Greg Bennick: It's funny you mentioned the 100 Greatest. I actually bought the fifth editionlast night, and the reason was yesterday, in anticipation of the interview, I was reading thecopy I've had for years and years and I was looking at it, I was like oh, the 1913 Libertynickel, I gotta ask him about the 1913 Liberty nickel. And then in the first edition, it saysonly the location of only four of these is known. I'm like, it's probably time for me to get anupdated edition, so I bought the fifth last night. I was going to ask about valuations becausethere's so many different factors I assume that go into valuation. Meaning if someone cameto me in five minutes with an 1804 dollar and said, I'd say well it's worth a lot more than $50,000. But how do I know that? Meaning, I knowthat because people have paid that, I know that because there's a collective agreement that itis worth more, but what are the other factors that go into valuations? And then what about thelesser coins, meaning some random Standing Liberty Quarter that isn't a key date? How arevaluations defined for an entire realm of numismatics? It just boggles the mind to thinkabout.

Jeff Garrett: Yeah, valuation is a mind-boggling experience. And it's actually becomingeven harder now because years ago, earlier in my career, the coin business was kind ofdominated by investors. So, investors would buy coins back in the seventies and eighties, andthey really didn't care what a coin looked like. Well, they didn't know the difference. So theywere being sold coins or what they were told to buy, but they really weren't students ofnumismatics. Now currently, the coin market is really dominated by coin collectors. I meanthat's who the real consumers are now. That's evidenced by...like even last night, there was a1958 penny sold for $1.1 million, which is mind boggling. And so, if I had to give you theshort answer, valuation is based on supply and demand like everything, and what thecollectors demand now are coins that are attractive. So it's really hard to put in like a priceguide. A better example would be like an 1894-O Silver dollar in MS-63. Well, the coincould be worth $1,500, or it might be worth $3,500, but it depends on what it looks like,really. If it's deeply toned or if it's like radiant luster or beautifully toned, there's a lot offactors that go into valuations of a coin. For Red Book and if I talk to other guys, the guysthat do Red Book and the other things that do price guides. So, catalog values are thetheoretical average coin for the grade.

So, it's a coin that's totally like right in the middle, not high end, not low end because youcould find extremes on almost every coin that you see where one would be selling. Butvaluations now are a lot to do, you know, the supply and demand factor comes in reallyheavily when these people go to battle for these set registry competitions. So, I never thoughtin my career I would see, like last night also Stuart Blay's collection of Lincoln Pennies iswhat I'm referring to. A 1919 penny sold for $400,000, which if you'd asked me 20 yearsago, would a 1919 penny be worth $400,000? I would've said, well gas must be $500 agallon by then or something crazy. But it is what it is, you know, people compete becausethey want to have the finest known and they want to have the finest known set and it'sprobably more set registry driven that's making that happen. And that set registrycompetition is one of the things that almost distorts the values because people will pay farmore than a coin's worth just because they want to be number one in the set registry. So that'sa big factor. But in general, when I'm doing pricing, I have to price for Red Book,everything from colonials to double eagles at the back of the book. And that is one advantagethat I have that probably other previous editors, like even Ken Bressett, he's a brilliant guy,but I buy and sell millions of dollars worth of coins a year. And I have an intuitive idea ofwhat a coin's worth just by my handling of coins. So my job is to know what a coin's worth,and that's what most highly skilled professionals have to do. You have to be able tounderstand, within five or 10%, what a coin is probably worth.

Greg Bennick: So before we set off a frenzy, like the era of Max Mehl, looking for the 1913liberty nickel on having the entire country frantically about looking for this coin, let's pointout to viewers that it wasn't just a 1958 penny that sold. And not just a 1919 penny that soldbecause the coins that sold last night, sure, 1958 Double Die, three known, if I'm notmistaken.

Jeff Garrett: Two known, I thought, but could be three.

Greg Bennick: Yeah, so could be three. And then the 1919 Penny in MS-69, gradedbeautiful, perfect.

Jeff Garrett: A fantasy grade.

