Coin It Podcast Episode #11
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Title: Heritage Auctions' Roxana Uskali and I Discuss This Ripe Market of World Coins
Charles Jonath: So we have Roxanna Uskali, is that correct?
Roxana Uskali: That's correct, yes.
Charles Jonath: Awesome from Heritage. So, you're leading up the international numismatics in Chicago, if I'm not mistaken, right?
Roxana Uskali: Yeah, so I handle the world and ancient coins, but part of my responsibilities there are all the numismatics, so I also take in U.S coins and currency, anything that falls under the numismatic umbrella.
Charles Jonath Wow. Okay. I didn't even know that that heritage had a base there in Chicago, but I heard about it, and then someone told me that it's been a while now, and then you've been spearheading the whole thing, right?
Roxana Jonath: Yeah, so the office opened formally in 2017, and I've been there since the opening.
Charles Jonath: Nice. How did you get started in all this stuff, coins and numismatics? I know your background actuality, it's in international numismatics like foreign coins and stuff like that.
Roxana Uskali: Yeah, that's correct. It's sort of an interesting story. I was going to college in the City of Chicago and come senior year, I didn't really know what I wanted to do, I was going to be majoring in history and piano performance knowing I would never use the piano for something professionally but just for my own use. But the history I was trying to figure out what to do with that. And I had met somebody while I was at college and they said to me, "I used to work at this coin shop in the city and they're looking to hire young people," because this was in the early 2000s, not to date myself, "And you didn't really need to know anything, they were going to teach you basically what you need to know from the ground up." And I thought, "Well, that's interesting." So I had planned to go to law school, I deferred enrollment for a year to try it out, and I started with buying junk silver over the counter, emails, going to the post office every day to mail coins. And after a year, some things had changed, the person who was handling world coins for the office had passed away, they hired somebody else who was there. But he, unfortunately, had to leave after about 10 months. And during that time, I was entering coins into our database, and I was like, "Wow, world coins are where it's at." I loved it.
Charles Jonath: Really.
Roxana Uskali: And I have a pretty good memory so as I was typing in things to the database, I was like, "Wow, these coins are beautiful," and I couldn't get enough of it. And so I had the opportunity to start working in the world coin section of a coin shop, and I did that for about eight and a half years total, and I never went to law school.
Charles Jonath: I think you did the right thing.
Roxana Uskali: Looking back at it, it worked out pretty well.
Charles Jonath: So, you basically just got that coin bug and that was it, right? It was like [crosstalk 00:03:23]
Roxana Uskali: Yeah, unlike most people in this business, I don't really fit the mold, I didn't have family members involved in numismatics. I wasn't really a collector. I would go get baseball cards and some buffalo nickels at the local shop when I was really little, but nothing like some of the people in this business that you've probably met and will meet that have been generational, it's been passed down. So that's a little bit different for me.
Charles Jonath: That's good. We all come into this from different angles. But it's really great to see people like that have no real upbringing in coins, just gravitate to it by some more. It's almost mystical in a way. It was fortuitous, I think for you, you just wound up in that area you found, you had to do international and then you just fell in love with it, and then now you found your lane, and that's that, which the international market now is really getting, it seems like it's been in waves like, my specialty is more in US type coins and stuff like that. My business does more of that.
But I've watched you know the international market and then growing up, I grew up in a coin shop, and then in addition to that, being in the coin business for an extended period of time, you see these cycles of, I remember Chinese coins were really happening and then Russian coins there for a while and then it dipped off, and now someone told me that Czechoslovakian gold is big.
Roxana Uskali: It is. It's very big. There are niche markets. It's hard to pinpoint. You can see the waves happening when you're starting to get in them. But global markets affect things very differently. But yeah, for the last, let's see here, almost 18 years, so when I first started in the business, gold was $200, $300 an ounce, and so to go through all that, to go through everything and see things change, see Chinese coins were like vintage stuff, it was really popular, and then it was the modern stuff, and then it goes back and forth. The Russian coinage definitely, and now yeah, check coins. There's a couple of different areas that are very popular.
And a lot of it has to do with the type of buyers that there are. Obviously, if you have high-grade, low mintage, that's always going to be really popular, and it's just… Being at Heritage is great because I get a front-row seat to see all these amazing coins pop up, and be able to help catalog and see the catalog go through, watch the auctions, and just to be able to track all that, it's really fascinating.
