Author Archives: Bret Evans

After nearly 25 years as editor of Canadian Coin News, this is my last column. Not bad for a job that I originally figured would be fun for a year, maybe two, before going back to regular journalism. I still find it hard to believe that it was 1990 when I first sat down and wrote my first coin articles. Not the very first, but one of them, was about the possibility of the one-cent coin being withdrawn. It took a while, but I finally saw that happen. Among my other early stories were the challenges involved in spending non-circulating legal tender, the proliferation of new issues, worries about the lack of new collectors, and various debates on third-party grading. Some things, it seems, never change. Yet the numismatic world of today is very different than it was back then. Continue reading →

Regular readers will know that I am a huge fan of circulating commemorative coins. Admittedly, one reason is that I like seeing different coins in my change, but I also think it is a great way to engage new collectors. Continue reading →

The new Collectible Coin Protection Act, signed into law just before Christmas, promises to give the numismatic community in the United States more powers to fight counterfeit coins and fake third-party holders. Frankly, I’m not that impressed. The new law does back up the already existing Hobby Protection Act, and it is hard to speak against any new law, but if we take a peek under the hood we find little that will change the world. Continue reading →

While generalizations can be both risky and inaccurate, I would say this has been a good year in numismatics. The bullion market has remained a driving factor, while that market has cooled down a bit, the bottom hasn’t fallen out, and trading remains brisk. The lower values means that the RCM probably won’t have the sort of year it had in 2013, but it will still post a profit that is quite large. In fact, the numbers we look at now make it hard to believe that in the 1990s the corporation’s goal was to manage a profit of $10 million. Much of the RCM’s vitality comes from a powerful market for collector and gift coins, which the RCM calls numismatic to distinguish them from circulating coins. Continue reading →

very once in a while, there is talk of selling off the Mint, since the Crown corporation has become pretty good at turning a profit. The talk started back in the mid-’90s, shortly after the federal government sold off the Canadian National Railway Company. The last time the idea was looked at seriously, it was determined that the Mint was better off being government-owned. The logic was, and it made a lot of sense, that much of the Crown corporation’s business is a direct or indirect result of being owned by the Government of Canada. Being a national mint gives the RCM sustainability, and many foreign governments would prefer to deal with a mint that answers ultimately to a federal cabinet minister than one driven purely by the winds of profit. Continue reading →