There are sound economic reasons to advocate the adoption of a gold or precious metal monetary standard for the United States.

However, the case is gravely weakened if it gets mixed up with tax fraud.

I read a story yesterday on boston.com http://articles.boston.com/2012-02-09/news/31042755_1_silver-coins-paper-dollars-silver-dollars about someone who has petitioned Andover, Mass., to consider a proposal at a town meeting in April that would involve paying its employees partly in silver American Eagles if the employees agree.

So, far no problem.

However, the rest of the proposal is that the town would have to withhold income taxes only on the $1 face value of the coins, not the $35 actual value.

The article goes on to point out that the Internal Revenue Service takes a dim view of such a proposal and has won cases in court to enforce the current tax law.

While advocates of a gold standard cannot control the actions of everybody else, it does not help the case to see it mixed up with mischief in this way.

With advocacy of something new, like a gold standard, which almost no one now living remembers, the burden of proof weighs more heavily on its supporters rather than on upholders of the status quo to explain its advantages thoroughly and make it clear that this is not some trickster’s dream system to take advantage of the majority of people who are not familiar with how the standard worked before it was abandoned in 1933.

Even during the gold standard era, people had to pay income tax after it was adopted.

Do collectors respond better to new coin issues whose face value is below bullion value, or whose face value is above bullion value?

Around the world it is a debatable point.

Canada has been hitting home runs with its new $20 coins for $20 series. The third one featuring a polar bear is now on sale.

Buyers pay face value and receive a slightly larger than quarter-sized coin that contains a quarter ounce of silver.

With silver at $34 an ounce, that works out to $8.50 in silver value. Silver would have to rise to $80 an ounce before it would exceed the $20 face value.

The Canadian dollar is presently even with the U.S. currency in foreign exchange markets.

The first issue sold out its 200,000 mintage in approximately one month. The second issue, which got my attention when I saw it advertised, sold out its 250,000 mintage in a similar period of time. I expect the third issue with the polar bear will likewise reach the 250,000 maximum.

Though I very much liked the canoe design on the second piece and that is what caught my eye, I think the clincher for me in deciding to buy it was not the relationship between the silver value and the face value but the attractiveness of the $20 price point. I figured such a sum wouldn’t ruin my monthly budget and I was free to act on impulse (Yes, I do think this way).

My colleagues here in the office, Lisa Bellavin and Tom Michael felt the same way and I ordered three pieces for us.

Affordability is not something we collectors tend to put up front in our thinking, but at the end of the day, that is what matters most.

It is the peculiar nature of the World Money Fair that I attended last week in Berlin that I ran into people that I would more normally speak to at home.

One such conversation I had was with Tom Hallenbeck, president of the American Numismatic Association. He was attending his second Berlin event.

Unlike last year, this year the ANA had a booth and Ann Rahn and Kim Kiick were helping Hallenbeck fly the ANA flag in Europe.

When I asked Hallenbeck about his experience, he said, “It’s fascinating what they do here. How differently coin dealers work and how differently they do business than world mints.”

He thinks the summer ANA convention can do better catering to the needs of world mints. “I think we can do a lot better job,” he said.

Unlike the more casual American way of doing business at a coin show, Hallenbeck noted that the world mints set up their meetings well in advance of the event.

“It’s very hard to just walk up and meet somebody.” He said he was lucky at one booth. He happened by and was told by the dealer that it was the first time in two days that he had been there.

How do the Europeans view the ANA president, I asked?

“I’ve been treated superbly. I’ve been treated with German kindness,” he replied.

“Just being here a second year is opening doors for the ANA.”

Hallenbeck said it was his hope to make the summer ANA convention live up to its name of World’s Fair of Money.

That will require some rethinking.

Whereas security and open lines of sight across the bourse floor are the primary considerations when setting up an American bourse, Hallenbeck said mints have other ideas of what they want.

“They like the idea of big set-up booths,” Hallenbeck explained. They stand out, but they also make any clean line of sight for security impossible.

He mentioned the Paris Mint. He said they would attend the ANA convention “only if they can build something that looks like Paris.”

Overall, Hallenbeck said, the mints “do want an American trade show.”

Hallenbeck is determined to help them get it.

But learning was not a one-way street.

Hallenbeck noted that the mints he talked to seemed “stunned at the number of ANA members.” They did not know that ANA had a large staff providing many programs to American collectors through its museum, library, monthly publication and club outreach.

Now that I am home, I can watch to see how the lessons of Berlin will be applied by the ANA and the world’s mints. And get some sleep.

