Mobile Bay Coins and Fine Jewelry 4.9.2025

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
This is News Radio seven to ten WNTM. Uncle Henry
here with Ron and Anna of Mobile bay Coins and
Find Jewelry. You'll find Mobile bay Coins and find Jewelry
and beautiful Midtown Mobile at twenty two oh four Government Street.
You'll also find Mobile bay Coins and Find Jewelry on
Facebook and Instagram. Their website is Mobile Baycoins dot com.

(00:30):
Ron and Anna, has it been a busy time at
Mobile bay Coins?

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Oh? Yeah, it's been a busy week. And it just
started to slow down there for a bit when gold
and silver had dropped, but it's climbing back up again.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Yeah. Tell me about the attitude of the people as
we do this program. We've had tariff talk, the markets
have been up and down, and up and down. How
did your customers react to all that?

Speaker 3 (01:00):
It was everybody was a little bit different. Some people
were coming in to liquidate some precious metals and get
stocks while they were down, because everybody felt not everybody,
but at least the people I was speaking with didn't
think the stock market was going on a downward crash.

Speaker 4 (01:16):
It was a correction.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
A lot of investors worried with the tariffs and worried
about whether or not the tax cut package was going
to get passed today, So all that stuff, it's a
I don't care what you say, it's a gamble.

Speaker 4 (01:28):
When you're any type of investment, there's risks.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
So people made their bets, and I think a lot
of people were betting on the downside. But I didn't
think it was going to last long, at least on
the downside, because gold and silver have a lot of
stabilization behind the reason for the increase, not just random
investors buying gold driving up the market. With inflation in
the economy and thirty trillion in debt, people are worried,

(01:53):
especially older people getting near retirement.

Speaker 4 (01:55):
They need to have some cash. They need to have
something that's very liquid.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
So if they need to have cash, they can sell
that item, and gold and silver are perfect for that.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
So if somebody wants to get a good supply of gold,
can you get Can you still get good quantities if
they need it?

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Oh yeah, right now. Eagles have been really hot, gold eagles,
one ounce gold eagles, and cougarants. The South African cougarand
has been really popular. Silver eagles, silver rounds, silver bars.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
I can't even the only thing we've really had to
delay on for some strange reason. Is two gram gold
go Yeah, of the oddest thing to be able to
have a hard time getting. Yes, that's been hard, but
everything else has been You pay for art and you
get it in about one to three days. So people
with large arders or special arders, they one items that
we don't always have, like monster boxes of one ounce
silver cougarans. It's not something you sell all the time,

(02:49):
so you don't usually have a box. You'll have one
hundred or two hundred one hand.

Speaker 4 (02:52):
Well, we had somebody walking in the door one of box.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
Well it took really literally two days for the time
they came in to the time they had the monster
box in their hand. And that's better than it was
for the last four years, I mean not for yeah,
about four years since COVID.

Speaker 4 (03:06):
I mean it's been.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
Getting increasingly better on the actual distribution, the chant, the
way that things are shipped, everything's been improving quite a
bit now.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
So gold and silver at the time that we're having
this conversation, they're back up, what about the other precious metals?
Are people interested in those also?

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Oh yeah, we have people that are coming in to
buy more platinum now because for a while they're platinum
was I hate to use the word dead, but it
was kind of dead. But now everybody wants one ounce
platinum bars, platinum coins, small little platinum fractional pieces.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
Again, now, is this because they think that car cars
are going to start getting made here more than they were?

Speaker 3 (03:46):
Yes, and not just that, just in general, even overseas manufacturers.
Palladium had risen to about two thousand dollars at one
point when the when the new car market was roaring,
right before basically Biden took office. And once Biden took office,
that declined steadily to where US car market actually overtook
the new car market as far as volume of sales. Well,

(04:09):
they don't need a new catalyt converter for a used car,
so they weren't using as much palladium. Platum dropped all
the way down to now actually less than platinum. And
the speculation is during that period that the changeover that
plants could make that actually manufacture the calaly converters would
switch back to platinum because it's much more it's in supply,
greater supply than the palladium is. Even though the price

(04:31):
of pladium is cheaper, it's actually a little harder to
get right now than platinum because platinum wasn't popular, so
it was like the ugly stepchild for a while, and
that's changed a lot. So there's a lot of speculation
on platinum, and there's nothing wrong with if you're hedging
or creating a stacking or anything like that, throw some
platinum in there. It's still under one thousand dollars, which

(04:51):
I think is inexpensive compared to how the popularity and
the amount that people have been asking for. Because of
things that have had delays, platinum is one of them
that we've seen a couple of days longer delay to
get it than you've seen in years. So big, big
surprize there.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Now, I've got a very dumb question, and I apologize
in advance for my ignorance, But are there have there
been investment grade collectible coins made out of platinum or palladium?

