Innholdsfortegnelse for August - September 2025 i COINage

Recent online stories about “pennies” worth $124 million and billion-dollar 1976 Bicentennial quarter dollars are either false or grossly misleading, advises the Professional Numismatists Guild (PNGdealers.org), a nonprofit organization composed of many of the country’s top rare-coin experts. “Unfortunately, these clickbait stories and videos with absurdly inflated rare coin values often get picked up by major search engines. The misleading or inaccurate stories raise false hopes to people who may mistakenly think they have a fortune when, in fact, their coins may only be worth face value or have drastically less collector value than they were led to believe,” cautioned John Feigenbaum, executive director of the Professional Numismatists Guild (PNG). PNG President James Sego advises, “For consumer protection and education, it is important to rely only on expert sources, such…

James McCartney has emerged as one of the most prominent leaders globally in the sale of collectible physical bitcoin. In his capacity as director of consignments and numismatics for Stack’s Bowers, he has handled about 2,000 crypto coins valued at $7 million that would now be worth approximately $30 million. BTC was $15,000 when he embarked on auctioning physical crypto. What’s a good way to invest in the crypto area? Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) make it convenient and easy to participate in this category while learning about the volatility. I would advise someone dipping a toe into these waters to start small and follow the trends of the large ETFs before going on your own and holding the crypto yourself. What are the caveats of collecting physical crypto? As the…

Gold is clearly the winner in the precious metals trio, with silver winning the second-place medal, but platinum has lagged behind gold and silver. At the end of 2015, platinum and gold both traded barely above $1,000, but since then, gold has tripled to $3,000 an ounce and above. To the contrary, platinum has hovered around $1,000 an ounce in a narrow trading range between $800 and $1,200 for about a full decade. That began changing in 2025. From a low of $894 an ounce during the tariff negotiations on April 7, platinum rose 22%, reaching $1,090 on May 21. It hasn’t matched gold’s gains yet, but it is challenging silver as the No. 2 performing metal in 2025. It is perhaps because, like silver, platinum rises or falls more…

Coin collecting is a fascinating hobby and people have collected coins for thousands of years. There are also many types of coins you can collect: Ancient Greek and Roman coins, United States coins, foreign coins, currency of the world, tokens and medals. HISTORY OF COIN GRADING AND THE ANA Years ago, the only way to learn about coins was to spend years studying books written about them and getting practical experience. But that changed in the 1970s when the American Numismatic Association (ANA) began a service called the American Numismatic Association Certification Service (ANACS). For a fee, ANACS would examine your coin, determine its authenticity, assign it a grade (a state of preservation with an assigned number from one through 70), take a black-and-white photograph of your coin and then…

The Eric P. Newman Numismatic Education Society (EPNNES) announced its sixth set of Newman Grants, created to financially assist numismatic authors and organizations pursuing original research in American and world numismatics. Newman Grants are awarded annually on the late Eric P. Newman’s birthday and assist with direct costs of numismatic research such as travel, photography and graphic arts services. Five awards are being made this year, touching on varied aspects of American numismatics. The 2025 Newman Grant awardees are as follows: Greg Bennick will conduct oral history interviews with prominent numismatists and will document these voices for future generations of collectors and researchers. John Frost will travel to San Bruno, California, to work with U.S. Mint material at the National Archives in preparation for a second edition of his work…

If you have never heard of physical bitcoins before, don’t be concerned, because you aren’t the only one. Though traditional rare coins have been collected for thousands of years, the physical cryptocurrency category was founded just over a decade ago and is very much still in its infancy. When this category was first showcased in a numismatic auction in November 2021, traditional numismatists had the assumption that most people in the bitcoin field were already well aware of these physical incarnations. Over the past several years of conversations and conferences, I am convinced that this is untrue. My firm was recently in attendance at the Bitcoin 2025 Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, which was host to some of the most famous, infamous and early adopters of the bitcoin currency in…

As ongoing geopolitical instability roils world markets, collectors and investors are increasingly looking for opportunities to buy coins promising stability and portable wealth in the years ahead. Many of the top buys are perennial blue-chip performers that have seen consistent gains. Others may be less obvious picks but nevertheless offer the investor hope for future appreciation. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results; however, there are many reasons for collectors and investors to consider my seven wonders of the coin market for 2025 and beyond. The rationale behind selecting these seven market buys is based on their historic performance, current activity and projected popularity given predicted future events. They also represent a broad sector of the United States numismatic catalog, assuring there’s something for just about everyone reading…