The Business of Numismatics: November 2025 Greysheet Editor's Letter

Now that the World’s Fair of Money® and the associated auction sales have come and gone, it is hard to see past any other topic besides that of the gold and silver spot price. What has occurred thus far in 2025 is nothing short of historic. Gold closed September at $3,882.40 an ounce, up 47% year-to-date. As I write this, the yellow metal sits at $3,969.60, another 2.25% increase. The moves higher have been relentless and are due to a number of factors. Primary among these is the fact that the U.S. dollar index (DXY) is down approximately 10.8% on the year, an intentional policy decision by the current administration to boost American exports. Institutional buying of gold has been a major factor, with central banks bolstering their reserves. In a mercantilist world, domestic currencies that are not the U.S. dollar can come under pressure rapidly and one of the only ways to defend its value is the selling of gold into the open market. On the individual retail buyer-investor level it seems that there has been net selling as opposed to buying. With gold at these levels, the purchase of physical gold bullion becomes cost prohibitive to the majority of buyers. Thus the institutional buying has fueled much of the rally, in addition to retail buying of "paper gold" in the form of exchange traded funds. Despite these heady returns for gold, silver has stolen the show over the past month and a half. At the time of writing it is trading at a whopping $47.50 per ounce, something unthinkable at the beginning of the year. Over the past three months is it up more than 30%. On one hand, it was only a matter of time until silver broke out in a similar manner as gold, but breaking well past the $40 per ounce level was only something the most optimistic silver bulls could foresee. Much has been written about silver’s use as an industrial metal as is relates to the hardware needed for the expansion of AI and this being the primary driver of this price breakout. While this is true, the recent price performance is a natural progression that needed to happen in light of what gold was doing, and because of how expensive gold had gotten. Speaking of tech and AI, the equity markets have continued their ascent, with September another positive month for the S&P 500, which is now up more than 14% year-to-date. Remarkably, the Magnificent 7: Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla make up 34.5% of the total value of the S&P 500 and made up for 64% of the September total gain and 41% of the year-to-date return of the index. Without these seven companies, the stock markets would have been nearly flat in the third quarter, and a lot of people would be a lot less wealthy. The top-heavy nature of the equity market could be another reason why more are rotating more funds into precious metals.

On the practical trading front in the rare coin and bullion business, these elevated metals prices have essentially eliminated premiums, and are causing real cash flow issues for smaller operators. As I mentioned above, these prices have motivated many to sell some or all of their physical holdings to take the profits they’ve long awaited. This is causing many items, such as 90% junk silver coinage, low grade pre-1933 gold coins, and bars to go up the chain of bullion brokers until they reach the biggest buyers who in many cases have no choice other than to conduct large scale melting.

Sincerely,

Patrick Ian Perez, patrickp@whitmanbrands.com