectibles.
Speaker 2:It's so much more logic driven than emotionally driven. I think we, as collectors, most of it is emotional. It's, you know, there's something that makes you feel connected to a piece. It just doesn't just have to be coins, it can be anything you collect. You can collect old comics, old video games, sports cards, who knows. There's something in your brain that makes you connect to the item and then the rational part of your brain kicks it and says, well, if I'm gonna spend $500 on a piece of cardboard that has, you know, mickey Mantle's face on it. Is that also me not throwing my money away? Right, because we all have a rational side and an emotional side. So then you look and you go oh yeah, the track record on this piece is good. Five years ago it was only worth $300. It's worth 500 now. I can see appreciation and it allows your rational side, that allows your emotional side, to make the purchase. And I think for coins on both ends, old or new, it's a very similar thing. Something connects you to it. You need to have a part of you that understands that you're not just throwing your money away. You're not buying a beanie baby for $300. It'll be worth 10 cents tomorrow, right, and there's enough track record and enough data points that you can easily access that show you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, though, this does make sense, and I think that's the disparity with the bullion collector I shouldn't even call it collector the stacker, the guy who is speculating on the metals markets. That's a. He's just doing the logical side. He's just doing the rational side. He's saying this is a good time to buy this metal. I wanna have it.
Speaker 2:Could be a variety of reasons, from prepping for the end of the world to. You know I'm a flipper and I'm gonna buy it at 24 and sell it at 29. You know there's a whole different slew of reasons you might do it, but it's truly just about investment. You don't have to have a personal collection to the piece, right? What's your personal collection to a Scottsdale 100 ounce bar? I mean it's? Does it have 8 million of them? And it doesn't matter, right? It's just metal, it's just metal. But that person over time, depending on the reason they're doing it.
Speaker 2:You know, like I said, if you're prepping for something it's a little different, right, you need that to be something that's usable and that is you could buy at the lowest premium, right. But if you're doing it more on the investment side, that's where I pitch the diversity. I think it's just like anything else. You know, I don't want all my money in stocks, I don't want all my money in real estate, I don't want all my money in metals, but I'd like to have some money in all of it, because if one goes down, I'm likely insulated and if you microcosm that to the metals, just what we do.
Speaker 2:Coins in general, there's those wedges of the new hemisphere there's. You know, I could buy old coins that I appreciate, for whatever reason, I can buy new modern coins that I appreciate, for whatever reason, I can buy physical metals that I'm speculating on. And now I've got a lot of diversity to where, if one market isn't working, the other ones are probably insulating me against that downturn, right, and I don't know that people look at it that way, necessarily. But I think they should start to look at it that way, because I'm not just here to pitch people on like the stuff we distribute, for I think you should have it all. I think you should have that whole range of products.
Speaker 1:And you could include things, and not just in our industry, but, like you're saying, not just in our industry.
Speaker 2:Get out there, get your stocks, get your real estate art, diversify it and you look at you know the other little niche parts of our industry. You know paper currency, exanumia, metals, tokens, things like that. You know all of those things have their place and generally if you're a collector there's gonna be some part of each of those that you connect with for whatever reason. And I mean personally for me I love metals. I really, really really do. You know, I grew up kind of collecting a lot of world stuff and the art that was on the bronze metals, you know in the 17 and 1800s is phenomenal. We're talking, you know, modern collectibles. You see high relief and people go crazy, right.
Speaker 1:They were all high relief.
Speaker 2:I mean, that was what the whole thing was. They just weren't coins, they weren't legal tender pieces of money, but the ability. I mean even look at some of the US stuff, the Colombian expo, stuff from 1893, that's big bronzes that are just beautiful, beautiful pieces, art Deco stuff. You know you go way back, you know 1700s, with France and Germany and the different metal makers. I happen to really love that stuff. If that's something that connects with you, it's no different than any other market. You can. You know, look at the appreciation over time. You can find things that connect to you that if you buy them now you should be, you know, 10, 20, 30 years down the line. You're a state, your children, whoever ends up with that product, is gonna be in a better place. But you still got to own something that connected to you in some way and that's just that whole diversity and the metal. You know paper money markets don't run congruent with old world.