I am back in the office after my trip to the World Money Fair in Berlin.

On the positive side, for the first time in five trips, I arrived home at the scheduled time and place.

Travel in winter can be an adventure, but I am glad this time it was the London and Paris airports that were having weather or labor problems and not the Amsterdam airport that I transited through.

I experienced the cold wave in Europe only to find that in Iola it was balmy. Much of the snow that was here when I left has melted. In Berlin, though, the cold was of a kind that is typical of Wisconsin for this time of year.

The negative side of the ledger is to discover and handle what awaits me at my desk.

Was the trip worth it?

Of course – especially when my jet-fatigued mind starts functioning normally again and I can realize the full magnitude of what I experienced.

I am already thinking about next year.

Congratulations to all who worked to make the World Money Fair the success it was.

If you have never been there, it might be time for you to consider going in 2013.

I was walking the bourse floor with Albert Beck, founder of the World Money Fair in Berlin. It was Sunday afternoon, the final day of the show. The aisles were still fairly active.

We strolled up to the booth of Coburger Muenzenhandlung and Albert pointed to a small gold coin.

“Is that from Salt Lake City?” he asked.

He pointed to the small $5 gold piece right at the front of the dealer case.

I hesitated. I wasn’t sure. It was a U.S. issue, no doubt. I had seen it before. But was it Salt Lake City?

I told Albert I was not certain. Perhaps it could have been from an earlier Olympic issue.

Albert asked for the coin, examined it and then showed it to me.

It definitely was 2002 Salt Lake City.

How unsettling.

If I walk the floor of a coin show in Europe, does all my U.S. numismatic knowledge go into limbo?

I don’t know the answer to that question, but what I do know is I had better get home and study up for my next walk down the bourse floor aisle with the founder of the World Money Fair.

Good ideas catch on and are copied by others. Coins designed by children are apparently a good idea because it is spreading to other world mints.

I attended a portion of the Media Forum today at the World Money Fair in Berlin. I was called away before it reached its conclusion, but fortunately Tom Michael of the Standard Catalog staff was present so that what I missed will not be missed by Krause Publications.

However, in the time I was present, I learned that the British have struck a 50-pence coin designed by a child. This was followed a short time later by a couple of new Austrian coins also designed by children.

Collectors have wondered for years how to involve the coming generations in coinage. Helping to design them is one way of doing this.

While coins designed by children might help us secure the future of numismatics, the present is very much concerned with coins made of precious metals. New offerings of these get everybody’s special attention.

The People’s Republic of China expects to produce gold coins that will use 1.4 million troy ounces of the yellow metal this year. The silver coins are expected to consume 11 million ounces.

Those are very large numbers and are sure to have an impact on world demand for precious metals.

It is the 30^th anniversary of th Chinese Panda and more new designs will mark this milestone.

Canada is introducing its new one-ounce Moose silver bullion coin. It is the fourth design in the popular Wildlife Bullion Series.

I know I am just scratching the surface. There is so much to take in in Berlin. However, one thing is certain. The world mints are watching each other and copying what works, much to the benefit of coin collectors and a likely great strain on their budgets.

Is the bullion business taking over the World Money Fair?

Not really, but the entry area is looking more and more like prime real estate to firms whose primary goal is to sell precious metals to willing buyers.

Another good year in precious metals is expected by the head of the Austrian Mint. He said 2011 was a record year. This year the volume of precious metals blanks that he supplies is expected to rise by another 10 percent.

Since the Austrian Mint is already working 210 full-time employees and another 30 part-timers three shifts each day, I expect squeezing out a 10 percent increase in production is significant.

But it is not just bullion coins and blanks that are being snapped up by buyers. The Austrian Mint’s numismatic collector business is doing very well and circulating coin production also is contributing positively.

But I guess that is to be expected.

A Krause staffer witnessed a Chinese firm representative requesting 5,000 pieces of an Austrian Coin of the Year Award winning issue. Unfortunately, there no longer are 5,000 pieces to be had. Apparently the Coin of the Year Award is becoming better known in China and the coins that win it are in high demand among Chinese buyers.

After every annual Coin of the Year Award ceremony here in Berlin, I receive inquiries about the availability of the prize-winning coins, but not in such large quantities. It is nice to see the level of interest in these coins growing rapidly.

Bidders at the Kuenker auction are setting a lively pace. I was told by one auction attendee that a British 1826 proof set was bid to 55,000 euro. Prior to the sale, it would have been priced at something like $50,000. With the euro at $1.32, that means the auction price was about 50 percent higher than where the market was before the sale started.

