May 12, 2025 • 41 mins
Gold prices have been booming and are near record highs. And seeing the line go up — especially during a period of so much uncertainty — makes people want to buy more. That includes acquiring actual gold coins. But where do gold coins come from? Why do people want coins, as opposed to just bullion? And who is buying them? On this episode, we speak with Philip Diehl, the president of gold vendor US Money Reserve. Earlier in his career, he was the 35th director of the US Mint, where he was instrumental in such endeavors as the 50 States quarter project, the Sacagawea dollar coin, and also the language that allows for the creation of the trillion-dollar platinum coin. We talk all about the business and supply chain of coinage, and who's buying these coins today.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. Hello and welcome to
another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Jill Wisenthal.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
And I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Tracy, you've actually benefited a little bit from this move
up in gold lady. Right, you're a bit of a
bullion hoarder.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Right.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I thought you were about to call me a gold bug.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
I know, I know you're not a full on gold bug.
You're a but you're like gold bug adjacent or silver
bug adjacent or something like that.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
I let me just be clear. I have inherited my
long gold position, I guess, and silver as well. So
for some reason, every year, for my birthday and for Christmas,
my dad gives me either a gold coin or a
silver coin from his personal collection. He got it in
his mind that, like I, I really enjoy coins, I guess,
(01:02):
and now I kind of do. There is something satisfying
about having physical coins and sitting there. And I don't
stack them on YouTube or anything, but I do like
to check occasionally that they're still there, and I do
get a little bit of satisfaction when I look at
my little, my little pile of gold and silver.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
I have to say, you know the one thing. I
don't own any physical gold. I do like the idea
of owning a bunch of silver and stacking it on
a table and doing a YouTube video about that. Everyone
should go look at the silver stackers on YouTube that
you're great. I would be scared, you know, you could
like bury them somewhere like out in the wilderness of Connecticut.
I would be scared to hold a lot of buoyon
(01:43):
on my person. And then I would be scared to
hold them in a bank because if everything goes bad,
is the bank even going to be open in a
safe deposit box? So I like the idea in theory
of having a lot of precious metal. Anyway, precious metal
has been doing really well lately.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
It has. I was just looking at chart of gold.
So it hit another record high just at sort of
mid April, and then it came down quite a bit,
and now it's up again, like we're almost back to
that record.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
It's pretty extraordinary. Gold is is sort of living up
to the hype because there's all this chaos and all
everything in the markets and the economy and politics, and
gold is up.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
So yeah, yes, you know what I like about gold?
Tell me I like the advertisements that you see on TV.
And the interesting thing to me is like, obviously the
companies that are doing those ads are pitching an investment,
but so much of the investment pitch is sort of
mixed up with cultural values totally. So for instance, I
(02:42):
was watching one earlier in preparation for this episode, and
they were talking about how when you're walking down inflation
Boulevard and global instability Avenue, you really need the safety
of a gold coin, which not only represents security via gold,
but also the security of the United States of America.
(03:05):
Like you get all these cultural references wrapped up in coins.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
At one hundred percent, and every coin has its design
and evokes all this stuff about heritage and everything. Anyway,
I'm really excited because we actually do literally have the
perfect guest because it touches on many things that were
interested in. It's someone who I've actually known for a while,
I've talked to before, someone who we're going to talk
(03:30):
about coins, but we're not going to talk about well, let's.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Just my most hated coin.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yeah, see, there's one coin that Tracy hates. So we
are going to talk to Philip Deal. He is the
President of the US Money Reserve which sells gold. He
was also I think one of the great mint directors
in US history. He was the thirty fifth director of
the US Mint, where he, among other things, had numerous accomplishments.
(03:58):
He was instrumental in the sakajuwea dollar or a dollar
coin that was very successful lease sold to collectors. He
was behind the fifty State Quarters project, which if you
remember the nineties, they made a quarter for each of
the states. Turns out our producer Dash has all of
the fifty state quarters, which I didn't know and we're
not going to talk about this, although maybe relevant again
(04:19):
with the dead sealing come up. He was also the
one that got the language in the law that in
theory allows for the creation of a platinum coin of
high denomination which could be used to circumvent the dead sealing.
We're not going to talk about the trillion dollar coin
on this episode. We are going to talk about gold coins.
Philip Deal thrilled to have you on to talk now,
(04:40):
appreciate you coming on Odd Laws.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
It's great to be on. I've looked forward to this.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
I'm so excited. Tell us about uh where to start
even just tell us you're what the US Money Reserve
is so people understand, you know where you're coming from.
What is the business of the US Money Reserve.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
We're a retailer of gold, silver, and platinum coins to
the US market. We sell mostly US government coins issued coins,
but also coins of other nations. We are probably in
the upper mid level of the marketplace, and I'd say
(05:21):
that we're different from our competitors because we market very differently.
I have a very different approach from what is typical
in the industry. This is something that I've really focused
on for the last several years. For example, all of
those advertisements that really harp on the end of the
world and how gold is your go to investment for
(05:48):
really hard times. A lot of that has meant. When
you look at the record, gold has performed extraordinarily well
over the last twenty five years in good times and
bad times. Great example of that is right now. Of course,
this has been a hard year for stocks, and stocks
are down probably the less time I check course this
(06:09):
change is daily that down about seven percent and gold
is up twenty seven percent this year. But last year
was a great year for stocks, and stocks were up
twenty three percent. The gold beat it it's twenty eight percent.
And when you look back over the last ten years,
five out a teen year gold has been beat this
(06:31):
and P five hundred.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
To this point, my mom asked me last year if
she should invest in gold, and hate I hate it
when family members ask you these kind of questions because
I'm not in the business of providing investment advice. But
I told her, you know, sure, why not, just don't
put all of your money in gold. And now fast
forward like eight months, she's mad at me for not
recommending that she buy even more gold. She took apparently
(06:56):
a conservative position and should have been more. But maybe
I'll start with my most my biggest question, which is
what makes a coin popular.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Well, a number of factors go into it. One is
the denomination, for obvious reasons, the bigger the better. Also,
the metallic matters, gold more popular than silver. And design
also is hugely important, and this is something that we
(07:27):
really played on with a Sacagawea Golden dollar. It's important
that a coin be distinguishable to not be confused with
another coin. The Susan b Anthony had that reputation with
confusion with a quarter. Also, the design was not a
popular design Susan B. Anthony was not attractive on that design.
(07:51):
So one of the things we wanted to do when
we introduced the new dollar coin was to find a
topic that the topic itself would be hugely popular. And
the book Undaunted Courage had come out probably about a
year before we launched that coin, and of course a
(08:15):
part of that story was the story of Sakagawa and
her role in leading the Lewis and Clark expedition across
the Rocky Mountains, and that had really captured the imagination
of Americans, and especially the story of Sectia carrying her
infant son, John Baptiste on her back through that entire journey.
(08:40):
And we ended up having the design competition for a
design that fit that theme, and we ended up with
a beautiful design done by a goodacre And as a
result also we did a lot of market research on
what would be necessary to make this coin successful, and
(09:02):
when we launched it through a Walmart, they had people
standing in lines around blocks all over the country. We
have something like one hundred and fifty million of them
distributed within the first month, and it was an enormous success.
