0:18

So it is recording . Now I'll do a

0:20

quick little intro .

0:21

Yeah , sounds good .

0:22

You know , welcome to the Numisphere thing and we'll

0:25

kick it over to you . Okay , I'm

0:28

good whenever you are . Welcome back to the

0:30

Numisphere . My name is Tyler O'Connor and

0:32

I am here with Jonathan Hawes

0:34

of Rogue Island's Mint . Welcome

0:37

, John .

0:37

Thank you , tyler , thank you for having me .

0:39

Absolutely , it's a pleasure to have you here , so

0:41

can you kick us off ? Tell us a little bit about yourself .

0:43

Yeah , gosh , industry

0:46

specific , I assume , or you want the whole gamut

0:48

, the whole shebang . Let's hear it out All right

0:50

, I was born numb , I'm just kidding , I

0:53

mean . So I started in the industry meaning

0:56

the coin industry late

0:58

20s , probably about 15 years ago Very

1:00

traditional , you know , kind of came

1:03

up around it . When I was a kid my grandfather was in the

1:05

coins , my dad was in the coins , you know they had collections

1:07

and stuff and I was always kind of like into

1:10

it as an amateur collector

1:13

. But it wasn't until

1:15

my late 20s when I hated my job

1:17

which I think is not very uncommon

1:19

, very relatable , working some dead-end

1:21

jobs , wondering why I went to school

1:23

for four years with that , you know , that dead-end bachelor's

1:26

degree and all that kind of stuff and

1:28

I started buying and selling coins

1:30

on the side as a way not

1:32

only to make extra money but to be into the hobby

1:35

that I kind of had as a kid

1:37

and I realized

1:39

that there was some money in it and

1:41

eventually that money started

1:43

to be every bit as good as the money I was getting

1:45

at that job I hated and

1:48

eventually I just took the leap . You know you

1:50

say I'm doing

1:52

just as good . I feel if I pursue this full-time

1:55

, there's a legitimate career here . And

1:58

you just I quit my job one day and opened

2:00

up a brick and mortar shop in Millbury Massachusetts

2:03

that hasn't

2:05

been there in over 12

2:07

years now probably . But that

2:09

was the start , yeah , and did

2:13

that for a few years To

2:15

get very traditional . You know old world numismatics

2:17

, us numismatics , paper currency bullion

2:20

you know all the kind of stuff you'd see in a coin

2:22

shop . And

2:25

three years in a

2:27

company that I did a lot of business with at the

2:29

time , a precious metal refiner

2:31

came knocking and said

2:33

, hey , we want to start buying and selling coins and

2:36

you know , we want you to come work for us . And

2:40

that was one of those decisions where it's like , well

2:42

, you go into business for yourself , I think to

2:44

escape the corporate

2:46

culture or to be your own .

2:48

You know you're working for anybody else .

2:49

You're the decision maker right , and you'd get kind of

2:51

spoiled by that in a lot of ways . As hard

2:54

as work as being your own boss is , there's

2:56

a lot of you know benefit as well

2:58

, and so I well there's the sense of freedom , yeah

3:02

, and definitely more stress , more work , but you're your

3:04

own boss .

3:04

Yeah , I think you get used to it too .

3:05

I think it's one of those things it's tough to put the genie back

3:07

in the bottle when you don't answer

3:09

to anybody and then you have to answer to somebody again . But

3:12

it was a very good opportunity with the way it was

3:14

presented to me , and so I

3:16

thought about it and decided

3:18

to do it , and so I sold

3:20

the business , went to work for them

3:22

, was there for eight years , but

3:24

during the course of that time I saw the industry

3:27

really shifting and

3:29

changing , I mean in the sense

3:31

of there were more options out there . I mean

3:33

I was a very traditional , like I said , numismatic coin

3:35

shop and we didn't do a lot

3:38

with modern

3:40

material or brand new material

3:42

, even on the bullion side , and we didn't

3:44

carry , you know , the latest Cucabarras or the latest

3:46

you know South African Krugerans

3:49

or things like that . So as we

3:51

, as I was growing the coin side

3:53

with this new company , we

3:56

I realized , hey , there's a lot more out there and

3:59

there's a lot of things that are new

4:02

to the market that people are kind of like , hey

4:04

, you know , they're interested and it was some of it was very

4:06

bullion based , it was very

4:08

, you know , spot plus and like look at all

4:10

these different fancy things we can do to it . Now

4:12

it's not just another eagle , it's this or it's this

4:14

and customers would get excited about it . And

4:17

then some of it started to progress into modern collectibles

4:20

and I kind of fell in love with with

4:22

that stuff over that time that I was there and

4:24

really shifted my focus .

4:25

And that shift was around when

4:27

like pre-COVID , yeah .

4:30

So I think it was the heaviest

4:33

, probably in 17 , 18 . I think that

4:35

I kind of was learning about it in

4:37

2015 , 2016

4:39

. My first year there

4:41

was 2014 . And we were very traditional

4:43

. We were trying to get it off the ground and it wasn't

4:45

a new mismatic thing because they were refinery , they wanted to

4:47

sell a bullion . Basically

4:49

, they had a well , yeah , they had a customer

4:52

base that was already doing refining

4:54

and those customers wanted to take back you

4:56

know product on their refining out turn

4:58

. So but it was something they weren't as familiar

5:01

with and they just wanted somebody that kind of knew that side of the business

5:03

. So it started off very bullion

5:05

oriented . But once we realized the

5:07

customers had an appetite for other things

5:09

, you immediately , you know

5:11

, you start to jump on those opportunities because

5:14

, especially if your competitors aren't doing

5:16

that same thing . So it

5:19

was probably by 2018 , 2019

5:22

, right before COVID . Those two years

5:24

is when we really started to

5:26

get big into carrying a lot of like world

5:28

mint products that weren't just your

5:31

basic bullion line . And then

5:33

, you know , by the time COVID hit

5:35

, we were in the right business at the right time . At that

5:37

point , I think . And

5:39

the rest is history . I mean , you know I shouldn't

5:41

say the rest is history , but the eventually

5:45

you know the allure

5:47

of being the business owner .

5:50

I could never get it out of my system .

5:52

I never quite got it out of my system . And

5:55

then , you know , you combine that with some

5:57

very fortuitous timing in

5:59

terms of the company I was working

6:01

for , going through some changes , and

6:04

it just was like , ok , I'm doing this again , I'm

6:06

doing it . And so you made

6:08

the leap again , made the leap again a

6:10

little more forced this time . Yeah

6:13

, there was the opportunity

6:16

to do my own thing was always

6:18

kind of hanging over my head , right , it

6:20

was like I've done it before . I know

6:22

a lot more now than I knew before . You

6:24

know , you make all those rookie mistakes when you start

6:27

a business for the first time , right , and

6:29

I was like , ok , I got that out of my system . I also

6:31

had eight years to work for another

6:33

company that let me , I

6:35

wouldn't say , be my own boss , that would be overstating

6:38

it but certainly they gave

6:40

me a lot of leeway to grow that department without

6:43

a lot of oversight . So it

6:45

was kind of like a chance to grow and

6:47

develop even further in the industry

6:49

without having to worry about not having

6:51

a safety net , right , yeah , the

6:53

support was there to make those choices , absolutely

6:56

. And then , you know , so it was always

6:58

nagging in my head . It was always that little thought of like man

7:00

, I should do this again at some point . But

7:03

when you know , my

7:05

hand was forced a bit , but

7:08

back in would have been

7:10

October of 21,

7:12

. The company was being

7:14

sold and there was other things going

7:16

on . But you know , and I was like , ok

7:19

, this is the right , this is it , this is the time If

7:22

I'm going to go back to doing it for myself . I'm getting older

7:24

, right , it's a lot of work . Oh yeah , and

7:26

I said I think I got at least one more in me to

7:28

build it from scratch . I don't want to be doing that

7:30

when I'm in my 50s , like it's just because

7:34

of the amount of the toll it takes me working , especially

7:37

at first , I mean , you're when you're starting it up .

7:38

It's 24 seven .

7:39

It's 24 seven and you know

7:41

, having done it , I knew what you had to put into

7:43

it and I just said I think I'm

7:45

at the right moment . I could do it one more time and that's

7:47

where Rogue's Island Mint came from . It

7:51

was born from that moment , so

7:53

great .

7:54

Well , I can tell you , we definitely appreciate Rogue's

7:56

.

7:57

Oh , thank you . I mean geez

7:59

. I didn't expect to get buttered up .

8:01

Well , yeah , keep you happy .

8:03

That's fair . That's fair . No , you guys are

8:05

great . I again appreciate you having me down . By

8:08

the way , really do

8:10

take good care of me , of course we have to .

8:14

So Rogue's Island

8:16

what's what

8:18

really inspired this place

8:20

in the market that

8:23

you have developed

8:25

so uniquely ?

8:27

Well I think it comes back to if

8:29

you're going to jump both feet

8:31

into a new business again , you've

8:33

got to examine the landscape of

8:36

the industry that you're in and try to find a hole

8:38

. What customer

8:40

base is not being serviced or is not being

8:42

serviced in a way that

8:45

you know it could be ? There's a lot of money

8:47

there that's just not being tapped . The reasons

8:49

are not really that relevant , although you could help

8:51

to know why that is . And

8:54

certainly when I looked around I said , okay , we've got a

8:56

lot of these new modern products that are coming

8:59

from world mints . You know places

9:01

people would have heard of and we'll use Perth or Royal Canadian

9:03

or New Zealand men as examples of

9:05

these types of places . And there's it's

9:08

all very new . I

9:12

don't want to get too . It's new , but it isn't . I mean

9:14

, some of these mints have been doing this stuff for a while , but

9:16

it was kind of new to the American audience . Like you didn't

9:18

see a lot of stuff

9:20

outside of the bullion range , you

9:23

know , going back 10 years , I mean

9:25

, were they doing it ? Yeah , they were doing it , not like they're

9:27

doing it now , but it was very limited . But it was very limited and

9:30

but as it started to grow , especially

9:32

as we went through the pandemic and we were like oh

9:34

man , there's a lot of hunger for this , but what there isn't

9:36

is there's not a way for the average

9:38

dealer to get the product for

9:40

their businesses , like in

9:42

Europe . Perfect example of this right , you run

9:44

a brick and mortar coin business . You have an e-commerce

9:47

coin business . You need product

9:49

to sell and in old numismatics

9:52

, obviously that's going to come from buying

9:54

collections . It may come from the public , it may

9:56

come from auctions . You have to seek it out . In

9:59

modern , you don't have to seek it out in theory

10:01

because they're making it brand new . You should just be

10:03

able to order it . But you can't .

10:05

Well we're so small that these big mints

10:08

really don't make a place for it .

10:09

It's not even . Yeah , and don't trust

10:11

me , don't put yourself down . I mean , you

10:14

guys are a very good size coin

10:16

business . It's just that mints

10:18

don't want to deal with more

10:21

than a few distributors . It's

10:23

more of a business model than it is . Looking

10:25

down on the size of a particular business . Bigger

10:30

the mint , the less people they want to distribute to , and

10:32

the US Mint's a perfect example . Right , we

10:34

don't even do US Mint products ourselves . It's

10:37

not our niche . But there's

10:39

several big companies that are kind of like the distributors

10:41

and when I realized

10:43

that medium

10:46

size and smaller size coin dealers

10:48

in the US hadn't really no

10:50

good access to any

10:52

of this new product that was coming out , I was

10:54

like there's the whole . How do

10:56

we become the person that can supply them ? Because

10:59

the companies that were big enough to

11:01

buy from direct from the manufacturers

11:04

didn't want the medium and

11:06

smaller size dealers to have access to the

11:08

product because they would create

11:10

their own competition . They wanted

11:12

to be the ones that had it . If you wanted

11:14

to buy it retail , you had to buy it from them . If

11:17

they start wholesaling it to dealers

11:19

like you , you can now have . You have

11:21

an e-commerce business . You could

11:23

post it up at the same prices that they can , and they're

11:25

creating somebody competing again their own competition

11:27

yeah . And so they all wanted to have

11:29

this little monopoly and it made sense

11:31

. They figured how is anybody going to break up

11:33

our monopoly ? Because we're the only

11:35

ones that are spending and have the enough

11:38

buying power to go direct to these places

11:40

. That was our first

11:42

challenge . It was how do we become

11:44

somebody that can Buy

11:46

that bulk direct from the mince and supply

11:48

it to the medium and smaller size dealers in the US

11:51

? So you know , so that the

11:53

mince will take us seriously , right , Like because we're

11:55

a brand new company . You know we don't have a

11:58

track record right , and we

12:00

looked at it as , Basically

12:02

, let's make a union I mean it's , it's not truly a

12:04

union if there's no formal you

12:06

know , you

12:08

know board of directors or anything like that .

