GERRY FORTIN INTERVIEW, PART FOUR

Greg Bennick's latest interview for the Newman Numismatic Portal is with Liberty Seated dime expert Gerry Fortin. Here's the fourth part, where Fortin talks about working for a semiconductor manufacturer in China, starting Gerry Fortin Rare Coins, the collaboration required to do die variety research, and purchasing coins at auction. Be sure to check out Gerry's upcoming auction of his world class Seated dime collection at www.seateddimevarieties.com. -Garrett

GERRY FORTIN: Something happened in my semiconductor career. I left Fairchild very frustrated and I ended up going to mainland China and working for a Chinese semiconductor company for six years. How about that?

GREG BENNICK: It's a twist I didn't anticipate. So that's really interesting.

GERRY FORTIN: That's what happened. In 2005, our CEO, who was very, very cost focused, he was not strategic at all, but just very cost focused. He decided that the organization I was running at that point, and I haven't talked about it, but starting in around 2000/2001, with the new Fairchild, I managed all worldwide contracted manufacturing. So, we had contractors throughout the world, you know, in Asia and in Europe, and I had an organization of 13 people, and we managed that part of the business. So, all the sourcing of chips made in those sub-cons, I had to ensure the quality, the yields, delivery, and so on and so forth. And all that flowed into our assembly sites to make our products.

I was doing that, and I was flying all over the world. So, I was in China frequently. I could tell you a whole bunch of stories offline, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and in Europe, it was working with the Dutch, working with the Germans. I had led a busy life, but still in the background, I was doing all this Liberty Seated stuff. So fast forward to 2005, the CEO said, “All right, you're spending way too much money. Your department is too expensive. Well, let's rebuild it in Singapore,” because we had a secondary headquarters in Singapore, and we had operations there. He says, “All right, I want you to move all your function there, including yourself, and hire your replacement.” That was no fun.

GERRY FORTIN: No, it was no fun. It was a year and a half of agony. I found jobs for all my people, and when it was done, I said, “That's it, I'm out of here.” And my German boss would say, “Gerry, stay, stay, stay, we'll get you a staff job at headquarters.” And I was like, “Really? I've been flying all over the world and running this large organization, and you want me to read and write reports in a staff function?” So, I approached one of my sub-cons in China and said, “Hey, do you need a high-level guy?” And they hired me immediately.

GREG BENNICK: Fantastic. That's great. Okay. Well, so at the same time, I'm assuming, at some point in this story, you dive back into Seated Dimes and or become a coin dealer full-time. So, I'm curious about that transition.

GERRY FORTIN: Well, so in 2006-7-8, I am just slammed with my career in China. I mean, here you've got a white American guy managing marketing and sales for a Chinese semiconductor company, and my Putonghua was pretty marginal. (laughs) So that was intense. You cannot believe how intense of a period that was in my life. By 2012, things happened there. The company I worked for, everything in China reports to the communist government. We had a shakeup with management and the whole management team essentially was let go because they took our semiconductor fab, we had built in Wuxi, China, and they turned it into a military fab. Classic Chinese Communist Party behavior.

GERRY FORTIN: So, we had brought in a lot of American tools. My last two years working with CSMC Technologies, I was handling export compliance with the Department of Commerce. I was the person that was guaranteeing to the U.S. government that the high-energy implanters and all these sophisticated tools were not going to fall into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party or the PLA. So that was my role. That was pretty intense, too.

GREG BENNICK: I'm sure it was. Now, were you still collecting? Were you gearing up to be a coin dealer at this time?

GERRY FORTIN: My wife was pretty tired of me working in China. She had stayed back. She did not want to live in China. She said, “You need to come home. Why don't you become a coin dealer?” She just said that. Why don't you become a coin dealer? You love coins. You know, we're financially fine. Why don't you become a coin dealer as a different career? And by 2013, I came home and that's what I did.

GREG BENNICK: Fantastic. So, you become a coin dealer. Now you've got this set of dimes that I'm assuming had been sitting stagnant for quite some time since that auction where the 65-S in gem got away from you.

GREG BENNICK: What happened at this point, meaning I'm curious about how in one respect Liberty Seated Coins changed between the entry of other players into the game when you decided to put it aside in 2005 until now. I'm curious about that. How has it changed? Are there many more, as you alluded to, wealthy players in the game? Is it much more competitive now? But also, what was it like when you came back and decided to be a coin dealer?