But one of the things that is always a challenge
(09:23):
for a dollar coin in the United States is you've
really got to withdraw the dollar bill when you introduce
the dollar coin. And that's been the case all through
the Western economies where the high denomination bill has to
our low denomination bill has to be eliminated when this
high denomination coin comes in.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
How do you actually measure sure the success of a coin,
because if I think about something like the Sacagway a
dollar you're talking about. Initially there there was a lot
of interest in it, but I think like production didn't
last for very long, and there are some people out
there who would say, actually, it wasn't that popular with
investors or Americans over the longer term.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Yes, we really a circulating coin like the Sacatary Golden
dollar is successful if it circulates, if Americans use it
in commerce, and we saw one of the challenges you
face is a plane of the pump. Unless you get
a lot of coins in circulation immediately, then it doesn't
(10:45):
really enter circulation. And one of the constraints the coins
face is the change tray in a cash register. At
least that was the case twenty five years ago when
we were launching the golden dollar. Is not really a
place for a new denomination coin unless that is made
(11:07):
by the commercial unity by taking a quarter rolls out
of one of the bins. And so that was the
first big challenge that we faced. And you would think
that it would be relatively straightforward because the Federal Reserve
is our customer, the us Men's customer for circulating coinage.
(11:28):
The us MEN produces the coins, the Federal Reserve purchases
us them at a markup I believe it or not.
Us Men is a profit making enterprise, and then they
are distributed around the country, and then banks purchased them
from the Federal Reserve. But when we went to the
(11:49):
Federal Reserve in part of our market research and talked
to the banks, they still remembered sort of the disaster
that the Anthony launch had been twenty years actually forty
years earlier, and they said, well, all you have to
(12:09):
do is proved us that this coin will be accepted
by the American people and then we'll order it. Well,
that was a catch twenty two for us, because of
course unless they ordered it, we couldn't make it work.
And so I ended up going to Walmart and asking
if they'd be interested in launching the coin in all
Walmart and Sam's locations on the same day at the
(12:33):
end of January two thousand and they caught the vision
of what that would mean and was huge success for them,
and we produced over a billion Secretaria coins in that
first year and distributed them first through Walmart. We had
a contract with them to provide three hundred million sacagaris,
(12:58):
and we had to go back to them after the
first half had been delivered and say we need to
be we need to be let out of the second
half of that because now the banks are calling and
they haven't ordered any and they really unhappy that customers
come to them they don't have the sacagaria and they're
calling the the Secretary of the Treasury in the head
(13:21):
of the Federalserve and complaining. So we want to if
we want to take your of them as fast as
we can. So it was an enormous success, and not
just because people collected it, but because they were also
using it. But banks don't like coins, They like bows,
they don't like coins because coins are more expensive for
(13:44):
them to handle the ship, and we expected that there
was a natural resistance to it. My term expired in
early two thousand, so Secretaria lost a champion at the
top of the mint at that time, and it and
the momentum was lost over the next several.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Years, Tracy, I could listen to like technical detain stories
public yeah, and like you know, the fact about change
trays and the you know, and how difficult that is.
I could listen to that for a really long time. Also,
what I appreciate about this story is the sort of
the entrepreneurialism involved of like having to go out to
(14:24):
the Walmart and the SAMs.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
And stuff that it's like a product launch, yeah, which we.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Don't normally associate with anything in the government for the
most part, except you know, the Mint is unique also
of course a policy entrepreneur. But we're not gonna we're
not going to talk about that specific area of the
trillion dollar coin. Okay, I'm on the US Money Reserve
website and I see that you have a one right
at today's price is a one ounce gold American Eagle
(14:48):
type two coin for three eight hundred and nine dollars
and seventy one cents a one out South African gold
krue Grand. Something very sexy about holding krewe Grand specifically,
I've always thought that's one eight hundred and six dollars
and thirty one cents same price for the Austrian gold
Harmonic Philharmonic coin.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Oh, I have one of those, really. Yeah, and I
have the Maria Theresa gold coins too. I probably shouldn't
say those podcast.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
You have one hundred of these coins and give the
location at home.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Yeah, and then also some silver coins that depict battles.
But I want to just ask a little bit about
the sort of basic supply chain here of some of
these coins. So these are official government coins that the
US Mint still produces and then sells them to some
distributor at a markup, and then you sell it at
a further markup. Is that basically the gist of how
(15:37):
these coins come into existence?
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Yes, just like any other product. And you're exactly right
that we had treated a number of new products as
typical commercial product launches, and so, just like any other product,
the manufacturer has a markup, the distributor has a markup,
(16:00):
and then also the retailer has a markup. And that's
true for all brillion coins that are produced by other
nations as well. And it is a competitive market in
the US. You can purchase any number of bullion coins
produced by other nations, and they market them in similar
(16:21):
fashion and mark them up in a similar fashion. It's
a very competitive market.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
So speaking of markups, one thing I've always struggled with
when it comes to coins is how much of the
value is derived from the actual precious metal content, whether
it's gold or silver or platinum versus how much of
the value is derived from the collectibility and the general
design or availability of the coin.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Okay, it's important here to distinguish two different kinds of coins,
actually three different kinds. One is bullion coins, precious metal
coins that are sold at a slight premium above the
spot price of gold when they are sold. Then a
second type is a collectible coin, like a nuismatic coin.
A US Mint produces annual sets also precious metal commemorative coins,
(17:17):
and than circulating coins. So the precious metal coins that
are boin coins and collectible coins are priced and marketed
in very different ways. Commmittive coins are produced to much
finer quality, and the strike is they're almost one offs.
(17:41):
There are multiple strikes in order to get that fine design.
Who raise the design and get the polished finish of
those coins. And because the production process is much more detailed.
There are fuel coins produce many fewer coins produced. They
are priced differently, they're marketed differently. They're sold directly by
(18:05):
the United States meant and those coins, a substantial portion
of the cost is reflected in those additional costs. And
so you know, very depending on which metal you're talking about,
but maybe in percent of the price or so of
(18:27):
a gold coin or a platinum coin is represented by
those additional costs. Whereas for a bullion coin, as I
was saying, those are highly competitive. There are, they're produced
in very large numbers. They're not produced as collectibles. Sometimes
they are collected, but they're not produced for.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
That reason, Would an American eagle account as a bullion
coin or a sort of finite collectible item, because I
know they issue them by year, Yes.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
They do. There are two version of it produced. The
bullion coin is produced in very large quantities by law.
They're supposed to be produced to meet public demand, the
law states, although sometimes the mint runs into bottlenecks and
(19:19):
cannot fully meet demand, and they are produced in a
very rapid mass manufacturing processes. The eagle is also produced
in a collectible and it's called the proof gold Eagle
and it is produced according to those very high standards
(19:40):
I was describing earlier, and is sold at a significant
break premium above the spot price of gold.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
I'm looking again at the website and the other one
of the other things you sell is a Pearl Harbor
gold coin, which is identified as exclusive to the US
Money Reserve and features Queen Elizabeth the Second on the obverse,
Navy ships and Japanese fighter planes on the reverse. Can
you talk a little bit? Is that a US government coin?