Speaker 2:US markets Totally we've seen the paper market spike at times when US coins were stagnating.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we're just coming off another one of those spikes. It's softening a little bit right now, but it was huge the last couple of years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's just having a piece of all those different things is, in my mind, the best way to go about collecting, you know, because collecting should be personal, but you should be able to find things in each of those arenas that connects to you.
Speaker 1:And still holds value.
Speaker 2:And still holds value.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. So All right, so took a little break there.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, Well listen, we've been doing it a while.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're pushing an hour here. It's great, it's a great conversation.
Speaker 2:I'm a notorious, you know.
Speaker 1:But it's always much appreciated because you do have a great deal of insight, experience, and it's always a great conversation with you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, same goes for you. I know we've had some times at your house that went to the wee hours. Bottle there too deep.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, that's the secret. See, you know, I am known for being a bit of a talker, there's no doubt about it. In fact, my name is Hawes, and when I was a kid, everyone called me Jaws because I was always flapping my mouth. But that might have to stick now. Jabber, jaws, hawes I'm not gonna lie to you, that was a childhood nickname and it has stuck because I'm still saying it now. But that's your secret. Get me going. It's like, oh, you know he likes to talk, but let's lube him up a little, but no, I get it.
Speaker 1:It's a job done.
Speaker 2:It's always a blast, and not only you know I enjoy your company. We have a great group of guys that you know in the community here in the. New England area. You know, we go to the shows and we, you know, socialize and it's more. It's work. But it's not just work. Well, I think it's more of a community.
Speaker 1:It's a community. We're all out to make money, hopefully support each other and do it in a respectful and more of a almost like a brotherhood type way, with a mutual respect.
Speaker 2:If you think you can make it in this business alone, you will not.
Speaker 1:No, you will quickly be pushed out.
Speaker 2:It's a relationship, business, not just with your competitors, with your suppliers, with your customers. Like you have to and it's not about being Mr Social, Mr Friendly, it's just you have to be the type of person people will want to work with. And that's kind of where we come from. I mean, the running gag is that, like, we have 120 odd dealers in North America that we sell to. Well, a lot of them are competitors. A lot of them are going head to head all the time, you know, and Quite often, Quite often and the question that I always get is how do you manage that? And it's like we will work with anybody. You know my job is not to get in between businesses that are competing in a healthy business way. My job is to distribute products to anybody that needs them. So we're kind of like separate ourselves outside the sphere. Somebody's like well, you're a deal, I'm not a dealer, we don't sell retail, we don't deal with the public.
Speaker 2:We're just a distributor, yeah, just a wholesale distributor. So we can kind of like just step back from that a little bit and say you know, yeah, these guys all are competing for parts of the market, competing with each other, but we're gonna supply all of them Because-.
Speaker 1:And you're doing it at the same price point.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, so there's no bias, there, right? No, no, no, not at all. You get what you get.
Speaker 1:Here's the price. You guys do what you want on the other end.
Speaker 2:You know what? I'm sure some of my biggest customers are gonna watch this and the first thing they're gonna do is nod and go. Yeah, we've been complaining about that for years Because, of course, listen, your best customers always want a deal and I don't blame them. They deserve it in a lot of ways. We try to take care of them in other ways. You should see the Christmas gift package. They get it at the end of the year. You know we always try to make them know they're appreciated. But we do want everybody on the same playing field, because the market is so sensitive and the margins have to be in a certain place for everybody to make money. It doesn't take much to throw the balance off. It doesn't take much.
Speaker 1:Well, that's why you have to bring in the fairness you have to you have to yeah, here we are. That's it, that's the price, it's for everybody.