Charles Jonath: Right. You're at a big advantage to see the ebb and flow of how this stuff really works. I'm curious, what do you think really drives that sort of thing? Is it renewed interest in a particular country, or are a lot of these collectors coming then from overseas, or is it a lot of it domestic here, people just get excited about foreign and then it catches on or it?
Roxana Uskali: From a US perspective, a lot of the people who collect are based in the US. From a world perspective, it will depend on the type of coin, it will depend on a lot of different factors. You'll see, like in some of our past auctions, very large gold crown-sized pieces high grade and selling for crazy money and it has to do with where the money is throughout the world and what those people's interests are.
It's very interesting, you will have like German coins, let's say, and a lot of people that are buying those are based, let's say in Germany or maybe in some parts of Europe. But you have British coins, and you could be seeing buyers in China, Japan, not only in Great Britain. It depends on what the country is and what the coin is.
But through our sales and stuff, we've been getting coins in and thinking, "We've sold one of these before or something similar," and then the next time we sell, it goes for way more money than we thought it would. And at least within the last few years, a lot of that has been driven by the pandemic. So, it's hard to pull apart everything and classify it as A, B, C. There's been a lot of factors that play here in the last few years.
Charles Jonath: Is it, I don't know, because right now in American-type coins, it seems to be a lack of inventory in the high-end stuff, so when you do get pieces that do come on the market, people are really aggressive in buying. Is it a similar situation in foreign or is there just more inventory and just renewed interest, or is it just lack of inventories like it seems in the US?
Roxana Uskali: It's a little bit of both. There are still collections out there that I'll pick up, and I know my colleagues in Dallas get that raw, and it seems like we've sold one of everything at this point. And then we'll get a collection that has amazing coins that have been collected years and years ago, and nobody certified them. And so now we're going to enter all that stuff and get it graded, and then it's going to come back, and it's going to go into the census and disrupt some stuff.
So, in terms of you know when you buy something and it's the finest known or the highest graded from this company, and we haven't offered one in the last few years, the drive there is significant. And it's usually pretty trackable. But in terms of, if we sell the same thing over and over again, it depends on that country, it could be very different from just a few years ago, maybe there is renewed interest in that country, or that particular coin if the mintage is low.
Obviously, there are a lot of subjective aspects to collecting with toning and things like that. Eye appeal is also something that's really hard to give an exact percentage to an increase in value. But there are people who don't collect tone coins at all, they want them frosty and white.
Charles Jonath: Yeah, exactly.
Roxana Uskali: But I think in the world, there's always going to be these very popular pieces like a Lady in the Clouds from Austria, Gothic Crowns from Britain that no matter how many we sell and how many are graded that there's always going to be people buying those. So, I don't remember if I answered your question but…
Charles Jonath: Oh Yeah, you did. That makes total sense. There are those classic pieces that probably have captured the limelight in the international market for so long, and they've been collected for so many years that it was sort of a staple. It would be almost like the equivalent, those pieces you're referring to would be like a high relief or something here in the US.
Roxana Uskali: Sure, yeah.
Charles Jonath: No, I get it.
Roxana Uskali: We had a sale in 2020 in March about two years ago, and it was called the Paramount Collection, and it was one collector, and it was about 700 lots including some ancients and some modern, and it was insane because it was coins you had never seen before or very infrequently, multiple-sized duckets, all over. There wasn't exactly, it wasn't all from one country or nothing like that, and it was just very impressive to be a part of that cataloging process and watch those coins sell. Because for Heritage, our website's fantastic. It's transparent, if you want to know what something is sold for if we've sold it, you know in that similar grade by that grading company, it's all at your fingertips. All you have to do is log in.
But for coins that haven't sold before, even somewhere else with some other company, to be able to work on that material and just see people come out of the woodwork and want to own something like that, and then the pedigree gets added, and that does add extra value to it the next time it is sold. But we've seen within the last few years, a lot of collections coming out like that are just incredible.
Charles Jonath: Wow, that's interesting. It's always, I noticed a lot of foreign sometimes, it's getting coupled together with ancients. Is there some crossover that you see as far as the collectors, the people that collect foreign also dabble on ancients? Or is it, it's a separate thing, and then you guys just try to make larger sales? How does that really work? What's the thought process?
