Gold at Record Highs: Dana Samuelson on the Precious Metals Market

I wanna stay in the, let's stay in the old days just a little bit longer.

What was that like, learning how to, obviously from a legend, but also, like, learning in the old days, like, h- how to, even just that two-year apprenticeship just in grading.

Like, what was that like?

Well, it's...

You don't learn how to appraise coins without doing.

There's no school that really can teach you.

You just have to do it by trial and error.

So I literally sat with two experienced coin appraisers, and we w- what we're judging is the condition of the coins, the survival rate today.

So there are a lot of coins that are made that are put into bags.

They're never put into circulation for use as currency.

Mm-hmm.

But they go into bags.

They rub against each other in the bag.

We call what, the scratches they got on them bag marks.

Mm.

And the frequency and the severity of the contact marks on the coin's surface from the bag rubbing against each other is what determines the state of preservation, whether it's uncirculated, choice uncirculated, gem uncirculated, or superb gem uncirculated.

Mm.

And then you put coins into circulation and they get wear on them.

It's like touching a coin up against a belt sander.

You lean in a little bit and you just rub off the highest details.

You lean a little bit more, you take a little bit more of that image off the coin.

So then there's degrees of circulation.

And then there's coins that get polished or cleaned, which is kinda like waxing your car with sandpaper.

Mm-hmm.

It ruinses the original surfaces and kind of impairs the value.