Speaker 3 (05:20):
There have, and most of them have been modern. But
actually Russia back in the eighteen hundreds made coins out
of platinum and they were one of the first coins
manufactured out of platinum. And when we got our first
one in, we had to have and it was raw
decipher the actual coin to figure out what it's said
in Russian, and you actually had to, I guess employ
your mother, who speaks I guess it knows the Russian

(05:43):
dialogue better, and figured out that it's said it was
platinum or two rubles in platinum.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
Well, I couldn't believe what it was saying because I
was just like, that doesn't sound right. You know, platinum
platinum back then.

Speaker 3 (05:54):
And they're rare of course, so they are truly investment
grade coins, so you know it's they can start out
about fifteen hundred dollars and go from there. And this
one was in a collection to where most of the
coins in the collection, they were all raw. They were
in sheets of plastic two by twos, and they were
shopping them around to all the dealers in town, and
they'd come to us last and gone through it, and

(06:16):
Angel said, leave this coin with us overnight so we
can figure it out because we think it might be
something that's valuable. Literally, the other three hundred coins in
the collection were anywhere from fifty cents to two dollars coins,
nothing special. Some of them were even just sent a
few cent coins. But this ended up being worth a
lot of money. So the person got about twelve hundred
dollars more than the nearest offer in town. And I

(06:39):
don't think that meant anybody was trying to steal this,
just they didn't have the expertise on hand to figure
out that that was a rare eighteen hundred platinum coin
mintage literally under two hundred coins. So I mean, it's,
my goodness, very very hard one to find. Okay, all right,
Well I've learned something new there from that. So you
do as I had asked you before. You do have inventory.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
If people are looking for gold, silver, platinum, palladium, that
can get it from Mobile Bay Coins and Fine Jewelry.
Even if somebody wants a big order, you can accommodate.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
Absolutely, And if I don't have it, I'll find a
way to get it.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
Now, I want to talk about we're in a time
of year where there's going to be a lot of
gift buying for a variety of things Easter, Mother's Day, graduations.
But before we get to that, tell me about some
of the new stuff in at Mobile Bay Coins and
Fine Jewlry. Do you have anything new in from the
last few weeks.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
There's really nothing new on pop culture at the moment.
I think it's due to the price of gold and
silver shooting up that not a lot of people are
making anything for a while. But we do have a
lot of silver dollars at the moment that we're doing
specials on that won't break the bank. It's older coins
like the Morgan design, like late eighteen hundreds up to

(07:49):
nineteen twenties, and then the Peace dollar design as well
with the spiky crown. There's silver eagle discounts by the rolls.
There's a ground had some nineteen thirty three you know
gold during the depression. Gold coins that are basically just
a little bit over melt value that you could get,
and he had twenty dollars Liberty. I think it was Liberty, right, Yeah, yeah,

(08:13):
sat goins and sing god In coins that are graded
at a great price.

Speaker 4 (08:18):
Yeah, just not much over their melt value.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
So if you want to maybe get a coin instead
of a bullion item. Although American gold eagles, cougarrands, maple leafs,
they're considered coins because they are monetized by their respective governments.
But I'm talking in older pre thirty three US coin
and I mean we have raw and graded and some
of the raw stuff is fifty bucks over melt. It's
just so many people are selling that the stuff is available.

(08:41):
Premiums haven't been this low in years, so a really
good time, although prices are higher. Gold is stole over
three thousand dollars, silver is just over thirty. It's a
really good.

