Name: Canadian Coins And Collectibles
Price range: $$

Sent to subscribers in September 2026 — archived here as published. Prices, dates and offers were current at the time of sending.

First, an apology. Issue 01 promised you a newsletter every month, and then five months went by without one. That is on us. The short explanation is that we have been flat out: we moved the entire website onto new hosting, opened the online shop, added NGC, PMG and CGC to our submission routes alongside PCGS, ran our first quarterly giveaway through to a draw, and started going live on Whatnot. All good problems to have — but none of them are a reason for you to hear nothing. Thank you for staying subscribed.

Toronto Coin Expo — 23 & 24 October 2026

We are back at the Toronto Coin Expo this autumn, and we would genuinely like to meet you. The fall show runs Friday 23 and Saturday 24 October 2026 at the Toronto Reference Library, 789 Yonge Street, Toronto. Friday runs 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is $6, and children under 16 get in free.

There are 55 dealer tables on the bourse this time, covering coins, banknotes, tokens and medals, and the show runs live numismatic auctions on the Thursday and Friday through Alliance Coin & Banknote and Geoffrey Bell Auctions. Saturday is the day to bring someone new to the hobby: there is a youth workshop and auction at 10 a.m., and an educational workshop on collecting fundamentals at 1 p.m.

Come and say hello at our table. While you are there we will happily:

Look over your coins and banknotes and tell you honestly which pieces are worth certifying — and which are not.
Talk through grading, market values and what we are seeing in Canadian material.
Take your coins, banknotes, comics or cards in for submission to PCGS, NGC, PMG or CGC.

Canadian, U.S. and world coins are all welcome, as are banknotes of every era including error and replacement notes. If you cannot make it to Toronto, our submission forms do the same job by mail.

The quarterly giveaway has been drawn

Our draw for the 1958 Franklin Half Dollar, PCGS MS65, has closed and a winner has been selected at random from every entry we received. We have contacted them by email and are waiting to hear back.

We are deliberately not naming the winner in this issue. Under our giveaway rules, using a winner's name publicly is something they have to agree to first, and they are entitled to decline the prize instead if they would rather not be identified. As soon as we have that confirmation we will announce them properly and put the next coin up.

One thing worth repeating, because it catches people out: entries do not carry over. When a draw closes, its entries are cleared. You need to enter again, with your email address, for every new draw — an entry in this one does not put you in the next one. Subscribing to this newsletter does not enter you either; the giveaway has its own form on the home page, and that is the only way in.

Why the professionals do not wear gloves

It is one of the first things a new collector gets told: never touch a coin with bare hands. So it surprises people to see footage from inside a grading room and watch technicians handling six-figure coins with nothing on their hands at all.

There is a good reason for it. Ron Drzewucki, who spent seven years as an elite grade finalizer at NGC from 2005 to 2012, put it plainly when he was asked whether graders should wear gloves: "Gloves make it harder to hold coins. There's a much greater risk of the coin slipping out of your hand and causing damaging that way."

That is the whole trade-off. A fingerprint on a coin is bad. A coin bouncing off a hard floor is far worse, and it is permanent. Someone examining hundreds of coins a day, turning each one under a light, is measurably more likely to drop one wearing cotton gloves than without them. So the profession's answer is not gloves — it is technique: hold the coin by its edge, on the reeding, and never let a finger touch the fields or the devices. Clean dry hands and a firm edge grip beat gloves and a fumble.

The exceptions are real, though, and worth knowing:

Proofs. Mirrored fields show everything. A single light print on a proof surface can move the coin's value materially, so proofs are often handled gloved.
Copper, especially original red. Copper reacts to skin oils faster and more visibly than silver or gold. Full-red cents deserve gloves.
Latex is the wrong glove. The sulphur in latex tarnishes silver. If you do use gloves, use clean cotton or nitrile — never latex.

