A really interesting video of David Hall's predictions made in 1988

[therealanaconda-migration]

[MJ]

I got to computer grading and Merrill Lynch and I bailed............MJ

[mumu]

He clearly had no idea how leverage works.

[James_OldeTowne]

He clearly had no idea how leverage works.

Nor "computer grading".

 

Nor "Wall Street".

 

Nor "raw coins".

 

Nor "81-S silver dollars".

[Hard Times]

Love the hair styles and wardrobe - make me think 1988 was a very long time ago!

 

 

Best, HT

[brg5658]

Hilariously wrong.

[MJ]

I would have predicted that porn mustaches would eventually go out of style only to return in 2012.

 

MJ

[Crohnos01]

... This reminds me of when I was in college using a punch card machine for programming and the prof told us all how computers were going to a) eliminate paperwork and b) do all the work for us so that we would have more leisure time and shorter work weeks....

 

 

[mumu]

... This reminds me of when I was in college using a punch card machine for programming and the prof told us all how computers were going to a) eliminate paperwork and b) do all the work for us so that we would have more leisure time and shorter work weeks....

 

 

In many respects that's true. Machinery is computer operated. But it doesnt mean people get paid to go relax instead of doing the work. Well I suppose if you are the boss it might. And paper use has been reduced. It would be een moreso if people werent ...like the geniuses at my work that like to print out emails and hand them to me when they want me to read something.

[AstroTrain]

I wonder how many people in that room bought the opinions and put way more money into those coins than they should have.

[e1cnr]

The responses to this video kind of relate to whether you think Hall is a marketing genius or an investment scam/fraudster.

 

The video was made during a time of rapid increasing values and within 2 years of the bubble crash/correction.

 

Some of the things he mentioned did occur.

[AstroTrain]

The responses to this video kind of relate to whether you think Hall is a marketing genius or an investment scam/fraudster.

 

The video was made during a time of rapid increasing values and within 2 years of the bubble crash/correction.

 

Some of the things he mentioned did occur.

 

i don't think any of the above. Just the way they showed people writing down every word and Hall sounded so confident. He did start off by saying the previous year he didn't do hot, so I know he wasn't scamming.

[mumu]

I dont think of it as a scam either and a lot of what he said did happen. A lot of coins went into hedgefunds and IRAs which is along the line of what he said. I think the part where coin brokers would be the point men was thwarted big time by the internet which was very hard to foresee then. The brokers are kinda there, they are just internet based rather than stock broker based. Places like kitco and apmex kinda specialized it instead of it joining the equities. Granted they use more generic gold and silver coins but they do have the graded material in bulk.

[BROADSTRUCK]

Love the hair styles and wardrobe - make me think 1988 was a very long time ago! Best, HT

 

That was the Miami Vice era as I recall stubble's, white suits, pink shirts, and no socks being the fashion at shows.

 

So is that John Dannreuther with permed hair in the baby blue polyester leisure suit wearing cream shoes?

[coinman1794]

I dont think of it as a scam either and a lot of what he said did happen. A lot of coins went into hedgefunds and IRAs which is along the line of what he said. I think the part where coin brokers would be the point men was thwarted big time by the internet which was very hard to foresee then. The brokers are kinda there, they are just internet based rather than stock broker based. Places like kitco and apmex kinda specialized it instead of it joining the equities. Granted they use more generic gold and silver coins but they do have the graded material in bulk.

 

I don't think his words were a scam either. The hobby leaders had every reason to believe that coins were going to become investments, and that computer grading was going to become a reality, during the infancy years of PCGS and NGC. Complications arose on both fronts, afterwords, that have limited progress, especially in computer grading; but parts of each have come to fruition.

[messydesk]

Interesting presentation. I was hoping when he went through his "top 10" list he'd have said what the current prices were for more than just a couple. Of course, those that he did mention are still down from the pre-'89 crash highs, and in general, I don't think any of them ever experienced any long-term surge in value since.

[e1cnr]

ftc got after a few coin firms back around that time for guaranteeing values / buybacks / grades etc.

