I think this year’s FUN show will reveal alot about the direction of the market for the year. On Wall Street, it’s a known fact that if January is strong, the rest of the year is as well. I can’t state this with total certainty as far as coins go but my experience is that a strong FUN generally means the rest of the year will be good as well. Early reports from the pre-FUN show (which I am not attending) are interersting.   
read more »

If you follow economic news in even the most cursory fashion you are, no doubt, aware of the fact that the news has been pretty grim for the last few days. Lehman Brothers is gone, Merrill Lynch has been sold in a distress situation to Bank of America, AIG is looking perilous and the stock market yesterday had its single worst day since immediately after 9/11. How does this affect the rare coin market?   
read more »

In the second part of this series, I reveal my answers to the final question from the Rosen 2007-2008 Crystal Ball survey. There are some very interesting questions asked here and some controversial answers so read on for my insights into the current State of the Market. For the following six (6) questions I ask you for your Best Buy selections in a number of series. Please detail why you made your picks and the potential you see for them. 10.   
read more »

For the last few years, I have been asked by Maurice Rosen, publisher of the excellent Rosen Numismatic Advisory newsletter, to be a contributor to his annual Crystal Ball survey. This feature, which generally has the participation of a half dozen or so very knowledgeable dealers, is an excellent way for me to analyze the coin market and the questions asked by Maurice are diverse and interesting.   
read more »

I was recently asked to participate in the annual Crystal Ball survey published by Maurice Rosen. Although some of these questions are not totally pertinent to the area of rare gold coinage, I think there is quite a bit of interesting reading here. 1. We had a great market till May, then a slump. What’s your outlook for 2007/2008? Please explain in detail. I think the coin market is going to be very two-tiered in the next year.   
read more »

Can you determine a market trend from one auction result? A few mixed results from a recent coin auction caused a number of clients to call me and ask me this question. My answer(s) were that, in each case, I did not feel that changes in the market could be determined from these results. Let me be more specific. In the November 2006 Heritage sale there was an 1845-O quarter eagle in NGC AU53 offered as Lot 1937.   
read more »