VISIT LEGEND AT TABLES 310-312 AT THE FUN SHOW
WHAT A LONG YEAR 2025 WAS
We ended 2025 on a huge upswing. At the writing of this report, we are bullish for at least the next six months about the coin market. The activity in the coin market is beyond anything we have ever dreamt of. Even if bullion were to crash, we see no short-term effect on rare coins.
January of 2025 started out just okay. We did our usual few million dollars in sales/auction representations. However, we noticed it was a huge struggle, and we made very little money in the end. Then from February through April we could not believe how poor our market had become. The lack of coins for us nearly drove us out of business. February was our worst month since Legend incorporated! We were nervous. Then slowly, things started to happen. We got pure lucky and were able to buy just a few coins. Then from June on, the floodgates opened and it was off to the races. We turned a six-figure loss into a tidy six-figure net. The work it took to get there, however, was physically tremendous. We handled a lot of coins. Interestingly, we still were not finding many coins for our Want Lists or specific kinds of coins the bulk of our customers buy. Yet wholesale was incredible. We have been able to take coins at the prices we had listed on our website and wholesale them at the shows. Boom! To this day we are still doing that. We expect that to easily continue at FUN (oh, do we have major players lined up to look at our coins). Clearly today, there is far more demand than supply.
What changed? Of course gold and silver are rising in price. You’d be surprised how many collectors rolled over their bullion into better rare coins. The other well-kept secret was that so did many of the dealers who made small fortunes from their stores. Don’t think they weren’t buying up coins they knew were cheap. We can tell you, not many collectors are sellers of their coins right now. Prices still have a way to go. The market has problems in the reporting of prices that are not getting any better. We predict in 2026 one day the coin market will just double on better coins, shocking everyone but dealers. For sure, it’s hard to buy the best coins anywhere near published values right now.
The biggest phenomenon of 2025—the apps. OMG, did this WhatNot draw in new people? We have WITNESSED a dealer selling $100G a day on an app. We’ve heard of others selling as much as $800G in a day. Hopefully, these collectors will not be one and done. It does seem enough are hanging around. The other new fad (which Legend does NOT approve of) is these bricks/boxes and other gambling-like options. People are buying them up in hopes of landing that special coin inside. We fully accuse those gimmicks of drying up the coin market of coins below $5,000.00. Frankly, now we are having problems buying coins up to $10,000.00 that used to frequently be available. We are gravely concerned about what we will be able to buy at FUN. It used to be that we’d fight the crack-out geniuses for first or early shots. Today it’s every dealer who has a boatload of customers wanting to buy, and then the dealers themselves wanting to put away nice coins. Now we are nervous about running out of coins again in February.
Not complaining, but we have never worked harder than we are today. Now it takes a lot of coins to make just a little. Our margins are the smallest they have ever been. Regardless, Legend did well in 2025 even with a horrible first few months. Unlike 2025, we expect January 2026 to be a strong month—even though we found no bigger coins to buy out of auction (that is a first for us). We have a few deals to sell, and we expect to be offered a few coins from regular customers.
We will still be the old-fashioned personal dealers we’ve always been. We won’t be hawking our coins on these apps. We won’t be offering games of chance to buy coins. We will continue to sell PCGS CAC to the public along with CACG coins. One change you may have noticed is that, to give ourselves a small break, our offices are closed Fridays (we can’t ship over the weekend anyway). Of course we will always answer emails 7 days a week. Legend is always open for business. You will still see us take tables at major shows (we are slimming down and taking smaller tables). Not much else is changing. NEWPS will still be posted Fridays. One thing we want to make clear: YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE A BIG BUYER TO DEAL WITH US!
LEGEND NUMISMATICS WISHES TO THANK EVERYONE FOR HELPING MAKE 2025 A SUCCESSFUL YEAR.
OUR OFFICES ARE NOW CLOSED UNTIL WE RETURN FROM FUN. WE MAY BE DELAYED IN POSTING FUN NEWS. STAY TUNED AND SIGN UP FOR OUR EMAILS.
We saw this interview in an article about Jay Leno. We have met him and can tell you he is a true passionate collector. In this interview he speaks exactly about why we say, “A collector makes the best investor.” He is talking about a spur-of-the-moment purchase of a castle in Newport, RI:
Leno: I have no idea if this was a smart business move. I bought Seafair because I liked it. The thing about me is I don’t buy things for investment. I buy things because I like them, and if they go down in value, I still like them. If they go up in value, that’s fine, but I don’t want to sell them, so it makes absolutely no difference to me whether the price goes up or down.
Obviously, I like it when things go up in value. I bought my McLaren F1 in 1998 for $800,000; the last offer I got was $17.5 million. And one just sold for $20 million. I have cars that I bought that are not as valuable, but I don’t like them any less than the McLaren. Some go up, and some come down. But if you always buy what you like, you’ll always be happy because you did it for the right reasons.
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You do not have to be as wealthy as Jay to have the same ideology. We have seen a trend in our 45 year careers where collectors come out ahead far more than investors. That does not mean that since a person can spend a significant amount of money on a coin or coins, it is not an investment. For sure, it is in the end. Owning coins is also a mindset. And if you notice, he buys for tomorrow (something Bob Simpson taught us). Do NOT buy coins to flip today or think you’ll make money in 2-3 years. Like a fine wine, they need time to grow. Enjoy your coins; they are real treasures!
See you all in 2026.
Yes, we are still answering our emails daily through FUN!
LEGEND IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS EVERY DAY VIA EMAIL!