(20:08):
Because there is also private stamping, right, like someone can
you know someone could get gold and stamp whatever they
want on it and sell it.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Yes, can you tell? Yeah, talk a little bit about
that that's not really coins, Okay, when they're produced that
they have to be legal tender to be coins. Okay,
you know you see it football games and coin toss. Well,
those aren't coins. Those are medals. They're medallions because they're
not legal tender. It's not a US coin. We usually
(20:38):
don't put royalty, foreign royalty on our coins, and this
is like Brien Elizabeth in this case, these are coins
by other nations that the risk meant does not do this.
It does not produce bespoke coins according to order, but
other nations do and it's not unique to US Money Reserve.
(21:01):
Other companies do this too, but we have been more
aggressive in developing coins through other governments in limited quantities
that are collectibles in precious metal and marketing those. Typically
we are celebrating an anniversary. A percentage of these coins,
(21:24):
the sole price of these coins typically goes to a
charitable purpose. We have been very supportive of the US
Navy memorial, so that's one of the ones that we
really stood behind.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
One thing I wanted to ask is when you're designing
a coin, So when you were at the US Mint,
and I'm not talking about precious metal coins here, but
just your sort of standard coin, how much does profitability
come into considerations for designing a coin? Because I know,
with the Trump administration talking about maybe getting rid of
(22:00):
the penny, this seems to be even more of an
issue than it used to be, although people have been
debating the existence of the penny or whether it should
exist for decades now. But do you do you sit
there and you know, write on a napkin. It's going
to cost me x to produce and I'll be able
to sell it to the Federal Reserve and the banks
(22:21):
for why amount.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
Yeah, it's a factor, no doubt about that. And to
a certain degree, or to a great degree, the US
Mint doesn't have discretion in the specifications of the coin.
They are laid out in great detail in the legislation
that authorized the coin. The long exception to that is
(22:43):
the platinum bullion coin, in which Congress I'd asked Congress
for a virtually total discretion on that coin, and they
gave it to us, and the trillion dollar coin came
as an unintended consequence of that.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
There's the trillion dollar coin.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Can't miss it. But yes, all the details are in
the legislation. But the Mint does attempt to produce those
coins in the most efficient fashion possible within those constraints.
And the penny has blown away our capacity to make
(23:23):
profitable for over thirty years. I was the first Mint
director thirty years ago to recommend elimination of the penny.
You can see how much influence I am. But it's
long overdue to be eliminated. There was a problem back
in the seventies I believe, where the penny had negative seniorage.
(23:45):
I can describe what senior riage is here in the moon,
but it's basically profit and so, and the coin was maing.
It was all copper. At the time, the coin was
being melted down because copper, the copper content, was worth
more than the penny was. And so the wronger stepped
in and changed the composition of the penny. We had
(24:08):
a similar situation now with a nickel, where it's a
money loser. The production of the nickel is a money loser,
but it might be profitable if there were some changes,
or at least the amount of money that is lost
producing each coin would be decreased. Now, one of the
things that came out of the Sataguria coin in the
(24:30):
fifty State Quarters program and those two huge projects, very
entrepreneurial projects, as you were alluding to, Joe, Those were
launched within about a year of each other, and that
took the US MINTS profits and our profits. The US
MINTS profits go to the American taxpayer that go into
(24:50):
the general fund of the Treasury, and we took profits
from seven hundred million dollars a year when I came
into the Mint to two point six billion dollars after
five years. And I told my staff that they'd all
be wealthy. We're a private enterprise, but we didn't get
paid by the by the coin.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Let's talk a little bit about your the business more
of selling these collectible coins and bullion coins and so
forth at gold coins to a retail customer base. I
have a couple of questions. One is is volume associated
with price because you must see you know when the
line is is there when the line is going up
in terms of the price of announce of gold, do
(25:35):
you generally see a correlation in pick a pickup in
people wanting to buy gold coins.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Absolutely, that's been It's been a tremendous nineteen months since
this this rally, this bull market began, and over that
period of time, we've seen prices go up sixteen hundred
dollars an ounce from eighteen hundred to thirty four hundred
this warning and it's just it's been one record after
(26:05):
another being set. So we see a tremendous increase in demand.
I think most people in the industry do.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
What about the demographics, so obviously you know generally I speak,
I think of the gold coin buyer who would buy
from us money reserve is probably someone you know, like
Tracy's dad's specifically what have you seen demographics do younger generations?
Does Gen Z or millennials? Do they care yet about
holding collectible or bullyant coins.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
When I was directed with the MINT, I was in
my forties and I would describe our buyers as being white, male,
and over fifty. And there's nothing wrong with that. I
aspire to be one some day. But worry about that demographic.
You know, I was fading out over a decade or two.
(26:54):
That's not the case today. Gold is hugely popular across
a very wide spectrum. And that's not surprising given the
amount of coverage news coverage gold has received over the
last two years and these record prices, especially when the
stock market is falling, people are looking for safe havens
(27:18):
and gold is the ultimate save haven. It's been around
for five thousand years, it's always had value, It's had
value worldwide. It's the universal safe haven. And what we
were beginning to see in some of the market research
is a skewing of interest to younger audiences that includes
(27:41):
millennials and Gen Z, and some of the research indicates
that they have greater interest in gold than boomers do.
That is really a surprise to me, but not too
much of a surprise once I thought about it, because
those of us who grew up in the sixties and seventies,
(28:02):
we're less focused on money and protecting ourselves and than
what our kids are. And so that you know, that's
extraordinarily smart and forward looking for them to be thinking
about their futures and thinking about the role gold with have.
Now you know, the issue comes up whether you know
(28:25):
what percentage of a portfolio should be in gold. I
tell people never put all of your money in gold.
Don't put in all your money into any asset. There
needs to be diversification in any portfolio, and the right
percentage depends on how old you are, your risk averseess,
you know how large a portfolio is. There's no one
(28:48):
size fits all recommendation. But one of the factors I
do recommend people to consider is how optimistic or pessimistic
you are about the state of the world, the state
of your own finances, and considering the slave haven history
of gold. The more pessimist you are, I do recommend
(29:11):
a higher percentage of your portfolio and gold.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Why should I buy a gold coin versus invest in
a gold mining stock.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
Well, mining stocks have tended to underperform the price of
gold itself. And there's a simple reason for this, and
that is it's getting harder to find and more expensive
to mine gold. The clear signal of this is if
you look back over world gold production over the last
ten or fifteen years, it hit a peak about ten
(29:59):
years ago. And despite the fact that gold prices have
skyrocketed since sin and the miners have tremendous incinners because
of that, to increase production, they haven't been able to.
And this is one of the forces that is driving
gold prices upward today. And one of the reasons why
(30:21):
I'm confident it will continue to go up is that
you know, you talk about peak oil. I don't know
that we've hit peak gold. But the miners have not
really been able to take advantage of these higher prices
by increasing production, and so the miners are weighted by
(30:41):
those additional costs. And also gold is now mined more
often and politically and economically unstable and corrupt countries, and
that is adds a risk premvement of cost to doing
business that the miners have to bear.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
It's so crazy to Tracey, I'm looking at a chart
of GDX, the Vank Gold Mining ETF charting against GLD,
the gold ETF. The miners are just a terribly relative
to gold. It seems like a terrible business.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Yeah, kind of like how.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Bitcoin mining companies don't do as well as bitcoin. I
want to talk about them. You also sell gold bars,
and so oh right now, I could buy a one
kilo gold bar on your website for one hundred and
fifteen thousand, five hundred and forty seven dollars and ninety
five cents. I could also buy a ten ounce gold
bar for thirty seven, two hundred and seventeen dollars and
(31:33):
seventy six cents. Where does that gold come from? What
is the supply chain for just let's say I don't
have any collectible interests. I just want a very space
efficient way to store a lot of gold. Where did
those bars come from? And how do they get to
my mailbox?