Our own practice reflects the same split. When we are examining a coin, assessing it for grading or photographing it for the shop, we do what the graders do: edge grip, clean hands, over a padded surface. When we are packing your material for transit — where the job is protection rather than close inspection — gloves go on, along with inert holders and rigid packaging. Different task, different tool.

If you are not sure how to handle something you own, ask us before you pick it up. That advice is free, and it is a great deal cheaper than a hairline scratch.

Market watch — August's rally gave most of itself back

If you were watching bullion in August you had a good month. Gold climbed roughly 10 per cent, its strongest month since January, helped along by moves to hold down long-term borrowing costs in the United States and a return of what traders call the debasement trade. Then September arrived and took a good deal of it back.

On 1 September gold settled around US$4,325 an ounce, down 2.86 per cent on the day, and silver closed near US$64.13, down 3.73 per cent. By 4 September, after the August employment report, gold sat near US$4,429 (down 1.14 per cent) and silver near US$66.17 (down 1.22 per cent).

So what actually happened? Not a collapse in demand for metal. The move was about the cost of holding it:

Rate expectations turned hawkish. Following comments from Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh, traders moved to price in roughly a 70 per cent chance of a rate hike in September — not a cut. Higher rates raise the opportunity cost of owning an asset that pays no interest.
The August jobs report came in hot. The U.S. economy added 162,000 jobs in August, well above expectations, which pushed the dollar and Treasury yields higher.
Higher real yields hurt metals. Gold and silver pay no coupon. When bonds pay more after inflation, metal has to compete with that, and on the margin it loses.
Profit-taking after a fast run. Both metals had travelled a long way quickly. Fiera Capital portfolio manager Candice Bangsund, who expects the Fed to hold rather than hike, has said gold moved "a little bit too far too fast" and could see US$4,000.

Worth noting that the selling has been orderly. Both metals have stayed inside their recent trading ranges, which reads as position-trimming rather than anything structural.

What it means in Canadian dollars. At the time of writing gold is around CAD $6,100 an ounce and silver around CAD $92, but that figure moves with USD/CAD as much as with the metal itself — a weaker loonie props up CAD bullion prices even while gold falls in U.S. terms. Our live spot prices and melt-value calculator run continuously if you would rather have today's number than ours.

And a reminder that matters more than the spot price. If you collect rather than stack, most of this is background noise. A key-date coin in a strong grade is priced on rarity, eye appeal and demand, not on melt. The metals market moves your bullion; it does not move your 1948 dollar. Keep the two mentally separate, and do not let a red week on the gold chart talk you out of a coin you actually want.

Catch us live on Whatnot

We are now running live shows on Whatnot, and they have quickly become the most enjoyable part of our week. Expect coin breaks, pre-bidding, live auctions and giveaways for buyers watching along. It is also the easiest way to ask us something in real time — type your question in the chat and we will answer it on air.

Worth watching — CAD Roll Hunter

We get asked fairly often where a newer collector should go to learn, and one of the answers we give most is a Canadian YouTube channel called CAD Roll Hunter.

On the surface it is a coin roll hunting channel — buying rolls and boxes of circulating Canadian coin from the bank and searching them. In practice it is one of the better numismatic educations available free in this country. The channel has built up close to 400 long-form videos and around 600 shorts working through Canadian errors and varieties, what to look for and why it matters, plus banknotes and collecting fundamentals.

What we like about it is the skill it teaches. Roll hunting forces you to actually look at coins — thousands of them — and to notice the one where something is different. That is the same eye that tells you which coin in a dealer's tray is worth a second glance, and the same eye a grader uses. You can read about doubled dies for a year; you learn them far faster watching someone find one.

It is worth your subscription, and there is a companion site as well. No affiliation on our end — we simply think the work is good.

Until next month

That is Issue 02. If you are coming to the Toronto Coin Expo on 23 or 24 October, find our table and introduce yourself — we would far rather talk to you in person than email you. If something in here raised a question, reply to this email or get in touch; a real person reads it.

Back in your inbox, with the Expo just weeks away.