Mobile Bay Coins and Fine Jewelry 3.25.2025

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
News Radio seven to ten WNTM. Uncle Henry here once
again with Ron and Anna of Mobile Bay Coins and
Fine Jewelry. Mobile Bay Coins and Fine Jewelry. You'll find
them at twenty two oh' four Government Street in Midtown Mobile.
You'll also find them at Mobilebacoins dot com. It can
always look at great pictures from Mobile bay Coins and

(00:27):
find jewelry on their Facebook page and Instagram account. Ron
and Anna, how busy has it been at Mobile bay
Coins and find jewelry?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
So busy? I can't remember my names? I count that's
Busy's bree.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Yes. So I like hearing that though. I like that
you still have a lot of a lot of people,
high volume of people coming in and out of Mobile
bay Coins.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Oh yeah, absolutely. And on that note, a lot of
people have been bringing in just scrap stuff that they've
had around the house. And some of the things that
Ron and I noticed as class rings and be it.
You know, if it's an't care ring and it's a
big hefty ring that just sits around, people don't really
wear their class rings anymore. They're surprised to get how
much they could get out of it, because it depending

(01:09):
on the ring size, the weight of it and whatnot.
It could bring up to about four hundred bucks or more.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah, and everybody's probably heard. Gold's been over three thousand
dollars almost two weeks and been holding steady. So a
lot of people have been profit taking on it. Other
people saying, hey, I think gold's gonna keep going higher,
so they've been coming in and buying gold. It's been
a good mix of buying and selling, and I'd say
there's been more silver bugs selling than gold bugs. People
that stack, you know, the people out there saying Okay,

(01:35):
I'm gonna switch to gold, just that gold seems to
be performing better. But I truly think silver has a
big upside still.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
So it's, oh, you don't handle the calls very often,
but when you do, you do a great job. Nothing
against that, but it's just like whenever we get calls
in the shop, a lot of the time it's people
thought are trying to basically trade in their silver for
gold or announce the gold or whatever they can get.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
So gold is having a moment, Yes, it is. So
is it difficult to get gold if you want gold?

Speaker 2 (02:05):
No? No, I just posted on Facebook today though we
have a whole bunch of one as gold bars, and
there's other coins on whatever else you're looking for. All
you have to do is just call us at the
store and ask what we have at the time.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Hey, before we go any further, and I'll ask I
typically will ask you these kind of questions at the
end of these shows. But you just talked about class rings.
So if people want to, if they need extra cash
at this time of year, what kind of things do
you buy from people? You just mentioned jewelry, class rings, any.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Type of jewelry, as long as it's precious metals, coins,
paper money, and coins. It really depends on what it is.
If you're not sure, just before you clean, don't clean it.
Just bring it in as it is. Even if you're
not sure what it is, even if it's dirty, just
don't clean it. Because sometimes we've seen stuff where people
would clean their coins, polish it up and think that

(02:55):
they're actually doing good by doing that, and no, that's
very bad for a coin collector. You wanted to be
in its original condition as is. If we need to,
we can clean it there at the shop. If we
need to do with some soap or water something, it's.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
Bad for the coin. Imagine taking a scrubby sos pad
to the mona Lisa wouldn't be good for the No,
it's not going to be pit coin either, so same
treat it just like some a rare painting. You never
know you might have something that's rare. We've had meant
not in the shop, thank god, but on online an
article like coin World where a father scratched a penny.

(03:29):
It happened to be a nineteen forty three copper penny,
which is very rare. All nineteen forty three pennies that
year during the war were supposed to be made out
of steel. They needed the copper for bolt casing so
they could shoot people, so it basically weren't supposed to
have copper. But a few copper blanks were left over
from forty two made it into forty three and were
struck and of course are very expensive in the sixty

(03:50):
to seventy thousand dollars range if they don't have scratches
on them. Well, kid was at a coin show and
cherry picked one, said Damne, he got home, loook what
I got? Look like it goes. Some of those are
all fakes, they're plated. He took some type of I
think a knife and scratched a surface and it wasn't plated,
and they got it certified and it was genuine uncirculated
detail scratch. So it' had been about sixty seventy grand