Greg Bennick: Yes...fantasy graded. These are exceptional, just unbelievable coins and yetstill, it's like you said, it's just hard to place value,. I didn't happen to have the $1.1 million inmy pocket. I'm an error guy, right? I'm on the board at CONECA and mint errors arebasically my life. And yet still, I never would've anticipated that the 1958 penny would'vesold for that. Like you said, supply and demand and it's really hard to pin down. If the coin isgorgeous, then it's simply worth more. But it's really good to know that the guidebook, likeyou said, is a baseline for the average coin. That's really good to know. Because then peoplecan interpret coins as art and then price them accordingly when they see them.

Jeff Garrett: Yeah, it's funny you just mentioned the coins as art. So, for a long long timepeople are saying really great coins are underpriced compared to great paintings. You know,there's been paintings bringing a hundred million for quite a while. You know, 50 million islike, you know, there'll be a painting selling for $30, $40 million. I've never even heard of theartist now. And I read about that stuff pretty often and coins have finally kind of beencoming into that realm where the greatest of the great are bringing really unbelievable prices.And one of the reasons for that, is we have what I call the age of the billionaires coincollectors. And right now I know four or five of them for sure multi-billionaires that havedecided coin collecting is their thing. And they've spent $200, $300, $400 million on theircoin collections, which is a staggering amount. And when those guys go to battle for a coin,it's like lights out.

I was just doing the Red Book final prices a couple weeks ago and I noticed a 1794 halfdollar sold 2 years ago for what I thought was a staggering price of $850,000 or maybe880,000, I think what it was. MS-64 plus finest known of course. And when that happened acouple years ago, I thought, wow, And it sold a couple weeks ago in this last sale for $1.8 million. So, it sold for a milliondollars more two years later. And probably because it's the finest known and it's a trophycoin essentially. And the billionaires have done battle and a lot of these headlines we'reseeing as a result of that phenomena. The multi-billionaires that have decided coin collecting,it's like the Dan O'Dowd, the Tyrant collector. Someone did an interview and he kind ofjokingly said that a lot of my fellow billionaires have yachts, but I get seasick, so I decided tocollect coins. So, it's kinda funny that's where he is putting his money, but it has a giantimpact on the coin market.

Greg Bennick: Oh, I'm sure it does. Absolutely. Well, let's talk just for a second aboutgrading. I mean, you're known as a grader. How did grading first become important to youand when did you realize you had these skills and what were the skills that made you a greatgrader early on?

Jeff Garrett: And it's funny, grading has been an evolving process because what coinsgraded 30 years ago, you know, like a glacier, now it's a little bit different. So, it is actually a moving target you have to keep up with to understand it. I've always known that grading wasreally key to being a successful coin dealer. I actually teach Advanced Coin Grading for thesummer seminar at ANA now in the summer. So I teach that and we get a lot of youngpeople who are interested in being professional coin dealers. You know, it's kind of hard todescribe. It's kinda like people will show me a coin and I'll tell them a grade and they saywell, how do you know? And I say, well if you show a diamond to an expert diamond guy, Icouldn't tell the difference, but they can tell you if it's a real diamond or not by probably justglancing at it. And grading is a very nuanced thing and it's something that you just have to doby experience. And I tell people that you gotta start somewhere. I tell people to start withMorgan dollars: if you can learn how to grade Morgan dollars, you can maybe extrapolatethat to other series because they're big coins. You can see them and you can see the thingsthat come into it, but grading is very complex. I mean these days it's not about just seeingdetail. You gotta be able to understand if it's artificially toned or if it's got things you don'tsee happen.

But I think in general, grading is just something you have to do by experience. And one ofthe things I teach my class, I tell people what you can do is go to an auction. Even if you'renot gonna buy anything, look at auction lots, study them very carefully. The coin's alreadybeen graded by the grading services once, so it gives you one point of reference. Then whenthe auction results are over, go back and try to figure why did one bring like twice thecatalog price and one brought half the catalog price. Then you can maybe see that actually bylooking at them. So, for me, I learned by experience and I don't know, I guess some peoplehave an eye for it. And I've seen times where I've had employees over the years where I'vetried to teach them and it goes into one ear and out the other, and some people just can'tgrasp it. So I'll call it a skill and some people have it and some people don't. That's probablythe best way to describe it, I guess.

Greg Bennick: What was it like being one of the early graders at PCGS? I mean, you werethere at the very beginning. What was that experience like? Because that was transformative.