When I flipped on German television, I saw gold coins being offered for sale. When I traveled the German subway yesterday, I saw a poster offering to buy or sell gold coins.

Clearly, the passion for bullion coins is still growing.

Tomorrow when the World Money Fair bourse opens, I will be able to find out how collector demand is doing in traditional coin collecting channels.

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Where’s the U.S. Mint?

That question was posed to me on my first full day of duty at the World’s Fair of Money in Berlin, Germany.

The show doesn’t even start until Friday, but business meetings are in full swing. For me, it is already mid afternoon and I already have several meetings under my belt as I write this.

The question about the Mint was put to me by the president of the show. In the past, the U.S. Mint used to take a booth at this show, which draws approximately 50 minting organizations from around the world. Berlin’s World Money Fair is the place to see and be seen if you are in the coin production business. For mints, it is a trade show. For collectors, it is a coin bourse. The fact that both types rub elbows with each other is a good lesson. We all can experience the shared numismatic world we in.

Now I know the Mint will have a representative at this show and I mentioned that when I attempted to respond to the inquiry as to the Mint’s whereabouts. But the deeper meaning as to why the Mint takes no booth I could not answer. I can mumble a few words about cost versus benefit and that sort of thing, but I certainly cannot speak for the Mint nor converse with any personal knowledge as to specific reasons the Mint is currently keeping such a low profile in Berlin.

Is the Mint missing something by not having a booth in Berlin?

I don’t know, but certainly its absence is noticed. If that reduces the Mint’s business opportunities, then I guess that is a bad thing. Berlin is bubbling with new ideas and enthusiasms for new numismatic products and marketing approaches. It is hard not to be affected by it.

Once again, the high prices for gold and silver are having an impact on the show. Individuals in the bullion business are very active. I ran into a delegation from APMEX in the elevator.

I expect to learn a lot from these chance encounters. I can do that this week only in Berlin.

Trying to explain the secondary market to newcomers to the hobby is often a challenge.

Everybody likes to buy something new from the U.S. Mint or other world mints and then see its price rise so they can sell what they have purchased for a profit.

What is the secondary market?

There is no place like the New York Stock Exchange that coin collectors point to and say “here is the market.” The closest thing we have is the bourse floor – and it moves from place to place each week.

What those collectors and dealers do at various shows determines the values of many coin issues.

A bourse is the freest of free markets. Nobody has to buy anything. Nobody has to sell anything. And nobody has to care what issue price was.

Issue price is simply what a collector had to pay the Mint at the time of issue. The initial trading price on the secondary market can deviate sharply. Many proof sets trade for prices far below issue price and have done so for many years.

Something like the 25th anniversary American Eagle set can catch fire and sell for multiples of issue price.

Some issues do both.

The 1992 White House commemorative silver dollar nearly tripled after its release. But a few years later, many in the hobby decided that its 500,000 mintage was too high and now it trades for bullion value. Depending on when you looked at it, you could have called it a winner or a loser.

With action like that on the secondary market, it is important that when you buy coins, you should look first to your own desires. If you like something, you can feel good about a purchase no matter what happens on the secondary market.

The Olympic Summer Games will be held in London this summer and as was the case with the Atlanta Summer Games in 1996, the British, like the Americans before them, have issued a huge Olympic coin set to commemorate the Games.

In the case of the British, the full coin set is 68 coins, which is a number that puts the Atlanta total of 32 in the shade. Larger gold coins and higher gold prices are having the expected effect in pushing up issue prices for the British offerings.

And on cue as in the United States before them, hobbyists are complaining about the set.

London dealer Richard Lobel, it was reported in The Independent newspaper article last week, after 38 years is giving up being an agent for the British Royal Mint. He says too many people are shocked to discover that they can sell the coins only for one-third to one-half the price they pay for them.

“I’m tired of how many people’s hearts we’ve had to break,” Lobel said.

Will the British follow the American example and eventually cap the number of commemorative coins at levels far lower than the present number?

That was the happy outcome of the 1995-1996 U.S. Olympic program. Now programs are limited to two each year and often a program includes just one silver dollar design in proof and uncirculated. Sometimes, they include a clad half dollar, a silver dollar and a $5 gold piece.

But while commemoratives have been successfully limited in the United States, proliferation in the number of coins being sold to collectors is not a problem that has gone away. The Congress has been authorizing many bullion coin programs from the 5-ounce silver America the Beautiful coins with denominations of 25 cents each to a pending palladium coin with a Mercury dime design.

So the cycle continues. Too many coins lead to collector complaints. When will the next round occur in the United States?