Speaker 2:People ask me how do things get allocated, like how do you decide who gets what? Right, and you know, if you read any of our offers, there's a throwaway line about. You know, if the demand outweighs the supply, the allocations will be based on order size, and that's just. You know, that's a nice disclaimer. 90% of the items don't get allocated. You know we're able to get fill orders, no problem.
Speaker 2:But for those hot items, the things we were talking about, whether it's a UFO or a cast bar from Germania or whatever it is how do I decide who gets what? Is it truly based on order size? And what does that even mean? Right? And maybe the retail customer doesn't care. They just want to know if they can get the thing.
Speaker 2:Sure, but it's important because pre-sales are so predominant in our industry. And as a retail customer, you are often offered coins well before the coin is here, right, months in advance, months in advance, and you're making a commitment to your dealer of choice and saying, yes, please, I want one of those, and you want to know that that dealer is going to be able to get that coin for you. So how do allocations actually come to fruition? How do they work? And for us it's so important to be impartial, because we know that those customers need to have faith in the system, because if they don't, they're not going to order the next thing or the next thing or the next thing. And is it just order size? No, but certainly that's a factor. Right it's? If one guy needs 25 and another guy needs five. Well, when the allocation rolls around, if everybody is only going to get 60% of what they ordered, the guy that ordered 25 might get I don't know, my math skills are terrible 15, I don't know what's 60% of 25?
Speaker 1:Somewhere around there.
Speaker 2:And the guy that ordered five will get three, and that's a fair system. We got 60% of what we ordered, so everyone's going to get 60% of what they ordered. But mathematically that system only goes to a certain degree, because what about all the people that only ordered one? You can't divide one, so what do you?
Speaker 1:do, then I'm cutting up pieces for everybody. Yeah, so what?
Speaker 2:we basically do is we want any dealer that orders one or more to get at least get one. We hate to say to somebody you aren't getting any of this one, you got cut from the one, from the one right. So generally if you order one, you'll get at least one of anything that it is. Now in two and a half years there might be two or three things that that was an exception to it. It was because we drastically underestimated what we would get and I could think of a particular coin that this happened to recently. There was a Batman coin and it was 300-minutes. It was nothing that blew my mind so I didn't expect it to. I knew there was a chance of allocation with a mintage that low, but I didn't think it would be insane. Well, we got a fair amount of orders. I want to say 40 to 50. It was expensive. It was a three-ounce coin. I want to say they gave me four. Now, when you have more than four customers that order the coin, you can't give everybody one.
Speaker 2:This is not possible, right? So that's the worst email. They're right is just like hey, listen, they gave me four coins.
Speaker 1:But you guys have always done a great job about making it clear on every piece you put out that this might happen, Because you don't know and you can't control what you receive.
Speaker 2:True, and the other thing we try to do is we try to hunt around secondary sources to fill orders. I would rather fill an order for my customer at a very minimal or even break-even profit to help them fulfill what they need for their customers, because I know there are pre-sales involved. And so this happened recently. That yellow dragon I was talking about for Perth, that was the first A&DA show dragon that they put out this year. Perth again very tough to get. A lot of Australia, this 200, I'm sorry, 2000 vintage. They allocated us 150, which is a lot. I was very pleased with it, but we're also one of the only wholesale Perth distributors in the US. I will get it, we can get it to that if you want, but very few people offer Perth wholesale to US dealers. So I was thrilled to get the 150, but we got orders that far exceeded that.
Speaker 2:Well, what am I gonna do? Well, sometimes there's nothing you can do, but sometimes there is. So there's a company that we deal with in the Netherlands that is a wholesaler as well, and I reached out and said, hey, you can get any of these yellow dragons. And they said, well, not a lot, but we're getting some of them whatever. Well, I was able to secure another 50. Doesn't sound like a lot, but boy, does that make a difference to the guy who pre-sold those coins and just needs two or three to fill those orders. And he doesn't wanna tell his customer no, because every time you tell a customer no, there's a chance they're not gonna come back, and we don't want that because their customers are our customers.
