Editor's Message: CPG Market Review Summer 2024

At the shows I have attended thus far this year, I have observed a robust trade and relatively good attendance from both dealers and collectors. In speaking with dealers, many have been pleasantly surprised with their levels of business thus far. Certainly, there has been some cases in which there are more sellers than buyers, but the major rare coin dealerships and market makers have been steadily buying; in other words, the market has been able to maintain a healthy flow of material. On the auction front, we have continued to see strong prices paid for rarities and fresh price records set. Heritage alone, in just their Signature and Platinum Night U.S. coin sales have had more than $88.3 million in prices realized. Stack’s Bowers adds another more than $20 million, and there is much more if you add the totals of regular weekly auctions from the other major online auction firms.

The other major market story over these first six months is precious metals prices. The gold spot price basis of our last CPG® issue was $2,016. As I write this column on the Friday before Memorial Day, gold sits at $2,338, a 16% increase. During this time period, gold topped out at just under $2,450 on May 20, easily an all-time high. These huge swings have brought a significant amount of attention to the yellow metal, both from within the coin business and the wider investor industry. In nearly twenty years of tracking and reading about gold prices, I do not recall a time in which more articles about the gold price and the reasons for its surge have been written for financial websites, blogs, and social media posts. The most oft-cited reason for gold’s upward trajectory is due to what is perceived as persistent inflation, and the associated interest rate levels as set by the Federal Reserve. I personally do not think this tell the whole story, as much of the demand for physical gold has been coming from sovereign entities, specifically central banks and governments who wish to protect their reserves. This signals that more and more institutions and individuals are seeing gold as a monetary instrument and not just an investment vehicle. My reasoning is that often in the past, gold has spiked higher, only to quickly come back down to where it started or even below. With gold sustaining a nearly four-month rally, a shift may be occurring in which the gold spot price is less driven by speculative traders and more by those who view gold as alternate currency. Meanwhile, silver had been lagging gold in a major way, until March. Multiple price breakouts over the last 120 days have pushed silver to above $30 per ounce. While I was not surprised that silver easily held the $23 to $24 level, I did not think that it would reach the $30 mark so quickly. This is all great news to long term physical bullion investors, as their positions present many options. Collectors who own bullion that is strongly in a profit position can take some cash off the table or choose to roll some of that bullion into collector-investor grade vintage coins. To conclude, the elevated levels of precious metals have generated much activity within the rare coin industry, and this should persist through the rest of 2024.

Sincerely,

Patrick Ian Perez, patrick@greysheet.com