Print ads are still effective as a way to buy the coins you need. I spoke to Julian Jarvis for the Coin Chat Radio program that went live yesterday at www.coinchatradio.com and he casually mentioned in our off-air chat that his recent quarter-page buy ad in Numismatic News pleased him and he was placing more.

When the first ad ran, I saw it, but I didn’t really study it. After my conversation with Julian I was curious to find out what he was paying for state quarters. Some of the prices surprised me greatly.

How about $40.50 for the P or D Georgia BU roll? While mintages were relatively low for the 1999 year of issue, Philadelphia still cranked out 451.2 million and Denver 488.7 million.

Tennessee, was less surprising. It has been freakishly unavailable since the coin was released in 2002. The P or D rolls are priced at $38. Did the coin coloring business really use that many coins? It has a nice guitar design and it is an indirect tribute to Elvis. Mintages were 361.6 million for Philly and 286.5 for Denver.

Remember, these are buy prices, not retail prices.

What really blew my mind, though, was the price for Illinois quarter rolls. It is $31 for either mint. Perhaps I wasn’t paying appropriate attention. Lincoln is the theme, but the design never appealed to me. The mintages for the 2003 quarter were 225.8 million for Philadelphia and 237.4 million for Denver.

When looking at those numbers I might be tempted to exclaim, “Aha!” However, there are other states with similar mintages that are nowhere near that price.

While I was never a collector of the coins by the BU roll, I did have a roll of Connecticut quarters at one time because the local bank got in a supply. I kept it for several years after its 1999 release, but finally spent the coins figuring the 688.7 million Philadelphia coins and 657.9 million Denver coins would guarantee its commonness for all eternity.

Guess what? Connecticut has a buy price of $24.75. Who’d a thunk it?

But Julian knows what he is doing. He wouldn’t be paying those prices if he didn’t think there was a ready buyer further down the supply chain.

It is amazing what you can learn from an ad.

Gold bugs love to poke fun at economist British economist John Maynard Keynes. He called gold a barbarous relic. Gold bugs have been replying since the 1920s, that if it is a relic, why is it so important?

Also, the current price of around $900 an ounce and news of Chinese buying seems to indicate a robustness that is anything but a relic.

Fun aside, the bright popular image of Keynes as being out of touch and the leader of a school of thought in economics that let inflationary demons loose in the world can be blinding and obscure the critical times when he was right.

One of those times was in the aftermath of the 1929 stock market crash. Early on he recognized the destructive deflationary wave that was swamping the world economy. He was dismissed at the time as peddling inflationary nostrums that were unsound that no rational person could support.

That sounds awfully similar to the current criticisms of the bank bailouts. What if the proponents of the bank bailouts are right and deflation is the greater danger?

It took more than three years for the Depression to unfold in all its ugliness. We are hardly more than two-thirds of a year into the present post-Lehman Brothers failure problems.

In the spring of 1930 many thought the worst had passed. It is easy to be optimistic in the spring. It is spring 2009.

We seem to still be standing even though we have witnessed housing prices down by 30 percent from the peak, oil down by 66 percent from the peak and, my favorite economic indicator, Mint coin production, which is down by roughly the same percentage as oil.

Those numbers look like deflation. If that is so, how long can the price of gold buck the trend?

Ever see a 5-year-old get a shiny red fire truck for Christmas or some other gift that he wanted badly?

Then you have an idea of the excited tone of voice I heard on the phone when a collector from Memphis gave me a jingle.

He wanted me to know that large numbers of Mint State state quarters were being released by the banks in Memphis. He said they were in original rolls.

The state quarters that he had encountered in this form, he said, were New York, Texas, Maryland and Vermont.

He just wanted me to know about this. I appreciate it. It is amazing what I learn from the spontaneous calls from readers.

Sure the world seems all agog about Twitter messages or regular e-mails and cable news programs seem to be less about news and more about simply begging for viewers to send messages, but much useful information still comes to me in the form of telephone calls and U.S. Postal Service mail deliveries.

