Applicants for the job of executive director of the American Numismatic Association will have the opportunity to personally deliver their resumes to ANA President Barry Stuppler at his bourse table at the Florida United Numismatists convention in January in Orlando.

Whether planned or unplanned, the Jan. 11, 2008, deadline for resume submission occurs during the show.

That is a good thing. Individuals who have numismatic backgrounds are the most likely individuals to be on hand at FUN to contact Stuppler there. It is to be hoped that someone among them will be able to take the ANA in hand to end the past decade of organizational tumult and take the organized hobby into the 21st century.

Last week when I first heard of the job posting, I wrote here that a hobby background is the critical factor in any future executive director. I have marveled and been mystified at the vehemence of opinion held by noncollectors about what collectors and their national organization should do.

That noncollector opinion I believe is what keeps leading ANA deeper and deeper into areas that are not only unproductive, but offend the collector membership.

One of these is the steady increase in what I call the police function. There is a strange supposition, again among nonmembers, that it is the responsibility of the ANA to be some sort of regulator of all nonmember conduct. That the opposite of what should be the case. ANA should have standing to regulate only member conduct.

ANA has loaned its good name to eBay to very little good result. If ANA does nothing, it looks weak and ineffective. If it does something, it infuriates those affected. In neither case does it help the ANA itself.

If the only contact you have with an organization is to have your wrist slapped,  or to be told of the many manifest failures of ANA to stop unethical conduct of nonmembers, why would you want to be associated with it?

ANA is supposed to be an educational organization established for the benefit of its members, not a police power haphazardly interfering in nonmember matters.

This week is a busy one in the Numismatic News office. Just as things speed up in the summertime instead of slowing down, the week just before Christmas is the one where our annual Florida United Numismatists convention special issue is put together.

Instead of being able to focus on the holidays, the staff must focus on putting together one of the largest issues of the year. I hope readers will enjoy it when they see it.

Always kept in mind is how the paper will look sitting on the table at the Krause Publications booth in Orlando come the actual opening of the show. We all want to be proud of it.

Corporate budget season also provides a background of frantic activity when most people would like to ease off a little bit to enjoy the holidays.

Regardless of what goes on here in Iola, I hope you will have some time in the remaining days of 2007 to relax a little, enjoy interaction with family and friends and re-energize for the coming of 2008.

The new year does not come in slowly. The FUN convention assures that it will come in with a bang or a bust. There is scarcely any middle ground. The FUN issue itself start Numismatic News off with a bang.

Occurring simultaneously with the FUN show Jan. 10-13 will be the New York International Numismatic Convention. Europeans will be in Gotham to buy up everything that is round and shiny with their strong euros. I don’t blame them. Make hay while the sun shines as the saying goes.

The question for 2008 is how far can momentum carry us? Paper money is hot. World coins are hot. Coins of the U.S. have become a bit more selective. That is to be expected. Prices have gotten very rich indeed for classic issues.

A redesigned $5 Federal Reserve Note will be introduced March 13, 2008, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing announced yesterday.

It will be better at resisting counterfeiting efforts because it will have two watermarks and a security thread relocated to the left of the large portrait of Lincoln.

Will anyone accept it? This question is less about counterfeiting and more about the battered prestige of the U.S. currency around the world. Since World War I, when the dollar began to be widely looked to as a store of value and a source of stability, it became a real competitor to  the British pound, which before then had been the international reserve currency.

By the end of World War II, British finances were shattered and the Bretton Woods treaty made the dollar’s dominance complete.

Dominance can be a bad thing if it creates an unreasonable arrogance, or an unrealistic laziness by those who experience it. Is that what the rest of the world is seeing in the economy behind the dollar, or is the value decline pure blind panic akin to a bank run?

It is no secret the dollar has been declining since 2002. The pace of decline accelerated this year.

I was in Germany in 2005 when the euro cost $1.25. It is now $1.45. Prices seemed high then. What will they be like when I visit Berlin in February 2008 to give Coin of the Year Awards? I am already curious.

World prestige and value questions aside, the new $5 bill will prompt more newcomers to take up the hobby of U.S. paper money collecting. That is a good thing. It probably means more good times for those of us who are active in the field, though that also means higher prices will be paid by collectors for prize notes.

Better buy them now before the general public becomes aware of the redesigned note. Most people probably won’t realize a new note exists until they get one in change. That means you have a 90-day head start.

Looking for a career change? The position of American Numismatic Association executive director might just be the position for you. Then again, it might not.

The ANA posted the job on Friday. Candidates have until Jan. 11 to submit their applications and resumes.

All you have to do is straighten out an organization beset by lawsuits, alienated staff, bleeding finances and a board as much focused on 1968 as 2008.

Sound like the ideal job? Far from it.