12:10

but it was a collective .

12:12

It was a collective , better , it's probably even a better way to put

12:14

it . It was again very informal

12:16

, but it was . Let's get all the dealers that are interested

12:19

in having this kind of product together and

12:21

let's Basically give

12:23

them access to everything that these men's are

12:25

putting out . We can conglomerate

12:28

those orders to create the buying power

12:30

. We need to go to the men's and say , listen , we can buy

12:32

every bit as much as the big box retailers . What

12:35

we do with it , how we distribute it , that's on us . But

12:37

, like , all they care about is seeing

12:39

that that big order right , right , or or

12:42

it's not even always a big order . They there's just certain

12:44

commitment levels that you have to hit . You either have to spend

12:46

a certain amount a year . You have to commit to certain

12:48

amounts of their flagstone , flagstone

12:50

, flagship products . Everyone

12:53

does it a little differently , but ultimately it's just about

12:55

. You have to be big enough to make it worth their while

12:57

. And I said how do we do that quickly

13:00

? Because Building

13:02

up a business that can buy at that level would take

13:04

a lot of time , absolutely . So we

13:06

said , well , this is gonna be a win-win . It's gonna be

13:08

a win for the medium and smaller size dealers

13:10

that can't go direct , because now They'll have access to

13:12

wholesale pricing and it'll be a win for us

13:14

because we can accelerate our buying power with them

13:16

very quickly and

13:18

that's kind of how it paid off . I mean , two and a half years later

13:21

we are distributing , as

13:23

far as I know , for more mince than

13:25

anybody in the US period . I mean , it's

13:27

over 50 World mince

13:29

that we carry their lineup of products

13:31

and it's only we're only able

13:33

to do that because we have this Collective

13:36

of of dealers . We just do

13:38

wholesale only . I don't know if I didn't say that earlier , but

13:40

we're just a wholesale distribution , distribution .

13:42

How many will say smaller

13:44

dealers , medium dealers , do you deal with on

13:46

average ?

13:47

in North America right now , because we do do

13:49

a little bit of international . But North

13:51

America right now it's about 120 Different

13:54

companies that buy the product through us and

13:56

again , it's not to say that those

13:58

companies are Exclusively buy from

14:00

us . It's not to say that they some

14:02

of them only buy a few things a year and other people buy

14:05

a little of everything , but there's 120

14:07

dealers that get our , you

14:10

know , distribution offers . And

14:13

that is

14:15

a funny story . Honestly , I Didn't

14:17

know the answer to that exactly , because even people sign up

14:19

for accounts doesn't mean they're customers . They don't know

14:22

. The customers go dormant . You know things

14:24

change . But at the end of the year we

14:26

made sure that , at the very

14:28

least , everybody who bought at least one product from

14:31

us in the year got a Christmas

14:33

card . And so when I was talking

14:35

to one of my employees , I said I need you to go

14:37

through and look at anybody who made at least

14:39

one purchase and tell me how many Christmas

14:41

cards I got a order , because we had , you know , cards made . Yeah

14:44

, and she said it's a hundred and twenty

14:46

two or whatever . I said , oh , okay , so now I know

14:48

exactly how many active yeah , I'll

14:50

stir are . You know that at

14:52

least bought something in 2023 . But

14:54

and then , yeah , we have a

14:56

handful of international accounts too

14:58

, although that that's a trickier , other

15:00

than Canada . I mean , north America is easy , but Obviously

15:04

, when you're dealing with world mint , it's a lot easier for them to

15:06

try to find a source in those

15:08

areas . You're right , asia or whatever .

15:10

But yeah , to get things you aside

15:12

and then distribute out again is challenge .

15:14

Yeah , we primarily . It's more for , like , exclusive

15:16

products , things that they can't get over there

15:19

, that we have that . Then it becomes a little more

15:21

, you know , valuable to them and

15:23

that's something we've certainly you know that was . That was

15:25

phase two , you know . I mean , when you're first getting started

15:28

, the last thing you're gonna do is start developing

15:30

Products from scratch . That you have to put

15:32

a lot of cash flow into , yeah , but

15:34

once you build that base of dealers and you've got product

15:36

flowing in and out , the next best thing you could do is

15:38

have product that you can't get anywhere

15:41

else . It's a , it's a double-edged

15:43

sort of your dealers

15:45

, that that your customers I call

15:47

my dealers , but they have access

15:50

now to a product that even the big competition

15:52

doesn't have , which is an advantage for them

15:54

Absolutely , and from our perspective

15:56

, it creates an opportunity to grow

15:59

that customer base , because if there are dealers

16:01

out there who aren't dealing with us , who

16:03

want that product , they have to come to us right , because that's

16:05

the incentive . That's the incentive . So it's

16:07

kind of like a good way to reward our

16:10

customer base with stuff that you won't

16:12

see getting plastered all over

16:14

you know Wherever

16:17

, and at the same time drive

16:19

traffic .

16:20

So it's and it's not just

16:22

these large National

16:24

sovereign man's or any of these big ones

16:26

?

16:26

not at all .

16:27

When you distribute products for for

16:29

garage mints .

16:29

Absolutely . I mean absolutely .

16:31

In fact , the one is phenomenal .

16:32

What are my favorite things to do , you

16:35

know . You know , on one end of the spectrum

16:37

you have , like Royal , canadian and Perth , these , these mega

16:39

, mega , mega world mints that have been around for A hundred

16:41

years , you know . And on the other end , yeah , you have , you

16:44

have literally guys that started in their garage

16:46

doing , you know , with either

16:48

doing hand pours , doing , you know , buying a

16:50

small press , buying whatever , and

16:53

. But they have good ideas right

16:55

and they have good quality and

16:57

you know , obviously we wait for them to be a little

16:59

bit established .

17:00

Well , they have to have the ability to produce

17:02

enough consistently to be able to provide

17:05

that quality to your buyers .

17:06

Huge factor yeah , that's the first

17:08

thing we ask when guys come

17:10

to us asking us to distribute their products is

17:13

what's your capacity ? Because when

17:15

we put out a product to the whole group

17:17

of dealers , there's a

17:19

chance that we're gonna sell a lot . I

17:21

mean , we never know for sure how something's gonna

17:24

resonate till you get it out there . But if

17:26

it does sell a lot , do they have the capacity to fill

17:28

those orders in a timely manner ? Right , that's

17:30

a huge thing .

17:30

Some that is definitely slow things . In the past . We

17:33

I mean I can tell to my experience there

17:35

might be product that comes out and says , okay , we expect

17:37

it February , but they couldn't

17:39

just quite keep up enough , so it

17:41

gets pushed a few weeks .

17:43

Yeah , and unfortunately delays are kind

17:45

of commonplace across the whole industry , right

17:47

.

17:47

I mean expected .

17:48

Yeah , even with the big mints . But the last thing

17:50

you want is to overload a guy . It's not ready . You

17:53

know if a guy makes a quality product

17:55

, that he has some good ideas , that's that's step one

17:57

. But if you hit him with a 400 piece order , that's

17:59

gonna take him four months to fill right and he's drowning

18:01

you . You're not helping him like you

18:03

don't even mean in a way . Yeah , so we

18:05

usually let them get through the growing pains before

18:07

we start offering any of their products . But

18:10

that stuff with is is almost part

18:12

goes to the mission that we were talking about , because

18:15

it's stuff that you're never gonna see at big box stores

18:17

. Okay , and Not

18:20

only that , it's supporting

18:22

another small business that fits in with

18:24

what my dealer base is , right

18:26

, so there's like a connection there where they go . Oh

18:29

yeah , I mean I , we could

18:31

pump people's tires , you know , if we want to . But somebody

18:33

like a lockerman , for instance , you know he's

18:35

been around a while . He's been around five , six years

18:37

, started at his garage , right

18:39

, and you know he's somebody

18:42

that came to us early on and we

18:44

had to make sure he was ready and everything like that . But the products

18:46

were were good , his turnaround times were fantastic

18:48

and the value was there

18:51

. But he's also another small business . He's a family-owned

18:53

business . His son works for him . His son's actually a really great

18:55

hand-poor guy , honestly . I've

18:57

gone to his facility in Louisiana . I've I've

18:59

seen his equipment .

19:01

Yeah , you guys did an event down there last year .

19:03

Yeah , so he , he hosted event for for Industry

19:06

people once a year . Well , it used to be

19:08

in the spring , now it's in the fall . They call it locked

19:10

over fast , yeah , because it's in October , and

19:13

what a blast that was . I mean , he invites everybody to

19:15

come see how everything's made . You know , you can actually

19:18

pull the hand , press , you can pour stuff

19:20

. Yeah , yeah , let's you do that , and it's

19:22

. It's a bunch of guys that either are other

19:25

silver-poor or Silver

19:27

art type of businesses or

19:30

people like me that work with him in other capacities

19:32

, and we all meet up there and

19:34

talk biz , you know , and what's the latest

19:36

thing going on , and just fellowship and

19:38

that kind of stuff . So that's

19:41

that has a lot of sway , I think , when

19:44

it comes to like what kind of products you want to carry , if

19:46

you , if you know that story and you've met these guys

19:49

and you know the new product

19:51

comes out , it's like , yeah , I'm gonna , I'm gonna give that a shot

19:53

. You know , I want to support . Dave is

19:55

the owner in this case , but it's

19:57

not just him . There's so many guys on

20:00

that other side of the of the spectrum in

20:02

that I mean I wouldn't go as far as to

20:04

say like garage , necessarily . I think hopefully they've

20:06

out a lot of them about growing that . But but

20:09

in terms of like Old-school

20:11

US manufacturing with a

20:13

small crew , you know For

20:16

that six people , sometimes ten people at

20:18

most you know , whether they're making

20:20

pressed stuff with it , with a . I mean

20:22

, there's a guy that

20:25

, no joke , makes incredible

20:27

stuff . He bought the same presses

20:29

that Scott still uses .

20:30

No , no kidding .

20:31

But he only bought one , you know , obviously doesn't

20:33

have the capacity . Those are very expensive machines

20:35

. But if you , if you give him the

20:37

right , die work . You know artwork wise

20:39

, and it's all you know and that's stuff's above

20:41

my head how they do it on the computers and all that stuff . But

20:43

if you give him the right file type , his stuff

20:46

looks every bit as good and

20:48

but he's , he's just a guy with a

20:50

couple employees , you know , and in a facility

20:52

. But you

20:55

want to support that again , I

20:57

distribute for Scottsdale to nothing against Scottsdale , right

20:59

, scott stills a monster .

21:00

I mean they're huge , they're breaking out

21:02

with countries a million ounces a

21:04

week .