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Well? I think we source them from several different sources,
and again that's a highly competitive market. Yeah, and so
you know, we probably shop like anybody else does. Those
bars are typically coming from major refiners, some of them
are in Switzerland, but we are not buying them directly
from the refiners. We're typically buying them from some wholesale distributor,
(32:14):
got it. I can't actually tell you who they are
at this time. Sure, not because it's a secret, but
because I don't know.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
I imagine one of the downsides to owning physical gold
is storage, right, and the idea that, all, right, you're
putting all your money into this physical thing. But the
risk is someone comes and finds it and steals it
and you lose it all. How are people dealing with
that storage risk?
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Well, you can own a lot of gold and hold
it in a very small place, so I mean, and
most people will put it into a safe deposit box,
you know, in their bank, along with you know, the
jewelry and other things, important documents, and they'll like And
(33:01):
you can own hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not
millions of dollars in a very small space. So I
think the storage issue is a bit of a canard,
and becoming even more so as gold prices have gone
from one thousand dollars announced to thirty four hundred dollars
an ounce.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
You know, it's funny. So I'm looking at the price
of the gold bars and it's true, like you could
store right now one hundred and fifteen thousand dollars worth
of US dollar value, or roughly, that looks like a
fairly small that one kilo of gold. What's funny, So
silver is just so much cheaper, because so a ten
ounce gold bar is thirty seven thousand, one hundred ounce
silver bar is only three thousand, seven hundred. So you
(33:43):
get something that's the same weight. No, you get something
that's ten x the weight for one tenth the price.
So for gold, the appeal is lots of dollar value
in a small amount of physical space. For silver, it's
almost the exact opposite, where you can spend not that
many dollar and have something that fills up your entire team,
something to stack, Yeah, something to stack and show off
(34:05):
on your YouTube channel.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Yeah, that's right, that's right. When you open that box
of one hundred thousand dollars with silver, yeah, then don't
feel like you've really gotten stuff.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
But is there a difference in the type of person
who accumulates silver coins and bars versus gold coins and bars.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
There's an important difference between those two product lines, gold
and silver and the market forces that move them. We
think of them as both being precious metal, both of
them being used in currency, both of them having this
long history as a store value. But silver A much
larger proportion of silver is used in commercial applications and
(34:53):
industrial applications than gold is. So there's this cyclical component
to silver that is largely absent in gold, and so
gold has been considered a pure form of hedging against
bad times, then silver has been because silver is influenced
(35:15):
by the cyclical demand factor. When I became Director of
the MEN, I really was not familiar with precious metals
or or coinage. I hadn't collected coins. But one of
my first jobs outside of going to the Mint, was
going to one of the big annual coin shows. And
(35:36):
when they announced that the Director of the Mint was present,
people lined up, like one hundred people lined up to
get my autograph. I'm just so shocked by that. And
I like to talk to people, and especially I like
to talk to my customers. And I was new with
the MINT and we were going to be very customer focused.
I was on a mission to demonstrate how government can
(36:01):
meet the highest standards of business, and the Mint was
very far from that when I came in. So I
talked to customers and I spent a lot of time
with them, and you know, they loved American history. That's
one thing that's very clear. That loved the art and
the stories behind coins. And they were good red blood
(36:24):
of Americans, and they were like the people I grew
up with in West Texas, and so you know, they
seemed very level headed to me.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
I would be curious to get your thoughts on this.
So what was it like actually writing the bill that
allowed for the possibility of the trillion dollar coin?
Speaker 3 (36:45):
No, it was, it was just it was a nothing.
We had. The very first entrepreneurial project that I took
on was I wanted to launch the nation's first platinum
bullying coin, or a platinum coin of any type, and
I wanted to demonstrate that we could go after the
(37:06):
Japanese market. Besides North America, the Japanese market was the hot,
the big hot market for platinum coins. And are Tarlean's
north of the border, who I love and continue to love,
even there is some tension in the relationship. Now they
own that market and I want won straight that we
(37:27):
could go and take that market away from them, because
I've had bigger fish to fry in the fifty state
quarters and a new dollar coin, and I just knew
I wanted to demonstrate that, so I wrote a bell
and I asked for complete discretion so that I could
go over there and talk to the senior probably in
(37:47):
his eighty eighties Japanese distributor, and sit down with him
and say, I'd like to talk to you about designing
a coin that will be successful Japan. And I knew
that we would go through the emotions of him expressing
your opining, but it was just the honor of being
(38:09):
asked participate in that process that would make the difference.
And sure enough, when we launch the coin within six
or eight months, we own that market.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Philip Deal, you know, I consider you a hero because
I never really worry about the dead ceiling being briefed
because I know that ability to mint a trillion dollar
coin could come up and that will save us in
the end. Thank you so much for coming on odd LATS.
Really delight to chat with you.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
It's been a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Thank you, Tracy. By the way, for those that don't know,
they could go back. I've written a ton about it,
the trillion dollar coin. Just look up trillion dollar coin
(39:00):
debt ceiling. For new listeners who aren't familiar with all
the lore, just search for it. We don't need to
repeat it. But I could really like all the sort
of technical aspects of like what does it make to
for a coin to be successful? Like I said, I
could just sort of listen to details on that for
a long time and all the market research and like, oh,
we thought it could be big in Japan. We felt
we could like feat out the Canadian sellers. To my mind,
(39:21):
really interesting stuff.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Japanese coin collectors are indirectly responsible for the trillion dollar
platform coin. Very interesting. You know what I was reminded of.
I read a book, I guess a few years ago
about numismatics, and I think it was called When Money Talks,
And I remember the author described coins as sort of
(39:44):
physical memes.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Yeah, like totally.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Meme plexes, and each coin contains like a set of
ideas and a set of values that then gets transmitted.
And I think that really came through in the conversation
with Philip, like it is not just about the pressure
metal content, It is also about all these sort of
social things that are embedded in that coin as well.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Yeah, and I don't know like what it is, but
like I really want a Kruegerrand specifically, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Wait, wait, I have a question for you. Yeah, okay.
If you were offered a krue Grand versus the same
amount worth of a tungsten cube, what would you choose?
Speaker 3 (40:23):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Well, I have my well the same uh the same value,
the same? Oh so I need to I might just
get a kruwe Grand.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
I'm really tempted. I have my tungsten cube. I think
I need to do.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
That's I think the novelty value of a Krugerrand.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
I need a Kruegerrand. I really think I do.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Okay, shall we leave it there?
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Let's leave it there.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Follow our guest Philip Deal. He's at Philip and Deal.
