Coin Update News Author

Patrick A. Heller

Patrick A. Heller owns Liberty Coin Service in Lansing, Michigan and writes "Liberty's Outlook," a monthly newsletter that evaluates trends in the rare coins and precious metals marketplace and provides advice on buying and selling rare coins.

Past issues of the Liberty's Outlook Newsletter can be viewed online at http://www.libertycoinservice.com/

Pat Heller is also the gold market commentator for Numismatic News. You can find his past columns online at http://numismaster.com/ under “News & Articles".

His periodic radio interviews can be heard on WILS 1320 AM in Lansing, www.talkLansing.net, and on www.yourcontrarian.com.

How Much Gold, Silver, and Rare Coins Should You Own?

How Much Gold, Silver, and Rare Coins Should You Own?

A question I am frequently asked by both new and experienced buyers of precious metals is just how much of one’s portfolio should be devoted to gold, silver, and rare coins?
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question.  Factors that affect the allocation decision include someone’s current financial position, their amount of liquid assets, their [...]

Global Economy Gets Closer To The Precipice

Global Economy Gets Closer To The Precipice

It seems apparent to me that, taken in total, the financial news points to a heightened risk of a near term major meltdown in the developed economies.
Without going into details, let me just remind you of some of the issues that may be on the brink of exploding:

European sovereign debt crises in Greece, Hungary, Spain, [...]

COMEX Silver Inventories Continue To Decline

COMEX Silver Inventories Continue To Decline

On June 16, the New York COMEX had a total of 119.5 million ounces of silver in bonded warehouses to cover more than 600 million ounces of open contracts.  Since then, there have been significant withdrawals almost every day, despite apparent efforts to scrounge up new silver inventories from elsewhere and also to pressure customers [...]

A Recap of Consumer Protection Information for Trading Gold and Silver

A Recap of Consumer Protection Information for Trading Gold and Silver

When I attended Freedom Fest 2010 in Las Vegas last week, I found attendees far more interested in purchasing physical gold and silver than I have seen at prior Freedom Fests and other such conferences.  The questions I was asked indicated that the people asking had been doing some research on the subject, not just [...]

Prediction: Obamacare 1099 Provisions Will Lead To Identity Theft Explosion

Prediction: Obamacare 1099 Provisions Will Lead To Identity Theft Explosion

Public Law 111-148, the Health Care Reform Act, contains a number of revenue raising provisions buried in the back of the legislation.  In my judgment, the new IRS Form 1099 requirements found in Section 9006 of this law will have the unintended consequence of leading to an explosion of identity theft!
The basic changes to Form [...]

IRS and Government Reporting Requirements for Coin and Bullion Dealers

IRS and Government Reporting Requirements for Coin and Bullion Dealers

There is an incredible amount of confusion and disinformation about the extent to which coin dealers are required to obtain customer information to use in submitting reports to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) or other government agencies.
In my judgment, this fogginess is a deliberate marketing ploy by some dealers used to persuade customers away from [...]

A Dose of Clarity

A Dose of Clarity

I have a couple of apologies for my readers.  There have been some valuable comments posted to some of my recent columns that let me know that I didn’t do as thorough a job of explaining context and providing background on some issues.  My proofreaders often get on me about the same issues, but there [...]

More Quantitative Easing (Higher Inflation) Coming To An Economy Near You

More Quantitative Easing (Higher Inflation) Coming To An Economy Near You

The politicians in Washington are beginning to see that their tens of trillions of dollars of bailouts and guarantees over the past few years have failed to save the economy. Now the rumblings emanating from the nation’s capital are that another round of quantitative easing (which used to be properly described as a huge [...]

Massive Drain Of COMEX Silver Inventories Continues

Massive Drain Of COMEX Silver Inventories Continues

On June 16th, the COMEX reported total silver inventories of 119.5 million ounces.  Ten trading days later, on June 30, total inventories had fallen to 113.56 million ounces, a 5.94 million ounce (4.97%) decline.
There have been significant declines on nine of the last ten trading days, but this story has received almost no coverage by [...]

Possible Run on COMEX Silver Inventories May Already Be Underway

Possible Run on COMEX Silver Inventories May Already Be Underway

On June 16th, the COMEX reported total silver inventories of 119.5 million ounces.  Six trading days later, on June 24, total inventories had fallen to 114.9 million ounces, a 4.6 million ounce decline.
On June 24th, the COMEX silver market had over 137,000 open contracts.  At 5,000 ounces per contract, that means that commodity contract sellers [...]