Gold down on good news

To all the coin collectors who found a new job in the past month, I say, “Good for you.”

Our hobby needs a large core of individuals who are meeting their economic obligations to their families and have a little disposal income left over to pursue their interests in numismatics.

I am sure the headlines proclaiming a drop in the unemployment rate to a 44-month low at 7.8 percent will be picked apart by economic experts, but at root, more people working means better times for the numismatic hobby as a whole.

Because so many coins are made of gold and silver, our hobby has always been buffeted by the world economic winds that push bullion one way and then another.

We have been living through an economic fear cycle since the Lehman Brothers failure four years ago. Fear is a poor foundation on which to build a collection how ever good it might be for gold and silver prices.

After all, if you are starting down a road that you may walk for the next 10 or 20 years, you would like to know that at the end of that period there will be an organized hobby to which to sell what you have accumulated in your hobby career.

Economic fear corrodes that expectation.

For the moment, though, gold dislikes the news. It is down $16 to $1,774.20 a troy ounce according to the Kitco website.

That’s a small price to pay if the economic news means that more collectors have more jobs to support themselves and the numismatic field.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."