Roxana Uskali: Well, our ancient department, it's a beast. Over the last few years, it's grown. We have select sales that run every week, and we had to break them apart. We have ancient ending one night and world coins ending on another because they became so large. In terms of the clients that I work with the most, they're going to be more world collectors that I deal with because we have people in Dallas that will, specifically specialize in ancient coins and can work with those clients.
But for me, a lot of the clients that I work with, a few of them will dabble, but it's very, and if they are, it's something very particular. It's a ruler or a war or something that they want that ties into something that they collect in the world side, so then slightly more modern like hammered coins and up to the present day.
But I don't really see… I would check with somebody in the Dallas office who works in ancient coins when they have a specific collector and ancients if they also collect world. But every now and again we'll get somebody who collects world, US, and agent and that's always a surprise to me because that's a lot of focus to be able to spread all of your time into three different kinds of categories or currency.
For me, a lot of people will come in with US, and it's always, I have currency too. So, the US coins, and currencies seem to go together very easily. and then for the world, sometimes We'll have real coins in-world currency. But it's not as often so…
Charles Jonath: Yeah, it's a whole other world, and if you really want to dedicate time in building a collection, there's so much to learn and so much to know it seems like. It's just it's overwhelming if you try to do everything.
Roxana Uskali: Yes, exactly.
Charles Jonath: I don't know if I could do it. Even as a dealer, we try to narrow that focus and stuff like that and get really good at a few things.
Roxana Uskali: Yeah. We'll have collectors who you know if you're looking at what they bring in and you're trying to map out what their focus is, sometimes it can be a little hard. But a lot of times, people will say, I had had a client that came in with a whole bunch of really neat coins all different countries, minors, crowns. I couldn't really figure out where how they were doing it, but they were only buying one-year types. And so, once I knew that that became crystal clear on why they were picking out the coins that they were.
Or we've had people that will only collect marriage commemorative, so you'll have the couple on the coin, and obviously, a lot of European coins will have that. So, there are a lot of different focuses, not just a denomination or a specific area in a certain country, but it just depends. But it's always, I love… Part of my job is I get to meet with people face to face. I do a lot in our office. I meet clients nearby at their office or their bank or their home, and it's wonderful for somebody to basically open up their collection and explain to you what they've been doing for the last number of years, and they love to talk about the stuff, I love to hear about it because it's always fascinating to me, and then you know really gives me some good perspective on how best to help the client with their collection.
Charles Jonath: That's so cool. Yeah, and then it's probably a lot of times they've been collecting this stuff for 20 plus years?
Roxana Uskali: Oh, yeah. It's, we have, I would say with the clients that I work with the most, it's the people that have put together this collection, perhaps they've been upgrading it, if they completed it a while ago. There's also a lot of you know adults who inherit coins from their elderly parents and then maybe they had some interest or none, and they don't know what to do with the stuff. So, every day is different, every client is different, and the way we advise them is different too based on what they need so
Charles Jonath: Yeah, exactly and the pieces and stuff like that. No, definitely. Are you one thing I wanted to know about the ancients and stuff like that? Not ancient, I'm sorry, but the foreign end of things, are you seeing, is there anything like a preference towards gold versus silver or is it just based on country and the type that they want to collect more so.
Roxana Uskali: There is some renewed interest in modern gold. So say, a few years ago, a coinage that we may have thought was bullion-related, so where the premium on it isn't is really tied to the spot price of gold. And lately, there has been, larger premiums on that type of material, which is interesting. Especially because it's graded, you know most of the coins that we handle like that are graded or certified and usually very high grade you know 69, 70 something like that.
In terms of silver or, let's say, platinum or something like that, it really depends on the country. And it's more or less if somebody's looking for a certain type of grade. So, a lot of the challenge when I'm helping someone build a collection is, they want a certain type of coin, and they want it in the best grade possible that they can afford. And so, we'll have something in mind, and then one will pop up in a sale, we'll talk about it, now we want to enter a bid, and that's fantastic. A lot of times, it gets surpassed because people are bidding with a mentality of a few years ago and not knowing that they're going to have to go much higher, maybe for a grade that's a little bit lower than they want.
Charles Jonath: It's happening to me frequently.