I would expect that if collectors undertake a canvas of other banks in other major cities that they might just find either supplies of state quarters backed up in the banking system or quantities cashed in by coin owners now down on their luck because of the severe recession.

However, they got there, now is the time to cherry-pick through the quarters to find the highest grades possible. Remember that original rolls might just contain some coins that can make an MS-70 grade, which in the long term is a better hold than “mere” MS-65 coins, especially for the state quarters that have astronomically high mintages.

The best part is this effort is that it takes time but little money as these coins can be acquired for face value.

Why not jump into this and let me know what you find in your neck of the woods?

Are collectors losing the ability to think independently? Some days I wonder.

I cannot tell you how many e-mails I receive where the writer expounds upon a topic, a specific course of action and then ends by asking me if he should do it. It usually involves buying something to make money.

I am not an investment advisor. I believe in collecting coins methodically over time, building nicely matched sets that please the eye.

Because I am not an investment advisor does not mean that I don’t recognize profits can be made in coins. Long-term collectors who follow the traditional hobby path usually make money unless perhaps the object of their ardor is XF Jefferson nickels.

I am also aware of the touts online. Buy this. Buy that. It will go to the moon. All the while the writer, often anonymous, is busily selling whatever it is online. The only person making a killing is the tout.

That’s not collecting.

If you want to run with the touts, go for it at your own risk. Often what happens afterwards is I get withering e-mails blaming greedy dealers, the U.S. Mint and any other target that comes within range.

Usually after reading this kind of message I think that I have saved a family dog somewhere from being kicked out of frustration.

It is human nature, but it is not collecting.

There is nothing wrong from indulging the urge to make a killing from time to time. My introduction to this was my scramble to buy a 1968-S proof set on the secondary market when it was heading for the moon. The touts of the era were pointing to $50. I paid $15. Issue price was $5. Persons who bought directly from the Mint and got early delivery had a nice tripling of their money at that point.

The set hit $20. I felt ecstatic. But then the bottom fell out. Eventually, the set fell under issue price. I see it is being sold in retail ads for $6.75.

But I received more for my $15 than a proof set. I received a lesson in life that told me to recognize what it was I was doing and to know that even my best guess will not guarantee a profit.

Swine flu is not really a numismatic topic, but with all the media focused on it, it is difficult to resist writing a little bit about it.

For individual collectors, if we feel there is a risk from interacting with other people for the duration of the potential epidemic, what can be more ideal than retreating to our homes and our numismatic interests?

The Internet will allow us to interact with others if we so choose to do so, but perhaps the best use of unexpected home time is the possibility to learn something new, or explore a familiar topic in slightly greater depth.

Without outside distractions, the chance to concentrate and to learn is enhanced. Carve out an hour or two. Turn off your cell phone. Tell any and all family members that this island of time is yours alone and you are going to spend it with your hobby.

Then simply luxuriate in the ability to give the topic of your choice your full attention.

Now your system might be shocked because you have blocked outside stimuli. Then again, you might find that you enjoy focused numismatic time so much that you will try to do it on a regularly scheduled basis instead of catching a few minutes here and there.

Numismatics cannot cure or mitigate swine flu, but it can cure any sense of being trapped where you happen to be. The whole world can be yours without actually physically exposing yourself to it.

I am not in the office Friday morning and will not be in a convenient location to post at the usual time, so I will write a few words ahead of time and hope that you won’t be too disappointed going into the weekend.

Of course, if something truly major happens during the interval between when this is written and posted and when the next one goes up on Monday, well, that is the risk.

Just know that I will be back at my desk on Monday morning.

There. I hope that wasn’t too painful.

This blog marks the completion of two full years’ worth of blogging. The actual anniversary is tomorrow, but, hey, this is Internet time. We have to make it snappy.

So I will celebrate the final day of the second year. Bring out the noise makers.

I think I have learned a lot doing this blog. I have had a lot of fun writing it. I hope you can say the same about reading it.

The wide ranging nature of topics is most interesting. Reader feedback is something that newspapers generate after the passage of weeks. Blog feedback can occur almost as quickly as I can post my comments.

