Put a one-ounce American Gold Eagle and a one-ounce Krugerrand side by side on a scale and they will read the same, give or take a hair. Both are 22-karat gold, both weigh about 33.93 grams, and both contain exactly one troy ounce of pure gold. Ask a dealer for a quote on each, though, […]
Ask a room of coin collectors whether gold goes up in a recession and most hands will rise. It’s one of the oldest beliefs in the hobby, and it has a decent record behind it. It also has a few ugly exceptions that tend to get left out of the retelling, and those exceptions are […]
Most people who own precious metals start with gold, add silver, and then one day notice a third column on the price board. Platinum looks like a natural next step: it is widely used in jewelry and industry, and the U.S. Mint strikes an Eagle in it. Then they try to buy some and discover […]
Most American coins earned their wear in pockets and cash drawers. The capped bust half dollar earned its wear in canvas bags, shuffled from one bank vault to another and counted by weight as often as by piece. That single fact explains nearly everything a buyer needs to know about the series: why so many […]
The Senate cleared the Common Cents Act on September 28, 2026 by unanimous consent, two weeks after the House passed it on a voice vote. The bill now sits on the President’s desk awaiting a signature, which had not been given as of this writing. Most of the coverage has treated it as the penny’s […]
Most American buyers can name every coin on their own shelf before they can name Europe’s best seller. The gold Vienna Philharmonic has been struck since 1989, was voted the best selling gold coin in the world four separate years, and carries a face value denominated in euros. Yet it tends to show up in […]
The U.S. Mint’s year-long tribute to its own back catalog ended on September 24, when the 1907 Saint-Gaudens High Relief $20 Gold Coin and Silver Medal Set went on sale at noon Eastern. It took 8,191 orders in its first few days, enough to debut at the top of the Mint’s weekly sales report for […]
Ask a room full of metals buyers why they own gold and someone will point at the debt clock. The federal government crossed $40 trillion in total debt outstanding in late August 2026, and by September 25 the Treasury’s own Debt to the Penny series put it at $40.097 trillion: about $32.39 trillion held by […]
Somewhere in a Federal Reserve vault sits a stack of dollar coins nobody asked for. As of June 30, 2020, the Fed reported holding $1.064 billion in them, which its annual report to Congress called roughly a 21-year supply of circulating demand. The hoard peaked near 1.434 billion coins in early 2012 and has drained […]
Two 1881-S Morgan dollars can sit in the same case, both sealed in MS65 holders from the same grading service, and trade at prices nowhere near each other. Buyers new to certified coins find that maddening. If a grader already put a number on both, what is left to argue about? A fair amount. The […]
