Will it be business as usual for the coin market in the wake of the stock market losses of yesterday?

For the Mint it certainly was. It announced it is raising its premium on one-ounce American silver Eagles Oct. 14 by 15 cents to $1.40 per coin from $1.25.

That actions seems small potatoes compared to the action on the New York Stock Exchange. The losses were large.

There is no way of knowing if numismatists as a group are less subject to making bad investments and receiving margin calls as the population as a whole.

We have no way of knowing that coin dealers as a group fund their operations with borrowed money to any greater extent than businesses of other kinds.

What we do know is they are all human and are subject to the same anxieties and fears as everybody else. They are asking themselves how the coin market is holding up.

Does the coin collector who saw his IRA or 401(k) retirement account fall seven percent or so yesterday go the next coin show or auction he was planning to go to? Will he bid as often or as aggressively online on eBay?

The odds are we collectors are as intertwined in the current financial crisis as anybody else. While collectors are probably less likely to have their mortgage interest rates reset to levels beyond their ability to pay, they may own small businesses that cannot get a credit line extended in the same amount or even at all. Here is hoping that coin dealers have bullet-proof financial arrangements. If they are forced to liquidate inventory to pay back these credit lines, prices will fall.

Numismatists will face things one day at a time just like everybody else. We always have. When I was just starting out as  a collector in 1963, there were no numismatic firms selling hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of coins in a single year. There was no firm that was publicly traded on the stock exchange. It was just me and my Whitman album doing what hundreds of thousands of others were doing.

Financial crisis I later learned meant that proof set orders for the 1958 set fell because of the recession during the order period. And that in the typical numismatic scarcity judgment made that set a better one compared to the year before or after. In short, the hobby always seems to make lemonade out of lemons. Silver dollars continued to rise after the stock market crash of 1987 right into 1989.

For good or ill, I was part of that 1963 collecting herd. I am part of that herd now. What happens today I don’t know, but the hobby will always be here for me. It will stay interesting, it will have its ups and downs and I will continue to go with it and perhaps complain a little about the Mint increasing the cost of the silver Eagle.

See? The collector in me never leaves.

Chet Krause sells his Wisconsin National Bank Note collection in a Lyn Knight auction Oct. 16-17 in St. Charles, Mo., during the Professional Currency Dealers Association show.

Unfortunately, I will not be there to see it. I have watched from my chair here at Krause Publications as he built the collection. It was a labor of love.

Collecting home state National Bank Notes is a popular way of collecting paper. In fact, it helped build the paper money hobby as we know it today.

National Bank Notes offer the organizing principal that Whitman folders did for coin collectors. You  have a list of banks. You have a list of what they issued and off you go.

Collectors usually get this information when they purchase a copy of National Bank Notes by Don C. Kelly and that helps give them an idea of what challenges they face.

Paper money is still smaller and more friendly than coin collecting, but that doesn't mean there aren't rivalries. While Chet was the big fish in the Wisconsin pond, there were those before him and others are coming after him. Part of the job of collecting is keeping track of who these people are and what they own, so if there is a gap in your collection, you can be ready with cash when their notes hit the market.

But there are surprises that help keep the hobby interesting. When Dave Kranz came to work here 14 years ago, he fell in love with Wisconsin Nationals from his home county. He bought notes as he could find and afford them.

One note, I am sorry to say I cannot remember, was particularly rare and a true find by Kranz. I urged him to show Chet. Chet’s comments to him confirmed it was rare. For emphasis, he added, “I thought I owned the only one.”

Nothing feels better for a paper money collector than a comment like that from a knowledgeable veteran.

Chet is now stepping aside to give other Wisconsin collectors their turn. I hope they are ready.

Watching gold yesterday was almost as explosive as the annual 4th of July fireworks display I watched in Bonduel this year. No one, of course, got hurt in the fireworks display.

I am not so sure about the volatile gold market.

Gold went up like a skyrocket and it lit up the bullion investment sky. By the close of regular trading in New York yesterday, the metal had set a record as the largest one-day price gain in terms of dollars, up $70.10. In percentage terms a day like this has not been seen since 1999, which you may remember was the lead-up to the Y2K problem that was going to happen to our computers when their internal clocks were to be thrown off when the year 2000 arrived.

Silver had a good day, too, rising by $1.178 to close at $11.64. This was the biggest one-day gain since 1979.

It is these references to the 1979-1980 boom that make me nervous. I remember what happened when the euphoria faded.

Gold went up from $742 on Jan. 16, 1980, to $803 on Jan. 17, 1980, up $61. This was on its way to its closing high of $825 on Jan. 21. On Jan. 22, it dropped by $155 to close at $670.

Manic upward movement was followed by manic downward movement in less than a week.

I cannot claim to know the future, but volatility works both ways. Even if the long-term uptrend in gold has further to run as many experts expect, short-term corrections can be wild.

That is the time when there is a big difference between being a long-term gold owner and a newcomer chasing headlines. Be careful.

The Kansas Numismatic Association has come up with a good idea to spur attendance at its annual show June 12-14, 2009, at the Cessna Activity Center in Wichita.

It will offer a gasoline rebate to members of its member clubs who drive to the event with at least two other fellow club members.

The rebate amount is $50, which even with $4 gas can still cover the cost of bringing people into the show from quite a distance.

Anyone receiving the rebate will also be expected to volunteer for two hours at the show, helping out with setting up, cleaning up, greeting visitors, or whatever else needs to be done.

