AUSTRALIA VIEW: CRELLIN ON PANDEMIC MARKETS

You don't need me to let you know what life has been like since March 12th - that distant bygone date when the World Health Organisation (WHO) officially declared COVID-19 as a pandemic.

Just in Australia, we've had restricted movement not only internationally and interstate but within states and within regions. This has forced many of us to be at home for many, many more hours than we otherwise would have been, and as the Devil is said to find work for idle hands, many of us have turned to our hobbies to keep ourselves occupied and with some sense of forward movement.

As the magnitude of this disease unfolded around the world, and we began to read forecasts of the impact it would and could have on incomes for businesses and individuals, I absolutely expected the economic consequences to be far worse than we've seen so far.

Collectors Without Income or Savings - Forced Sellers

I was concerned we'd see people who were without income and savings being forced to sell items from their collections and wasn't sure just what demand there would be for them from those that happened to be better positioned to cope.

How wrong I was - whether it's due to the Commonwealth Government's JobKeeper program, the better financial health of the general man than I expected or complete indifference to financial ruin, many collectors have been quite content to focus on their collections over the past two and a half months.

Will this activity run out of puff as soon as JobKeeper ends its run? Once the next few credit card statements come in? Or are we going to keep ticking along well into 2021? One thing we do know about markets is that they feed off themselves - as behaviour is reinforced positively with movement upward in prices, market momentum builds over time.

Online Shopping and Payments Facilitates Activity

Online shopping is obviously facilitating this activity, it's a way of keeping busy while remaining isolated at the same time. One interesting nuance of this current situation is the impact that social distancing; concern for health and the prevention of anything-but-local travel is having on the oft-quoted "supply chain" for numismatic items on the secondary market.

It's been some time since I was active in any meaningful way in coins and sets offered directly from Australia's mints, but I expect if I were actively selling them and I sold out, I could replenish my stocks as soon as they ran out, simply by placing an order with the relevant Mint.

The Supply Chain for the Secondary Market - Will It Break Before We Return to "Normal"?

When it comes to products on the secondary market however, re-supply isn't quite as simple. When I know that a customer has a specific coin, note or set that they're no longer beholden with, I know I can contact them with an idea of perhaps selling it or trading it against something else that suits their current collecting patterns more closely. In the absence of that, it is challenging to locate regular supply when the general public and collectors aren't entertaining heading out and about to deal with a relatively complex project such as selling a collection of coins or notes.

I reckon most of us are specifically focused on getting through each day or week at the moment and are waiting for some kind of indication that life is returning to "normal" before we get stuck into anything that requires a good degree of planning and exercise of the grey cells.

One major challenge for someone looking to sell a valuable collection of tangible assets without being able to physically deliver it to a dealer and discuss it in detail is, how do you deliver it and discuss it in detail without leaving yourself open to the risk of loss in transit or having a whole lot of hassle once it has been delivered?

That's a whole other discussion that'll be forthcoming in the coming months, but I've mentioned it because if this situation doesn't change in the coming months, dealers such as myself will find it challenging to replenish their stock by any means! If the conversations I've had with my colleagues that run auction houses are any guide at all, they're in exactly the same position - this means we could see some strong price movement as dealers begin to compete with an already-active cohort of collectors.

To read the complete article, see:
SO HOW HAS THE WORLD PANDEMIC LOCKDOWN AFFECTED THE NUMISMATIC TRADE? (https://www.sterlingcurrency.com.au/blog/news-research/market-news/so-how-has-the-world-pandemic-lockdown-affected-th/)

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