Speaker 4 (08:51):
Time to get into those.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
And one of the reasons, and I was talking about
pop cultures, there's not a lot of new items out well.
The reason being is that the demand for one ounce
round blanks before they're struck. Not every one of these people,
they don't all make their own blanks, so there's a
limited number of suppliers in the United United States, United Kingdom.
The Perth Mint makes them, but they've been out there.
They're running on backlogs. So luckily there was enough in

(09:15):
the system that it hasn't caused any large delays. But
there's been many times in the past, like the US
Mint has stopped striking one ounce American silver eagles, which
they can only do by law if they can't get
their own blank, if they can't get blanks, and it's happened.

Speaker 4 (09:29):
A couple of times this year so far.

Speaker 3 (09:31):
And knock on Formica here, we've been doing very well
with the US Mint and plenty of blanks to strike things,
but like they've been redirecting. Instead of making some pop
culture stuff, they're throwing them just to one ounce blanks
to fill out the orders for the generic silver.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
Now, in terms of the tariffs that have been in
the news, is this well, tariffs We've heard about tariffs
on China, Canada, all these are the places that I
know electors in this country like to get their coins,
they like to get their bullion. Is that going to

(10:06):
have a big impact?

Speaker 4 (10:07):
It can?

Speaker 2 (10:08):
It did on the maples, right, the gold maples. It
actually impacted the Canadian goal.

Speaker 4 (10:13):
Maple and silver maples.

Speaker 3 (10:15):
Yeah, Canadian products, even their premium products if you order
from the mint website.

Speaker 4 (10:18):
I mean it affected that too.

Speaker 3 (10:20):
So it affects collectors in negative ways, and it can
affect it in positive ways because in the long run,
hopefully tears for everybody we'll get on an equalized scale,
help US manufacturing, help the economy, and hopefully reduce inflation
just by being able to make deals with other countries.
So short term, just like Trump's saying, there could be

(10:41):
some pain in people's pockets because prices of different items
are going to go up, they just are. Don't panic
and sell your portfolio. Just like the other day when
the stock market took a dip, that wasn't a time
to be staring at your portfolio and cry, and it
was a time either to ignore it or invest in
some of those stocks because it was really a really
good buying opportunity when you take into account what happened,

(11:01):
you know, just two days.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
Later, Well that's what you said just a few minutes
ago at the beginning of the shows that some of
your customers this week were coming in trying to turn
their gold into cash so they could buy the dip.

Speaker 4 (11:13):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (11:14):
And a bunch of them did and bought and are
probably sitting there smiling. Of course, that depends on what
they were buying. But if they were buying any of
the top five thousand items on the stock market, they're
making money.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
I've learned to kind of have that analogy. This is
going to be really cute, I think for people that
don't really understand all of this economy wise, but you know,
think of it. They call it currency and they have banks,
you know, So it always is a wave. It's always
going to go up, and it's going to come right back,
come down, come back up.

Speaker 4 (11:43):
It stays the same.

Speaker 1 (11:45):
Now, well, everybody was looking to see it's right now.
They're trying to figure out where is the bottom? Yes,
and uh and and if we had a crystal ball,
we'd know, but we don't. So we just have to
take the advice that you've given. You're listening to Mobile
bay Coins and find jewelry here on news Radio seven
to ten WNTM. You can find them in mid tim

(12:06):
Mobil A twenty two oh four Government Street and online
at Mobile baycoins dot com. So Easter is coming up.
Do you have any gift items for Easter.

Speaker 2 (12:16):
I've got plenty of bunny coins out there or rabbit coins,
whatever you want to call them them. It's not quite
the Easter bunny, but I'm sure we can get an
Easter bunny coin if you needed one. There's egg stuffers,
and that can be little fractional pieces of silver, like
a one tenth silver or a one quarter of a
grain of gold that you could put in like the

(12:37):
gold egg or something like that. There's plenty of little
egg stuffers that we have at the shop, and expensive jewelry.
There's copper rounds. A lot of people have been buying
copper rounds by the dozen or more right now for
the Easter egg hunters already.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
That's a great idea.

Speaker 3 (12:53):
Yeah, it is, because that in like one tenthound silver.
Like she's talking about, you're not going to talk, you're
not talking a lot of money. If the grand prize
is it gets a little round piece of silver worth
about three dollars and ten cents, that's a nice little gift.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
Well if if a kid is old enough and open
l knife.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
Yes, oh yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
What about is there anything engraveable? You do engravables at Easter?

Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, we do engraveables at Easter, not a whole lot
during Easter, but graduation we do quite a bit. And
for Easter there's some people that do it. They put
like a lot of people like to buy something religious
during Easter time to have engraved. We have different bars
we have to Yes, we have bars with Jesus on

(13:36):
the cross. We have just a cross with butterflies and birds.
There's the praying hands, there's there's there's all kinds of
different designs. I can't even name them all. That's how many.

Speaker 1 (13:49):
Now you mentioned graduation, so we have the talk about
some of the things that people can get to give
as a gift for graduation. I guess just around with
the year on it. A lot of people would like.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
Yeah, some people have custom engravables with the you know,
congratulations or congratulations graduation. They want the year on there,
the person's name, and the American Silver Eagle, the twenty
twenty five, the current years really popular too as a
choice for girls. There is something that people have been
doing is getting a pearl necklace or some type of

(14:27):
ensemble where they get like a whole set of jewelry
for the girl. And another thing that people have been
doing instead of getting like a class ring, they have
been actually getting a ring of their choice in gold
or you know, white gold, whatever.

Speaker 4 (14:42):
The girl prefers more than can.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
Yes, many fifty year olds wear their class rings very few.

Speaker 2 (14:48):
A lot that has become a popular tradition among the
younger generation is getting a ring for graduation that they
are actually going to wear and remember, not just a
school ring, the super hunky because a lot of them
are really hunky or chunky looking to where they don't
want to wear it all the time.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
This and hearing you describe these things, A lot of
these graduation gift ideas might also go if you were
giving gifts at weddings for like groomsmen and things like that.
Have you done that?

Speaker 3 (15:18):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah, we have cufflings. We had people buy like strong
silver flatwear, like a cake knife for like a spoon
and fork set for the couple in silver with like
their initials. We have people that have bought different type
of jewelry and charms and things that they've had engraved

(15:39):
with the couple's monograms. Like I recently just did a
silver round for a wedding where they wanted specific initials
of the bride and groom and the date to commemorate that.

Speaker 1 (15:53):
Okay, so Mobile Bay Coins and Fine Jewelry really is
a one stop shop for gifts you have to buy
somebody a gift, A great place you can do all
your gift shopping at Mobile Bay Corns and find jewelry.
What about your Mother's Day is coming up? A lot
of great jewelry for mom.

Speaker 2 (16:10):
Oh yeah, of course we have for moms. It would
really depend on the mom and how she is on jewelry.
But we have a lot of different jumpstones. There's diamond earrings,
diamond studs or dangle earrings. There's necklaces yellow white gold.
There's crosses for those religious moms. There's a lot of

(16:33):
different heart jewelry that actually says the word mom, or
just a jewelry that I've seen too in silver and
gold is where it's like a silhouette of the mom
and the baby. There's a lot of those things and
some of it is available online that you can go
to our website at Mobile bay cooins dot com. Click
on the store and it'll take you to our eBay

(16:56):
link and you can actually do a search and browse
of all the different inventory we have before you come in.
And if you like something, just take a screenshot with
your phone and I'll know what it is. I'll be
able to find it when you come in with it.

Speaker 3 (17:10):
Everything has an item number and there's literally almost a
ten thousand different jewelry items.

Speaker 2 (17:15):
Over ten thousands.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
Well, I have bought jewelry that way. I've searched the
jewelry inventory at Mobile bay coins dot com that way,
and it speeds things up. There's no way to go
through all your inventory. As you mentioned, it's so big,
so lots of gift ideas for mom as well, and
we could even engrave something for mama.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
Oh yeah, and we can have custom stuff made as well,
because I have people that come in they want certain
things done and we may not have it in the shop,
but we can definitely order it in, like you know,
diamond studs or a fancy I don't know, fancy ring
that we had don't have in the store.

Speaker 3 (17:51):
There are thousands of designs that can pick through these
books and we can order them in and have the
diamond mounted so pretty quick.

Speaker 2 (17:57):
A mon and grammaring. Somebody actually came in looking for
gifts for graduation for a monogram ring like one of
the ones they used to have back in the day
where they had the person's middle name or sorry, their
last name initial in the middle and then the two
initials on the side. So we can have that done
as well. They make them in gold silver.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
Okay, So just again, if you need to buy gifts,
mobile bake coins and find jewelry, head in there and
just tell them what your loved one likes and they
can find something that will correspond with that in jewelry
or in bullion, or.