21:05

I don't know making that up right but and they're super

21:07

nice guys , but it's just like we want to have the

21:09

whole breadth of that , because you won't find

21:12

that From any

21:14

other wholesale distribution network . I mean

21:16

, you can sign up with different places

21:18

and maybe get five or six minutes

21:20

Worth of stuff offered to you , but you won't have

21:22

the diversity of product . We want to have everything

21:24

from a silver pour to an art bar to a colorized

21:26

piece . You know a lot of that secondary market kind

21:28

of stuff to you know your , your

21:30

Staple mints , you

21:33

know the bread and butter stuff which I mentioned , like Perth

21:35

and Royal Canadian places like that , to your

21:37

upscale . You know art mints that are

21:39

doing legal tender in those bigger sizes

21:41

, very , very . You know the European artistic high

21:43

relief , three ounces that we want to have

21:45

all that stuff because we

21:47

feel like Everybody

21:49

has different customers At

21:52

the end of the day , I don't know who your customers are , you

21:54

know , I don't know what their tastes

21:56

are . If I can give you access to

21:58

everything , not only can you fill

22:00

what your customers like , but

22:02

you have the opportunity to grow new

22:05

avenues in your own market and

22:07

develop those new , because you

22:09

now have stuff available that maybe Either

22:11

you never thought of or didn't know existed , or

22:13

whatever the case might be , or you could be the only one

22:15

in the area You're carrying that that too . Yeah

22:17

, that too . I think our biggest benefit , you

22:19

know , is to a lot of the true , I

22:22

call him brick and mortar or show circuit

22:24

type guys , because you can

22:26

have unique stuff in your store , in

22:28

your case , that your competitors

22:31

in the room aren't gonna have , absolutely . And

22:34

Even . It's so funny too because

22:36

, like , I'll go to a few shows where we're the supplier

22:38

for a couple of the people there , right , and

22:41

even when you go to those people's tables and

22:43

you look in their cases , they're drastically different

22:45

in terms of what they've chosen to carry , right

22:48

, so it's like , you know , you may buy stuff from

22:50

us and there may be two other dealers that

22:52

buy stuff from us . You could all be set up in the same row

22:54

and you look , in your case , the

22:56

stuff that you bought from us is different than what he bought

22:58

, it's different than the other guy , and you know , some

23:00

of them may have focused on price points , they may

23:02

have focused on product types , they may have focused on themes

23:05

, and so you , you know , and I

23:07

think it's important to state that , like , the reason

23:09

you can do that Is because we are offering

23:12

, on average , five

23:14

to seven new Coins

23:16

or products every day of the year . It's

23:18

an enormous amount of stuff so

23:20

you can tailor it to what works for

23:22

you . It's not like , oh , I kind of have to buy

23:24

this because it's the only thing I'm gonna see

23:26

for the next three days . Right , not at all . You

23:29

know , if something comes out and you're like , yeah , that's not gonna

23:31

work for me , just wait half an hour . Every

23:35

day , I check my email all day long and

23:37

the diversity of products , the availability

23:39

of products yeah , we really get to fine-tune

23:42

it for what works for our business , our model and

23:44

our customers and that's why we need

23:46

a big dealer base , because in order to

23:48

Make any particular product

23:50

successful and to get bulk orders

23:52

, you know , the average product is only bought

23:55

by 10 to 20 dealers out of 120 , but

23:58

it's a different 10 to 20 dealers on each product , right

24:00

, so it ? That's

24:03

what we , that's what you need to make this whole system

24:06

work . You know , we're just here to to

24:08

marry two people that don't want to work together . Basically

24:10

, you know the mince don't want to deal with hundreds

24:12

of smaller guys that they have to do the leg work

24:14

on , and a lot of dealers Don't want to deal with

24:16

mince , especially overseas . There's a lot of complexity

24:19

to that . Yeah , it's a headache , it's a headache

24:21

. There's currency conversions , trust me , there's , there's , there's

24:23

customs .

24:24

That don't even get me involved in all that stuff

24:26

.

24:26

There's delays there . They want money up front

24:29

. A lot of dealers don't you know . Listen , we're in a cash

24:31

flow business , right , and that's a turnoff

24:33

. Yeah , you have to pay for it months in advance in some

24:35

cases , yeah , and Then

24:38

when they gets delayed , how mad are you then ? Right ? And then

24:40

you get hit with a customs bill you weren't expecting , cuz I

24:42

declared it wrong , and you know that's

24:44

my job . My job is to streamline that

24:47

so that you never have to deal with that part of it , right , and

24:49

the mince don't have to deal with hundreds of dealers

24:51

which they don't have the logistical capacity to do

24:53

. So it we marry

24:56

the two together , that's . That was . That was the hole

24:58

in the market that we saw , and that's a

25:00

really , really long way of answering that question

25:02

.

25:03

I mean it makes sense though , because there

25:05

was nothing there before , and I

25:07

mean , obviously , as dealers , we had the opportunity

25:09

to get it with some of these nationals that do

25:12

the bullion stuff . Yeah , oh yeah which are

25:14

great and they have their purpose , but

25:17

that in today's market , where

25:19

the average buyers kind of shifted

25:21

to that 35 to 50 year old and

25:24

we were touching a little bit earlier on this is

25:26

that it's not necessarily about buying

25:28

eagles or Britannia's or the basic

25:30

bullion anymore . Is that you ? you're

25:33

trying to tap into Nostalgia

25:35

yeah and having

25:37

that connection to get to the mince that have

25:39

the licenses to do that type of stuff , whether

25:42

that's Star Wars , disney or

25:44

the likes . That's a

25:46

new opportunity in a new market that Really

25:49

didn't exist as much before and

25:51

it's such a different Mentality

25:55

from the buyer .

25:56

So I this is great . I'm glad you're called

25:58

numus fear , by the way . Here's why I think

26:00

there's a lot of different wedges in

26:03

the numus fear . Absolutely and

26:05

Obviously , the

26:07

biggest wedges are traditional numismatics , exanumi

26:10

, a currency you know those types of things . And

26:12

then bullion is a big wedge , and substantial

26:15

bullion is True

26:17

bullion . Buyers are more concerned

26:20

about the investment than about the

26:22

specific theme of the product . Necessarily

26:25

, their goal is to buy metals

26:27

at a reasonable price that leaves

26:29

them not a lot of premium to where

26:31

they're . They can sell it when the potentially

26:34

when the price goes up , even if they're

26:36

holding long term , they want to be able to have

26:38

the lowest costs Over

26:41

the price of the metal . Oh , the lowest premiums

26:43

they can get . That's , that's a traditional stacking

26:45

mentality .

26:46

We want to keep the cost average physical

26:48

matter .

26:49

Physical metal investor . Look

26:51

the stuff that we sell . Just to be clear

26:53

, we really don't deal in bullion . I mean we

26:55

deal in some we call

26:58

premium bullion , which is One-off

27:00

type coins or license type coins that are

27:02

still priced based on the spot I

27:04

mean there's still spot-plus or whatever but they

27:06

tend to be quite a bit higher than a , than a Government

27:09

round or certainly than a than a like a buffalo

27:12

round or something like that . So what's

27:15

interesting is that the mentality behind

27:17

that collector a lot of people think

27:19

you know , it's certainly the nostalgia , it's

27:21

certainly what's tugging at them , you

27:24

know , emotionally when they see it , but

27:26

it's also they don't want to lose money either . I

27:29

mean , anybody who's buying this type of product wants

27:31

to think that they're making a good investment .

27:33

Right . And the hope is that over time those collectibles

27:36

will grow in value .

27:37

This is the best analogy I can use and

27:39

I truly believe this . Traditional

27:42

numismatics is like investing

27:45

in traditional stocks . Modern

27:47

collectibles is like crypto . Okay

27:50

, there's much , much bigger

27:52

swings , much more volatility , but

27:54

you can also , you know , hit home

27:56

runs much quicker or

27:58

potentially buy a dud much more easily

28:00

. Right , I was just going to say there's a lot of those , absolutely

28:03

so , and I

28:05

could go into a million examples . But literally

28:07

in a given month , there could be three , four , five coins

28:09

that are so hot right

28:12

out of the mint press the day they're made that

28:14

they're overallocated . Right , meaning the

28:16

mint gets way more demand than the amount

28:18

of mintage there is . Right , they

28:20

, at that point , obviously they cut back

28:23

the orders from distributors like myself who were saying , hey

28:25

, I need 500 , and they're saying , well , I can't give you 500

28:27

. I can give you 300 . I can give you 250 because we

28:29

got so much demand . Right , we get

28:31

those . We have more

28:34

demand from our dealer base than what we can fill . So

28:36

you guys get allocated and it

28:38

kind of trickles downstream that way . But the

28:40

interesting thing is some of that product sells

28:43

for two , four , five , six

28:45

times the retail

28:47

within one to three

28:49

months , like that crazy of a spike

28:51

and it's not a fake number where you can't liquidate

28:53

it . You can easily liquidate it

28:55

at those prices , either as a dealer

28:57

who has one in stock or as a customer who

28:59

bought one , you know , either

29:02

by , you know , just going back to your dealer

29:04

or going , you know , putting it on eBay or doing whatever

29:06

. The money is real and

29:09

what I like about that , like I said , it's almost

29:11

like it is a very crypto analogy there , right

29:13

, where there's a lot of very

29:15

, you know , spiky things . If

29:17

you get good at picking the right things as

29:20

a retail buyer , you can

29:22

do something you can't do in regular numismatics

29:24

. This is not to put down regular numismatics . Regular

29:27

numismatics have held value for you know

29:30

, hundreds of years . But even before

29:32

the US existed , there was coin collectors in , you

29:34

know , europe and Asia that were buying in the Middle and Middle Ages , I mean

29:36

it's the Javier Kings .

29:37

Yeah , ancient coins whatever .

29:40

So that is a tried and true

29:42

way to put your money in something that's

29:44

going to maintain or increase in value over time

29:46

. But it's more like the stock market . It's a slower crawl

29:49

right and with the

29:51

modern collectible , if the right thing resonates

29:53

with a certain customer base , it all has a very limited

29:55

minting . It all has a very limited mintage , you

29:57

know , unlike a Morgan where you

29:59

know they okay . So

30:01

what I was going to say is you know you buy a

30:04

nice , rare Morgan , certain grade , something you're

30:06

looking for . That's a great , you

30:09

know way to hold value . And of course you know

30:11

you're assuming that 10 , 20 , 30

30:13

years down the road that's going to have increased in

30:15

value . And if you look back they almost

30:17

always do right . You got to go back at any

30:19

old numismatic coin , far enough , and you see

30:21

the auction records and you see a steady increase

30:23

, other than some , you know , downmarket blips , but

30:26

over the long term it's usually a very safe investment Coins

30:28

themselves also have cycles right .

30:30

So as that inventory is accessible , you

30:32

do have a supply and demand aspect to it . Generally

30:34

, over time , they perform .

30:36

But if you can get good at picking the right

30:38

modern numismatic piece , the

30:41

returns are crazy and again

30:43

it's more of a wild west than modern

30:46

I mean , than old numismatics is . But

30:49

you're basically constrained

30:51

by these limited mintages . That's what drives the whole thing . What

30:54

I was going to say about a mortgage is they

30:56

were made in the millions . Now obviously things

30:58

have been , you know , melted over time

31:00

and there's different conditional factors and all these other things

31:03

. But a new modern

31:05

collectible and this is something I

31:07

know that your brother , tj

31:09

, had mentioned something about a

31:11

floating coin he had asked me about it before

31:14

we got on the air , and the reason

31:16

I'm bringing that up is that's a perfect example of this . There's

31:19

a coin that was made by the Mint of Poland

31:21

very recently and it's a

31:23

UFO . But the UFO

31:26

actually floats . It actually hovers with nothing

31:28

under it , because they built magnets into it and

31:31

the box . They built the opposite magnets

31:33

into it and if you put it over the box it floats

31:35

.

31:35

So the coin is essentially levitating .

31:37

The coin levitates and it's seven ounces of silver

31:39

. It's big and they

31:41

had it on display at the Berlin show in February

31:43

and everybody went crazy over it . But the mintage

31:46

of that piece I want to say was

31:48

500 . I mean , it's very , very limited . Now

31:50

it's expensive because it's seven ounces , you know .

31:53

And that's a very unique manufacturing , very

31:55

unique . The base , the housing , everything else , yeah , and it's a three-dimensional

31:57

object too .

31:58

I mean it's flat on the bottom where they could stamp

32:00

the effigy and so on , but it's still

32:03

a pretty three-dimensional object . So

32:05

what's interesting is , of course , they got flooded

32:08

with orders after the Berlin trade show and

32:10

to the point where it 10 times

32:12

the mintage was requested . And

32:15

you know , I remember our wholesale

32:18

pricing was somewhere around $725

32:21

, I want to say , was the cost we were charging

32:23

dealers . Now , what the dealers were

32:25

selling it for I don't Like . Originally

32:27

, before it got extremely hot , I don't

32:29

know what . I'm assuming , a normal margin markup , you

32:31

know , somewhere between $900 and $1,000

32:34

, was probably the retail . If you try to

32:36

find one of those now and they haven't even , by the way , they haven't even

32:38

come out yet , like they haven't even shipped to

32:40

the US yet . This was just a presale

32:43

the prices

32:45

are already 50%

32:47

over what that retail cost was and

32:49

by the time they're live , that's when you see the real spike . Right

32:52

when the product hits the

32:54

stores and it's already all accounted for

32:56

, it's not like most of your dealers aren't going

32:58

to have any for sale because they've already pre-sold the

33:00

product . So now the demand is this

33:03

high but the supply is super

33:05

low and you're going to see people

33:07

probably paying $2,025

33:10

to get one of these , if they can find one , right

33:12

? Because out of the 500 , how many made it out

33:14

of Europe ? How many were

33:16

shipped to Asia , australia , different

33:19

, different ? Coin collecting is big everywhere . So

33:22

, out of the 200 , out of the 500 , how many came

33:24

to the US ? Half

33:26

, if we're lucky .

33:27

And then how many are actually available for ?