Roxana Uskali: Yeah, so in terms of purchasing our bidding in our sales and buying it coins like this, it's better to have a wider… Emotion gets involved too which can be good or bad I don't know. But it's better to have an open mind on, "If you want it you know you're willing to pay for the grade, the high grade, that's what you have to do. Whether or not it's going to work out for you, in the end, I don't know." But the point is to, the way I collect as well I pay too much for things sometimes because I want it, and I don't know when the next time something will be available in that grade, or even with us or anybody else. So, I have to weigh all those options and so do our clients.
Charles Jonath: Yeah! It's going to depend on the piece. If it's something that you don't see come onto the market that often, I would expect to be aggressive, especially in this market.
Roxana Uskali: Yeah. In terms of our US sales there, we have so many of them because we have so much material coming in, and we don't want to water down our sales by having too many of the same coin and the same grade. So that's why we have so many, plus there's so much material that we don't want to make the sales too big too long, but you know you'll have a string of Morgan Dollars, so you'll have you know these kinds of things, wherein world you might have one type of Tola from a German state that someone wants. It's not like they have to go through 50 of them in one sale. So, I don't know if coming into it, the mindset has to be different in that, "It's here, but they don't come up that often, and I'm weighing the risk of not getting this one and holding out for who knows how long until the next one is available."
Charles Jonath: It's tough to find that stuff. I do see like the German state stuff and that more seems to be happening in Germany like on [unintelligible 00:19:22] and that kind of thing, or you could find it that stuff if you attend the Numismata, it's a big trade show there. Do you do any trade shows?
Roxana Uskali: I do. I do in the US, and the last few years have been a little absent. But I'm based in the Chicago office. We have central states coming up here at the end of April. We'll have ANA here again this summer in August, so I will be at both of those. I do the New York International Show in January. I've been to a couple of other shows around the country and stuff. I haven't done any international shows. But hopefully, that's on the horizon. It's been a little bit tricky trying to get into those. But our company does send representatives every once in a while, to shows that are in Europe and Asia. And we do have some Heritage employees based in our London office, the Netherlands, and Hong Kong, so they cover those areas too.
Charles Jonath: Right. So, in foreign and stuff like that, I know there seems to be a preference in NGC grading foreign. What is your whole take? I'm curious to see what your whole take is on that, because I think pc just does a fair job too. It just it's hard to say in some series, I think NGC is a little bit better, but then in other series pieces just caught up, what is your whole opinion on it? Do you have a preference?
Roxana Uskali: So, the main thing comes down to the country and the denomination, so we'll send a lot of Canadian coins to PCGS because they're looked at and treated more like US in terms of the Canadian collectors. So a lot of the Canadian stuff we send to PCGS because they'll mark things specimen, which does play into it. In terms of German State, it's a cross. A lot of times we get the collections, and they're already certified. So, we're not going to be cracking something out for no reason to send it somewhere else just to have another grade on it. But a lot of German State stuff does come in PCGS holders, and those are great. It's not necessarily as black and white as US coins being in PCGS holders versus NGC and seeing some numerical value difference that's easy to trend. But with the world, we do send a majority of it, if it is coming in raw to us, we do send the majority of it to NGC. A lot of it has to do also with turnarounds for our deadlines, making sure we can get material back in time, and then, of course, with ancient coins, we only have one option, really. We do send some things to the Annex. But NGC is pretty much the one that we go to for those so.
Charles Jonath: They do, yeah. They specialize in that. I don't think anyone could beat them at ancients.
Roxana Uskali: But in terms of whether a coin is certified by NGC or PCGS for the world, I'm speaking purely of my own opinion, and the way I've seen things play out, it doesn't really translate into a higher value the way it does for US coins sometimes. And both are obviously very well respected, and most clients tend to be very aware of both companies. So again, for us it will basically boil down to, if we can get it back in time for the sale that it's supposed to be going into, and then from there what are the options that we have in terms of the finish. So if it's a specimen or if we have a really beautifully toned coin and we want that to have a star. So, those things can come into play. But it's more of an exception to the rule.
Charles Jonath: Yeah, that is interesting, though. The cool thing, and it depends on how you want to look at it, but in the international market, you guys haven't had to deal with the whole CAC phenomenon?
Roxana Uskali: Well, yeah. That doesn't exist. There was, I don't know if they're still in, Wings, but it doesn't have the traction, I don't believe that [unintelligible 00:23:17] does, so for world coins, it's sort of just, you know, the grade on the holder is the grade on the holder, there isn't another company looking at it to verify it or anything like that.