GERRY FORTIN: Becoming a coin dealer was... it took a little time to figure out that industry. It took me like about a year. I decided I was going to, well, let's go back and look at the situation. So, in 2004, I published the book. And at that point, I had 1,650 Seated Dimes. It's a substantial amount. I had to liquidate this stuff, because I was done with it. I had used it as a reference collection to build the online book.

GERRY FORTIN: Now I didn't need it. So being a coin dealer was an avenue by which I could start liquidating it without shaking up the market. You just can't put 1,000 dimes on the market. You'll crash prices. So, what I did is I started letting go some of those reference pieces to raise capital. But also, while I was working in China, I was still active. I was buying up Chinese pandas. So Chinese silver pandas. And there was a period of time where they were just dirt cheap. Just dirt cheap. So, I bought a bunch of those and brought them back to the U.S. and sold some of those to also raise capital.

So, I had those two sources of capital. And that launched the business and really it got started in 2014. That's when I started doing coin shows. I had my own website, which I bolted a sales module onto the dime variety reference. I just bolted a module. I could program somewhat in HTML.

GERRY FORTIN: Another parallel! Right. And that's how the coin business got started.

GREG BENNICK: So, in terms of the Liberty Seated collection itself. Are there coins that you, other than the 65-S, that you wish you could have owned? Or are there favorite pieces of your collection that you did own and sell or still own today?

GERRY FORTIN: Oh, man. (laughs) That's a wide-open question. When I was doing the die variety research, I built relationships with a number of collectors. You don't do die variety research in a vacuum. You need access to a lot of coins to study. All right. And like you mentioned earlier on, the 43-O and the 45-O.

GERRY FORTIN: Let's see. Probably around 1993, 1994, I was researching the 1840-O, no drapery dimes. Trying to figure out all the dies and then all the die marriages. And I was working with a gentleman in California named Kevin Zeitler. And Kevin and Craig Eberhardt in Los Alamos, and one other gentlemen, his name escapes me. These were the three major New Orleans collectors in the country. So, I hooked up with them. Kevin sent me all his 1840-O dimes. And some of them were pretty high grade. So, I was able to do all the analysis.

After I shipped those back, and a few months later, he calls me and says, “Hey, Gerry, I've got an 1843-O and an 1845-O dime that I want to sell. Do you want them?” I said, “Sure. Send them to me.” I bought the pair at a very attractive price, and they turned out to be what's in my set today. They were never upgraded. One is the third finest. I think they're both third finest. But I just, at that time, I made decisions to buy those two very nice dimes. That's what it was like, was relationships.

The auctions, the auction house, and the auction experience was so different than today. Back then, you went into an auction room, and everybody who was bidding was in the room. And sure, you had the phone bidders. There was no internet bidding. You showed up, and everybody looked at everybody else in the room. Who was there?

GERRY FORTIN: Hold up your card. And then there was always that mysterious phone bidder at the end that you questioned. That was, you know, what was going on with that guy?

GERRY FORTIN: Where were they? Yeah! Were they still bidders, or what was it? But that was the experience. Today, it's sad. The bidding process is all online. You go to an auction room, there's maybe five people there. You know, and the gentleman that's running the auction is playing for the internet and not for the people in the room.

GREG BENNICK: I remember many years ago, going to auctions and having my bid card, and I picked up a few error coins from my collection by holding up my bid card. And it was an exciting experience. I mean, it was engaging and physical to hold up the bid card. It was really exciting.

GERRY FORTIN: Oh, yeah, you get that feeling in your chest when the coin that you want is coming up and you start the bidding and say, “All right, where am I going to jump in?”

GREG BENNICK: I literally remember that experience with one particular coin. I still feel the feeling in my chest from the coin that I won. So that's exciting. I like that.

About the Interviewer
Greg Bennick (www.gregbennick.com) is a keynote speaker and long time coin collector with a focus on major mint error coins and US counterstamps. He is on the board of both CONECA and TAMS and enjoys having in-depth conversations with prominent numismatists from all areas of the hobby. Have ideas for other interviewees? Contact him anytime on the web or via instagram @minterrors.