Stack’s Bowers Galleries moves ahead

It is an exciting time to be in numismatics. The combination of Stack’s Bowers Galleries, Spectrum Numismatics and Teletrade into one entity operating under the venerable name of Stack’s Bowers Galleries starts a new chapter for the firm and for those of us who deal with it.

It’s new president, Brian Kendrella was clearly excited when I spoke with him.

“We’ve been working on this for the past several months. It will bring a lot of real new services to our customers and strengthen our numismatic team,” he said.

You might say Stack’s Bowers Galleries has become a triple numismatic threat, to borrow a sports term.

The firm will maintain its physical locations in Irvine, Calif., New York City, Wolfeboro, N.H., and Hong Kong as well as gain an office in Paris from Spectrum, Kendrella said.

He said he was encouraged by “adding the expertise at Spectrum and Teletrade to the team at Stack’s Bowers. We feel it is the best in the business.

“We will continue to keep the services of all companies.” He cited weekly online Internet auctions, live showcase auctions, and collector’s choice auctions of bulk lots three times a year.

He said he was working on an “expanded online retail presence.” Under the name SBGdirect, it will also provide wholesale services.

The new website will consolidate auction archives to create 1.5 million auction records for search, Kendrella explained. There will be bidding pages, price guide information, population reports from the Professional Coin Grading Service and Numismatic Guaranty Corporation. There will be coin specifications, mintages, metals and melt values.

Kendrella said the website would likely have the address of www.coins.com. When I checked it, the Teletrade home page still came up.

Transitions are not easy. I wish Stack's Bowers Galleries, which is a division of Fortune 500 Company Spectrum Group International, Inc., good luck and success.

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