Charles Jonath: You just have to look at the quality of the individual piece?
Roxana Uskali: Yeah.
Charles Jonath: The eye appeal is-
Roxana Uskali: Or are as good as the grading companies are, and they're very helpful in helping give our bidders some confidence. It helps them formulate their bids better because they can see something in that grade and what it's been selling for, let's say, in the last few months. But always look at the coin, too. Our website's fantastic where we, for a lot of the coins in our signature sales, you can zoom in on the coin and really get a better look at it than you could in person with a loop. Because you always want to look at the coin too, the grade is great, but you want to always look at the coin so
Charles Jonath: Yeah, I know definitely. And there's no… I'm obviously a customer of Heritage, and I think most people in the business are. You guys are well established.
Roxana Uskali: Me too.
Charles Jonath: You're bidding on your own stuff with your own account, sure.
Roxana Uskali: Yeah.
Charles Jonath: That's great. So, anything like any cool sales coming up or what's new on the horizon for Heritage?
Roxana Uskali: In the last few years we've really branched out. We're starting to offer more showcase sales. Those run every month, or I should say they last a month. So we've had a bunch of ending here. The last one we had ending was we had a spring Hong Kong sale. They're all online only. But all of our sales are online, so that doesn't make any difference. We've had them tailored for specific clients who have a lot of material. It makes sense to keep it together. We just had a world showcase, a modern world showcase of sales. So basically, coins from 1970 to the present. We're trying to get the people that are most interested looking at one type of sale so that they don't have to search a million different ways and things.
And then the next signature sale that we have is actually going to be taking place in May, May 5th through the 7th the coins will be available for lot viewing at the Central states Coin Show in Schaumburg at the end of this month. And for our signature and platinum night sales, we have those, the next one is the ANA. So we do run those. It's like every six to eight weeks or so for those, and then we have our weekly select auctions. So for all coins, all world all ancients in those sales as well. And those are fantastic. I bid in those as well.
My personal collection is interesting. But mostly, I'm interested in Tolas, and I haven't been able to buy anything lately because, as we were talking about before, Tolas have really, they've been they've always been popular, but they've really gained a lot more traction in the last little bit here, and the prices have just really gone up.
Charles Jonath: Well, it's a lot of interesting history there. It's sort of the precursor to the dollar, right?
Roxana Uskali: Yes, it's a large silver coin. And for me, one of the most attractive points of Tola and there are several other countries that really utilize the planchet as art. You can find some beautiful designs, and I love the Wild Men series, so there's, different German-states issued Tola sizes. From a span of hundreds of years and the wild men are holding trees that they've uprooted or lights. And so, I love those kinds of coins. I also collect coins with bears on them, so it gets into a little bit of Swiss. But yeah, everything that I tend to buy is very hard to buy right now.
Charles Jonath: Yeah! It goes that way sometimes. It goes like, you have to wait till new stuff comes in the market. It's good and bad, probably at the same time.
Roxana Uskali: Yep.
Charles Jonath: Yeah, and that's true. So, if someone really wanted to get into foreign coins and build a really nice collection, what would you suggest now? What's a good approach to it?
Roxana Uskali: I would try to find out what they like, if there's, some people come into this, and they'll have like I, somebody's like US Civil War period or these types of battles or this particular country and try to find out what they like, because you want to buy what you like so you can enjoy it. And then try to find out do you like large coins? Do you like minors? Do you like gold? What your budget? And someone had once told me years ago, "If you're going to start a collection, you should buy the hardest coin to find the first one because you'll be searching for that forever if you try to complete your collection and you can't get the last one."
Roxana Uskali: Interesting.
Charles Jonath: So, just try to find out what they like. Our sales are great. Everybody can buy from us. We have coins that are basically a $100 in our select sale. So there's no barrier to entry, you're just at home, and you're, "I like this. I'm going to bid on it." And that's how you get started and it's really from there people I think to catch on really quickly, and that fire gets lit, and then they go to… I usually recommend, if you have a show in your area, go to a show meet some local dealers, just wade into it and see, what's happening? And if there's a coin club in your area, you could join that. And that gives people a lot of perspectives and also connects them to people that are collecting just like they are. And there are a lot of social media groups out there too where people post coins from their collections and they talk about them, which can be really helpful too.