Speaker 2:We only make sales. When you make sales, absolutely, you stop selling. Who's buying it from us? We don't sell to the public, we don't have any access, right? So, whatever we can do to help you grow and you believe me, I paid a lot more for that batch of dragons from the Netherlands and I did not change the price to the dealers.
Speaker 2:I did not up it because I had to pay more or somewhere else. It was just a matter of we need to fill as many orders as we can and unfortunately, sometimes that's not as easy as that. But sometimes you can do it. That's the risk, right, that is the risk, yeah, but we try to be fair with allocations. We try to be always fair with pricing. You know we do, obviously, like anybody else, we offer some bulk discounts. You know, if you order a certain amount, you're gonna get a couple dollars off. But that is public. That is part of the offer. Everyone knows what the terms are, everyone knows what the expected turnaround times are, everyone knows what the In some cases and a bar go is on a product or or things like that nature. So If all the dealers are on that playing field, then it's just hey, have at it. And everyone's got different Venues and and mediums in which they sell. Like. So we've, we've seen everything. We have everybody, from TV sales to brick and mortar to shows, to e-commerce, to Facebook.
Speaker 2:Live lives and you know everything else, and I'm hearing about new mediums every day that I didn't know existed. Right, you know, people are telling me I'm selling stuff on drip. I don't even know what drip is.
Speaker 1:People are a new version of whatnot, oh, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, people are telling me they're selling on eBay lives. I said oh, eBay is doing lives now.
Speaker 1:I've been seeing tick-tock lives with stuff that I know only came from you.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:I'm sure that's true.
Speaker 2:I'm sure that's true, so we certainly have dealers that use, of course, every medium. Yeah, I honestly don't know sometimes where these guys sell what. I am not super tech savvy.
Speaker 1:I mean what sleeves your warehouse? It is what it is.
Speaker 2:It is what it is, but but we're on Facebook, we're on Instagram but, like I don't know what, I didn't even know people sold stuff on tick-tock. Oh yeah, I know I have one guy that has a big YouTube following. I didn't know that was a thing that people I mean I know what it is, but I didn't know people were selling products on there. Yeah, you know what not? I'm a little more familiar with because it's kind of a format that you know Is a little more live, traditional type thing. But when I heard eBay was doing lives, that that was something I had to keep up with whatnot.
Speaker 2:There you go. They're not gonna give away that market share right and they're striving to keep it.
Speaker 1:They're getting through some struggles, but they're pretty good. You should check them out.
Speaker 2:Listen. Wherever my customers can move product, I'm thrilled, Listen. Customers have things they're comfortable with when it comes to purchasing avenues right. Some people are very comfortable with eBay right. They've been buying on eBay for years.
Speaker 2:It's guaranteed they're not worried about you know, absolutely, and other people are much more Comfortable dealing with people face-to-face. You know, coming into a shop, going to a show, there's a piece of mind there that you know who you're dealing with and you're holding the product, you know what you're getting, you know there's no mystery to it and everyone's different. You know some people are comfortable with with TV sales and all sorts of other these things I've never heard of, like I've never bought anything. On drip I've heard, I barely have heard of drip, but people tell me it's a thing you know. But if there's customers in that venue, someone needs to go reach them.
Speaker 1:Right, it's another market.
Speaker 2:It's another market because it's not usually as much overlap as people think there is. It's true. The proof with that is I was once talking to a guy who runs Some of the TV sales networks down in the southeast okay and it's regional.
Speaker 2:You know they're doing as the Carolina's, georgia, north Florida and they buy TV time and they do these coin. You know coin sales shows or whatever. And he was telling me that they track all their demographics. You know Down to a T age, you know male or female, what area, the country they from, all that kind of stuff. And he said what was really interesting because it's not the only place that they sell their products Right, was that the TV buyer Really fit a very specific demographic. And he said that when they sell on their e-commerce site Because they would take whatever they didn't sell on the TV show and they'd post it on their e-commerce site the demographics were completely different. You know this, the skewing of male to female, the skewing of age, all of it was different. He said it's not the same customer, it's the same product, but it's not the same customer.