(04:11):
would have paid a lot of that fifteen year old's
college and they ended up selling it at auction. They
did it, okay, they got thirty eight grand, but wow
half yeah, wow.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Well, anyway, we also buy Stirling silver flatware that's like forks, spoons,
tea sets, trays, and you want to look for the
Sterling stamp. If it doesn't have one, it probably is
not would not be silver. Sometimes there's old British hallmarks.
If again, if you're.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
Not sure, don't catch it.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
Yeah, bring it, we'll check. Yet there's no charge for
us to take a look at it. Well, so by
currency paper money being world currency, on world currency, I
would say it's Worldward two era and earlier that might
have some value. Anything from the fifties and on is
considered kind of more modern, So there's a lot of
that stuff. You could probably trade, take it to a

(05:02):
currency exchange place.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
The only caveat with with what Miss Barsova said is
from World War Two because much of World War War
two currency. In fact, if it's not US, almost all
of it is like monopoly money, because Japan was just
issuing script like crazy because of course they needed it,
and it's we're almost worthless, just like World War two
and World War One with Germany they had no GLD,

(05:24):
which is basically the same thing. Script promissory notes and
their very beautiful notes and fun to collect, but they're
very inexpensive because everybody printed them and they were worthless.
It took a wheelbarrow to get a load for bread.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yeah, don't call that Confederate money nowadays.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
Yeah, well, Confederate money is collectible, that is true. So
it's a little bit better shape because a lot of
people sence the government US after the North oneset, they
basically declared Confederate money worthless, worth nothing, So many people
used it for heating and the winner and burned bundles
of Confederate currency, and only twice, I wish I'd seen more.

(06:00):
Twice packets came in original packets with consecutive serial numbers
of the more common notes. Unfortunately, but they were the
whole deal was original, and their paper wrapping and the
pin they basually took a strapen like a woman's hairpin
from the time with a hard glass end and basically
stuck it through the You know, they didn't have glue

(06:21):
back then, so yeah, they bundled it that way. And
that's where the term pinholes and currency came from. Because
the old bundles and banks would use a pin for
making their bundles. There was no way they didn't have
a handy tape or whatever way to do it, so
they used pins. But packets came in. We still had
the original pin from the Confederate time. Those things are
so easy to sell, and both times the people thought

(06:43):
they had nothing. I'm like that is it makes a
com would normally be rather common notes to be worth
thirty forty bucks. The pack was worth tenfold because it
was the original pack. So it's neat to see stuff
like that. You don't see it very often, but it
is out there.

Speaker 1 (06:56):
You're listening to Ron and and of Mobile back Coins
and Fine Jewelry at twenty two four guys from Street
to Midtown Mobile Mobile bay Coins dot Com. Now you
just told me that gold is real strong right now.
People that's in demand. Gold and silver always demand, uh Anna.
Last time I did a show with Ron and you
weren't here. He said that there was people were interested
in pladium and platinum.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
Oh yeah, there's been an increase again in that. Now
platinum used to be actually higher than gold at one
point when they were putting it in the what do
they call them, the Cadillac converters. Y.

Speaker 3 (07:28):
Yeah, and now more than Cadillacts use them. They all
cars use them.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
Okay, but I like the term I had, that converter.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
It's a good one, that's original.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yeah, a lot of people have are switching back into
platinum and want to collect platinum again because for a
while there, since it was under I think a thousand
dollars spot on platinum, it just kind of lost its flow.

Speaker 3 (07:51):
Yes, as a matter of fact, it closed. Today the
metals are so close, platinum platium only ten cents apart,
nine hundred and ninety five dollars and forty cents and
outs around the platinum and forty cents less on palladium,
so almost equal, and the bets are of course, if
the economy recovers and we don't go into recession, please
don't let that happen. More people buy new cars and

(08:12):
the companies that make the catilet converters, we to buy
more platinum and our palladium. The equipment sets up different. Well,
some of the companies have been setting up during the change,
because before pladium got up to almost two thousand ounce.
Before that, platinum it hit two thousand ounce. So if
both metals trading just at one thousand dollars an ounce,
there's some room there for an increase. So if you're

(08:33):
gonna stack and create a hedge, adding some platinum and
our palladium to your portfolio, I think is a great idea.
I'm a platinum person right now, so I'm putting some
platinum aside. I think at under one thousand with the premium,
as long as you go without combi bars, anim can
do you pretty well. You're gonna be a little over
a thousand with the premium. But I do not recommend

(08:54):
unless people collect them the American Platinum Eagles, because they're
mond tries. Coins in the premiums are crazy. In some
cases it's the premiums are half the price of the
actual metal, So stick with bars if you're going to
go with platinum or palladium.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
Okay, now, the last time we did this show, last
couple of times, Anna was not here with us. It
was me and Ron, and so we didn't talk a
lot about jewelry. Now, how are things with jewelry at mobile?
Back coins and fine jewelry? How's the supply?