33:28

sale and how many will be available for sale once

33:31

they're finally shipped here . And one

33:33

of the biggest guesses if the US got 250 of 500

33:35

, which is again being generous 10%

33:39

of those might still be available like uncommitted

33:41

sales Right by the time it hits

33:43

. You know your shelves , there's

33:45

just none . So those people can ask

33:47

the moon for it because and it's

33:49

there it's a legitimate supply

33:52

and demand discrepancy . And

33:54

if you can get good at kind of figuring that

33:56

out as a retail consumer , if

33:58

you have a dealer that's offering you steadily

34:00

a stream of products and you can figure

34:03

out to some extent and again , they're not all

34:05

going to be things that are worth 10 times in a week , of

34:07

course , but there are some

34:09

that are , you know , worth 50% more

34:11

in a month or two , or 100% more in three

34:13

months , and

34:15

you can avoid some of the opposites things

34:18

, which is always the goal , right , you

34:21

can actually have a really good time playing

34:23

in that arena and buying

34:25

stuff you actually like . It's not just

34:27

like , you know , if you're into sci-fi , what's

34:30

cooler than a floating UFO coin ? Right , absolutely

34:32

. And if you can turn that around

34:34

and double your money in a short period of time on top

34:36

of that all so much the better . Or

34:39

if you were able to get it in the initial offering at the

34:41

normal retail and you put it away

34:44

as a collector yourself . How

34:46

good does it feel to know that that

34:48

piece has already appreciated that much in value

34:50

and you're not waiting 20 years

34:52

to see that ? You know in your

34:54

bottom line , you know . So

34:56

it is interesting . But I will say this too Obviously

34:59

we have to talk about the downsides , the potential

35:01

pitfalls , the dud coin

35:03

that doesn't go up but goes

35:05

down . But the one thing that

35:07

is helpful is you're never going

35:09

to see the same level

35:11

of down as you would see up . So

35:14

if there's a coin and I'll give you another good example

35:16

, germanium mint people are familiar

35:18

with Germanium mint okay , they came out with a new

35:20

product line maybe two months ago

35:22

of these colorized cast bars . They're

35:25

not coins , they're just silver bars Beautiful

35:27

artwork , well packaged

35:29

, but a very basic thing at the end of the

35:31

day . And the first one they did

35:33

is a series called Goddesses and the

35:35

first one was Freya , and the

35:38

mintage was $1,000 . And they sold them

35:40

at a very reasonable price , I think . Like

35:42

I said , I don't remember what they charged us , but our wholesale

35:45

was in the high 80s . The

35:47

retail was probably $110,000

35:49

, something like that when

35:51

it first came out . But

35:54

boy did people go crazy for this thing . The reasons

35:56

, yeah .

35:57

I mean , that went right into allocation , didn't it ?

35:59

Oh , it went to allocation absolutely , so we got

36:01

orders . We alone got orders for almost $500

36:04

, the whole mintage is only $1,000 . So

36:07

, like , needless to say , we were going to get $500 , I mean it's

36:09

not going to happen . But

36:11

what was interesting about that is when they finally

36:13

were live . You could jump on

36:15

any secondary market , whether it's you know , obviously

36:18

eBay's the big one . But look at , you know just

36:20

secondary markets , like whatnot , or you know

36:22

wherever , where people are selling new products , very

36:25

consistently selling at $400 . That's not

36:28

. You can look that up . You can go on eBay today . I

36:30

encourage anybody to do it . Look , hey , did

36:32

you hear that ?

36:33

Yep Freya $400 . Oh yeah , let's

36:35

throw it on whatnot tomorrow Completed sales completed

36:38

sales right , just boom , boom , boom boom .

36:39

I believe it and they are legitimate people

36:42

jumping on this . At that price . It's four times the value

36:44

right Now . The flip side of that what if you

36:46

buy something that's not desirable , that doesn't

36:48

click with people , right , and the

36:50

supply and demand goes in the opposite direction . Where they

36:52

? It's a 3,000 mintage and not that many people

36:54

want it and you got one . Okay , you're

36:57

never going to see the same level of downturn . You're

37:00

not going to see a $100 coin selling for $25

37:02

. Right , okay , which is the inverse

37:04

of the four times right , so it's not going to sell for a quarter

37:06

of what you paid for it . So

37:09

the highest highs are higher than the

37:11

lowest lows . Is all I'm saying . But

37:14

you can still make mistakes . You can still buy

37:16

stuff that , unfortunately , is

37:18

going to decrease relatively quickly . However

37:21

, the good news is , you're still able to buy

37:23

stuff you like . If you buy a product

37:25

as an investment and you don't care about it and

37:28

it goes down in value , that's almost a double stinger

37:30

in a lot of ways . Yeah , because

37:33

now you got something that's just a brick that you don't care about and it's worth

37:35

less than you paid for it , at least if you're buying

37:37

something that has a appeal

37:39

to you personally . In some way you're

37:41

more willing to ride out the low . You

37:44

can say you know what I love Star Wars , maybe

37:46

. For whatever reason this coin , I bought it . It's

37:48

got Darth Vader on it . It didn't resonate and I paid $100

37:50

, but the market's $75 now that's what

37:52

people are paying for it . Sure

37:55

, you still like having it .

37:56

Right , and you can hold it longer . That softens the blow

37:58

. It softens the blow and you just hold on to it because you like

38:00

the piece .

38:01

Yes , and

38:03

just like traditional numismatics , if you ride it out

38:05

long enough , the market comes back . The market will shift

38:07

, because what has to happen is all

38:09

the supply that was manufactured

38:11

whether it's a supply and demand discrepancy has to get

38:13

soaked up Right , and

38:15

it takes time for that to happen on a piece that's not red , hot right . But

38:18

once it happens , if you fast forward a year or two

38:20

years down the road and you go back and try to find one

38:22

of those coins , well , now they're all in the hands of collectors

38:24

and they've been put away , so there's not a huge

38:26

supply , and you'll

38:29

see that that retail price will creep back

38:31

up and usually exceed

38:33

what the original retail was . I

38:36

run this test all the time . I have my employees

38:38

. We always tell them like you

38:41

want to check market trends , you want to see what's going on . I

38:43

said , when we get an old coin and something from 2020

38:46

or earlier , stuck in four years or older

38:49

, I want you to look up what

38:51

it's selling for now

38:53

. If you can find one sometimes they're very

38:56

difficult to find because there may only be a handful out there

38:58

they go on eBay and they go

39:00

. I got this 2019 Marvel

39:03

Venom coin . Whatever it is who knows

39:06

making stuff up . And

39:08

oh , there's only two guys on eBay that have them and they're selling

39:10

them for $125 . It seems reasonable enough

39:12

for a one ounce silver . That's tough to find , right ? But

39:15

what was the original retail on that coin five years ago ? It

39:18

was certainly lower than $125 . Right . So

39:21

it's really a matter of if

39:24

you make a mistake on something that you like

39:26

it is , it softens the blow , and now you're

39:28

just treating it almost like the modern numismatic

39:30

where you're going to play the longer game

39:32

of investment .

39:34

I mean I was going to say I know many dealers that

39:36

actually take that strategy where they'll

39:38

buy a large quantity upfront , whether it's a

39:40

dud or not , because they know that if

39:42

they hang onto that product for that 18 to 24

39:45

months that it's going to come back on the other

39:47

end and again after that's been kind

39:49

of absorbed and the accessibility

39:52

of that material isn't there , they

39:54

can strike it in that value back out A thousand

39:56

percent .

39:57

I see it a lot and it's actually some of the best

39:59

stuff we get is when one of those guys

40:01

that held a couple cases of product back it's

40:04

two years later and he wants to now distribute that

40:06

product and he comes to us to do that . Our

40:09

customers love that stuff . Old stuff is

40:11

new again . You know what I mean . It's like they

40:13

haven't seen this coin in two years , if

40:15

they ever saw it at all , because who knows what they were doing two

40:17

years ago . And a

40:20

lot of times that stuff has more demand than

40:22

a brand new thing that came out yesterday . We

40:24

see it constantly and I

40:26

love that when that happens , I

40:29

think it proves

40:31

the validity of the

40:33

wedge of the new hemisphere that I'm in

40:35

. It's like we don't

40:37

have a 200 year track record with

40:39

this type of product . I mean you

40:41

could say that US

40:43

mint commemoratives technically kind of

40:45

fit into that arena and

40:48

they were making US mint commemoratives in the 20s and

40:50

30s , right , and they were not designed for circulation

40:52

and

40:55

so they were collectibles and they were modern when

40:57

they were issued and

40:59

of course those have stood the test of time . But

41:01

that's the idea on just a massive

41:04

scale , with new technologies being

41:06

instituted all the time , things

41:08

to dress them up and make them something

41:12

you haven't seen before , instead of just another

41:14

stamp piece of silver which , listen , if it's

41:16

the right design , it's still awesome We've been

41:18

having licensed products issued .

41:20

I mean 2000s , 90s

41:22

, disney's doing it back in the 80s . So , that

41:25

type of stuff's been around , but the

41:27

way in which they can do it today is

41:29

just unseen .

41:31

So something I would say and this is

41:33

an example I use all the time Last

41:37

year , new Zealand Mint produced

41:39

a Star Wars kilo for the anniversary

41:42

of whatever movie

41:44

was hitting its 40th anniversary . Like I can keep track right

41:46

Empire Strikes Back , or New

41:48

Hope , or whatever one it was , and

41:50

it was . So it was a 2023

41:53

dated . So what came out in 83 ? Return of the Jedi , sure

41:56

, so maybe it was Return of the .

41:57

Jedi .

41:57

We'll go with that . So big kilo

42:00

, colorized , gorgeous , obviously

42:02

very expensive , and the mintage

42:04

was $299 or $199

42:07

. It was a very , very limited piece , hard to get and

42:09

everybody was going crazy over it . So we've never seen

42:12

a colorized Star Wars kilo

42:14

with the super low mintage . Like what a cool , cool

42:16

thing it was . It was tremendous piece , thank

42:19

you . But what they didn't realize

42:21

is it had been done before it

42:24

was done . In 2012 by the

42:26

same mint , they made a colorized

42:28

Star Wars kilo for a different movie . Maybe

42:30

that one was the one for Empire Strikes Back or a different

42:32

one , whatever but that piece was

42:34

11 years old and if you tried

42:36

to find one , good luck . The

42:39

only record I could find of one was

42:42

a graded 69 that

42:45

somebody had sold in I think it was a heritage

42:47

auction , like in 2015 or something

42:49

. So

42:52

it's interesting how fast stuff

42:54

falls out of the public

42:56

zeitgeist , if you will right

42:58

, like it doesn't take long

43:00

, because so much new stuff comes on the market all the

43:02

time for us to kind of forget the

43:04

things that we sold two , three , four , 10

43:07

years ago . And that

43:09

kilo , if it came up for sale the 2012

43:12

one , if that came up for sale now

43:14

in any place , I would take $5,000

43:17

out of my wallet because I'm never gonna see one . And

43:19

that comes back to that supply and demand . If you're

43:21

a Star Wars collector and you've

43:24

got this amazing collector that you started putting together

43:26

five and six years ago , you

43:28

probably never saw that piece . And now

43:30

one comes on the auction block . Oh , you're gonna have a lot

43:32

of people jumping on it and it's gonna sell for three times

43:34

what that one that came out last year sells for because

43:37

it's so rare . But mintage-wise

43:39

it's not any rarer , it's just rarer

43:41

to find in the market . And I think that's the

43:43

other thing that people don't understand the difference between

43:45

rarity and scarcity . They

43:47

think they're synonymous and they're

43:49

not . Rarity is how many are produced

43:52

, Scarcity is how many are available , and

43:54

a lot of times the hottest things

43:56

are always scarce , even if the mintages

43:58

are a hair higher , because no one ever lets them go , no

44:01

one ever pulls them out of their safe and puts them up for

44:03

sale . So it because

44:05

they're so desirable . That's

44:08

the stuff that you know . I'd rather have a scarce

44:10

piece than a rare piece , I think .

44:13

We see that not just on more artistic

44:15

and licensed pieces but mints will

44:17

do exclusive privies for specific

44:19

regions .

44:20

Absolutely .

44:21

And that stuff really doesn't leave that market

44:23

and come stateside or go to Europe or

44:25

become available to others .

44:27

Awesome example . Perth

44:29

is actually notorious for this . They

44:31

make versions of their

44:33

coins for coin

44:36

shows , specific shows that are in Australia

44:38

only . So there's a , you

44:41

know , we have obviously the fun show here

44:43

, and the ANA is a big show here in the United States

44:45

. Well , in Australia it's

44:47

called the ANDA . That's their ANA

44:49

show and they do one . It's

44:52

four times a year , it's quarterly , and they hold them

44:54

in the big cities . So there's a Perth one , a Melbourne

44:56

one , a Sydney one and a Brisbane one

44:58

.

