General Public Out-Buying Collectors in Gold
Gold bar
Wikicommons
Rare coins are back in the spotlight. The early April Spring Whitman Baltimore Expo auction conducted by Stack’s Bowers Galleries realized more than $32 million hammer price in a massive 14-session sale. There was something for everyone in this auction.
The sale included U.S. coins, bank notes, numismatic Americana, and physical cryptocurrency. The Americana session included a collection of Indian Peace medals and a gold Washington Funeral medal with its original jewelry encasement. Carson City-minted $20 double eagles highlighted the half eagles, eagles, and double eagles Mont Blanc Set from the Fairmont Collection. Many of the lots in this auction were “fresh” coins that had been off the market for a very long time.
It’s always challenging to differentiate between the motivations of whoever is buying bullion and bullion-impacted coins. At the moment, the majority of gold coins that fall into either the bullion or bullion-impacted categories appear to be being purchased by the general public and speculators rather than by investors and collectors. This doesn’t mean there are no collectors taking an interest in common date and generally available precious metal composition coins being primarily intrinsically valued.
Right now, the general public appears to have “joined the crowd” due to the noticeably higher spot prices of both gold and silver. Retail giant Costco may yet prove to be the coin-collecting hobby’s best friend due to the company’s recent marketing of both silver coins and gold ingots to the retail public. This may be an unusual opportunity through which the non-collector public is being introduced to the hobby.
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