Speaker 2 (09:22):
We have so much jewelry. I don't have enough toes, fingers,
necks any We're running out of room to store all
the jewelry. That's how much we have.

Speaker 3 (09:32):
You would sink into the ground.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
Okay, there's no way. And I try to do these
sails on a lot of the stuff, where especially on
the silver, the silver rings, earrings and chains and things
like that impendance. A lot of the silver jewel we
have so much of, so we do a lot of
different sales on that, like buy one, get one certain
percent of raw, or buy two get one free. You
can't it, can't beat.

Speaker 3 (09:54):
It, and come in on Tuesdays because usually we do
the melts on a on a Wednesday. Mondays are the best,
or you know Friday. The more you weiit, the more
stuff builds up. That Ann's like, I have too much
of this. I'm gonna just scrap it or take the
stones out and we'll sell that stuff to you at
melt because we're gonna bust the stones out and get
melt from refinery. So get a deal. Can't guarantee every
week there'll be a lot of it, but a few

(10:15):
weeks ago she had about two pounds of it, so yeah,
you never know. It comes in and droves.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yeah, and if there's you come in and your brows
you don't see what you like, just ask because we
have stuff in the back. We have stuff that hasn't
even been processed yet or in the process of getting put.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
Us in the process of getting processed.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
Yeah, inventory, do you know what I mean? Hey, it's past,
give me a break.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
So, so the point is though you've got plenty of jewelry,
and it's at every price point really, so you can
get something. If you are really watching your wallet very closely,
you can get something. Or if you want to get
a statement piece of jewelry, you've got that stuff too, yes, sir,
all right, So and let's see, Mother's Day will be
coming up before you know it. You've got great items

(11:02):
as gifts for moms, be it jewelry. What other things
do you have that you could that people can buy.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
We actually have a specialty silver round and a silver
bar that specifically is designed to be a mother's I
wouldn't say Mother's Day gift, but for a mother, yes,
because they have a silver round that's called Mother like
no other, and that has all these words of encouragement
on it that would a mother represented. On the back,
you can actually personalize it by putting your mom's name,

(11:29):
the year or special date, whatever it is, and on
the silver bar it also has almost like a little
poem something like that. I can't recall it off the
top of my head right now, but on the back
again you can engrave it and make it personalize it
to her, and that makes it very unique to gift
to her as a gift for a Mother's Day or

(11:50):
any occasion really, because we have engravables like that for
just about everything, be it sports, be it graduation, be
it even Saint Patrick's Day that passed all right, but yeah,
we even have shamrocks. We have silver rounds with horses,
different animals. There's coins with different animals too, So there's
just there's gifts for just about any occasion for anyone

(12:12):
at the shop.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
And when they're engravable like that, it just it becomes
such a it can be a keep sak in the family.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
To keep three years or you control people with them,
because we've seen people buy stuff and put some funny
stuff on the back of it just to give it
us a gift or you know, pass it down, or
a lucky coin that you could keep in your pocket.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
Okay, all of that available at Mobile Bay Coins and
Fine Jewelry, twenty two oh four Government Street in Midtown Mobile.
Now what is new? What new has arrived? Any any
interesting pop culture stuff in there that we haven't heard
of yet on the radio.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
I don't think we've really had any news. There is
a new batterying design that's coming. It's on its way, yes,
to the shop. But graduations coming up, which, by the way,
let me mention that forget. Yeah, so if you want
a graduation still around or bar, you can go ahead
and get on the pre order list. So that way

(13:08):
you're locked in. And because once I order them, once
they sell out, they're gone.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
I happened to give you the engraving information as soon
as possible because you can only do so many Wait
till the day, I mean it can be too a
little time.

Speaker 2 (13:21):
Yeah, that's open until about mid April or so, and
then after that I I can't guarantee they'll be there,
but most of the graduations happen around May to June.
So if you're trying to get in on that, I
do it now sooner than later. Let's put it that way.
And also we can do before I forget is the
personal company logos on the engravables. They come with one

(13:42):
side that's blank and something Angelo actually used to do.
It was for the kids Fish Rodeo show. But we
can do that with a company logo.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
Basically, so you can engrave a company logo.