Speaker 2:People tend to think, well, okay, the person who wants to buy this type of coin is one type of person. It's not. It's the format in which it is Sold is very specific to demographic, right? You know People who are comfortable, like I said, going to shows and going to coin shops there. They might be a reason for it. They might have grown up with that, that's where their comfort zone is. But the millennial generation, or even younger, right you know the convenience of the problem with apps.
Speaker 2:They'll buy something on drip, Whereas a coin collector I don't want to stereotype age, but say you know your average 55 to 65 year old Coin collector it would say I'm not giving this drip company my money. I've never heard of these guys right like and who would blame them. So it's just very different perspectives. You want to get that product in front of all those different groups. It's not about the product. The millennial, you know 30. I don't, I don't even know how old a millennial is now.
Speaker 1:They're probably older than I think they're like mid 30s. Yeah, okay, so whatever, whatever right.
Speaker 2:Gen Z? How old are they? But you know that customer might buy the same coin that the retired. You know firefighter who's 67 might buy.
Speaker 1:It's the same item, right, but they're not gonna buy it in the same thing, the easiest way to look at that, it's just the access to the customer. Yeah, same product, same places, but how do you access them? Because there are so many ways that didn't exist previously again Thanks to technology, very, very very.
Speaker 2:I mean it's it's it's exponentially growing all the time in terms of how many places you can access customers. But you need to do it because those customers aren't always comfortable in the traditional ways. Right Again, it's not that the product only appeals to one group, it's that the Customer only appeals to one sales source. They're only comfortable buying it in one way. So you, so at we, as as the sellers, need to present it in every way we can to capture, not only for us to capture the business, for the customer to get the thing they want right, because if we don't do it, they're not gonna see it right, I mean a traditional brick-and-mortar.
Speaker 1:Today Would have a very difficult time Thriving because they're very much limited to simply the geographics of what's in their area correct and that's such a small customer base in such a niche market.
Speaker 2:And I don't know. I mean I don't know every brick-and-mortar guy out there, but I don't know any brick-and-mortars that aren't diversified into other sales avas any more. I mean, I'm sure there are some, but I think they all have to have some kind of e-commerce or other type of sales presence, because the customer base is so fractured. You know, in you can't live off just one right. You know in a lot of, in a lot of ways. I mean there are the guys who balance it with the show circuit, and the show circuit does tend to be. It might be similar Demographically, but it's different in terms of the buying customer, I think well, you're consolidating those customers into a single space, single time period.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in your accessing wholesale. Yes, so that's a massive part for dealers is being able to turn their inventory, increase that cash flow with other dealers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the dealer to dealer business is strongly encouraged at in the coin show venue, yeah, and it's honest, we love it too. I go to a lot of shows, and primarily other than just to meet with the customers that I don't see a lot face-to-face there's a lot of our customers are there but is to Also engage in in Business. We guys have stuff that, like we were joking about that, that kilo, that Star Wars kilo from 2012, I imagine. I go to a show and I see that somebody's case. I mean, hopefully you're taking it home. That's my goal and it's not for me. It's just that that's something as a wholesale or that would. That would be, would blow my customers minds if I offered that.
Speaker 2:I mean, we always want to try to find those rare hidden gems, because Selling all the new stuff is awesome. I love it. I mean, you never know what's gonna come out tomorrow. We talk new technologies, different things, whatever. Yeah, but also, at the same time, what is old is new and in modern collectibles it doesn't have to be very old, you know, just a few years, that's it, and it's out of the public eye, it's out of your mindset, and now it comes back in and people get excited like they've never seen it before, right. So if I can find that stuff at a show, that's a great deal or dealer opportunity for me Definitely.
Speaker 1:So talking about getting excited yeah, you just came back from Berlin. Yeah, you saw a Just an array of all the stuff coming out. Yeah, what did you see that most excited you about what we can expect to come?