Follow our producers Carman Rodriguez at Kerman armand Dash Ill
Bennett at Dash, Kilbrooks at Kilbrooks. For more Odd Loots content,
go to Bloomberg dot com slash odd Lots. We have
all of our episodes and a daily newsletter, and you
can chet about these topics. Twenty four to seven in
(41:10):
our discord discord dot gg, slash.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Odlines and if you enjoy odd Lots, if you like
it when we talk about the allure of physical coins,
then please leave us a positive review on your favorite
podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber,
you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad free.
All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel
on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. Hello and welcome to
another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Jill Wisenthal.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
And I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Tracy, you've actually benefited a little bit from this move
up in gold lady. Right, you're a bit of a
bullion hoarder.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Right.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I thought you were about to call me a gold bug.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
I know, I know you're not a full on gold bug.
You're a but you're like gold bug adjacent or silver
bug adjacent or something like that.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
I let me just be clear. I have inherited my
long gold position, I guess, and silver as well. So
for some reason, every year, for my birthday and for Christmas,
my dad gives me either a gold coin or a
silver coin from his personal collection. He got it in
his mind that, like I, I really enjoy coins, I guess,
(01:02):
and now I kind of do. There is something satisfying
about having physical coins and sitting there. And I don't
stack them on YouTube or anything, but I do like
to check occasionally that they're still there, and I do
get a little bit of satisfaction when I look at
my little, my little pile of gold and silver.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
I have to say, you know the one thing. I
don't own any physical gold. I do like the idea
of owning a bunch of silver and stacking it on
a table and doing a YouTube video about that. Everyone
should go look at the silver stackers on YouTube that
you're great. I would be scared, you know, you could
like bury them somewhere like out in the wilderness of Connecticut.
I would be scared to hold a lot of buoyon
(01:43):
on my person. And then I would be scared to
hold them in a bank because if everything goes bad,
is the bank even going to be open in a
safe deposit box? So I like the idea in theory
of having a lot of precious metal. Anyway, precious metal
has been doing really well lately.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
It has. I was just looking at chart of gold.
So it hit another record high just at sort of
mid April, and then it came down quite a bit,
and now it's up again, like we're almost back to
that record.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
It's pretty extraordinary. Gold is is sort of living up
to the hype because there's all this chaos and all
everything in the markets and the economy and politics, and
gold is up.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
So yeah, yes, you know what I like about gold?
Tell me I like the advertisements that you see on TV.
And the interesting thing to me is like, obviously the
companies that are doing those ads are pitching an investment,
but so much of the investment pitch is sort of
mixed up with cultural values totally. So for instance, I
(02:42):
was watching one earlier in preparation for this episode, and
they were talking about how when you're walking down inflation
Boulevard and global instability Avenue, you really need the safety
of a gold coin, which not only represents security via gold,
but also the security of the United States of America.
(03:05):
Like you get all these cultural references wrapped up in coins.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
At one hundred percent, and every coin has its design
and evokes all this stuff about heritage and everything. Anyway,
I'm really excited because we actually do literally have the
perfect guest because it touches on many things that were
interested in. It's someone who I've actually known for a while,
I've talked to before, someone who we're going to talk
(03:30):
about coins, but we're not going to talk about well, let's.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Just my most hated coin.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yeah, see, there's one coin that Tracy hates. So we
are going to talk to Philip Deal. He is the
President of the US Money Reserve which sells gold. He
was also I think one of the great mint directors
in US history. He was the thirty fifth director of
the US Mint, where he, among other things, had numerous accomplishments.
(03:58):
He was instrumental in the sakajuwea dollar or a dollar
coin that was very successful lease sold to collectors. He
was behind the fifty State Quarters project, which if you
remember the nineties, they made a quarter for each of
the states. Turns out our producer Dash has all of
the fifty state quarters, which I didn't know and we're
not going to talk about this, although maybe relevant again
(04:19):
with the dead sealing come up. He was also the
one that got the language in the law that in
theory allows for the creation of a platinum coin of
high denomination which could be used to circumvent the dead sealing.
We're not going to talk about the trillion dollar coin
on this episode. We are going to talk about gold coins.
Philip Deal thrilled to have you on to talk now,
(04:40):
appreciate you coming on Odd Laws.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
It's great to be on. I've looked forward to this.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
I'm so excited. Tell us about uh where to start
even just tell us you're what the US Money Reserve
is so people understand, you know where you're coming from.
What is the business of the US Money Reserve.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
We're a retailer of gold, silver, and platinum coins to
the US market. We sell mostly US government coins issued coins,
but also coins of other nations. We are probably in
the upper mid level of the marketplace, and I'd say
(05:21):
that we're different from our competitors because we market very differently.
I have a very different approach from what is typical
in the industry. This is something that I've really focused
on for the last several years. For example, all of
those advertisements that really harp on the end of the
world and how gold is your go to investment for
(05:48):
really hard times. A lot of that has meant. When
you look at the record, gold has performed extraordinarily well
over the last twenty five years in good times and
bad times. Great example of that is right now. Of course,
this has been a hard year for stocks, and stocks
are down probably the less time I check course this
(06:09):
change is daily that down about seven percent and gold
is up twenty seven percent this year. But last year
was a great year for stocks, and stocks were up
twenty three percent. The gold beat it it's twenty eight percent.
And when you look back over the last ten years,
five out a teen year gold has been beat this
(06:31):
and P five hundred.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
To this point, my mom asked me last year if
she should invest in gold, and hate I hate it
when family members ask you these kind of questions because
I'm not in the business of providing investment advice. But
I told her, you know, sure, why not, just don't
put all of your money in gold. And now fast
forward like eight months, she's mad at me for not
recommending that she buy even more gold. She took apparently
(06:56):
a conservative position and should have been more. But maybe
I'll start with my most my biggest question, which is
what makes a coin popular.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Well, a number of factors go into it. One is
the denomination, for obvious reasons, the bigger the better. Also,
the metallic matters, gold more popular than silver. And design
also is hugely important, and this is something that we
(07:27):
really played on with a Sacagawea Golden dollar. It's important
that a coin be distinguishable to not be confused with
another coin. The Susan b Anthony had that reputation with
confusion with a quarter. Also, the design was not a
popular design Susan B. Anthony was not attractive on that design.
(07:51):
So one of the things we wanted to do when
we introduced the new dollar coin was to find a
topic that the topic itself would be hugely popular. And
the book Undaunted Courage had come out probably about a
year before we launched that coin, and of course a
(08:15):
part of that story was the story of Sakagawa and
her role in leading the Lewis and Clark expedition across
the Rocky Mountains, and that had really captured the imagination
of Americans, and especially the story of Sectia carrying her
infant son, John Baptiste on her back through that entire journey.
(08:40):
And we ended up having the design competition for a
design that fit that theme, and we ended up with
a beautiful design done by a goodacre And as a
result also we did a lot of market research on
what would be necessary to make this coin successful, and
(09:02):
when we launched it through a Walmart, they had people
standing in lines around blocks all over the country. We
have something like one hundred and fifty million of them
distributed within the first month, and it was an enormous success.