Speaker 3 (13:54):
On it, but it's not cheapy, clear sticker, high quality,
and the way you apply them to the item, they
if you don't pick at it, they'll stay on there
for a long time, keep out of the sun, probably
almost forever until the plastic and glue breaks down on
the front. You know, item you can give away. So
Stripers does it every year with the fishing Rodeo. The

(14:15):
I mean it's very inexpensive to do great way to.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
ReWarp people in your company or somebody, Yes, if you
wanted to make something more personal.

Speaker 3 (14:22):
But we can have the dies in grade if they
want to go that far. We have companies that do
that too. So your expense for that is about between
seven and fifty and one thousand per die, and usually
they pick one die with a logo and they'll use
a common engraveble design on the reverse and then they
can personalize the actual item that they're going to give
the employee or they just give them out a massive
Christmas a couple, you know, and every employee gets a

(14:45):
silver announce of silver at Christmas.

Speaker 2 (14:47):
And another thing that's new at the shop is the
new mystery bullying box that we've started. It's basically a
deal that you could get. It's one hundred dollars box
at the moment, that's what we've been doing, and you
get great savings when you buy. You don't know what's
in it. It could be a mix of silver bullion
and some gold. It could be just all silver you
don't know, or all gold.

Speaker 3 (15:08):
In most cases it's under melts. We have too many
of that we bought at the right time and we're
not selling thousands of them. It's kind of fun. The
last person to open and had a lot of fun
over it. So just different stuff, very inexpensive as one
hundred bucks. And Anna actually does the cards and we
both initial and signed them the day put the spot
price what it was. Of course it's a mystery. Gold

(15:29):
could go up and gold could go down, but silver
and gold have been going up. So all I can
say is the last boxes did very well.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
Okay, now say that was on my list of things
to ask about because the last time you were here
a couple of weeks ago, it was the first time
you brought up the mystery bond, and I thought, I
wonder how the customers are going to react to the
mystery bid.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
I mean, we haven't had a line off the story
to get them, but the people that have bought them
enjoyed them.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
Yes, so well, I know that the especially the longtime
customers that are familiar with you, are probably they would
probably stand in the line to get one of these
boxes because they know what Mobile Bay coins should find.
Jewelry is all about any deals you want to tell
us about. You have any great deals going on right
now and Mobile Bay coins and find jewelry.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
Well, Ron's told me to say that all the pre
nineteen thirty three US gold coins are on sale, but
common dates only, and he said they're fifty dollars over
the melt value, which is like great deal, Like you
can't get any better than.

Speaker 3 (16:30):
That, and we're not talking Joey grade or junk and
decent average circulated older US gold coins.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
And they're ninety percent gold.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (16:38):
People get confused, they think that they're all fine gold
and bullyan, but they're nine.

Speaker 3 (16:42):
It's an easy item to google US coin gold melt
values and n GC side will come up. They're very
very reputable. They grade coins publicly traded company and that
has accurate values for every US coin ever minted. That's
precious metals, what it currently melt. Matt's at its spot
right then you can hit refresh, very easy to calculate.
They add fifty bucks to it. That's what it's going

(17:03):
to cost you. We got some pretty once ten dollars Indians,
twenty dollars gold pieces, five dollar gold pieces, the whole,
the whole gambits available just because so many people have
been profit taking selling gold and the premium's nationwide have
come down. We can save people a lot of money, yep.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
And as far as silver, we've actually put pictures on
Facebook of those. But it's so they're coins and I
think they're Canadian if I'm not.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
Misstariedly some Canadians, some New Guinea.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
Okay, New Guinea and Canada. And it's what it is
is a one ounce and a point quarter five yeah,
one in a quarter of an ounce of silver, and
it features like different animals on them. I think it's
like bison, bison bears or polar bears maybe something like that.

Speaker 3 (17:42):
They're just odd sized coins. Not it's not everybody's thing.
That's why the premium is solo on them, and we
buy a lot of them. People are profit taking, they're
selling silver and these are mint fresh items. They're not
just like junk drawer stuff. So one point twenty five
ounce rounds.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
The best thing about them is only a dollar over.