Charles Jonath: Well! That's a whole new thing now. Instagram has become really big for coins. It's a good avenue social media-wise, because you're showcasing the pictures of coins and stuff like that, and you get to see people's collections. And there's a lot of people out there that collect foreign. There's a good audience for it.
And it's varied, it's all over like. But it seems to be serious-focused or country-focused more so. I see like there's a lot of people that only collect Spanish-American coins or something like that. Or a focus like Tolas like you. British coins, obviously are big. They're huge. It seems to be all over the place.
So that's great. What is a big coin that's going to be coming out pretty soon? Is there anything really exciting? Anything stand out that's going to be up for auction? What should we be bidding on, basically?
Roxana Uskali: Oh, well, bid on everything. Our May sale has a couple of featured collections. There are some amazing Australian Sovereigns and Half Sovereigns, they are insane. Their pattern pieces and just that sale, in general, is fantastic. As we build these sales, we're always thinking, "Okay well, maybe we're not going to have as many coins as we did in the last year," and then by and far, we get so many coins that it's at the end we're just like, it's incredible to see the kind of stuff that we get, and then to be able to showcase it for everybody for the collectors and for the people that are consigning so they can see their material.
But there are coins like even in our select sales which happen every week. Error coins like British Error coins, beautifully toned coins, there's no ceiling to the limit there. The coins can sell for several thousand dollars. So, in terms of looking and buying, every sale that we have is just full of really interesting, some unique things that you don't really see. And like I said, if you're beginning to collect or just trying to maybe change your focus a little bit, browsing our website and our archives is very helpful because you can see the trends of the values for things that you like or you might be interested in buying, and you can see census reports on every lot gauge, so you can see, "Oh, well, this coin is the highest-graded right now in this type of variety." And all that is really going to give somebody a lot of information that's helpful when they're purchasing something, and it's basically free, you just have to log into the website.
Charles Jonath: No, it's great to do research on that stuff. One thing I like about you guy's website is that the features like, when you want to build a want list, you guys are very good about a lot, adding the filters to specific want lists, and then they notify you when these coins come up for sale. So that's how I've found and wound up bidding and winning on a lot of great coins
Roxana Uskali: Yeah, we really encourage people to use that feature. You can get as specific as you want. "I only want this grade, or I want this grade range."
Charles Jonath: Right, exactly.
Roxana Uskali: And it's really up to you. We can help people tailor them. I do that all the time for clients because they want to look at our website, but they also want us to say, "Hey, this is something that you've been looking for, come see it." And for people who are really busy, obviously, it's, we want them to see everything. We don't want them to miss anything is the point. The wantless features are fantastic. And like I said, you can do it for all of our categories, not just for coins and numismatics, which is really helpful for people, especially if they're cross-category buying and they're interested in, "I like coins, my wife likes jewelry, I like American art," that kind of thing. So you don't have to search all of our categories all day long. It's a job if you do that. But yeah, the want list feature is an excellent way, especially if you're building a collection, you can keep track of what you're looking for and what's come up, so yeah.
Charles Jonath: No, definitely. Heritage, everyone knows, and I feel like in the coin business it's bar none. You guys have been around, what? Since the 70s and very well-established…
Roxana Uskali: Yeah, all of our founding members started in coins, and they're all still very active. They come to the coin shows, they interact with clients, and they're fantastic. So yeah, Heritage is very well known for the coin aspect, absolutely.
Charles Jonath: Definitely. Well, that's great. And it's so cool to see people like you coming in from outside and really getting into coins. That's great. That that was my whole reasoning behind doing stuff like this, is to sort of broaden the reach of coins. Because I feel like our industry is like this little hidden gem, and it is small, but in essence, it's really not. If you look at the numbers and the participation, as far as people bidding in these things and the dollar amounts, it's not that small. But hardly any, a lot of people don't know.
Roxana Uskali: Yeah, for everybody that's bidding in all of our sales and all of our different categories, it's global, it's everywhere in many, many countries, and they're buying, and they're bidding on lots of different things. And it does, it makes it feel like this large community, but it seems like everybody's easily connected. And the shows help too because a lot of times, I meet with a lot of people that are in the Midwest, that's my territory, but then I go to shows, let's say I'm traveling to Philadelphia or California, and then I get to meet some of the clients that I've met and talked on the phone, but I get to meet them in person. And so, just adding people, collectors that you know, they become friends, it's really a wonderful group to be a part of.
