The Business of Numismatics: September 2026 Greysheet Editor's Letter

As I write this in early August, the ANA World’s Fair of Money® is still a good two weeks away, and while vacations and time off are taking priority, the coin trade moves along. As I touched on in last month’s column, the story of the summer really has been the plunge of the gold spot price. It will be interesting to watch if the yellow metal can break out again in the final four months of the year.

The collector community was set alight the weekend of August 8–9, as an image surfaced of a 2026 American Silver eagle with a "Team USA" privy mark. According to reports, these coins were presented to all athletes who represented America at the 2026 Olympic Winter Games and Winter Paralympic Games in February and March. With the number of athletes collectively on Team USA, there is little doubt these will reach the collector market. For those keeping score, we now have five different Silver Eagles so far in 2026.

Outside of the direct trading of coins, our industry has seen some shake up recently on the data and information front. On July 1, NGC announced that they acquired the digital assets of two former Krause catalogs, both of which were published under the moniker of the Standard Catalog. The World Coin version, often referred to as the "KM" (Krause-Mishler) catalog, and the World Paper Money version, referred to as the "Pick" were the early standard-bearers in their respective categories. For those not familiar, when Krause Publications ceased operations, their assets were split between two companies: Active Interest Media (AIM) and the large publishing firm Penguin Random House. Neither firm had a significant footprint in the numismatic space, so the transaction caused many questions to arise about the future of these catalogs. While the KM catalog was first published in 1972 and the Pick catalog in 1975, they had largely been passed by in terms of the market. Their core spec information, however, remained valuable. Meanwhile here at Whitman-CDN, we have been aggressively working on cataloging and valuation for more than a decade. We have already seen one byproduct of the NGC deal, and that is the discontinuation of the former AIM product known as NumisMaster. An online pricing resource, it provided subscribers pricing data much in the same vein as our own online price guide at Greysheet.com. We recognize that some NumisMaster users may need a fresh option, and as a result we are offering a promotion, the full text of which can be read below:

Collectors looking for pricing information on U.S. and world coins have lost one option. Numismaster.com ceased operations on July 31, leaving paid digital subscribers unfulfilled and scrambling to pursue other options for their numismatic information.

As a policy to assist, Greysheet.com is offering a free 3-month trial access to their extensive database of U.S. and world coinage and paper money.

Greysheet.com (and the connected smartphone app) offers users over 1 million prices, which are updated every few hours to reflect spot metal and other market changes. While the offer is open only to those who are not also current subscribers, plans start at just $10 per month which also includes access to 7.6 million images and 3.5 million auction records. Qualifying subscribers may use coupon code WELCOMENUMIS at checkout when registering directly at www.greysheet.com/subscribe.

Sincerely,

Patrick Ian Perez, patrickp@whitmanbrands.com