Remember Jackie Gleason? Well, his signature phrase popped into my head here in Phoenix.

It is good to be with active hobbyists in a very pleasant setting. Winter won’t give up in Wisconsin. Snow is still piled high. Spring is coming.

However it doesn’t take seasonal optimism to be pleased with numismatic business conditions. Nobody knows how long the good times will last, but all of the signs keep pointing to continuing high levels of interest and ever rising prices for truly collectible coins.

If you know where inflation is going and how hard any recession might bite, you will have an idea of how long the good times can last.

Back in 1979-1980, the boom was called “The Party” by dealers. We don’t seem to have a name for this particular period. When we find one, I hope it will last longer.

With silver up nearly a buck yesterday and approaching $21 an ounce in value, it should be interesting to see what the effect might be on bourse activity at the American Numismatic Association National Money Show in Phoenix.

As you have probably guessed, I am en route to the show. If the airlines and weather allow, I am due to reach my destination about lunch time. Dealers set up starting at 3 p.m. in the afternoon.

In addition to seeing what goes on at the bourse, one of my main purposes will be to cover the ANA board meetings. The good news for me in terms of time spent is that the public meeting lasts just three hours. The bad news is that those three hours are at 3-6 p.m. tomorrow. This will keep me off the bourse floor then.

The board has a heavy agenda, including the adoption of the annual budge in public session. In the many private meeting hours, the board was spending all day Wednesday interviewing candidates for the position of executive director. More executive session hours are scheduled for today as well and there will be a town hall meeting Saturday night.

Who will want to help straighten out the budget and work to get the ANA out of deficit in future years? That is a key question for the board. This task is daunting enough, but the various lawsuits overhanging the organization make budget projections very difficult if not impossible.

The only recourse is massive layoffs or dipping further into the endowment fund. The latter is the likely outcome, and I will be there to watch the public portion of the decision-making process.

Any guesses as to just how big the ANA deficit will be?

Silver is spurting toward $20 an ounce. Gold is moving toward $1,000. Which will cross the nice round number first?

I don’t know, but today I am leaning to silver. Why? Well, it is one of those peculiar reasons. My firm publishes gold and silver value charts. These list the value of the bullion in various widely owned coins at various market price levels for the precious metals.

The current gold value chart tops out in the value listing at $1,200. The silver chart tops out at $20. We have run out of these. The internal mechanism for getting more printed was swinging into motion and I had to pass the word yesterday that the chart needs to be modified otherwise we would be paying production costs for something that looks set to be useless in just a few days.

Sure, silver could top out at the $19.21 that it settled at yesterday, but I don’t want to bet company money on that possibility. I would much rather see the new charts run up to the $25 area, and even that could become obsolete soon.

Our Federal Reserve chairman is so worried about the banking crisis and the need to cut interest rates, that it appears anyone with any investable funds has decided to take a spin in the commodity casino. Why collect a paltry 3 percent interest from banks or funds that may blow up when you can get huge percentage gains in commodities?

Everybody is watching the $100 mark for oil and the metals milestones but fewer are following things like wheat on the Minneapolis market hitting $24 a bushel when not that long ago it was less than $5 and this story seems to be repeating over and over across the board. Coffee has been soaring, too. That of course worries me most of all. What would I do if I couldn’t afford my morning three cups?

The gold bugs are actively dissecting the news that the International Monetary Fund appears to be in the process of making a decision to sell 12.9 million ounces of gold bullion.

Created in 1944 by the Bretton Woods treaty, the purpose of the IMF was originally to help member countries keep their exchange rates fixed by helping keep their trade accounts balanced.

This help ranged from advice to loans. Nowadays, where exchange rates are floating and nationalism has caused countries to resent or resist any advice that runs counter to prevailing political passions, the IMF has lost much of its original purpose. It does still lend money and the purpose of the gold sale is to raise some additional lendable funds.

What will the extra supply hitting the market do to the price of gold? Not very much, I would think. As long as the Federal Reserve continues to rapidly increase the American money supply, inflation will be a problem and individuals who want a hedge against it will continue to buy gold.

It pays to keep in mind that 12.9 million ounces is less than $13 billion. The American money supply, measured at its most basic level, currency in circulation, is nearly $1 trillion and annual economic output is about $14 trillion. This doesn’t even take into account the rest of the world.

Put in that light, it is hard to imagine the market having any difficulty absorbing the gold.

There are good reasons to buy or sell gold. The IMF’s possible gold bullion sale should not affect any of them.

Here I thought I was lucky. For the first time this winter, I successfully transited Chicago O’Hare airport without delay yesterday. But then, to bring the universe back into balance, my office computer this morning was moving very slowly.

I guess I should be grateful. It is Monday and slow is better than completely locked up.

For me, this week will see me watching the price of silver. I know that platinum is moving like a rocket because of electricity shortages at mines and smelters in South Africa, but silver is in my blood as a coin collector.

The Coinage Act of 1965 is not just an historical landmark to me. To my generation of collectors, it was viewed almost as a personal affront. The act dared to take silver away from us. Sure, there were good policy reasons, but the net result was the end of the circulation finds era of coin collecting.

It might be argued that had it been the Coinage Act of 1962, I wouldn’t be a coin collector at all. Could I have survived in a period as a kid trying to put a collection together when all there was to find in change was a single date for each denomination? I tend to doubt it. I had a running start of a few years to tide me over until I was earning my own money and could buy pieces from time to time.

Had I shelved coin collecting or not attempted it at all, how would my life have gone?

Gosh, I might have become a doctor or a lawyer instead of a numismatic writer. Timing is important in this life, especially when something new is being attempted. Coins got into my blood early. Silver was and is a part of it.

How is $18 an ounce affecting potential newcomers and potential collectors? Any old pre-1965 silver coin is now worth almost 13 times face value as metal.

Timing means a great deal. If this is the time for some individuals to try coin collecting, what are they deciding?