This is a clever way of keeping attendance up in uncertain times to make bourse dealers happy and for finding the necessary help to keep the show running smoothly.

Cliff Mishler brought this to my attention yesterday at lunch at the Crystal Cafe. The Kansas Numismatic Association Newsletter had just arrived and he had photocopied the relevant pages out of the current issue beforehand.

Other clubs might have other ideas to tackle the same problem. Let’s share them.

Andrew Jackson Presidential dollar production figures have been released by the U.S. Mint, so it is time to update a topic I visited only last week.

I noted Sept. 4 that Presidential dollar production was heading ever downwards. Well, that trend has been broken. The Jackson figures total roughly 7 million more than the prior John Quincy Adams numbers, 122 million versus 115 million.

Does this mean the American public is somehow reacting differently to dollar coins this time out compared to the prior two times?

Take a look. Production during the first two years of the Anthony dollar in 1979 and 1980 totaled 848 million pieces. The third year saw production fall to collector pieces only.

During the first two years of the Sacagawea dollar, 1.419 billion coins were struck and in the third year production fell to collector pieces only.

This is the second year of production of Presidential dollars and the combined total so far is 1.302 billion. If the Martin Van Buren total approximates the Jackson total, the two-year total will be virtually tied with the Sacagawea output.

What will that mean for the third year? I wrote last week that the trend was ominous. I had an e-mail to point out that the second year total of Presidential dollars is a higher percentage of the total that the two other second-year totals. That’s true.

Second-year Anthony production equaled 10.6 percent of the two-year total. Second-year Sac production was 9.4 percent of the total. Second-year Presidential dollar production could come in around 34 percent of the two-year total.

The question is whether this redistribution of production means anything relating to the future success of the Presidential dollars compared to the prior two dollar coin issues.

In is hard to see any likelihood of the American people warming to the idea of using dollar coins simply based on this data.

Both major political parties have selected their standard bearers. Barack Obama and Joe Biden represent the Democrats. John McCain and Sarah Palin represent the Republicans.

Today we are sending out a newsletter where we ask the recipients if it will make any difference to the hobby which presidential candidate wins in November.

Columnist David Ganz reports that though both candidates have supported numismatic legislation from time to time, neither one seems to have any significant record one way or the other on hobby-related matters.

Naturally collectors pay attention to who will become the Treasury secretary because it is his facsimile signature on American Federal Reserve Notes. There will be a new Treasurer of the United States as well, who signs to the left of the Treasury secretary.

Both will change no matter who wins and that virtually guarantees a new Series date of 2009 for notes.

A new Mint director is in the cards. The position is one of the political plums that are handed out to a supporter of whoever is President rather than a party loyalist, so even if the political party does not change at the head of government in November, the person in the chair likely will.

All of these changes are interesting to those of us down at the collecting level, but there are other more important questions. Will we get more new coins or fewer? Will the value of the dollar go up or down on foreign exchange markets? How will that affect gold and other precious metals? I am sure you can think of others and will be paying attention to the campaign over the next two months.

I am in a statistical frame of mind this week. Yesterday it was state quarters. Today I have the mintage figures for the Presidential dollars before me.

Collectors believe you need to abolish the paper $1 bill to get anybody to use dollar coins. Until then, old habits and loyalties dominate usage patterns.

These old habits dictate a death spiral for the Presidential dollar, though the Mint has just launched a four-city effort to avert this. Will it be enough?

Well on the one hand, the statistics do not yet show that rigor mortis has set in for the Presidential dollar. Mintage numbers are still significant but they do point straight down. Each succeeding design has a lower mintage than the one before it.

Washington sits with a 340,360,000 combined total from Denver and Philadelphia.

Adams follows with 224,560,000. Thomas Jefferson sits at 203,610,000 and Madison is at 172,340,000.

That makes the 2007 first-year total approximately 941 million.

This year the Monroe dollar total is 124,490,000 while the John Quincy Adams is 115,260,000.

If the pattern holds, Andrew Jackson will be lower still. That decline will suit American Indian tribes who are complaining that Jackson should not even be honored at all because of his policies toward Native Americans. There will be a few more Presidents against which this issue can be raised as a reason not to use the coins.

Other than the paid optimism of those executing Mint strategy, it is hard to see success at the end of this effort.

Everybody is worrying about the economy. It is so pervasive that it has become as ubiquitous as the weather.

What if the economy doesn’t slow down anymore from where it currently is?

Looking at some state quarter mintages might give us a clue.

Mintages have actually begun to rise again. The bottom seems to have been reached with the first state quarter design early this year. The Oklahoma quarter had a combined Philadelphia and Denver mintage of 416,600,000.

The next design of 2008, the New Mexico piece, rose to 488,600,000 pieces. The third design, the Arizona quarter, rose more, to 509,600,000. This total inched just ahead of the Utah mintage at the end of 2007.

Coin demand follows the economy. The Mint strikes coins to fill that demand. The mintage of quarters has gone up.

Does this mean the economy has reached a turning point this year? Could be.

The quarter is the workhorse denomination of the economy. It actually serves a purpose beyond simply making change from a larger sum. People pump them into vending machines and there are other uses for them, but the vending machine is something I am confronted with every time I pass through the company’s main break room to get my mail.

If the economy is indeed in the process of turning around, it will have ramifications for the value of the dollar, precious metals and collector coins. Let’s keep watching.