Speaker 2 (18:33):
If you don't know, just come see Anna. Because I
have people that come in and they just go, this
is how much money I have I need a gift,
and I have no clue what to get or what
she likes. So we'll help you.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
Out very very good now before we're out of time here,
and we almost are. I know, you buy things from
the public. People may need cash for what maybe they
want to buy what they think is the bottom of
the star market, or maybe they just need to pay
some bills. What will you buy from the public.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
We buy scrab jewelry and we'll pay top dollar for
Scrabe jewelry and strolling silver flatware. And before you bring
in stuff, just shop it around, get some quotes before
you before you come in, so you can get an
idea of what it's actually you know, what it's worth
to other people before you come in to us, because
I've had quite a few people that have done that

(19:23):
in the past and come into our shop and get
blown away by our offer because we've offered a whole
lot higher than others shopping around.

Speaker 4 (19:31):
For sure, it's almost always in their benefit. We've had people.

Speaker 3 (19:34):
In fact, guy came in the other day to buy
gold and mentioned that he'd took a large gold chain
in to somebody and wanted to buy one of the
rolexes and used the gold chain as partial payment and
came in and told us what they gave him as
far as cash on that, and it was about three
hundred dollars less than what we would have paid, So
it could have saved a lot of money on the rolex.

Speaker 4 (19:54):
And it wasn't a trade.

Speaker 3 (19:55):
He sold the necklace and just planned on buying the
rolex and he went back the next day and bought it.
So it wasn't like they gave him a discount on
it because of that. I mean they bought it and
then sold something to them the next day. So shop
it around and give us a chance.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
This is something, by the way, this is something I've
heard from Mobile Bay Coins and find Jewelry for years
and years and years. The first shows we did together, Roan,
you were you were encouraging people to shop it around
because you were so confident in the offers you make.

Speaker 3 (20:20):
Yeah, we buy a lot of stuff and we just
want to be able to give us the opportunity to
make them an offer, or sometimes we can point them
in the right way if they have something that we
don't normally buy, we can usually find somebody to help
them out.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
Now before at a time, I'm gonna mention it again.
We mentioned it in every show that Mobile Bay Coins
and Find Jewelry does free appraisals and estimates. The telephone
number to call us two five one seven fifteen ninety.
Now should someone call you first before they come in
for an appraisal.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
Yeah, absolutely, you can give us a call just to
find out if it's you know, it may not be
worth the trip up there if you have one or
two coins, so I could just tell you over the
phone if they if what they would be worth, or
send me a pick. Sure, and I could tell you.
But if it's a nice collection, decent sund like a
shoebox collection or larger, if it's larger than the shoebox,
go ahead and book an appointment online or call ahead

(21:10):
to let us know you're coming so we can make
time for you to come in by appointment. But if
it's a shoebox or less, come on in at any time.
We'll take care of it.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
And this is this is a free service. Even if
I don't want to sell anything to you, if I
need it from my insurance company, you still don't charge
me anything.

Speaker 3 (21:27):
Absolutely, we can actually do insurance specific appraisals, so if
they want to get the appraisal far that. We had
a lady coming today showing us a couple of silver
dollars she bought for her collection. Bought a couple from us,
and found out that she didn't have an insurance writer.
She assumed an arm homewer's insurance would cover it. We're like, no,
you gotta have a writer almost every case. So make
sure you check with your insurance agent. Find out, well,

(21:49):
number one, how much your collection's worth, and then number two,
make sure it's insurance. That's not just coins, that's collectibles, jewelry.
Most homewers policies throw those all into one pile, so
it doesn't take long to run out of the coverage.
I most of those coverage can be under ten thousand dollars,
So get an appraisal and get yourself covered.

Speaker 1 (22:07):
Very very good, We're out of time. Mobile Bay Coins
and Fine Jewelry at twenty two oh four Government Street
at Midtown Mobile Mobile bay coins dot Com, the website Ronannanna,
thank you for coming in.

Speaker 4 (22:17):
You're welcome, You're welcome,