I have found that some topics that I think will generate feedback instead generate the “loudest silence” that I experience. There are other topics that I never would have guessed in a thousand years will spark major attention, but do.

That’s the guiding hand of the audience telling me where we should go. I have a vantage point and readers want to learn what I can see over the horizon. Sometimes I see something worthwhile, but then sometimes I might just as well have stayed home that day.

But good or bad, the topics are part of the flow of discussion that the hobby and all hobbyists are having with each other and with themselves.

It would be interesting to know what future generations will make of these transcripts.

I get a lot of e-mails from frustrated collectors. When it is about a sold out item, I can sympathize with the U.S. Mint, because somebody is always disappointed in a sellout.

Most collectors think it wonderful that something sells out as long as they get one. I know. I have been there, done that myself.

However, in any sellout, there are more potential buyers who could not have their orders accommodated. This is what breeds disappointment.

When everyone can get something for weeks on end, there might be less disappointment but suddenly fewer collectors seem to really want it. Just look at the pattern of sales for the First Spouse gold coins. The first three sold out 40,000 mintages within hours. Sales totals since have declined by as much as 75 percent, but you can still buy them.

E-mails have begun to reach me with complaints of canceled Lincoln commemorative silver dollars orders. It is a popular coin that sold out within six weeks.

Someone had to lose.

The salt in the wound seems to be the electronic messages that show that orders are accepted and then canceled later. Is there anything that can be done about that? That might help.

But then again, disappointment is bitter no matter how it is coated. Hence my sympathy for the Mint. Even with a success, it just can’t win.

There is some talk among the producers of coins from precious metals that a half gram size is needed.

When I first saw this, I had to read it a second time. Half gram? Not half ounce?

There are more than 31 grams in a troy ounce, 31.103 to be precise. A half gram coin would be smaller than 1/60th the size.

The rationale is that a smaller size would be more affordable. To illustrate, if gold were $900 an ounce. A half gram coin would contain roughly $15 in bullion value.
I am rounding. Please, don’t make me use a calculator.

Oh, never mind. I will probably have to get one out to finish making my point.

Is there really a large unmet demand by $15 gold buyer’s? I haven’t noticed.

What I do know is the U.S. gold dollar, which was introduced in 1849 because at the time the United States was swimming in the precious metal bonanza from the California Gold Rush, was never popular because of its small and inconvenient size.

During its lifetime they even made it thinner to increase the diameter to 15mm from 13mm. For comparison, the dime is 17.9mm.

The dollar coin is actually more than three times the size of half a gram. It weighs in at 1.672.

Somehow, I think the world’s coin manufacturers should catch up with the demand for the one-ounce coin first. But then, the premium on the one-ounce coin is far lower than the mark-up would be for half a gram.

After all, what’s an extra $15 or $20 tacked onto a half gram gold coin price. Remember, you are paying for convenience. Yeah, right.

I had a phone call from a Numismatic News reader. She was looking at the weekly Coin Market at a Glance.

“The price of Morgans seeems to be down. Why?”

That’s a pretty broad generalization. I asked her what her point of reference was and I wasn’t trying to be funny. Was it Morgan prices 20 years ago, or from some other year in the past?

No, that wasn’t it.

She was looking at the Coin Market at a Glance from prior weeks.

I stated the obvious. If the prices as printed are lower than those from prior weeks, then indeed prices were lower. If she needed a specific slant on a specific issue, I invited her to e-mail the editor of that section, Harry Miller.

She asked if it had to do with silver?

I asked what date specifically she was looking at.

She replied, the 1921-D. I said it was possible that some of the price fluctuation for that date was due to silver’s moves. It is not a rare coin.

The caller pressed on. Why did the prices fall?

I told her I didn’t know the answer to her question.

She volunteered that she was pricing a friend’s collection and so she was noticing.

It is too bad I couldn’t be more helpful, but one observation I can make is I am getting a large number of calls asking about prices. What this usually means is the family budget is being pinched and some prized coins are going to find their way to eBay or a local coin shop. If enough people are doing this, prices will indeed drop.