ARTICLE PROFILES JIM HALPERIN OF HERITAGE AUCTIONS

Halperin, co-founder of Heritage Auctions, has been in business almost all his life.

Halperin’s association with coins began the summer before his senior year of high school when he converted his print shop into a stamp business. Wanting to attract a wide customer base, he brazenly named it Jim’s Stamp & Coin Shop, even though he didn’t know anything about coins.

But when Gary Walls walked into the store and asked about coins, Halperin had to admit he didn’t have any. So Walls volunteered to help get the coin business off the ground, and almost immediately became Halperin’s new company’s first employee.

It wasn’t long before Halperin was studying Numismatic News, Coin World, the Red Book and using Brown & Dunn for grading. What he quickly learned was that he had an affinity for coins.

“Every time I saw a coin I remembered what it looked like,” he said. “When I saw another one, I remembered whether – and why – it was better or worse than the first one.”

During his senior year at Middlesex School in Concord, Mass., he ran the coin business in the afternoons, attended coin shows on weekends and amassed an inventory of about $100,000 with no debt.

But more opportunity lay ahead. Halperin was accepted into Harvard University.

“Harvard was great,” he said. “One thing about it though was that I was no longer the smartest person in the room. I didn’t like that. But even worse, I couldn’t attract a girlfriend to save my life. I had gone to an all-boys private high school and I didn’t know how to talk to women at all. And I loved coin dealing.”

So, after three semesters he told his Dad he was leaving school to sell coins full-time and opened New England Rare Coin Galleries in Framingham, Mass. That was late 1971.

Halperin gives credit to a number of coin dealers who helped him out and offered advice in those early years. Dealers like Joe Lipson, and Ed Leventhal of J.J. Teaparty, who took him to his first coin show away from home.

“Coin dealers were, and still are, very nice to new colleagues,” Halperin said.”

Then there was the tall Texan, Steve Ivy, whom Halperin met when Ivy was 19 and already a famous coin dealer. Halperin was 16 at the time. The friendly rivals continued to keep in touch.

The late 1970s were magic for New England Rare Coin Galleries. At its peak it employed almost 200 people and brought in close to $35 million annually. It was doing so well, in fact, that in 1979 Sotheby’s came calling and offered Halperin $22 million for his company. Halperin declined.

But with the good comes the bad, and within a few years the company that Sotheby’s had coveted was now insolvent – almost $2 million under water.

“I was unwilling to consider bankruptcy,” Halperin said, “and determined to pay all of New England’s creditors in full.”

Fortunately, Halperin wasn’t alone. His Texan friend and rival Ivy called because his business, although in better shape than Halperin’s, wasn’t doing all that well either. Ivy’s proposal was to join forces, move Halperin’s operations to Dallas and cut overhead expenses. That was 1982.

“It’s one of the best things I ever did,” Halperin said.

Along with the wholesale coin business, Halperin brought his auction company to Dallas where Bob Merrill, who ran Heritage’s auctions, rolled it into the business.

To read the complete article, see: Halperin Put His Stamp on Coins (www.numismaster.com/ta/numis/Article.jsp?ad=article&ArticleId=27092)

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