CATCHING UP WITH DOUG WINTER NUMISMATICS

We are entering our ninth week of quarantine (but who’s counting…). Doug, Irma, and Earl are still in California while Jenna is running the Portland office. We’ve established a comfortable routine with Doug working a few hours in the morning and a few in the mid-afternoon. Jenna is keeping operations running smoothly at DWN/PDX. We are adding coins to inventory, and shipping two days per week (Monday and Wednesday). It’s not “normal” but it’s pretty darn close…

Despite some really scary economic news, the coin market continues to chug along. If a coin is popular, reasonably priced (less than $10,000), and it's choice, it will find a buyer. Maybe not as quickly as it would have three months ago but it will sell. The market remains collector based and this is good. In 2008, after the mortgage crisis hit hard, I had numerous dealers and collectors frantically call me looking to sell coins. This time around, I see next to no panic selling. The market has solid fundamentals. Plus, the spike in gold has certainly helped.

As I’ve previously mentioned, the biggest problem in the coin market right now is the broken supply chain. It was never easy for me to find quantities of DWN-esque coins, but at least I could go (kicking and screaming) to a show and come home with 25 coins; maybe even more if I was lucky. I can’t see me going to a show before the Fall and this means that I will have to continue buying one coin here and one coin there. What it also means is that you, the collector, will see fewer interesting coins in 2020. This means that you should take advantage of buying opportunities when they arise.

If you have coins for sale, please run them by me. If they were purchased from DWN, I can make a sight-unseen offer. If they come from another dealer, I’ll need to see them in person to make an offer. Warning: if you have coins stored in a safety deposit box at your local bank, be prepared to make an appointment to retrieve them and be prepared not to be able to do this easily. We recently had a client wait nearly two weeks (!) until he was able to get three reasonably inexpensive coins out of his sdb. Again, the “new normal.”

We are putting the finishing touches on an updated 2020 version of the New Orleans gold book. While the book isn’t radically updated (as the 2018 edition was) there are some significant changes. We are intentionally making an extremely limited run (less than 100 books) to make it a numismatic collectible and because we realize that most of you are fine with a slightly-out-of-date 2018 edition. That said, if you’d like a copy, let us know via email.

Doug is working on a May article (which will be of interest to San Francisco gold collectors), and a series of blogs which will be posted on the site as soon as they are finished. They’ll be interesting and you’ll want to read them.

While only a limited number of new coins have been added to the site in the last 30 days, we’ve sold some amazing coins. This includes a number of six-figure Pioneer/Territorial issues, a few Condition Census half eagles from the Southern branch mints, two or three amazing Liberty Head eagles, and some very special Proof gold. Please note that we work closely and very confidentially with a number of very serious collectors and many of the really spiffy coins we handle never make it to the site.

We all hope you are your family are safe and healthy. If you’d like to play coins, DWN is here for you and we invite you to reach out by phone or email.

Thanks for your time and we always appreciate your business and your support.

-Doug, Irma, Jenna, and Earl (CFO; Chief Fetch Officer)

Jenna's "urban farm" recently hatched Silver Appleyard ducks, and she couldn't resist.

To visit the DWN web site, see:
https://raregoldcoins.com/

To read an earlier E-Sylum article, see:
NEW BOOK: GOLD COINS OF NEW ORLEANS MINT 3RD ED. (https://www.coinbooks.org/v21/esylum_v21n38a02.html)

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web