The Business of Numismatics: March 2025 Greysheet Editor's Letter

Long-time readers of the Monthly Greysheet will know that it is our practice to periodically review the magazine to see where we can make incremental improvements and to react to subscriber requests. We are very deliberate with these changes because we know how heavily the Greysheet is used during the normal course of business, and changes can disrupt that flow. The other factor is the fixed amount of space we have to work with. We are more or less at our maximum page count, due to factors such as production costs and postage weight. The first major change is that we have removed the Goldsheet pricing of modern gold and silver Chinese coins from the back of magazine and have used those pages to provide complete pricing of U.S.-Philippines coinage. The modern Chinese coin pricing will always be available online, and those prices are maintained in the same manner as all other world coin series that we currently price. Philippine Territorial and Commonwealth coinage has continually gained in popularity and is rightly collected as part of regular U.S. coins. On a fun—and challenging—note, we have also added our first-ever Greysheet crossword puzzle. Numismatists who enjoy a challenge will surely enjoy this, and don’t worry, the answers can be found on our website!

The biggest story in the market right now is the bullion market. Gold and especially silver has continued to climb, with silver well above the $32 line as I write this column. While rising prices excite investors and collectors who already have quantities of precious metals, it really puts the brakes on new purchases, simply because of the amount of cash needed. This barrier to entry causes sales to slow, which eats away premiums. The largest distributors and market makers are the first to know this, and they adjust accordingly. Many bullion products are currently bid at or below melt value. There is also another segment of the market that can be called the “collector bullion” genre which has exploded the past five years. These are the hundreds of new releases each year produced by national mints and private firms, often in partnership. They are struck in silver and gold and feature popular or otherwise non-numismatic topics, such as superheroes, sports, nature, or movies and music. They also often feature cutting edge minting technology and extreme shapes, with square, curved, and three-dimensional coins becoming the norm. Because of the manufacturing processes involved, along with the requisite premium packaging and marketing campaign, these coins must be sold for significantly more than their intrinsic value. While a certain amount of every release will sell to non-coin collector enthusiasts of the subject matter, the rest are marketed to coin collectors. The issue becomes, when gold and silver spot prices are already elevated, it becomes too expensive for the average collector of modern issues. Sales stagnate as a result, and distributors who took large orders are forced to discount to move product. It will be interesting to see how this impacts future releases.

On the classic rare coin front, the year started out with a bang, with the Heritage FUN U.S. coin auction bringing home more than $62.5 million. The sale feature five million-dollar coins, with the Duckor-Fox 1927-D Saint-Gaudens leading the way at $3.84 million. Stack’s Bowers held a select Showcase auction of U.S. coins in February which yielded another million-dollar coin, a, 1849 Pacific Company $5 territorial gold piece.

Sincerely,

Patrick Ian Perez, patrick@whitmanbrands.com