But one of the things that is always a challenge
(09:23):
for a dollar coin in the United States is you've
really got to withdraw the dollar bill when you introduce
the dollar coin. And that's been the case all through
the Western economies where the high denomination bill has to
our low denomination bill has to be eliminated when this
high denomination coin comes in.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
How do you actually measure sure the success of a coin,
because if I think about something like the Sacagway a
dollar you're talking about. Initially there there was a lot
of interest in it, but I think like production didn't
last for very long, and there are some people out
there who would say, actually, it wasn't that popular with
investors or Americans over the longer term.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Yes, we really a circulating coin like the Sacatary Golden
dollar is successful if it circulates, if Americans use it
in commerce, and we saw one of the challenges you
face is a plane of the pump. Unless you get
a lot of coins in circulation immediately, then it doesn't
(10:45):
really enter circulation. And one of the constraints the coins
face is the change tray in a cash register. At
least that was the case twenty five years ago when
we were launching the golden dollar. Is not really a
place for a new denomination coin unless that is made
(11:07):
by the commercial unity by taking a quarter rolls out
of one of the bins. And so that was the
first big challenge that we faced. And you would think
that it would be relatively straightforward because the Federal Reserve
is our customer, the us Men's customer for circulating coinage.
(11:28):
The us MEN produces the coins, the Federal Reserve purchases
us them at a markup I believe it or not.
Us Men is a profit making enterprise, and then they
are distributed around the country, and then banks purchased them
from the Federal Reserve. But when we went to the
(11:49):
Federal Reserve in part of our market research and talked
to the banks, they still remembered sort of the disaster
that the Anthony launch had been twenty years actually forty
years earlier, and they said, well, all you have to
(12:09):
do is proved us that this coin will be accepted
by the American people and then we'll order it. Well,
that was a catch twenty two for us, because of
course unless they ordered it, we couldn't make it work.
And so I ended up going to Walmart and asking
if they'd be interested in launching the coin in all
Walmart and Sam's locations on the same day at the
(12:33):
end of January two thousand and they caught the vision
of what that would mean and was huge success for them,
and we produced over a billion Secretaria coins in that
first year and distributed them first through Walmart. We had
a contract with them to provide three hundred million sacagaris,
(12:58):
and we had to go back to them after the
first half had been delivered and say we need to
be we need to be let out of the second
half of that because now the banks are calling and
they haven't ordered any and they really unhappy that customers
come to them they don't have the sacagaria and they're
calling the the Secretary of the Treasury in the head
(13:21):
of the Federalserve and complaining. So we want to if
we want to take your of them as fast as
we can. So it was an enormous success, and not
just because people collected it, but because they were also
using it. But banks don't like coins, They like bows,
they don't like coins because coins are more expensive for
(13:44):
them to handle the ship, and we expected that there
was a natural resistance to it. My term expired in
early two thousand, so Secretaria lost a champion at the
top of the mint at that time, and it and
the momentum was lost over the next several.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Years, Tracy, I could listen to like technical detain stories
public yeah, and like you know, the fact about change
trays and the you know, and how difficult that is.
I could listen to that for a really long time. Also,
what I appreciate about this story is the sort of
the entrepreneurialism involved of like having to go out to
(14:24):
the Walmart and the SAMs.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
And stuff that it's like a product launch, yeah, which we.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Don't normally associate with anything in the government for the
most part, except you know, the Mint is unique also
of course a policy entrepreneur. But we're not gonna we're
not going to talk about that specific area of the
trillion dollar coin. Okay, I'm on the US Money Reserve
website and I see that you have a one right
at today's price is a one ounce gold American Eagle
(14:48):
type two coin for three eight hundred and nine dollars
and seventy one cents a one out South African gold
krue Grand. Something very sexy about holding krewe Grand specifically,
I've always thought that's one eight hundred and six dollars
and thirty one cents same price for the Austrian gold
Harmonic Philharmonic coin.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Oh, I have one of those, really. Yeah, and I
have the Maria Theresa gold coins too. I probably shouldn't
say those podcast.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
You have one hundred of these coins and give the
location at home.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Yeah, and then also some silver coins that depict battles.
But I want to just ask a little bit about
the sort of basic supply chain here of some of
these coins. So these are official government coins that the
US Mint still produces and then sells them to some
distributor at a markup, and then you sell it at
a further markup. Is that basically the gist of how
(15:37):
these coins come into existence?
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Yes, just like any other product. And you're exactly right
that we had treated a number of new products as
typical commercial product launches, and so, just like any other product,
the manufacturer has a markup, the distributor has a markup,
(16:00):
and then also the retailer has a markup. And that's
true for all brillion coins that are produced by other
nations as well. And it is a competitive market in
the US. You can purchase any number of bullion coins
produced by other nations, and they market them in similar
(16:21):
fashion and mark them up in a similar fashion. It's
a very competitive market.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
So speaking of markups, one thing I've always struggled with
when it comes to coins is how much of the
value is derived from the actual precious metal content, whether
it's gold or silver or platinum versus how much of
the value is derived from the collectibility and the general
design or availability of the coin.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Okay, it's important here to distinguish two different kinds of coins,
actually three different kinds. One is bullion coins, precious metal
coins that are sold at a slight premium above the
spot price of gold when they are sold. Then a
second type is a collectible coin, like a nuismatic coin.
A US Mint produces annual sets also precious metal commemorative coins,
(17:17):
and than circulating coins. So the precious metal coins that
are boin coins and collectible coins are priced and marketed
in very different ways. Commmittive coins are produced to much
finer quality, and the strike is they're almost one offs.
(17:41):
There are multiple strikes in order to get that fine design.
Who raise the design and get the polished finish of
those coins. And because the production process is much more detailed.
There are fuel coins produce many fewer coins produced. They
are priced differently, they're marketed differently. They're sold directly by
(18:05):
the United States meant and those coins, a substantial portion
of the cost is reflected in those additional costs. And
so you know, very depending on which metal you're talking about,
but maybe in percent of the price or so of
(18:27):
a gold coin or a platinum coin is represented by
those additional costs. Whereas for a bullion coin, as I
was saying, those are highly competitive. There are, they're produced
in very large numbers. They're not produced as collectibles. Sometimes
they are collected, but they're not produced for.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
That reason, Would an American eagle account as a bullion
coin or a sort of finite collectible item, because I
know they issue them by year, Yes.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
They do. There are two version of it produced. The
bullion coin is produced in very large quantities by law.
They're supposed to be produced to meet public demand, the
law states, although sometimes the mint runs into bottlenecks and
(19:19):
cannot fully meet demand, and they are produced in a
very rapid mass manufacturing processes. The eagle is also produced
in a collectible and it's called the proof gold Eagle
and it is produced according to those very high standards
(19:40):
I was describing earlier, and is sold at a significant
break premium above the spot price of gold.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
I'm looking again at the website and the other one
of the other things you sell is a Pearl Harbor
gold coin, which is identified as exclusive to the US
Money Reserve and features Queen Elizabeth the Second on the obverse,
Navy ships and Japanese fighter planes on the reverse. Can
you talk a little bit? Is that a US government coin?
(20:08):
Because there is also private stamping, right, like someone can
you know someone could get gold and stamp whatever they
want on it and sell it.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Yes, can you tell? Yeah, talk a little bit about
that that's not really coins, Okay, when they're produced that
they have to be legal tender to be coins. Okay,
you know you see it football games and coin toss. Well,
those aren't coins. Those are medals. They're medallions because they're
not legal tender. It's not a US coin. We usually
(20:38):
don't put royalty, foreign royalty on our coins, and this
is like Brien Elizabeth in this case, these are coins
by other nations that the risk meant does not do this.