[therealanaconda-migration]

I don't think David Hall was trying to scam anyone then or subsequently. He strikes me as a totally honest guy. One thing he probably learned was that making predictions is not something that can often be done accurately.

 

He also made predictions in his book A Mercenary's Guide to the Rare Coin Market that I am sure he would not make today. Texas in MS 65, 1881-S Morgan Dollar in MS 65, 1938-D Buffalo Nickel in MS 65 were three I remembered.

 

(Those coins in his mind were common enough to be mass marketed and had wide appeal. Current thinking in coin investment is the coin needs a reason to go up....pick truly rare coins.)

 

 

[therealanaconda-migration]

And remember, that era was a heady time.....the advent of third party grading was the best thing to happen to coin collectors and investors EVER. The only things that come close are the advent of digital photography and the internet.

 

Before third party grading very, very few people who had purchased expensive coins were ever able to sell them for even close to what they paid for them.

 

Just about everything you bought from a dealer was sold to you at several if not quite a few points above what they bought them for. And I'm not talking about coins being sold as XF40 and bought back as VF35. I'm talking about sales of coins at 65 levels that would be sold as AU's. This was the way it was done....for decades and decades. The only guys who didn't lose their shirts were the dealers and a small handful of collectors. The only way you could get reasonable value for your coins was selling them at auction and then you lost 25% or more to the auction company.

 

So, David Hall and the others in that room really believed that coin prices were about to take off, never to come down. And, coin prices did take off. They really, really, REALLY took off. Take a look at MS 65 commems in I think April and May of 1989. Then they crashed. Some commems in MS65 lost 90% of their values from the peak. And have never recovered....because they're not rare; there are enough of them to go around to satisfy all the demand.

[James_OldeTowne]

The only guys who didn't lose their shirts were the dealers and a small handful of collectors. The only way you could get reasonable value for your coins was selling them at auction and then you lost 25% or more to the auction company.

I'm not so sure I believe that. It may or may not be true that today, a $1M coin wouldn't bring $1M on the market unless it was slabbed, leaving $900,000 of downside (to use an exaggerated example) if I bust it out of the slab and sell raw. But that is comparing apples to oranges, because in the 1960s and 1970s, coins were not remotely as expensive as they are today. In other words, it actually would not have been that easy to buy a single coin in 1965 that was so expensive that you would "lose your shirt" upon quick resale, because not too many coins were costly enough to carry that much risk.

 

The way I see it, things have not changed as much as one might believe at first glance. Today, I can buy a certified coin for $1000, and be reasonably assured that I can get $800 out of it if an emergency requires a quick sale. That's "only" a $200 loss. But in 1965, a costly coin would have been $20. Even if you got completely ripped off and couldn't get but half your money back, that was only a $10 loss. (Yes, I realize inflation plays a role, but the logic holds.)

 

Of course, just like today, you had those who bought into the roll collecting craze, or jumped on 1950-D nickels, or bought proof sets at inflated premiums, and promptly lost boatloads of cash, but that is no different today than when one buys heavily hyped "first strike" and "MS-70" nonsense that practically has unlimited downside.

 

I think that on a percentage basis, certification has reduced risk. But this advantage is greatly diminished by the huge pricetag associated with coins. If slabs truly have given today's collector such a huge advantage over the collector from 1965, then why aren't there a lot more collectors making money hand over fist? Maybe they are and I just don't know it...

 

To summarize, I think that certification has diminished the number of mistakes that a collector can make overall, but has also increased the potential magnitude of those individual mistakes. The most magnificent losses that I have seen suffered by collectors have always involved certified coins (and a lot of marketing hype, of course).

 

Edited to add: If I had to name the single greatest thing to happen to collectors and investors, I would say: "Information". Access to information today is light-years ahead of the resources available just 25 years ago.

[michael]

To summarize, I think that certification has diminished the number of mistakes that a collector can make overall, but has also increased the potential magnitude of those individual mistakes. The most magnificent losses that I have seen suffered by collectors have always involved certified coins (and a lot of marketing hype, of course).

 

Edited to add: If I had to name the single greatest thing to happen to collectors and investors, I would say: "Information". Access to information today is light-years ahead of the resources available just 25 years ago

 

 

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