Speaker 2:Okay, so I should say my German is still awful. I know you were gonna ask me that next, but the good news is they don't require me to speak it. But you go to those, to the Berlin show. It's unlike any show that you'd see in North America or probably a lot of the world, to be honest but the, the modern collectible product, is so heavily represented there more so than you would see in a US show that that's where you're gonna see mints touting their latest stuff. They're the things that are months away. They might still be in development, r&d, things like that. And and we talked about the UFO earlier that was on display there. It didn't go on sale for another couple weeks after that, but, but you know that they're showing these types of things off. So I think the biggest trend that's coming Not so much from a technical perspective, because there's all sorts of fun technologies, aside from floating coins.
Speaker 2:I mean, we all know there's glow-in-the-dark coins and holographic coins and shaped coins and colorized coins, and these are all things that, if you know, they get better over time in terms of the technology, a lot of times improves as time goes on, but it's still the same idea. What you're seeing now that's gonna be a huge trend, is the shift from how we used to sell coins to how they sell other types of collectibles Trading cards, comics. You know all these other things that also boomed during the COVID. You know era Yep, they're sold and marketed in a very different way. Why aren't modern collectible coins doing the things that they do? Well, now they are starting to do that and we're already seeing it with. You know these mystery pack type of ideas. We think of sports cards. I mean, what do you think? You open a pack and you don't know what you're gonna get you get a rare variant.
Speaker 2:You get this holographic version or you get whatever you know limited numbered one, and that's the chase. That's the fun, right? Well, we didn't have that in the coin industry up until this year. The last 12 months ultra breaks, ultra breaks vault box was another one that did that, and I think that's just the tip of the iceberg. Now mincer doing it. We've seen New Zealand do it with the, with the Star Wars and Marvel trading cards yeah, those went really well.
Speaker 2:Exactly another example of stuff that was worth three, four times within a very short amount of time. But because it's a concept that had been used for 10 and 15 and 20 years in the other collectible industries. Right, but we never employed it. They're figuring that out now, because I think they're figuring out that the target customer for modern collectible coins isn't just coin people. It because it is an emotional draw. You're trying to get somebody, you know somebody, who likes Star Wars and collects Star Wars merchandise. They may have toys, they may have comics, they may have Star Wars cards, they may have original screenplays, and I don't you know, they're all these different types of products, and coins fits right in with that.
Speaker 2:They they're not limited by the type of product that it is, they're limited by the fact that they want Star Wars stuff, right. Well, the coin community Lacked that type of marketing. We didn't bring the coins to them, we tried to market it just to coin people, right, and I think that you know, thank God, that's evolving and that that the companies are realizing that the target customer Is it just a coin collector? It can be a coin collector, but it doesn't have to be just a coin collector. Well then, how do you draw in somebody who's not a coin collector? Well, you do the things they are used to, right, you do the.
Speaker 2:The same things that drew them, exactly the type of merchandising that that they are seeing all the time, right, but again we're seeing it with sports cards. First, but it won't be the last. We're seeing the grading scales change, right. We were seeing NGC come out with NGCX, which was designed to to be the same grading scale they use on sports cards and comics, because they knew that that customer was not gonna Understand a 70-point grading scale, right? So these are all the things that we're just starting to see, but I think that's the trend that you're gonna see. Mince do it, we, we. I mean, this is something I definitely can't talk about, but I won't use any names. This just happened today.
Speaker 2:I say this exclusive right here there's a very large mint. It's not New Zealand, I can't say who it is because it's all confidential, embargoed. Whatever Another mint that is going to release a very popular product that they've already made in the past that's extremely popular, in five different versions in a mystery pack With differing rarities per version.
Speaker 2:Okay now I'll give you. I can't say anything about it, but I'll give you an parallel example. That isn't true. So let's say, since we've brought it up before, we'll talk about the Perth lunar dragon.