It does not produce bespoke coins according to order, but
other nations do and it's not unique to US Money Reserve.
(21:01):
Other companies do this too, but we have been more
aggressive in developing coins through other governments in limited quantities
that are collectibles in precious metal and marketing those. Typically
we are celebrating an anniversary. A percentage of these coins,
(21:24):
the sole price of these coins typically goes to a
charitable purpose. We have been very supportive of the US
Navy memorial, so that's one of the ones that we
really stood behind.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
One thing I wanted to ask is when you're designing
a coin, So when you were at the US Mint,
and I'm not talking about precious metal coins here, but
just your sort of standard coin, how much does profitability
come into considerations for designing a coin? Because I know,
with the Trump administration talking about maybe getting rid of
(22:00):
the penny, this seems to be even more of an
issue than it used to be, although people have been
debating the existence of the penny or whether it should
exist for decades now. But do you do you sit
there and you know, write on a napkin. It's going
to cost me x to produce and I'll be able
to sell it to the Federal Reserve and the banks
(22:21):
for why amount.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
Yeah, it's a factor, no doubt about that. And to
a certain degree, or to a great degree, the US
Mint doesn't have discretion in the specifications of the coin.
They are laid out in great detail in the legislation
that authorized the coin. The long exception to that is
(22:43):
the platinum bullion coin, in which Congress I'd asked Congress
for a virtually total discretion on that coin, and they
gave it to us, and the trillion dollar coin came
as an unintended consequence of that.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
There's the trillion dollar coin.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Can't miss it. But yes, all the details are in
the legislation. But the Mint does attempt to produce those
coins in the most efficient fashion possible within those constraints.
And the penny has blown away our capacity to make
(23:23):
profitable for over thirty years. I was the first Mint
director thirty years ago to recommend elimination of the penny.
You can see how much influence I am. But it's
long overdue to be eliminated. There was a problem back
in the seventies I believe, where the penny had negative seniorage.
(23:45):
I can describe what senior riage is here in the moon,
but it's basically profit and so, and the coin was maing.
It was all copper. At the time, the coin was
being melted down because copper, the copper content, was worth
more than the penny was. And so the wronger stepped
in and changed the composition of the penny. We had
(24:08):
a similar situation now with a nickel, where it's a
money loser. The production of the nickel is a money loser,
but it might be profitable if there were some changes,
or at least the amount of money that is lost
producing each coin would be decreased. Now, one of the
things that came out of the Sataguria coin in the
(24:30):
fifty State Quarters program and those two huge projects, very
entrepreneurial projects, as you were alluding to, Joe, Those were
launched within about a year of each other, and that
took the US MINTS profits and our profits. The US
MINTS profits go to the American taxpayer that go into
(24:50):
the general fund of the Treasury, and we took profits
from seven hundred million dollars a year when I came
into the Mint to two point six billion dollars after
five years. And I told my staff that they'd all
be wealthy. We're a private enterprise, but we didn't get
paid by the by the coin.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Let's talk a little bit about your the business more
of selling these collectible coins and bullion coins and so
forth at gold coins to a retail customer base. I
have a couple of questions. One is is volume associated
with price because you must see you know when the
line is is there when the line is going up
in terms of the price of announce of gold, do
(25:35):
you generally see a correlation in pick a pickup in
people wanting to buy gold coins.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Absolutely, that's been It's been a tremendous nineteen months since
this this rally, this bull market began, and over that
period of time, we've seen prices go up sixteen hundred
dollars an ounce from eighteen hundred to thirty four hundred
this warning and it's just it's been one record after
(26:05):
another being set. So we see a tremendous increase in demand.
I think most people in the industry do.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
What about the demographics, so obviously you know generally I speak,
I think of the gold coin buyer who would buy
from us money reserve is probably someone you know, like
Tracy's dad's specifically what have you seen demographics do younger generations?
Does Gen Z or millennials? Do they care yet about
holding collectible or bullyant coins.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
When I was directed with the MINT, I was in
my forties and I would describe our buyers as being white, male,
and over fifty. And there's nothing wrong with that. I
aspire to be one some day. But worry about that demographic.
You know, I was fading out over a decade or two.
(26:54):
That's not the case today. Gold is hugely popular across
a very wide spectrum. And that's not surprising given the
amount of coverage news coverage gold has received over the
last two years and these record prices, especially when the
stock market is falling, people are looking for safe havens
(27:18):
and gold is the ultimate save haven. It's been around
for five thousand years, it's always had value, It's had
value worldwide. It's the universal safe haven. And what we
were beginning to see in some of the market research
is a skewing of interest to younger audiences that includes
(27:41):
millennials and Gen Z, and some of the research indicates
that they have greater interest in gold than boomers do.
That is really a surprise to me, but not too
much of a surprise once I thought about it, because
those of us who grew up in the sixties and seventies,
(28:02):
we're less focused on money and protecting ourselves and than
what our kids are. And so that you know, that's
extraordinarily smart and forward looking for them to be thinking
about their futures and thinking about the role gold with have.
Now you know, the issue comes up whether you know
(28:25):
what percentage of a portfolio should be in gold. I
tell people never put all of your money in gold.
Don't put in all your money into any asset. There
needs to be diversification in any portfolio, and the right
percentage depends on how old you are, your risk averseess,
you know how large a portfolio is. There's no one
(28:48):
size fits all recommendation. But one of the factors I
do recommend people to consider is how optimistic or pessimistic
you are about the state of the world, the state
of your own finances, and considering the slave haven history
of gold. The more pessimist you are, I do recommend
(29:11):
a higher percentage of your portfolio and gold.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Why should I buy a gold coin versus invest in
a gold mining stock.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
Well, mining stocks have tended to underperform the price of
gold itself. And there's a simple reason for this, and
that is it's getting harder to find and more expensive
to mine gold. The clear signal of this is if
you look back over world gold production over the last
ten or fifteen years, it hit a peak about ten
(29:59):
years ago. And despite the fact that gold prices have
skyrocketed since sin and the miners have tremendous incinners because
of that, to increase production, they haven't been able to.
And this is one of the forces that is driving
gold prices upward today. And one of the reasons why
(30:21):
I'm confident it will continue to go up is that
you know, you talk about peak oil. I don't know
that we've hit peak gold. But the miners have not
really been able to take advantage of these higher prices
by increasing production, and so the miners are weighted by
(30:41):
those additional costs. And also gold is now mined more
often and politically and economically unstable and corrupt countries, and
that is adds a risk premvement of cost to doing
business that the miners have to bear.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
It's so crazy to Tracey, I'm looking at a chart
of GDX, the Vank Gold Mining ETF charting against GLD,
the gold ETF. The miners are just a terribly relative
to gold. It seems like a terrible business.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Yeah, kind of like how.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Bitcoin mining companies don't do as well as bitcoin. I
want to talk about them. You also sell gold bars,
and so oh right now, I could buy a one
kilo gold bar on your website for one hundred and
fifteen thousand, five hundred and forty seven dollars and ninety
five cents. I could also buy a ten ounce gold
bar for thirty seven, two hundred and seventeen dollars and
(31:33):
seventy six cents. Where does that gold come from? What
is the supply chain for just let's say I don't
have any collectible interests. I just want a very space
efficient way to store a lot of gold. Where did
those bars come from? And how do they get to
my mailbox?