44:58

This is usually the Cucabura that they do different

45:00

varieties and so they make .

45:02

they take the regular Cucabura and they'll either

45:05

do a colorized version or a privy mark

45:07

version that comes in a nice card from

45:09

that show . It's the Perth ANDA show

45:12

, cucabura , and the mintage of that

45:14

is usually one to 2000 and most of them

45:16

never leave Australia . So as a

45:18

collector if you're into the Cucabura

45:20

line , that's like a really rare bird

45:23

to get . No

45:25

pun intended , it was intended actually , but

45:27

you know , and they

45:29

do , that there's even an even more obscure show

45:31

in Australia called the Perth

45:33

Stampin' Coin Show . Actually

45:36

, yeah , I mean , we don't even see hardly any

45:38

stamp shows here anymore , right , very few , but

45:40

over there I guess it's still a thing . And they do a colorized

45:43

koala for the Perth Stampin' Coin

45:45

Show . And boy

45:47

are those hard to find , I'll tell ya . And they're not

45:49

expensive . They're one ounce colorized

45:51

coins in a nice card . But to get them here

45:53

, that's where that scarcity is Like . If they

45:55

make 2000 , I would guess 15

45:58

, 1600 never leave Australia .

46:00

So I think the only ones I really saw come

46:02

to the US market in any volume were

46:04

the COVID year , where the shows were canceled .

46:06

Bingo , bingo , and you know what helped that

46:08

. So , yes , the COVID year they made them , they

46:11

had them ready to go . Covid canceled all the shows

46:13

, so a lot of them . The

46:15

point is to sell them at the show . It's a draw

46:18

for the collector who goes

46:20

to those shows . They can pick up a unique . It's

46:22

the only place to get them Exactly . But

46:24

the shows were canceled , so now they're sitting on the stock

46:26

of these and Perth

46:29

made them available to their distributors . And

46:31

what was really cool and what helped sell

46:33

them even more is NGC got involved

46:35

and NGC was

46:38

willing to grade them with

46:40

a emergency COVID designation

46:43

on the label , which changed

46:45

the game from a collector's perspective . Cause this is the thing

46:47

about what I was saying , where we forget

46:50

the things from just a few years

46:52

ago sometimes because there's so much new stuff all the time . Well

46:55

, how do we capture that moment so

46:57

that we don't forget it ? Right and

46:59

now , when you go back , and if you were a customer

47:01

who bought one at that time and it's a 2020

47:03

, right and it's 2020 , kukabara

47:05

, covid , emergency

47:08

cancellation of the Perth show and it's on the

47:10

label , that's gonna be on there forever

47:12

, 20 years from now , they're gonna know the

47:14

reason that this coin exists in its

47:16

form that it's in is because of a very special

47:18

event that I shouldn't say special . I mean , covid

47:20

was awful , obviously , but

47:22

a very unique set of circumstances that led

47:24

to it in its form . It

47:27

adds such an additional premium

47:29

over the previous years , like

47:32

if you could buy a 20 , you know , 20

47:34

, 2015 , a&a

47:37

Kukabara and a slab and a 70

47:39

, and yeah , you're gonna pay a decent amount

47:41

for it . But those COVID emergency labels

47:43

were just so hot .

47:44

I think I still have the set of four

47:47

yeah it's a set of four .

47:47

Yeah , it's a set of four .

47:48

I have that tucked back somewhere .

47:50

Now this year God bless them

47:52

they're still doing the privy Mark

47:54

Kukes , but they're also because it's the Year

47:56

of the Dragon 2024 . That

47:58

is , I mean Perth's , known for Lunars , right , everyone

48:00

knows they make the Lunar series , the Ron series

48:02

three . It's always a popular thing , but the Dragon

48:05

is the most popular and so

48:07

they go all out in Year of the Dragon and

48:09

so they are also doing colorized

48:11

A&DA show

48:14

dragons . Oh cool . And

48:16

what's even crazier about that is normally

48:19

what they do is they take the base design

48:21

for that year and they

48:23

colorize it or put a privy on it just for that show

48:26

. For the dragons they're actually

48:28

doing a different design for

48:30

each show , so they're actually minting

48:32

totally different coins for each

48:34

A&DA show and colorizing them All

48:37

dragon motifs .

48:38

They'll still distribute them in the card as well .

48:40

They still come in the card and

48:43

the Perth one was yellow . It was

48:45

a yellow dragon . The next show was a blue

48:48

dragon . There's gonna be a purple and , I believe , a pink

48:50

. Those haven't come

48:52

out yet . The yellow one came out but the other ones haven't

48:54

come out yet . And they

48:56

also did do a carded version of

48:58

the standard bullion dragon colorized

49:01

. But it was not for a particular

49:03

show , it was just as a way to kind of have a completion

49:06

piece because they were doing actual

49:08

different die strikes for these different

49:10

shows which they've never done before . That's like unheard

49:12

of Because obviously there's a lot of cost that goes into

49:14

doing different dies , different

49:16

designs , artists , all those different things

49:18

. So to only make a thousand or 2,000

49:20

of a coin for them is kind of like . But

49:23

for the year of the dragon they wanted to do something special

49:25

. I mean , the dragon's been hot everywhere

49:28

.

49:29

I think at the beginning of the year Canada

49:31

did that red carded release

49:33

with the dragon on it . We

49:35

got a small batch in and I think we were one of the first

49:38

out online instantly gone .

49:41

These are the examples that we want people to know

49:43

about , because if you see

49:45

something that really appeals to you and you start

49:48

to get into the hobby of modern collectible

49:50

coins , you can pretty quickly

49:52

figure out these things are

49:54

the right things to buy . And

49:56

it doesn't have to be the only thing you

49:59

buy . It can be in addition to

50:01

the type of collecting you're already doing . If

50:04

you're a traditional numismatic collector , if you're somebody

50:06

who buys bullion as a hedge

50:08

against inflation or somebody who wants to just , you

50:11

know , speculate on metals markets or whatever

50:13

the case might be , this could be a

50:15

great add-on to what you're

50:17

already doing . Because it's a very different

50:19

market . They're not tied together . Silver

50:22

goes down . Your collectible doesn't go down . If

50:24

silver goes from 25 to 20 , your UFO

50:27

that floats hasn't changed in value , right

50:29

, you know , if anything , it may have gone up depending on demand

50:32

. So they're very separate markets and

50:34

we all know you want to

50:36

diversify you know in any investment

50:39

line and I think those

50:41

are three ways to diversify . If you buy traditional

50:44

, you know old numismatics

50:47

with history , with track record , that's

50:49

a different market than metals . Buying

50:52

metals is obviously a different market . And then

50:54

you have the modern collectible coin , which is different

50:57

in its own way . It's never gonna- .

50:59

I think it's kind of a melding of all of those

51:01

right . So generally a numismatic collector

51:04

is getting into a specific kind of because they appreciate

51:06

it , they like the history , the story . I

51:08

would say the majority aren't at investment

51:10

level numismatics right , yes . So

51:12

you take that aspect of I really appreciate

51:15

this piece and you pair it with the fact

51:17

that it's still a commodity and you have a tangible

51:19

asset with it . Is that's

51:21

that bridge of how that

51:23

bullion collector and stacker becomes

51:26

numismatic collector or

51:28

collecting coins in some form ?

51:31

Well , and I also think the other bridge

51:33

is you know what makes

51:35

the old world coins the most valuable

51:37

? What's the single thing ? It's condition . Absolutely

51:39

Conditional rarity

51:42

trumps general

51:44

rarity in a lot of ways . Like you could have

51:47

a common date Morgan in

51:50

what we would call , you know , unk

51:52

loose , not great , it's just Unks

51:54

and there's kind of a

51:56

set by price out there . Everyone knows what those are

51:58

worth , right ? And but

52:01

if you have that same common date

52:03

Morgan in an MS67 holder , it's

52:06

a different game , totally different game . I mean , you're

52:08

talking 10 to 100 times the

52:10

value , depending on the date and everything that goes into it

52:12

, and so there's conditional

52:14

rarity there . In modern

52:17

collectibles they flip it around . Obviously there's

52:19

no conditional rarity because the stuff was all

52:21

made yesterday I mean it's they should all be coming out of their

52:23

quality . They should all be . Yeah , you know you can send

52:25

a batch of any new , as

52:28

long as it'll fit a slab , which you know a floating

52:30

UFO won't . But you know , I don't know

52:32

interesting might come up .

52:33

They figure out a way to do it .

52:34

If they can , if they can trust me , they'll

52:36

call it . You know a fancy mega magnetic

52:38

slab or something you know . But

52:40

if you can get it in a slab and it's modern

52:43

and you send out a batch , you're

52:45

always gonna get 69s and 70s and it should be

52:47

predominantly 70s . If it's a good mint that

52:49

can strike well . So

52:51

there's no conditional scarcity from that perspective

52:53

, but there's mintage rarity

52:56

which you don't see on the old world

52:58

stuff . You know , again , morgans

53:00

were made in the millions and millions and millions , and I'm just picking

53:03

on Morgans because they're the most common collected coin . So

53:05

there it's . You know they made a lot of them , but

53:08

the condition can determine value because it's tough

53:10

to find them in good condition . On the modern collectible

53:12

side , the condition is always good but it's

53:14

tough to find them because there's just so many . Because there's

53:16

just so many . So that's where

53:18

the melding comes from . And if you put those two things

53:20

together in your collection , you've

53:22

hedged yourself on both sides . You know

53:24

you've got conditional rarity items that

53:29

you've created the supply and demand discrepancy

53:31

by having one that's tough to find in that condition

53:34

, and on the other side you've created it by having

53:36

something they just didn't make a heck of a lot of , but

53:38

it's popular . And then

53:40

you've got the bullion in the middle . Now that , now that

53:43

is , I always look at that

53:45

as a completely different animal , because I think the

53:48

reason that people buy physical

53:50

metals when we're

53:52

talking about generic is totally

53:55

different than why people buy world coins

53:57

, old US coins or

54:00

modern collectibles . It's

54:02

so much more logic

54:05

driven than emotionally driven . I

54:07

think we , as collectors , most

54:09

of it is emotional . It's , you know , there's something

54:11

that makes you feel connected to

54:13

a piece . It just doesn't just have to be coins

54:15

, it can be anything you collect . You can collect old comics

54:18

, old video games , sports cards , who knows . There's

54:20

something in your brain that makes you

54:23

connect to the item and

54:25

then the rational part

54:27

of your brain kicks it and says , well , if I'm gonna spend

54:29

$500 on a piece of cardboard

54:31

that has , you know , mickey Mantle's face on it . Is

54:34

that also me not throwing my money away ? Right

54:36

, because we all have a rational side

54:38

and an emotional side . So then

54:40

you look and you go oh yeah , the track record

54:43

on this piece is good . Five years ago it

54:45

was only worth $300 . It's worth 500 now . I

54:47

can see appreciation and it allows

54:49

your rational side , that allows your emotional

54:51

side , to make the purchase . And

54:53

I think for coins

54:55

on both ends , old or new , it's a very similar

54:57

thing . Something connects you to it . You

55:00

need to have a part of you

55:02

that understands that you're not just throwing your money

55:04

away . You're not buying a beanie

55:06

baby for $300 . It'll be worth 10 cents

55:08

tomorrow , right , and there's enough track

55:10

record and enough data

55:12

points that you can easily access that show

55:14

you . Yeah , though , this does make sense , and

55:17

I think that's the disparity with

55:20

the bullion collector I shouldn't even call it collector the

55:22

stacker , the guy who is speculating

55:25

on the metals markets . That's a . He's just

55:27

doing the logical side . He's just doing the rational

55:29

side . He's saying this is a good time to buy

55:31

this metal . I wanna have it . Could

55:33

be a variety of reasons , from prepping

55:35

for the end of the world to . You know

55:37

I'm a flipper and I'm gonna buy it at 24

55:40

and sell it at 29 . You know there's a whole

55:42

different slew of reasons you might do it , but it's

55:44

truly just about investment

55:46

. You don't have to have a personal collection

55:48

to the piece , right ? What's your personal

55:50

collection to a Scottsdale 100

55:52

ounce bar ? I mean it's ? Does it have 8

55:54

million of them ? And it doesn't matter , right ? It's just metal , it's

55:57

just metal . But

55:59

that person over time , depending

56:03

on the reason they're doing it . You know , like I said , if

56:05

you're prepping for something it's a little different , right , you

56:07

need that to be something that's

56:10

usable and that is you

56:12

could buy at the lowest premium , right . But

56:14

if you're doing it more on the investment side

56:16

, that's where I pitch the diversity . I think it's just

56:19

like anything else . You know , I don't want all my money

56:21

in stocks , I don't want all my money in real estate , I

56:23

don't want all my money in metals , but I'd like to have some money in

56:25

all of it , because if one

56:27

goes down , I'm likely insulated

56:29

and if you microcosm

56:32

that to the metals , just what we do

56:34

. Coins in general , there's those

56:36

wedges of the new hemisphere there's . You know , I could

56:39

buy old coins that

56:41

I appreciate , for whatever reason , I

56:43

can buy new modern coins that I appreciate

56:45

, for whatever reason , I can buy physical

56:47

metals that I'm speculating

56:50

on . And now I've got a lot of diversity

56:52

to where , if one market isn't working

56:54

, the other ones are probably insulating

56:56

me against that downturn , right , and

56:59

I don't know that people look at it that way , necessarily

57:02

. But I think they should start to look at it that way , because

57:05

I'm not just here to pitch people

57:07

on like the stuff we distribute , for I think

57:09

you should have it all . I think you should

57:11

have that whole range of products .

