Book Review: Secrets of a Professional Coin Dealer By Fred and Abner Berson ( 1967 )

yspsales

This is the first in a series of Book reviews that I will undertake.

Feel free to supply your opinion! Please add to the history of an event or individual. Contribute backstories to fill in any gaps so that today and in the future we can preserve memories and opinion that are too often lost with the passage of time.

Secrets of a Professional Coin Dealer By Fred and Abner Berson 1967

A basic Google search turns up little in the way of biographical information on Fred and Abner Berson. Still, the two show an understanding of the coin hobby. They touch on all of the highlights of the hobby with chapters titled Mintage, Scarcity, Demand, Condition, and Pitfalls among others.

The book was written at the dawn of 1965 Coinage Act, and this alone makes the book worthy of purchase if only for a detailed recounting and snapshot in time. Details the uncertainty during this transitional period of coinage and historic event in US history.

Basically the Coinage Act relieved the US government from international and domestic demands on use of industrial silver. It prohibited the mintage of all Silver dollars for 5 years (interesting), reduced half dollar silver content from 90% to 40%, and replaced all quarters and dimes with sandwich “cupro-nickel-on copper” and maintained a support price of $1.25 for domestically mined silver.

Another interesting fact learned was the offer to replace silver certificates with silver crystals in an envelope!

On the cover, the hookline of how to turn $256 into $8000 is never really discussed outside of taking advantage of Gresham’s Law and hoarding silver as the law takes effect.

The promised Techniques are the same as we imagine today. Well covered and usually found at the intersection of knowledge and opportunity. I was not even born at the time the book was written and much too young to recall whether the predicted Coinage Act initiated a Bull market in Numismatics during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.

Some passages I highlighted and notes I made in the margins of the book…

Even six decades ago collectors knew value as the authors state that “Gold coins are the Blue Chips of the business…” and would remain valuable as long as government price restrictions did not ease. Runaway gold prices would mean melting.

Gresham’s Law is discussed and defined as being no matter what steps the government takes with “sandwich” coins, essentially all 90% silver coins will be pulled from circulation. From page 8… Quote: “No king or Congress has ever been successful in repealing Gresham’s Law”

Personal sidenote: Gresham’s Law reminded me of the debate WCC and CladKing have on moderns and how this theory might mirror high grade moderns. Also, contemporary coins are rarely collected because of economics and/or interest. The Mercury Dime 1916d being a logical example from 100 years ago.

The authors push the attraction to key and semi key dates, condition, grading, and popularity of a series.

On the other hand, they wrongly predicted Roosevelt Dimes being undervalued and rising in value.

Finally, how does the book apply to 2020?

One thing often repeated in the book was the large numbers of collectors at this point in time. Their rise of collectors and bricks and mortar coin shops have been replaced by online dealers and collectors. I don't numbers have declined much and may have increased. A recent podcast mentioned that they had nearly 250,000 unique visitors to their You Tube channel and the average demographic was under 40 years of age.

Not sure I learned anything other than some historical facts. The traits of successful collectors have never really changed over the decades. Quality, strike, mintage etc... I found the book an interesting walk back into time right down to the musty smell of the book and the several pages of prices in the back of the book.

Book Cost $10
Relevance Rating: Two stars out of 5 stars
Enjoyment: Five Stars

1630Boston

Thanks for the review

ricko

Good review... Some points of interest, though I likely will not rush out to buy a copy....More recently, I tend to focus on publications with a more specific focus. Cheers, RickO

Sonorandesertrat

Around this time (1964), the U.S. Treasury stopped paying out silver dollars on demand. Subsequent GSA sales of Carson City Morgans also contributed to huge changes in perceived rarity. There were stories of bags of rare Morgans being opened, and values dropping like a shot. Nobody talked about wildly toned Morgans or other kinds of toned coins then.

Typical collectors did not fly across country much, and their main sources of 'fresh' information were Coin World and perhaps Numismatic News.

The point about pulling silver coins from circulation was correct. My grandmother told me to do this, as soon as clad coins started to appear in change in large numbers. Many people (not just collectors) were going to banks to get rolls of dimes, quarters, and halves, just to pick out silver coins for their bullion value. I sold the ones I accumulated in the late 1970's.

People who made money largely had more access to information. There weren't nearly as many books then, no internet, etc. Regarding rarity, I think that the playing field has become more level. There still remain issues regarding quality (grade, resubmissions) that knowledgeable people take advantage of. That book was written during a time when typical coin collectors paid attention to pricing in the Red Book, unlike today.

There were also lots of obsolete coins still in circulation, sometimes 80 years old. My father had a cigar box full of them.

Investors didn't really start to move into coins until years after this book appeared, so don't expect much to really be applicable today.

A number of dealers (e.g., Bowers, Hall, Kagin) have written similar types of books and pamphlets over the years. It would be interesting to compare what they had to say.

tokenpro

The switch from paying out silver dollars for silver certificates to paying out packaged granules of silver only slowed things down for a while. The identification of silver certificates in circulation was easy (they're the blue ones, duh) so when dealers started posting buy prices for silver certs seemingly everyone got into the act. Many non-numismatic citizens got involved both in searching bills from their banks or coming through their stores and then advertising to buy silver certs in newspapers, in their stores, etc. acting as middlemen. They then shipped the bills on to the the higher paying aggregaters who took them to the Treasury to convert to silver granules.

Not everyone started pulling silver coins from circulation right away -- silver coin continued to circulate alongside clad for quite a while after clad was introduced to circulation.