For the past 14 years, Joe Fama has been buying, selling and trading collectibles at Fama’s Coins and Baseball Cards at 105 Main St. in Beckley. The business started from scratch — literally — as Fama worked for his father George Fama, owner of the family shoe store.
“He actually got me started because I started just going through the change and collecting pennies, then pennies, nickels and on,” Fama said. “Then, when I got into junior high, high school, I started going to the flea market trading, buying, selling and collecting. It’s just grown from that.”
Fama worked from his father’s business for eight to 10 years before moving to the Main Street location, he said.
A mining engineer at the National Mine Health and Safety Academy, Fama operates the coin and card shop on a part-time basis opening from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Fama said he plans to retire “in the near future” and pick up the collecting business full-time, though.
There’s no better time than the present to be a coin collector, Fama said.
“If you collect the older coins that are silver, you’ll always have the intrinsic value of the silver,” he said. “About a month ago gold hit an all-time high. Silver hit $30 an ounce.”
As the market price for silver and gold continues to climb, the hobby becomes a better investment, Fama said.
Because of the gaining interest in coin collecting, Fama said he is trying to revive a local coin club, too.
Fama’s collection includes items such as gold coins, American Eagle silver dollars, proof sets, collector coins and more.
Fama said many individuals enter the store with coins to inquire their worth. A couple weeks ago, Fama said a man came to the store with a pair of gold coins on behalf of a female relative.
“They were each a one-ounce gold piece,” he said. “What she thought was worth $400 to $500 for two coins turned out at that time to be worth about $1,200 each for those two coins.”
As with any collectible, there are several factors that determine a coin’s worth.
“The value depends on the denomination, then the date, the mint mark and the grade,” Fama said.
Though Fama said he estimates 95 percent of his business is with coins, he maintains a vast collection of sports cards as well.
Fama said card collecting “was just red hot” during the late 1980s and early ’90s until the middle of the decade when manufacturers had over-saturated the market.
“Shaquille O’Neal and some of the rare rookies that sold for $100 went down to like $4 or $5 retail and you could buy them a lot cheaper at shows,” Fama said. “It was like the ’29 stock crash. It crashed that bad. It crashed that bad it’s been dead for several years.”
Card collectors left the hobby in droves as they became frustrated at how their collections depreciated in value, Fama said, but it’s beginning to make a return now.
While card collecting isn’t as popular as it once was for children, Fama said the hobby is bouncing back as older collectors try to hunt for older items they once had as kids themselves.
“I’m getting back into it because I like the older cards,” Fama said. “I’m starting to carry the new 2010 cards and I’m a buyer of older cards, too.”
Whether it’s cards or coins, Fama said he cautions collectors to be mindful of potential counterfeits.
Source: http://www.register-herald.com/business/x1939352770/Flipping-coins
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