57:13

And you could include things , and not just in our industry , but

57:15

, like you're saying , not just in our industry .

57:16

Get out there , get your stocks , get your real

57:19

estate art , diversify it and

57:22

you look at you

57:25

know the other little

57:27

niche parts of our industry . You know paper currency

57:29

, exanumia

57:31

, metals , tokens , things like that . You know

57:33

all of those things have their place and generally

57:37

if you're a collector there's gonna be some

57:39

part of each of those that you connect with

57:41

for whatever reason . And

57:43

I mean personally for me I love metals . I

57:45

really , really really do . You know , I grew up

57:47

kind of collecting a lot of world stuff and

57:50

the art that was on the bronze

57:53

metals , you know in the 17 and 1800s

57:55

is phenomenal . We're talking , you

57:57

know , modern collectibles . You see high relief and people go crazy

58:00

, right .

58:01

They were all high relief .

58:02

I mean , that was what the whole thing was . They just weren't coins

58:04

, they weren't legal tender pieces of money

58:06

, but the ability

58:08

. I mean even look at some of the US stuff , the Colombian

58:10

expo , stuff from 1893

58:13

, that's big bronzes

58:15

that are just beautiful , beautiful pieces , art

58:17

Deco stuff . You know you go way back , you

58:19

know 1700s , with

58:22

France and Germany and the different metal

58:24

makers . I happen to really love that

58:26

stuff . If that's something that connects with you , it's no

58:28

different than any other market . You can . You

58:30

know , look at the appreciation over time

58:32

. You can find things that connect

58:34

to you that if

58:37

you buy them now you should be , you know , 10

58:39

, 20 , 30 years down the line . You're a state , your

58:41

children , whoever ends up with that product , is

58:43

gonna be in a better place . But you still

58:45

got to own something that connected to you in some

58:47

way and that's just that

58:49

whole diversity and the metal . You know paper

58:52

money markets don't run congruent

58:55

with old world . US markets Totally

58:58

we've seen the paper market spike at times

59:00

when US coins were stagnating .

59:02

Yeah , so we're just coming off another

59:04

one of those spikes . It's softening a little bit right

59:06

now , but it was huge the last couple of years .

59:08

Yeah , so it's just having a piece of all

59:10

those different things is , in

59:13

my mind , the best way to go about collecting

59:15

, you know , because collecting

59:17

should be personal , but you should

59:19

be able to find things in each of those arenas that connects

59:21

to you .

59:22

And still holds value .

59:23

And still holds value .

59:24

Yeah , absolutely Absolutely . So All

59:27

right , so took a little

59:29

break there .

59:29

Yes , yes , Well listen , we've been doing it a while

59:31

.

59:32

Yeah , we're pushing an hour here . It's great

59:34

, it's a great conversation .

59:35

I'm a notorious , you know .

59:38

But it's always much appreciated because you do have

59:40

a great deal of insight , experience

59:42

, and it's always a great conversation with you

59:44

.

59:44

Thank you , same goes for you . I know we've

59:46

had some times at your house

59:49

that went to the wee

59:51

hours . Bottle there

59:53

too deep .

59:53

Yeah .

59:54

Well , that's the secret . See , you know , I

59:56

am known for being a bit of a talker , there's no doubt about

59:58

it . In fact , my name is Hawes , and when I

1:00:00

was a kid , everyone called me Jaws because

1:00:03

I was always flapping my mouth . But that might

1:00:05

have to stick now . Jabber , jaws , hawes

1:00:07

I'm not gonna lie to you , that was a childhood nickname

1:00:09

and it

1:00:12

has stuck because I'm still saying it now . But

1:00:14

that's

1:00:16

your secret . Get me going . It's

1:00:18

like , oh , you know he likes to talk , but let's

1:00:20

lube him up a little , but

1:00:22

no , I get it .

1:00:23

It's a job done .

1:00:24

It's always a blast , and not only you

1:00:26

know I enjoy your company . We have a great

1:00:28

group of guys that you know

1:00:30

in the community here in the . New England area

1:00:32

. You know , we go to the shows and we

1:00:35

, you know , socialize

1:00:37

and it's more . It's work . But it's not just

1:00:39

work . Well , I think it's more of a community .

1:00:41

It's a community . We're all out to make money , hopefully

1:00:43

support each other and do it

1:00:46

in a respectful and more of a

1:00:48

almost like a brotherhood type way , with

1:00:50

a mutual respect .

1:00:51

If you think you can make it in

1:00:53

this business alone , you

1:00:56

will not .

1:00:57

No , you will quickly be pushed out .

1:00:59

It's a relationship , business , not

1:01:01

just with your competitors , with your suppliers

1:01:03

, with your customers . Like you have

1:01:06

to and it's not about being Mr

1:01:08

Social , Mr Friendly , it's just you

1:01:10

have to be the type of person people

1:01:12

will want to work with . And

1:01:14

that's kind of where we come from

1:01:16

. I mean , the running gag is

1:01:18

that , like , we have 120

1:01:21

odd dealers in North America that we sell

1:01:23

to . Well , a lot of them are competitors . A

1:01:25

lot of them are going head to head all the

1:01:27

time , you know , and Quite often , Quite

1:01:30

often and the question that I always

1:01:32

get is how do you manage that

1:01:34

? And it's like we will work

1:01:36

with anybody . You know my job is not

1:01:38

to get in between businesses

1:01:40

that are competing in a healthy business

1:01:42

way . My job is to distribute

1:01:45

products to anybody that needs them . So

1:01:47

we're kind of like separate

1:01:50

ourselves outside the sphere . Somebody's like well

1:01:52

, you're a deal , I'm not a dealer , we don't

1:01:54

sell retail , we don't deal with the public . We're just a

1:01:56

distributor , yeah , just a wholesale distributor . So

1:01:58

we can kind of like just

1:02:01

step back from that a

1:02:03

little bit and say you know , yeah , these

1:02:05

guys all are competing for

1:02:07

parts of the market , competing with each other , but

1:02:10

we're gonna supply all of them Because- .

1:02:11

And you're doing it at the same price point .

1:02:13

Oh yeah , so there's no bias , there , right

1:02:15

? No , no , no , not at all . You get what you get .

1:02:17

Here's the price . You guys do what you want on the other end .

1:02:19

You know what ? I'm sure some of my biggest customers are gonna

1:02:21

watch this and the first thing they're gonna do

1:02:23

is nod and go . Yeah , we've been complaining about that for

1:02:25

years Because , of course , listen

1:02:28

, your best customers always

1:02:30

want a deal and I don't blame them . They

1:02:33

deserve it in a lot of ways . We try to take

1:02:35

care of them in other ways . You

1:02:37

should see the Christmas gift package . They get it at the end of the year

1:02:39

. You know we always try to

1:02:42

make them know they're appreciated . But we do want everybody

1:02:44

on the same playing field , because the

1:02:47

market is so sensitive

1:02:49

and the margins

1:02:51

have to be in a certain place for

1:02:53

everybody to make money . It

1:02:55

doesn't take much to throw the balance off . It doesn't

1:02:58

take much .

1:02:59

Well , that's why you have to bring in the fairness you have

1:03:01

to you have to yeah , here we

1:03:03

are . That's it , that's the price , it's for everybody

1:03:05

.

1:03:06

People ask me how do things get allocated , like how do you decide

1:03:08

who gets what ? Right , and you

1:03:11

know , if you read any of our offers , there's

1:03:13

a throwaway line about . You know , if

1:03:17

the demand

1:03:19

outweighs the supply , the

1:03:22

allocations will be based on order size

1:03:24

, and that's

1:03:26

just . You know , that's a nice disclaimer . 90%

1:03:28

of the items don't get allocated . You know we're able to get

1:03:30

fill orders , no problem . But for

1:03:32

those hot items , the things we were talking

1:03:35

about , whether it's a UFO or a cast

1:03:37

bar from Germania or whatever it is how

1:03:40

do I decide who gets what ? Is it truly based

1:03:42

on order size ? And what does that even mean ? Right

1:03:45

? And maybe the retail

1:03:47

customer doesn't care . They just want to know if they can get the

1:03:49

thing . Sure , but it's

1:03:52

important because pre-sales are so predominant

1:03:55

in our industry . And as a retail

1:03:57

customer , you are often offered

1:04:00

coins well before the

1:04:02

coin is here , right , months in advance , months

1:04:04

in advance , and you're making a commitment to

1:04:06

your dealer of choice and

1:04:09

saying , yes , please , I want one of those , and

1:04:11

you want to know that that dealer is going to be able

1:04:13

to get that coin for you . So how do allocations

1:04:16

actually come to fruition ? How do they work

1:04:18

? And for us it's so

1:04:20

important to be impartial , because we

1:04:22

know that those customers need to have

1:04:25

faith in the system , because if they don't , they're

1:04:27

not going to order the next thing or the next

1:04:29

thing or the next thing . And is it just order

1:04:31

size ? No , but certainly that's a factor . Right it's

1:04:34

? If one guy needs 25

1:04:36

and another guy needs five . Well , when

1:04:38

the allocation rolls around , if everybody

1:04:40

is only going to get 60%

1:04:43

of what they ordered , the guy that ordered 25 might

1:04:45

get I don't know , my math skills are terrible

1:04:47

15 , I don't know what's 60% of 25 ?

1:04:49

Somewhere around there .

1:04:49

And the guy that ordered five will get three , and

1:04:52

that's a fair system . We got

1:04:54

60% of what we ordered , so everyone's going to get 60%

1:04:56

of what they ordered . But mathematically

1:04:59

that system only goes to a certain degree , because

1:05:01

what about all the people that only ordered one ? You

1:05:03

can't divide one , so

1:05:05

what do you ?

1:05:06

do , then I'm cutting up pieces for everybody . Yeah , so what

1:05:09

?

1:05:09

we basically do is we want

1:05:11

any dealer that orders one or

1:05:13

more to get at least get one . We

1:05:15

hate to say to somebody you aren't

1:05:17

getting any of this one , you got cut from the one

1:05:19

, from the one right . So generally if you

1:05:21

order one , you'll get at least one of

1:05:23

anything that it is . Now in two and a

1:05:26

half years there might be two or three things

1:05:28

that that was an exception to it . It was because we

1:05:31

drastically

1:05:33

underestimated what we would

1:05:36

get and I could think

1:05:38

of a particular coin that this happened to recently

1:05:40

. There was a Batman coin and it

1:05:42

was 300-minutes

1:05:44

. It was

1:05:46

nothing that blew my mind

1:05:48

so I didn't expect it to . I knew there

1:05:50

was a chance of allocation with a mintage that low , but

1:05:53

I didn't think it would be insane . Well

1:05:56

, we got a fair amount of orders . I want to say

1:05:58

40 to 50 . It was expensive . It was a three-ounce

1:06:00

coin . I want to say they

1:06:03

gave me four . Now

1:06:06

, when you have more than four customers that order

1:06:08

the coin , you

1:06:10

can't give everybody one . This is not possible

1:06:12

, right ? So that's the worst

1:06:15

email . They're right is just like hey , listen , they

1:06:18

gave me four coins .

1:06:19

But you guys have always done a great job about making

1:06:22

it clear on every piece you put out

1:06:24

that this might happen , Because

1:06:26

you don't know and you can't control what you receive

1:06:28

.