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Well? I think we source them from several different sources,
and again that's a highly competitive market. Yeah, and so
you know, we probably shop like anybody else does. Those
bars are typically coming from major refiners, some of them
are in Switzerland, but we are not buying them directly
from the refiners. We're typically buying them from some wholesale distributor,
(32:14):
got it. I can't actually tell you who they are
at this time. Sure, not because it's a secret, but
because I don't know.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
I imagine one of the downsides to owning physical gold
is storage, right, and the idea that, all, right, you're
putting all your money into this physical thing. But the
risk is someone comes and finds it and steals it
and you lose it all. How are people dealing with
that storage risk?
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Well, you can own a lot of gold and hold
it in a very small place, so I mean, and
most people will put it into a safe deposit box,
you know, in their bank, along with you know, the
jewelry and other things, important documents, and they'll like And
(33:01):
you can own hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not
millions of dollars in a very small space. So I
think the storage issue is a bit of a canard,
and becoming even more so as gold prices have gone
from one thousand dollars announced to thirty four hundred dollars
an ounce.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
You know, it's funny. So I'm looking at the price
of the gold bars and it's true, like you could
store right now one hundred and fifteen thousand dollars worth
of US dollar value, or roughly, that looks like a
fairly small that one kilo of gold. What's funny, So
silver is just so much cheaper, because so a ten
ounce gold bar is thirty seven thousand, one hundred ounce
silver bar is only three thousand, seven hundred. So you
(33:43):
get something that's the same weight. No, you get something
that's ten x the weight for one tenth the price.
So for gold, the appeal is lots of dollar value
in a small amount of physical space. For silver, it's
almost the exact opposite, where you can spend not that
many dollar and have something that fills up your entire team,
something to stack, Yeah, something to stack and show off
(34:05):
on your YouTube channel.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Yeah, that's right, that's right. When you open that box
of one hundred thousand dollars with silver, yeah, then don't
feel like you've really gotten stuff.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
But is there a difference in the type of person
who accumulates silver coins and bars versus gold coins and bars.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
There's an important difference between those two product lines, gold
and silver and the market forces that move them. We
think of them as both being precious metal, both of
them being used in currency, both of them having this
long history as a store value. But silver A much
larger proportion of silver is used in commercial applications and
(34:53):
industrial applications than gold is. So there's this cyclical component
to silver that is largely absent in gold, and so
gold has been considered a pure form of hedging against
bad times, then silver has been because silver is influenced
(35:15):
by the cyclical demand factor. When I became Director of
the MEN, I really was not familiar with precious metals
or or coinage. I hadn't collected coins. But one of
my first jobs outside of going to the Mint, was
going to one of the big annual coin shows. And
(35:36):
when they announced that the Director of the Mint was present,
people lined up, like one hundred people lined up to
get my autograph. I'm just so shocked by that. And
I like to talk to people, and especially I like
to talk to my customers. And I was new with
the MINT and we were going to be very customer focused.
I was on a mission to demonstrate how government can
(36:01):
meet the highest standards of business, and the Mint was
very far from that when I came in. So I
talked to customers and I spent a lot of time
with them, and you know, they loved American history. That's
one thing that's very clear. That loved the art and
the stories behind coins. And they were good red blood
(36:24):
of Americans, and they were like the people I grew
up with in West Texas, and so you know, they
seemed very level headed to me.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
I would be curious to get your thoughts on this.
So what was it like actually writing the bill that
allowed for the possibility of the trillion dollar coin?
Speaker 3 (36:45):
No, it was, it was just it was a nothing.
We had. The very first entrepreneurial project that I took
on was I wanted to launch the nation's first platinum
bullying coin, or a platinum coin of any type, and
I wanted to demonstrate that we could go after the
(37:06):
Japanese market. Besides North America, the Japanese market was the hot,
the big hot market for platinum coins. And are Tarlean's
north of the border, who I love and continue to love,
even there is some tension in the relationship. Now they
own that market and I want won straight that we
(37:27):
could go and take that market away from them, because
I've had bigger fish to fry in the fifty state
quarters and a new dollar coin, and I just knew
I wanted to demonstrate that, so I wrote a bell
and I asked for complete discretion so that I could
go over there and talk to the senior probably in
(37:47):
his eighty eighties Japanese distributor, and sit down with him
and say, I'd like to talk to you about designing
a coin that will be successful Japan. And I knew
that we would go through the emotions of him expressing
your opining, but it was just the honor of being
(38:09):
asked participate in that process that would make the difference.
And sure enough, when we launch the coin within six
or eight months, we own that market.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Philip Deal, you know, I consider you a hero because
I never really worry about the dead ceiling being briefed
because I know that ability to mint a trillion dollar
coin could come up and that will save us in
the end. Thank you so much for coming on odd LATS.
Really delight to chat with you.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
It's been a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Thank you, Tracy. By the way, for those that don't know,
they could go back. I've written a ton about it,
the trillion dollar coin. Just look up trillion dollar coin
(39:00):
debt ceiling. For new listeners who aren't familiar with all
the lore, just search for it. We don't need to
repeat it. But I could really like all the sort
of technical aspects of like what does it make to
for a coin to be successful? Like I said, I
could just sort of listen to details on that for
a long time and all the market research and like, oh,
we thought it could be big in Japan. We felt
we could like feat out the Canadian sellers. To my mind,
(39:21):
really interesting stuff.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Japanese coin collectors are indirectly responsible for the trillion dollar
platform coin. Very interesting. You know what I was reminded of.
I read a book, I guess a few years ago
about numismatics, and I think it was called When Money Talks,
And I remember the author described coins as sort of
(39:44):
physical memes.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Yeah, like totally.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Meme plexes, and each coin contains like a set of
ideas and a set of values that then gets transmitted.
And I think that really came through in the conversation
with Philip, like it is not just about the pressure
metal content, It is also about all these sort of
social things that are embedded in that coin as well.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Yeah, and I don't know like what it is, but
like I really want a Kruegerrand specifically, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Wait, wait, I have a question for you. Yeah, okay.
If you were offered a krue Grand versus the same
amount worth of a tungsten cube, what would you choose?
Speaker 3 (40:23):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Well, I have my well the same uh the same value,
the same? Oh so I need to I might just
get a kruwe Grand.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
I'm really tempted. I have my tungsten cube. I think
I need to do.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
That's I think the novelty value of a Krugerrand.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
I need a Kruegerrand. I really think I do.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Okay, shall we leave it there?
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Let's leave it there.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Follow our guest Philip Deal. He's at Philip and Deal.
Follow our producers Carman Rodriguez at Kerman armand Dash Ill
Bennett at Dash, Kilbrooks at Kilbrooks. For more Odd Loots content,
go to Bloomberg dot com slash odd Lots. We have
all of our episodes and a daily newsletter, and you
can chet about these topics. Twenty four to seven in
(41:10):
our discord discord dot gg, slash.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Odlines and if you enjoy odd Lots, if you like
it when we talk about the allure of physical coins,
then please leave us a positive review on your favorite
podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber,
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All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel
on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.
Hosts And Creators
Joe Weisenthal
Tracy Alloway
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