August 2024 - Week 2 Edition
Mike and Our Team Win the Prestigious PNG Sol Kaplan Award Again
This year, I was part of a team that won the Professional Numismatists Guild’s (PNG) 2024 Sol Kaplan Award for combatting a major example of mail fraud and theft involving valuable coins shipped using the U.S. Postal Service to our customers over the past few years. It was also disclosed this criminal enterprise involving U.S. Postal Service employee, Pamela Jo Rojas, affected numerous other companies' shipments, as well, and our work helped them recover some of their stolen property, too.
The Sol Kaplan Award is given each year during the World’s Fair of Money to those who have devoted a great deal of their professional time to “rid our numismatic profession of fraud and thievery.” Another recipient of the award was also on our UCB team, our attorney Gary Linthicum, who serves on our National Coin and Bullion Association (NCBA) board with me. Other recipients of the Award were Oz Fong, a U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General special agent, and Paul Sandler of the Numismatic Guaranty Corp. (NGC) and the Certified Collector’s Group (CCG), both of whom were instrumental in helping us trace the “lost” coins which were stolen by Rojas from the Beaumont mail facility.
Some of the same team who worked on this investigation had previously won a Sol Kaplan Award. Jerry Jordan, Doug Davis and I shared the Award in 2016, when PNG Executive Director Robert Brueggeman said, “Davis, Fuljenz and Jordan worked for nine months to provide valuable assistance to law enforcement agencies in four states that helped detectives coordinate their investigations into a series of numismatic-related crimes. Their persistent work successfully led to the arrests earlier this year of three suspected con artists who allegedly targeted elderly victims and their coin collections in California, Colorado, New York and Texas.”
The 2024 award centered around a series of missing (and presumed stolen) coins tracing back to the years 2020-21. At first, we registered each lost coin with Doug Davis, president of the Numismatic Crime Information Center. He worked closely with Paul Sandler of NGC to list the stolen coins on their website. When we found out that the original loss point was the local USPS center, that’s when Fong took over and put tracers on our packages and found that a long-time USPS employee, near retirement, was stealing our packages and her son was “selling” many of them in Beaumont to Heartfield’s Fine Jewelry and Rare Coins. When postal and police authorities gained a warrant to search her home, they found several of ours and others’ coins and mailed packages still in her possession.
Rojas eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 37 months in federal prison earlier this year, as well as being ordered to pay restitution for the stolen goods. Regardless of whether restitution is actually made, at least justice was served by the fine teamwork of our UCB staff, Doug Davis, Paul Sandler and Oz Fong. We now have more trust that our customers and other companies affected customers will receive what is shipped. This crime spree by a single postal employee impacted dozens of our customers, who lost faith in our company, thinking we had lost the coins we were shipping to them. It impacted our reputation, cost us money and required extensive investigative work but it is rewarding to know we have a fine team of professionals who helped resolve this issue and bring to justice those involved.
The World’s Fair of Money wasn’t all serious “cops and robbers” stories. We had a lot of fun, too. I took pictures with some great look-a-likes for the $5 bill (Abe Lincoln) and $100 bill (Ben Franklin):
In other news of a more important nature, the National Coin and Bullion Association (NCBA) has now earned Sales Tax Exemptions for rare coins and precious metals in Wisconsin and we are waiting for the Governor’s signature for approval in New Jersey. This is all part of the work I and other board members of NCBA have done for all coin dealers and customers, not just our own. We now have 44 states that are sales tax-free, leaving only six states without some form of sales tax exemption on our products.
This is one of the most important jobs we do. In fact, when I mentioned the 44 state tax exemptions at Freedom Fest in July, at the closing banquet, this got more applause than any other speaker that night.
At the World’s Fair of Money last week, dealers attending the convention appeared very optimistic about the market for rare coins and precious metals, with most reporting a very successful week at the event. Likewise, we were able to secure numerous coins our customers were searching for while also studying the market to determine where the rare coin market will move over the next year. I urge you to contact your representative to discuss coins in our 20-20 Program, as well as, adding more gold to your portfolio ahead of this next upswing in the precious metals market.
Last year was capped by my reception of the organization’s most prestigious award, the Krause Award, so this year I was able to present that award to one of my past summer seminar students. I was also honored at this year’s ANA banquet with the “Triple Crown” award for time, talent and service to the ANA – a nice honor as I reached my 70th birthday year.
Inflation Statistics for July are Weak but Gold Still Remains Strong
The July Producer Price Index (PPI), released Tuesday morning, was tamer than the June PPI, which revealed a 2.7% 12-month gain. The July PPI was only up 2.2% for the past 12 months, since most commodities – with the notable exception of gold – were down in July, as we reported here last week. Limiting the numbers just to July, gold was up 4.24% in July, while silver was down -1.57%, crude oil was off 4.45%, copper was down 5.25% and natural gas cratered by a phenomenal -21.7% in July.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI), released Wednesday, was not so dependent on commodity prices, so it was up a bit more robustly, at 2.9%, year-over-year, or 3.2% after subtracting food and energy prices. Most pundits say this will give the Federal Reserve a “window” to start cutting rates on September 18th.
Total gold demand reached its highest second-quarter rate on record this year, according to the World Gold Council (WGC). Demand reached 1,258 metric tons from April through June, up 4% from the same quarter in 2023 and setting the record for the highest second-quarter demand going back to when such record-keeping began by the WGC, starting in 2000. Despite widespread reports of a Chinese slowdown in central bank buying, China’s central bank has apparently been buying gold by other means. Using customs data, gold analyst Jan Nieuwenheijs reported the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has regularly been buying 400-ounce bars from the United Kingdom rather than through normal channels.
Economic and Global Factors Lining Up to Send Gold Even Higher
Gold traded over $2,500 on the futures market (basis: December 2024 contract) on Monday and Tuesday this week, although gold remained below $2,500 on the spot market. Gold rose from a brief retreat under $2,400 this past Thursday on a wave of ETF inflows and global accumulation as North American investors finally joined the rest of the world in seeing the value of accumulating gold. The World Gold Council (WGC) just announced a $3.7 billion rise in gold ETF demand in July, the fourth straight (and largest) North American gold ETF rise, helping gold be the strongest commodity last month. The current acrimony in the U.S. Presidential race, global unrest involving Russia and Ukraine, Iran and Israel as well as China and Taiwan are also contributing to this increase.