The ANA’s track record in finding someone to manage the organization has been less than stellar. It first took a turn toward professional management instead of hobby management in 1987 when it decided to hire a retiring director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing at the Atlanta convention.

Professional management is all well and good, but with each succeeding candidate, the hobby connection seems to have been lost in the shuffle.

The ANA board seems to realize this – at least partially. The press release says candidates for the positioin “must have considerable knowledge of and interest in the subject matter dealt with by the ANA or a similar hobby field.”

What are we now, the hobby that dare not speak its name?

My view is the board has had its priorities precisely reversed. The single most important factor is actually being a hobbyist. Everything else can be taught.

The board’s philosophy has been to ask for a glittering management resume and the hobby part can be taught.

Well, the last decade of experience seems to indicate that it cannot be taught. We hobbyists have been treated condescendingly and we know it. We don’t like it. We are ANA members precisely because we are coin and paper money collectors and precisely because all other considerations are basically irrelevant.

The hobby qualification must be central in a new ANA executive director’s background. Other qualifications are significant but any one of them is not absolutely essential, unless of course you think that the next Vatican conclave to elect a new Pope should focus solely on management skills.

What does the future hold for us in 2008? Everybody would like to know. Many opinions are expressed, especially in the financial news media.

I am not in a position to take advantage of sophisticated economic models. I have to rely on what I can see and what I have experienced.

From that perspective, there is good news. Coin dealers and others active in numismatics have expressed their views in the most concrete way possible: with their cash.

I just deadlined the January 2008 issue of World Coin News. Display ad revenue decisively exceeded the target in our annual budget. The issue will be distributed at the Florida United Numismatists convention and the New York International Numismatic Convention in January.

This result does not mean the financial prognosticators who are pessimistic about next year are wrong, but it does cast some doubt. By both outlook and habit I am an optimist. I would love to be in the position of those hobbyists who live in the euro economies. Coins here seem incredibly cheap and euro-based buyers are aggressively in acquisition mode.

I saw a comment by World Coin News writer Bob Reis that his business was now higher abroad than domestically. That, he noted, had never happened before.

Every business person knows that profit is where you find it and you have to adjust behavior accordingly to maximize outcomes in ever changing conditions.

Conditions most assuredly are changing. But that isn’t necessarily a negative. It just means things are different. I like different. Hobby life would be boring if nothing ever changed.

There I go again, being the optimist.

Every Halloween I get a lesson in what is called line extension. I get to see what new forms familiar candies take.

The Mint is practicing line extension. The question is will coin buyers bite. If I have a big Hershey bar, little Kisses or bags of the little bars, it is all chocolate to me. It tastes great.

What about dollar coins? The Mint has a slew of new ways to buy dollar coins. A new set that went on sale Monday offers a West Point uncirculated silver American Eagle, four uncirculated Presidential dollar coins from Philadelphia and an uncirculated Sacagawea dollar from Denver. The price is $31.95. You might call it a dollar coin type set.

Then there are four-coin Presidential uncirculated sets for $8.95 from either Philadelphia or Denver. There is an eight-coin uncirculated set that includes the issues of both mints. Its price is $15.95.

Individual Presidential proofs are offered for $5.95 each.

Is there a market for these offerings? Are there people who don’t want a full proof set who decide that they really would like just a proof Madison dollar? It is certainly possible, but I have my doubts of it being an economically viable product line extension.

We have had packaging errors in the past when there were just proof sets and mint sets to keep track of. With all of these line extensions, the possibilities for packaging mishaps explode geometrically.

Already Ken Potter in recent years has noted that quality control for proof sets just isn’t what it used to be. The evidence comes in the many reports to him of proof coins with errors from minor die cracks to spiked heads.

Then there is the secondary market. For sure the many packaging options will drive price guide publishers crazy.

The Dolley Madison First Spouse gold coin is not yet sold out more than two weeks after it went on sale Nov. 19. This situation was not unexpected.

The price hike for this, the fourth coin in the series, upset many potential buyers.

The expense of routinely buying expensive gold coins is beginning to hit home with collectors who are facing the costs of building a set of approximately 40 designs and 80 coins (if we assume they want both proof and uncirculated versions).

And the instant profit available to any buyer who acquires what can be popular on eBay is missing.

Of the three factors, the eBay factor is probably the most critical for this set. Once this factor disappears, can it ever return?

That raises other questions in my mind that I would ask all collectors. Have you written off the idea of ever collecting a complete set of First Spouse gold coins? Have you written off the possibility of ever buying even one First Spouse coin? If you happen to have purchased any of the first three, will you continue to keep them, or will you sell them while the price of gold is high and move on to other areas?

I would like to know the answers. I think the Mint would like to know, too.