1:06:29

True , and the other thing we try to do is

1:06:31

we try to hunt around secondary

1:06:35

sources to fill orders . I would rather

1:06:37

fill an order for my customer at a very

1:06:39

minimal or even break-even

1:06:42

profit to

1:06:44

help them fulfill what they need

1:06:46

for their customers , because I know there are pre-sales involved

1:06:48

. And so this

1:06:50

happened recently . That yellow dragon I was talking

1:06:53

about for Perth , that was the first A&DA

1:06:55

show dragon that they put out this year . Perth

1:06:59

again very tough to get . A lot of Australia

1:07:01

, this 200 , I'm sorry , 2000 vintage

1:07:03

. They allocated us 150 , which

1:07:05

is a lot . I was very pleased with it , but we're also

1:07:07

one of the only wholesale Perth distributors in the

1:07:10

US . I will get it , we can get it

1:07:12

to that if you want , but very few

1:07:14

people offer Perth wholesale to

1:07:16

US dealers . So I

1:07:18

was thrilled to get the 150 , but we got orders

1:07:20

that far exceeded that . Well , what am

1:07:22

I gonna do ? Well , sometimes

1:07:25

there's nothing you can do , but sometimes there is . So there's a

1:07:28

company that we deal with in the Netherlands that

1:07:30

is a wholesaler as well , and

1:07:32

I reached out and said , hey , you can

1:07:35

get any of these yellow dragons . And they said , well , not a

1:07:37

lot , but we're getting some of them whatever . Well , I was able to

1:07:39

secure another 50 . Doesn't sound

1:07:41

like a lot , but boy , does that make a difference to the guy who

1:07:43

pre-sold those coins and just

1:07:45

needs two or three to fill those orders . And he doesn't wanna

1:07:47

tell his customer no , because every time

1:07:49

you tell a customer no , there's a chance they're not gonna come back , and

1:07:52

we don't want that because their customers are

1:07:54

our customers . We

1:07:56

only make sales . When you make sales , absolutely

1:07:58

, you stop selling . Who's buying

1:08:01

it from us ? We don't sell to the public , we don't have any

1:08:03

access , right ? So , whatever

1:08:05

we can do to help you grow and you believe me , I paid

1:08:07

a lot more for that batch of dragons from the Netherlands

1:08:09

and I did not change the price

1:08:12

to the dealers . I did not up it because I had to

1:08:14

pay more or somewhere else . It was just a matter of

1:08:16

we need to fill as many orders

1:08:18

as we can and

1:08:20

unfortunately , sometimes that's not as easy

1:08:22

as that . But sometimes you can do it . That's the risk

1:08:24

, right , that is the risk , yeah , but

1:08:26

we try to be fair with allocations . We try to be always

1:08:29

fair with pricing . You know we do , obviously

1:08:32

, like anybody else , we offer some bulk discounts

1:08:34

. You know , if you order a certain amount , you're gonna get a couple

1:08:36

dollars off . But that is public

1:08:38

. That is part of the offer . Everyone knows what

1:08:40

the terms are , everyone knows

1:08:42

what the expected turnaround times are , everyone knows

1:08:45

what the In

1:08:47

some cases and a bar go is

1:08:49

on a product or or things like that

1:08:51

nature . So If all the dealers

1:08:54

are on that playing field , then it's just hey , have

1:08:56

at it . And everyone's got different Venues

1:08:58

and and mediums in which they sell

1:09:00

. Like . So we've , we've seen

1:09:02

everything . We have everybody , from TV sales to brick

1:09:05

and mortar to shows , to e-commerce

1:09:07

, to Facebook . Live lives and

1:09:09

you know everything else , and I'm hearing about new mediums

1:09:11

every day that I didn't know existed . Right , you know , people

1:09:14

are telling me I'm selling stuff on drip

1:09:16

. I don't even know what drip is .

1:09:17

People are a new version of whatnot , oh , okay .

1:09:19

Yeah , people are telling me they're selling

1:09:21

on eBay lives . I said oh

1:09:24

, eBay is doing lives now .

1:09:25

I've been seeing tick-tock lives with

1:09:27

stuff that I know only came from you .

1:09:31

Okay .

1:09:32

I'm sure that's true .

1:09:34

I'm sure that's true , so

1:09:37

we certainly have dealers that use

1:09:39

, of course , every medium . Yeah

1:09:41

, I honestly don't know sometimes

1:09:43

where these guys sell what . I

1:09:46

am not super tech savvy .

1:09:48

I mean what sleeves your warehouse ? It is what it is .

1:09:50

It is what it is , but but we're on Facebook

1:09:52

, we're on Instagram but , like I don't know

1:09:54

what , I didn't even know people sold stuff on

1:09:56

tick-tock . Oh yeah , I know I have one

1:09:58

guy that has a big YouTube following . I didn't

1:10:00

know that was a thing that people I mean I know what it is

1:10:02

, but I didn't know people were selling products on there

1:10:04

. Yeah , you know what not

1:10:07

? I'm a little more familiar with because it's kind of a format

1:10:09

that you know Is a little

1:10:11

more live , traditional type thing . But

1:10:14

when I heard eBay was doing lives , that

1:10:16

that was something I had to keep up with whatnot

1:10:18

. There you go . They're not gonna give away that market

1:10:20

share right and they're striving

1:10:22

to keep it .

1:10:24

They're getting through some struggles , but they're pretty good

1:10:26

. You should check them out .

1:10:27

Listen . Wherever my customers can move product

1:10:30

, I'm thrilled , Listen . Customers

1:10:33

have things they're comfortable

1:10:35

with when it comes to purchasing avenues

1:10:37

right . Some people are very comfortable

1:10:39

with eBay right . They've been buying on eBay for years

1:10:42

. It's guaranteed they're not worried about you

1:10:44

know , absolutely , and

1:10:46

other people are much more Comfortable

1:10:48

dealing with people face-to-face . You know , coming

1:10:50

into a shop , going to a show , there's

1:10:53

a piece of mind there that you know who you're

1:10:55

dealing with and you're holding the product , you

1:10:57

know what you're getting , you know there's no mystery to

1:10:59

it and everyone's different . You know some people are comfortable

1:11:01

with with TV sales and all sorts

1:11:04

of other these things I've never heard of , like I've

1:11:06

never bought anything . On drip I've heard , I

1:11:08

barely have heard of drip , but people tell me it's

1:11:10

a thing you know . But if there's customers

1:11:12

in that venue , someone needs

1:11:14

to go reach them .

1:11:16

Right , it's another market .

1:11:17

It's another market because it's not usually as

1:11:19

much overlap as people think there is . It's

1:11:23

true . The proof with that is I was once talking

1:11:25

to a guy who runs Some

1:11:28

of the TV sales networks down in

1:11:30

the southeast okay and it's regional

1:11:32

. You know they're doing as the Carolina's , georgia

1:11:34

, north Florida and they buy

1:11:36

TV time and they do these coin . You

1:11:38

know coin sales shows or whatever . And he

1:11:40

was telling me that they track all their demographics

1:11:43

. You know Down to a T age

1:11:45

, you know male or female , what area , the country they

1:11:47

from , all that kind of stuff . And he said

1:11:49

what was really interesting because it's not the only place

1:11:51

that they sell their products Right , was that

1:11:53

the TV buyer Really

1:11:56

fit a very specific demographic . And

1:11:58

he said that when they sell on

1:12:00

their e-commerce site Because they would take

1:12:03

whatever they didn't sell on the TV show and they'd

1:12:05

post it on their e-commerce site the demographics

1:12:07

were completely different . You know this , the

1:12:09

skewing of male to female , the skewing of age

1:12:11

, all of it was different . He said it's

1:12:14

not the same customer , it's the same product

1:12:16

, but it's not the same customer . People

1:12:18

tend to think , well , okay , the person who wants

1:12:20

to buy this type of coin is one type of person

1:12:22

. It's not . It's the format

1:12:24

in which it is Sold is very

1:12:26

specific to demographic , right ? You

1:12:28

know People who are comfortable

1:12:31

, like I said , going to shows and going to coin shops there

1:12:34

. They might be a reason for it . They might have grown up with

1:12:36

that , that's where their comfort zone is . But

1:12:38

the millennial generation , or even

1:12:40

younger , right you know the convenience

1:12:42

of the problem with apps . They'll buy something

1:12:45

on drip , Whereas a coin collector

1:12:47

I don't want to stereotype age , but

1:12:49

say you know your average 55

1:12:51

to 65 year old Coin collector

1:12:54

it would say I'm not giving

1:12:56

this drip company my money . I've never heard of these guys

1:12:58

right like and who would blame them . So

1:13:00

it's just very different perspectives

1:13:03

. You want to get that product

1:13:05

in front of all those different groups . It's not about

1:13:07

the product . The millennial

1:13:09

, you know 30 . I don't , I don't even know how old

1:13:11

a millennial is now .

1:13:13

They're probably older than I think they're like mid 30s

1:13:15

. Yeah , okay , so whatever , whatever

1:13:17

right .

1:13:18

Gen Z ? How old are they ? But you know

1:13:20

that customer might

1:13:22

buy the same coin that the retired

1:13:25

. You know firefighter who's 67

1:13:28

might buy .

1:13:29

It's the same item , right , but they're not gonna

1:13:31

buy it in the same thing , the easiest

1:13:34

way to look at that , it's just the access to

1:13:36

the customer . Yeah , same product , same

1:13:38

places , but how do you access them ? Because

1:13:41

there are so many ways that

1:13:43

didn't exist previously again

1:13:45

Thanks to technology , very , very very .

1:13:47

I mean it's it's it's exponentially growing

1:13:49

all the time in terms of how many places you can access

1:13:52

customers . But you need to do it because those

1:13:54

customers aren't always comfortable in the traditional

1:13:56

ways . Right Again , it's not

1:13:58

that the product only appeals to

1:14:01

one group , it's that the Customer

1:14:03

only appeals to one sales

1:14:05

source . They're only comfortable buying

1:14:08

it in one way . So you , so at we , as

1:14:10

as the sellers , need to present

1:14:12

it in every way we can to capture

1:14:14

, not only for us to capture the business

1:14:16

, for the customer to get the thing they want right , because

1:14:19

if we don't do it , they're not gonna see it right

1:14:21

, I mean a traditional brick-and-mortar .

1:14:23

Today Would have a very difficult

1:14:26

time Thriving because

1:14:28

they're very much limited to simply

1:14:30

the geographics of what's in their area correct and

1:14:33

that's such a small customer base in such

1:14:35

a niche market .

1:14:36

And I don't know . I mean I don't know every

1:14:38

brick-and-mortar guy out there , but I don't know

1:14:41

any brick-and-mortars that aren't diversified

1:14:43

into other sales avas any more . I

1:14:45

mean , I'm sure there are some , but I

1:14:48

think they all have to

1:14:50

have some kind of e-commerce or other

1:14:53

type of sales presence , because the

1:14:55

customer base is so fractured . You

1:14:57

know , in you can't

1:15:00

live off just one right . You know in a lot of , in

1:15:02

a lot of ways . I mean there are the guys who balance

1:15:04

it with the show circuit , and the show circuit does tend

1:15:06

to be . It might be similar Demographically

1:15:09

, but it's different in terms of the

1:15:11

buying customer , I think well , you're consolidating

1:15:14

those customers into a single space , single

1:15:16

time period .

1:15:17

Yeah , in your accessing wholesale . Yes

1:15:19

, so that's a massive part for dealers

1:15:21

is being able to turn their inventory

1:15:24

, increase that cash flow with other dealers

1:15:26

.

1:15:26

Yeah , I think the dealer to dealer business is strongly

1:15:28

encouraged at in the coin show venue

1:15:30

, yeah , and it's honest

1:15:33

, we love it too . I go to a lot of shows , and primarily

1:15:35

other than just to meet with the customers that

1:15:37

I don't see a lot face-to-face there's a lot of our customers

1:15:39

are there but is to

1:15:41

Also engage in in

1:15:43

Business . We guys have stuff that

1:15:46

, like we were joking about that , that kilo , that Star

1:15:48

Wars kilo from 2012 , I imagine . I go to a show and

1:15:50

I see that somebody's case . I

1:15:52

mean , hopefully you're taking it home . That's my goal and

1:15:54

it's not for me . It's just that that's something

1:15:56

as a wholesale or that would . That would be , would

1:15:59

blow my customers minds if I offered that . I

1:16:01

mean , we always want

1:16:03

to try to find those rare hidden

1:16:05

gems , because Selling

1:16:08

all the new stuff is awesome . I love it . I mean , you never know what's gonna

1:16:10

come out tomorrow . We talk new technologies , different things

1:16:12

, whatever . Yeah , but also , at the same

1:16:15

time , what is old is new and in modern

1:16:17

collectibles it doesn't have to be very old , you

1:16:20

know , just a few years , that's it , and it's

1:16:22

out of the public eye , it's out of your mindset

1:16:24

, and now it comes back in and people get excited

1:16:26

like they've never seen it before , right . So if

1:16:29

I can find that stuff at a show , that's a great deal or

1:16:31

dealer opportunity for me Definitely .