Speaker 2:Now imagine that, perth, they made those great different carded ones, like we said, for specific shows and they made some other rare versions for different, different things. But imagine that they made five different versions of that coin, meaning colorized holographic, you know, maybe one that was made of gold or more expensive, whatever, and they took those five versions and one had a mintage of five thousand and one had a mintage of twenty five hundred, one was a thousand, one was five hundred and one was two fifty, extremely rare, and they mixed those all into a mystery pack, but from the mint, not from a secondary source. This isn't vault box or ultra brakes, this is mint direct and that is the only way you can get that Particular coin and it's legit a part. And again, perth is not doing this and it is not a lunar dragon. I'm just saying as an example.
Speaker 2:And you know, you, you want to chase those rarer ones. You're gonna buy multiple packs, in theory, right, but all of them in and of themselves will be rare, much like the New Zealand ones where the the the largest mintage was still not that high. If you got a common out of the New Zealand Star Wars trading card sets, for instance, I think the largest mintage was like 250, was like still very low. So even a common one outside of its original packaging was sold for a good amount of money and this is going to be happening more and more.
Speaker 2:We're gonna see it. And then another mint has announced that it's still six months away, because you know these things come out, so you know they let the distributors know so far in advance. But it's another very popular product line and they're gonna do the same kind of thing and I think we're gonna just keep seeing more and more of that because the excitement that that creates in the collector's mind and even in my. I'm excited about it, like I hear about it, like this is cool, like you know, limited, limited, limited, mintage stuff, stuff that's just the, the coup de grace, your collection that we always joke that a collector mentality is who's kind of a crude saying actually. But you know it's a big swinging D contest at the end of the day, right, like you Want your collection to be just better than that next guy's collection.
Speaker 1:You're proud of it, right.
Speaker 2:It took you time to put it together, it took you money to put it together, and these type of mystery pack items where there's a really really rare version of something that only a handful of people are gonna get. That's the type of piece that like elevates your collection to like a crazy level. That's what everybody wants. That's what everybody wants and the excitement of going after it and trying to find it in brokering and trading and all this stuff. You know, yeah, so you know. I mean that's the trend I'm seeing for minutes, that, yes, we've got some great technologies there's. They're always improving the technologies of some cool stuff always coming down the pike. But that's the thing I think we're gonna see the most of is, is these type of? The way you see other collectibles? You're gonna start to see coins marketed in the same way.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, it's exciting.
Speaker 2:I is exciting, it is excited, I'm excited to try it myself and see how it works out. You know, ultra brakes has been a huge success. Yeah, they've been great. They've been great and they're fun.
Speaker 1:We've opened several packs here in the shop and I think the hunt right.
Speaker 2:That's what really brings it in it's. It's. Collecting is fun, but the hunt is also right, and and so we need more of that. Yeah, in our, in our business.
Speaker 1:Well, it sounds like we got some more coming, which is fantastic.
Speaker 2:We definitely do.
Speaker 1:So with that, although you are wholesale, you definitely still have a bit of a social media presence. Yes, so how could our viewers find you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we are on Facebook and Instagram and it's at rogues island mint very, very easy, and what we use that for is to, basically, we publish a lot of photos of the type of things that we carry, just as like a you know, awareness of the type of stuff that's out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you see things on there that you like or that you're attracted to, the best thing I can suggest because we again, we don't have any pricing on there, we're not directly selling it right is, if you know a dealer which is probably most Dealers that carry modern collectibles, that deal with us, mm-hmm, reach out to them because they can get that product, and one of those, specifically, is American, historic. If you see something on there, reach out to Tyler because he could get it. He can get it from us, no problem. But, yeah, that's the best way to connect with us. We like chatting with people. I mean, people leave comments about the photos all the time and, hey, that's really cool and you know whatever, and where could I get that? We give them, distribute a list or whatever. But nice, yeah, that's the best way to find us and connect with us.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, fantastic. John. Again, thank you very much for joining us. It's been a pleasure. That has been awesome always conversation is fantastic with you and we look forward to a great 2024.
Speaker 2:It's gonna be good. It's gonna be good Okay.