Jeff Garrett: Yeah, it was a lot of fun to be there. When they first started, they didn't havefull-time graders. You'd come out and grade for a week. I lived in Kentucky at the time, and I would go to California for a week. We'd live in an apartment. It was kind of like a dormlifestyle and I enjoyed it. It was fun to do. And I probably didn't fully appreciate howtransformative it was gonna be when I was doing it. You know, we were like,

So it was fun in the beginning and then I eventually had to make a decision, do I want to livein California and do it full-time? So that was the positive I learned about it. But the negativewas, I personally don't have the mentality or the mental state to sit in front of a light andgrade coins all day long, every day. And I want to be on the phone, like doing a deal or goingto a coin show. I don't have the attention span to sit uninterrupted for eight hours a daygrading coins. So, it's not for everybody, it's something you have to be able to do and havethe right focus in being able to do it. So, I could do it very effectively, but I didn't enjoy it.And then at some point I decided that really wasn't going to be the lifestyle I wanted topursue. So, I stayed with being a professional coin dealer. But it was fun to be there in thebeginning and also seeing all the great characters, David Hall and all the other people whowere around there. So eventually it'll end up being like you were kind of like with thelegends of numismatics and it was fun to be around when that was going on.

Greg Bennick: Yeah, I would think that grading coins would be really fun at first. And Ihave a friend who's a grader and I think it'd be really fun at first. I think after seeing my35,000th MS 64 walking liberty half, I think maybe the fun would diminish slightly.

Jeff Garrett: Try grading MS 69 and Ms 70 Silver Eagles all day long for two weeks andsee how you like that. Yeah, long as they're putting great coins in front of me, it couldprobably get my attention, but at some point it gets kind of dull. But it is interesting thoughbecause you do see a lot especially in these professional companies, they've got people tryingto trick them every day, all day with this or that, artificial coins and stuff, so definitely haveto be on their toes. So, I admire what they do, it's a tough job.

Greg Bennick: Absolutely, I can't imagine the focus and the attention and the skill and theencyclopedic knowledge of coins it would take to do that work, so yeah, it'd be prettyamazing. Now for those who don't remember and I'm old enough to remember myself, butdescribe what happened when PCGS came around and when slabs and grading came aroundand how that shifted grading. You touched on it, but I know I talked to my dad, for example,my dad started collecting 1949, 1950, and he describes going into a coin shop, you'd have aconversation with the dealer: I think it's this....I think it's uncirculated....really?...I think it'sXF and then you just have a conversation, you come to an agreement that was the grade andyou were good. So just describe - because I think it's a hugely important moment innumismatic history - the shift that happened when all of a sudden we began slabbing coins.

Jeff Garrett: Yeah, before that there were a lot of guys that would, like the classic line, a lotof them would say, So this is what I want for it, youdecide what you think about grades...that kind of mentality. And that was really a big part ofhow people did things. A coin had its implied value, but then of course that led to a lot offraud or it made it easy for a person to sell an over graded coin or grossly over graded coinsor counterfeits even. So, if it hadn't been for third party grading, the coin business would'vestayed small. It would've been a much smaller business. And it's funny, it's even an evolvingthing now. Like the world and ancient market is just now kind of embracing what we callthird party grading. Even like ancient coins or maybe the last holdouts, but a lot of thosepeople say. And they don't like the grades they assigned to itand all these things, but it really was transformative. In fact, what I mentioned earlier aboutinvestors, there were a lot of investors back in the seventies and eighties, and at first, coins, Idon't know if you look at the price guides, but 1989 a few years after the grading started,prices skyrocketed. I mean proof 3 cent nickels in 1989, I think we're $2,000, now you canbuy them for $400 in gem condition.

So, 35 years later they've gone down by a lot. So, what it did is it basically commoditizedcoins where like I want to buy 200 MS-65 Morgans, and I know exactly what they arebecause they have been certified as MS-65. So, people like investors are like

About the Interviewer
Greg Bennick (www.gregbennick.com) is a keynote speaker and long time coin collector with a focus on major mint error coins. Have ideas for other interviewees? Contact him anytime on the web or via instagram @minterrors.

To watch the complete interview on NNP, see:
Jeff Garrett, Interviewed by Greg Bennick(https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/book/622304)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
JEFF GARRETT INTERVIEW, PART ONE(https://www.coinbooks.org/v26/esylum_v26n07a13.html)