Charles Jonath: Yeah! It's so true. No, definitely. And I'm glad we have you in it.
Roxana Uskali: Thanks.
Charles Jonath: That's great.
Roxana Uskali: Yeah, I love coins and I’m so happy to be in the business. A lot of times when i was starting out, I didn't know what I could do with this, and I didn't have the background that a lot of people have coming into it. But I had the energy and I really wanted to learn, and through some a lot of luck but through timing too, I was able to meet a lot of really well-known people in the industry who were very generous to share their time and their knowledge to help teach me. And I would say that is the most important thing that I’ve gotten out of all of this from the early start of doing this was, people and other numismatists who really wanted to teach me. And a lot of times in businesses people don't want to share their secrets or how they know [crosstalk 00:35:22]
Charles Jonath: Yeah, it's true.
Roxana Uskali: And I cannot be more thrilled that people, they saw that I wanted to learn and they were like, "Okay, if you want to do this, we're going to help you get your feet wet in it, and then it's up to you to go, take it off." But that was huge for me. Because if I didn't have that, I don't know you know how far I would have gotten on my own. Because it can be exclusive sometimes.
Charles Jonath: Sure.
Roxana Uskali: In your early 20s and female in a business like this, some people may not have taken me seriously, so there's always advantages and disadvantages to everything, but it's wonderful to see all these people at coin shows and talk to them, and I always look forward to the coin shows. The last couple of years have been a bummer, but hopefully this year things pick up again so.
Charles Jonath: They will. Slowly but surely it seems like things are getting back on track.
Roxana Uskali: Yeah.
Charles Jonath: These last couple of shows, they've been really busy. It just seems like everyone has been pent up waiting to go to shows, and fun has been huge.
Roxana Uskali: Yes.
Charles Jonath: I heard this last Baltimore was good although I didn't attend. Long Beach is now getting back, so yeah. And there are great little great shows too. I do a lot of the PCGS members-only shows because they are really good. They're small. They're in Las Vegas, which is local for me, so yeah, it's getting there little by little. Well, I'm hoping to see more of the international show start up again, especially for you guys like in the international like Numismata is huge. It's a big show.
Roxana Uskali: Yeah, the New York International was this year. They did host it. It was in New York, and there weren't as many dealers as before just because of some restrictions. But the dealers that did show up were all very positive about the people that were in New York and are able to travel to New York from you know nearby states and the material that was available. Because you're right, everybody's been home and they want access to stuff, and they want to see stuff, and for the last few years, it's been hard to just physically hold something or go someplace and see stuff. But yeah, I'm really hopeful for this year that we can all, especially at the ANA, hopefully, a lot of them can come and set up and stuff like that.
Charles Jonath: Yeah. That one's going to be in November this year, right?
Roxana Uskali: Well, now, the summer ANA, American Numismatic Association show, will be in Rosemont. Again, it's suburban Chicago.
Charles Jonath: Right, in August, yeah. I'm doing that one. So hopefully, I'll get to see you there
Roxana Uskali: Yeah.
Charles Jonath: But the New York show, it's in November, right?
Roxana Uskali: No! it's in January, so it was just a few months ago.
Charles Jonath: Oh, January, yeah. Okay, I knew it was in the wintertime. All right, January?
Roxana Uskali: Yeah, it's usually at the same time or a week apart from the Fun Show in Florida, so a lot of people go do that show, and then they'll come up to New York and then do that show.
Charles Jonath: Yeah, that's good. It's like a one-stop up north and then go down, and you're only three hours away on the plane.
Roxana Uskali: Yeah.
Charles Jonath: All right, well, Roxana, it was a pleasure. I won't take up too much of your time. But I really enjoyed talking to you and getting a sense of the world market. If anyone you're going to talk to about a broader market like that, Heritage would be the way to go, because you guys see everything over there.
Roxana Uskali: Yeah, we're here, we're happy to help. I'm in Chicago, but my Dallas colleagues as well, and if you have questions and you're still making a collection, you want assistance, please let us know, and we're happy to help so.
Charles Jonath: Awesome, great. Thanks, Roxana. It was a pleasure talking with you.
Roxana Uskali: All right! Thanks, take care.
Charles Jonath: Look forward to seeing you. Take care.
Roxana Uskali: Yeah, absolutely. Goodbye.