Speaker 3 (17:58):
Spot, so save a lot of money on We got
a lot of big savings there.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
Okay. Now, the last time Ron was here without Anna,
he mentioned something that I don't remember Mobile Bay coins
and fine jewelry ever having for sale before, and that
was a vintage book or books. You still have vintage
books that you've got.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah, so a lot of them are part of the
Wizard of Oz series. And I didn't even know how
collectible these are. And they're from like nineteen twenties and thirties, okay,
And we've put them online on our eBay store, and
you can actually go to mobile bay cooins dot com,
click on shop and it'll take you to a page
that has our eBay link. If you click it, you

(18:37):
can view our newly listed items and you should be
able to find them on there. Okay, but they're older
collectible books.

Speaker 3 (18:43):
And as we've discussed, most of these were from mister
angel Semiferaoll's collection the Wizard of Oz series, and there's
some in color that were very hard to find. Angela
worked really hard trying to find the ones that were
the plates were color plates instead of black and white plates,
so that the whole gambit is available. Besides maybe a
couple than I am a sold already, but also some of
mister Semapharaoh's Gerber knives that his estatus oh really are

(19:07):
finally coming available. I had to find a couple experts
that I could trust to run stuff back and forth.
But you know, compare their prices and how their descriptions are,
and we've got probably, I mean, he's got thousands of
these knives, different in some thousands thousands.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
Now. Every time I talk to the air, he would
always say a couple of hundred, did he not want
people to know he had a thousands of knives.

Speaker 3 (19:30):
He did. I wouldn't say thousands and thousands, but I
think the total is gonna be right around a thousand. Now,
a lot of these aren't rare and collectible. They're Gerbers
and Randalls, and some of the ones that make up
the quantity are more modern, the ones you could wear
around your neck, worse knives, you know, little utilitarian type stuff.
So a lot of the number I'm count is that.
But of the rare stuff, we're probably talking four hundred,

(19:51):
maybe half the amount about that. Yeah, the man, so
he said, a few hundred men of the rare variety,
not of not of it's a Gerber knife. And my
name is angel Soma Pharaoh. I'm buying this sucker because yeah, yeah,
that's that mixture of those. But that is all available,
not all of it available. I'm working on it, but
some are available. So whether you're a fan of Angela

(20:11):
and you want to one of his gerber knives, or
you just love gerber knives, come by the shop.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
Okay, we're almost out of time. Anything else you want
to throw out here before we're out of time.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
Well, speaking of vintage, Nancy speaking of collecting stuff, that's Vita. No,
don't take it that way, No, no, recorded now, ye okay,
well recorded. Now she's been collecting these fire king glassword
dishes and little trinkets and things, and a lot of
them are collectible and available at the shop. They're not

(20:43):
out for display a lot of the time, so if
you come and look in for those, you'd have to
either browse online on our eBay store or just call
us or ask because if we would.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
Have something like that, Okay, so I want to make
sure I asked this before we end the program. Uh.
For many many years, you've made a part of your
business that you do free appraisals for people, even if
they don't want to sell their stuff. You'll go through
it and tell them what it's what it's worth. You'll
even provide information for their insurance company. Absolutely, so you're

(21:15):
still doing this. You're still doing it. What do people
need to do if they want a free appraisal?

Speaker 2 (21:20):
The all they have to do is bring it themselves,
the item into the shop, and we can help them
out from there.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
Yeah, tell us what kind of appraisal it's going to
be for insurance or whether it's an executor and they
got to split it up amongst their kids. Are somebody
that's smart and they're pre planning. They're still alive, they
own these items, but when they pass, when the time comes,
they want this child to have that. And that's an
important thing to do because we've seen states where people
didn't do that and the kids were just pick and

(21:46):
choose and it wasn't fair. And goodness they found out
early and we were able to bring everything back together
and divide it evenly, because you don't want one kid
to get a ten thousand dollars coin and the other
kid to get a five dollar coin. It can't sometimes
you can't tell.

Speaker 2 (21:59):
Okay, something that we can advise on too, because I
have several people that come in and they're trying to
buy coins for their children and make sure that they're
getting the same equal value or you know, the same
coin for each kid, the same type of stuff.

Speaker 1 (22:13):
So yeah, okay, So if somebody wants to find out
more about the appraisals, they can call you. Two five
one seven two five fifteen ninety. That's the number for
Mobile Bay Coins and Fine Jewelry. Two five one seven
two five fifteen ninety. Again, Mobile bay Coins and Fine
Jewelry located in Mintown Mobile at twenty two oh four
Government Street and also at Mobile baycoins dot com, Ron

(22:35):
and Anna. Thank you for coming in.

Speaker 3 (22:37):
Thank you, You're welcome, sir,