When Hunter Hicks first took a serious interest in collecting rare coins, his parents grew concerned. Their son's hobby didn't exactly match that of other preteen boys.

"Oh," they'd ask him, "you'd rather go hang out at a convention center with old people rather than, like, play soccer?"

As he did when he was 10, Hicks, now 21, is happy to respond to all inquiries regarding his unique passion. The University of Virginia fourth-year student runs a lucrative rare coin collecting business – Hicks Coins generated more than $960,000 in revenue in 2024 alone – in addition to studying at UVA's Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.

"Sometimes I look at the history of a coin," Hicks said, "and I'm like,'Oh my gosh, this is a silver dollar from 1857.' I don't know how to describe the appeal to me, but it's just so cool to have this item of value that so many hands have touched and appreciated along the way."

Curiosity turned into a hobby. Then it became a business.

The Falls Church City native learned more about the industry through local clubs in Alexandria and Fairfax, as well as summer excursions to Colorado and California for coin seminars. In high school, Hicks began working for coin wholesalers and coin shops. He established Hicks Coins in February of his senior year in high school.

"I realized I could have this business model with a very lean operation, without a big office and without someone working there 40 hours a week in person," said Hicks, who operates out of a low-rent office space and doesn't have full-time assistants. "I've built a fairly robust system of wholesaling. I do a ton of business on eBay. I do a ton of business at shows. It's just kind of finding the right place to sell this stuff."

During the 2024-25 academic year, Hicks took business trips to Chicago; Orlando, Florida; San Francisco; Baltimore; Charleston, South Carolina; and Syracuse, New York, as well as having dozens of local adventures.

Hicks recently found clarity at a Starbucks while traveling home from making an out-of-state deal. It was late at night, and he had a class in the morning.

"I just got this dopamine rush, and I was like, 'I just can't imagine another industry where I'm going to have this much fun and be this excited to be driving back from the Eastern Shore of Maryland at 11 p.m.,'" he said

"It was this feeling of, 'This is what I should be doing for the rest of my life.'"

To read the complete article, see:
Meet the UVA student building a rare coin empire(https://news.virginia.edu/content/meet-uva-student-building-rare-coin-empire)