1:16:34

So talking about getting excited yeah

1:16:37

, you just came back from Berlin

1:16:39

. Yeah , you saw a Just

1:16:42

an array of all the stuff coming out . Yeah , what

1:16:45

did you see that most excited you

1:16:47

about what we can expect to come

1:16:49

?

1:16:50

Okay , so I should say my German is still awful

1:16:52

. I know you were gonna ask me that next , but

1:16:55

the good news is they don't

1:16:57

require me to speak it . But

1:16:59

you go to those , to the Berlin show . It's

1:17:02

unlike any show that you'd see in North

1:17:04

America or probably a lot of the world , to be honest

1:17:06

but the , the modern collectible

1:17:08

product , is so heavily represented

1:17:10

there more so than you would see in

1:17:13

a US show that that's

1:17:15

where you're gonna see mints touting

1:17:17

their latest stuff . They're the things that are

1:17:19

months away . They might still be

1:17:21

in development , r&d , things like that . And and

1:17:24

we talked about the UFO earlier that

1:17:26

was on display there . It didn't go on

1:17:28

sale for another couple weeks after that , but

1:17:31

, but you know that they're showing these

1:17:33

types of things off . So I think the biggest

1:17:35

trend that's coming Not

1:17:38

so much from a technical perspective , because there's all sorts

1:17:40

of fun technologies , aside

1:17:42

from floating coins . I mean , we all know there's glow-in-the-dark

1:17:44

coins and holographic coins and shaped

1:17:47

coins and colorized coins , and these are all things

1:17:49

that , if you know , they get better

1:17:51

over time in terms of the technology

1:17:53

, a lot of times improves as time

1:17:55

goes on , but it's still the same

1:17:57

idea . What

1:18:00

you're seeing now that's gonna

1:18:02

be a huge trend , is the shift from

1:18:04

how we used to sell coins to how

1:18:06

they sell other types of collectibles Trading

1:18:11

cards , comics . You

1:18:13

know all these other things that also boomed during

1:18:15

the COVID . You know era Yep , they're

1:18:19

sold and marketed in a very different

1:18:21

way . Why aren't modern collectible

1:18:23

coins doing the things that they

1:18:25

do ? Well , now they are starting to do

1:18:27

that and we're already seeing

1:18:29

it with . You know these mystery pack type

1:18:31

of ideas . We think of sports cards . I mean , what

1:18:33

do you think ? You open a pack and you don't know what you're gonna

1:18:35

get you get a rare variant . You get this

1:18:37

holographic version or you get whatever you

1:18:39

know limited numbered one , and that's the

1:18:42

chase . That's the fun , right ? Well

1:18:44

, we didn't have that in the coin industry up

1:18:46

until this year . The last 12 months

1:18:48

ultra breaks , ultra breaks vault

1:18:50

box was another one that did that , and

1:18:53

I think that's just the tip of the iceberg . Now

1:18:55

mincer doing it . We've seen New Zealand do it with

1:18:57

the , with the Star Wars and Marvel trading cards

1:18:59

yeah , those went really well . Exactly

1:19:02

another example of stuff that was worth three

1:19:04

, four times within a very short amount of time . But

1:19:06

because it's a concept that had

1:19:08

been used for 10 and 15 and

1:19:10

20 years in the other collectible

1:19:12

industries . Right , but we never employed it . They're

1:19:15

figuring that out now , because I think they're

1:19:17

figuring out that the target customer for

1:19:19

modern collectible coins isn't just coin

1:19:21

people . It because

1:19:23

it is an emotional draw . You're

1:19:25

trying to get somebody , you know somebody , who likes Star Wars

1:19:28

and collects Star Wars merchandise . They

1:19:30

may have toys , they may have

1:19:32

comics , they may have Star Wars cards

1:19:34

, they may have original screenplays

1:19:36

, and I don't you know , they're all

1:19:39

these different types of products , and

1:19:41

coins fits right in with that . They they're

1:19:43

not limited by the type of product that it is , they're

1:19:45

limited by the fact that they want Star Wars stuff

1:19:48

, right . Well , the coin

1:19:50

community Lacked that

1:19:52

type of marketing . We didn't bring the

1:19:55

coins to them , we tried to

1:19:57

market it just to coin people , right , and I

1:19:59

think that you know , thank God , that's

1:20:01

evolving and that that

1:20:03

the companies are realizing that the target

1:20:05

customer Is it just a coin collector ? It can

1:20:07

be a coin collector , but it doesn't

1:20:09

have to be just a coin collector . Well

1:20:11

then , how do you draw in somebody who's not a coin

1:20:13

collector ? Well , you do the things they are used to , right

1:20:16

, you do the . The same

1:20:18

things that drew them , exactly the type of

1:20:20

merchandising that that they

1:20:23

are seeing all the time , right

1:20:25

, but again we're seeing it with sports cards

1:20:28

. First , but it won't be the last . We're

1:20:30

seeing the grading scales change , right . We were

1:20:32

seeing NGC come out with NGCX , which

1:20:34

was designed to to be

1:20:37

the same grading scale they use on sports cards

1:20:39

and comics , because they knew that that

1:20:41

customer was not gonna Understand a 70-point

1:20:43

grading scale , right ? So these

1:20:45

are all the things that we're just starting to see

1:20:47

, but I think that's the trend that you're gonna see . Mince

1:20:50

do it , we , we . I mean , this is something

1:20:52

I definitely can't talk about , but

1:20:54

I won't use any names . This

1:20:57

just happened today . I say this exclusive right here

1:20:59

there's a very large mint . It's not New

1:21:01

Zealand , I can't say who it is because it's all

1:21:03

confidential , embargoed . Whatever Another

1:21:06

mint that is going to release

1:21:08

a very popular product that they've

1:21:10

already made in the past that's extremely popular

1:21:12

, in five

1:21:15

different versions in

1:21:17

a mystery pack With

1:21:19

differing rarities per version . Okay

1:21:22

now I'll give you . I can't say anything about it , but

1:21:24

I'll give you an parallel example . That

1:21:27

isn't true . So let's

1:21:29

say , since we've brought it up before

1:21:31

, we'll talk about the Perth lunar dragon . Now

1:21:35

imagine that , perth , they

1:21:38

made those great different carded ones , like we said , for specific

1:21:40

shows and they made some other rare versions for different

1:21:42

, different things . But imagine that they made

1:21:44

five different versions of that coin , meaning colorized

1:21:47

holographic , you know , maybe

1:21:49

one that was made of gold or more expensive , whatever , and

1:21:52

they took those five versions and one had a mintage

1:21:54

of five thousand and one had a mintage of

1:21:56

twenty five hundred , one was a thousand , one was

1:21:58

five hundred and one was two fifty , extremely

1:22:00

rare , and they mixed those all into

1:22:03

a mystery pack , but from

1:22:05

the mint , not from a secondary source

1:22:07

. This isn't vault box or ultra brakes , this is mint

1:22:10

direct and that is the

1:22:12

only way you can get that Particular

1:22:14

coin and it's legit a part

1:22:16

. And again , perth is not doing this and it is not a

1:22:18

lunar dragon . I'm just saying as an example . And

1:22:22

you know , you , you want to chase

1:22:24

those rarer ones . You're gonna

1:22:26

buy multiple packs , in theory , right , but

1:22:29

all of them in and of themselves will be rare

1:22:31

, much like the New Zealand ones where the the the

1:22:33

largest mintage was still not that high . If

1:22:36

you got a common out of the New Zealand Star Wars

1:22:38

trading card sets , for instance , I

1:22:40

think the largest mintage was like 250 , was like still

1:22:42

very low . So even a common one

1:22:44

outside of its original packaging was

1:22:46

sold for a good amount of money and this

1:22:50

is going to be happening more and more . We're gonna see

1:22:52

it . And then another mint has announced that it's still

1:22:54

six months away , because you know these things

1:22:56

come out , so you know they let the distributors know so far

1:22:58

in advance . But it's another very

1:23:00

popular product line and they're gonna do the same kind

1:23:02

of thing and I think we're gonna just

1:23:04

keep seeing more and more of that because the

1:23:07

excitement that that

1:23:09

creates in the collector's mind and

1:23:11

even in my . I'm excited about it , like I hear about

1:23:13

it , like this is cool , like you know , limited

1:23:17

, limited , limited , mintage stuff , stuff that's just

1:23:19

the , the coup de

1:23:21

grace , your collection that we

1:23:24

always joke that a collector

1:23:26

mentality is who's

1:23:31

kind of a crude saying actually . But you know it's

1:23:33

a big swinging D contest at the end of

1:23:35

the day , right , like you Want

1:23:38

your collection to be just better than that

1:23:40

next guy's collection .

1:23:41

You're proud of it , right .

1:23:42

It took you time to put it together , it took you money to put it

1:23:44

together , and these

1:23:47

type of mystery pack items where

1:23:49

there's a really really rare version of something

1:23:52

that only a handful of people are gonna get . That's

1:23:55

the type of piece that like elevates your

1:23:57

collection to like a crazy level . That's

1:23:59

what everybody wants . That's what everybody wants and

1:24:02

the excitement of going after

1:24:04

it and trying to find it in brokering and trading

1:24:06

and all this stuff . You know , yeah

1:24:08

, so you know . I

1:24:10

mean that's

1:24:13

the trend I'm seeing for minutes , that , yes

1:24:15

, we've got some great technologies there's . They're always improving

1:24:17

the technologies of some cool stuff always

1:24:20

coming down the pike . But

1:24:22

that's the thing I think we're gonna see the most

1:24:24

of is , is these type of ? The

1:24:27

way you see other collectibles ? You're gonna start to see coins

1:24:29

marketed in the same way .

1:24:30

Okay , yeah , it's exciting .

1:24:33

I is exciting , it is excited , I'm excited to

1:24:35

try it myself and see how it works out . You know , ultra

1:24:37

brakes has been a huge success . Yeah , they've been great

1:24:39

. They've been great and they're fun .

1:24:41

We've opened several packs here in the shop and I

1:24:44

think the hunt right .

1:24:47

That's what really brings it in it's . It's . Collecting

1:24:49

is fun , but the hunt is also right , and

1:24:51

and so we need more of that . Yeah

1:24:53

, in our , in our business .

1:24:54

Well , it sounds like we got some more coming , which is fantastic

1:24:56

.

1:24:57

We definitely do .

1:24:59

So with that , although

1:25:01

you are wholesale , you definitely still have a

1:25:03

bit of a social media presence . Yes , so how

1:25:06

could our viewers find you ?

1:25:07

Yeah , so we are on Facebook and Instagram

1:25:09

and it's at rogues island mint very , very easy , and

1:25:12

what we use that for is to , basically

1:25:15

, we publish a lot of photos of the type of things that

1:25:17

we carry , just as like a you know

1:25:19

, awareness of the type of stuff that's out there . Yeah

1:25:21

, if you see things on there that

1:25:23

you like or that you're attracted to , the

1:25:26

best thing I can suggest because we again , we

1:25:28

don't have any pricing on there , we're not directly selling

1:25:30

it right is , if you

1:25:32

know a dealer which is probably most

1:25:35

Dealers that carry modern collectibles , that

1:25:37

deal with us , mm-hmm , reach out to them because they

1:25:39

can get that product , and one of those , specifically

1:25:41

, is American , historic . If

1:25:45

you see something on there , reach out to Tyler

1:25:47

because he could get it . He can get it from

1:25:49

us , no problem . But , yeah , that's

1:25:51

the best way to connect with us . We like chatting with people

1:25:53

. I mean , people leave comments about the photos all the time

1:25:56

and , hey , that's really cool and you know whatever

1:25:58

, and where could I get that ? We give them , distribute

1:26:00

a list or whatever . But nice , yeah

1:26:02

, that's the best way to find us and connect with us .

1:26:04

Yeah Well , fantastic . John

1:26:06

. Again , thank you very much for joining us . It's

1:26:08

been a pleasure . That has been awesome always conversation

1:26:11

is fantastic with you and

1:26:13

we look forward to a great 2024

1:26:16

.

1:26:17

It's gonna be good . It's gonna be good Okay

1:26:20

.