YouSaid · the spoken record

Philip Diehl

lines on the record: 31
first: 2025-05-12
most recent: 2025-05-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“We would go to emotions of him expressing an opinion, but it was just the honor of being asked to participate in that process that would make the difference. And sure enough, when we launched the coin within six or eight months, we own that market.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was just a nothing. We had the very first entrepreneurial project that I took on was I wanted to launch the nation's first. Besides North America, the Japanese market was the big hot market for platinum coins. And our tile leaves north of the border who I love and continue to love even though there is some tension in the relationship now. They own that market. And I wanted to demonstrate that we can go and take that market away from them because I had bigger fish to fry in the 50 state quarters and New Dollar coin and I just knew I wanted to demonstrate that. So I wrote a build and I asked for complete discretion so that I could go over there and talk to the senior probably in his 80s Japanese distributor and sit down with him and say, I'd like to talk to you about designing a coin that will be successful in Japan. And I knew that”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there were red blooded Americans, and they were like the people I grew up with in West Texas. And so, you know, they seem very level-headed to me.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or coinage, I hadn't collected coins. But one of my first jobs outside of going to the mint was going to one of the big annual coin shows. And when they announced that the director of the mint was present, people lined up like 100 people lined up to get my autograph. I was just so shocked by that. And I like to talk to people, and especially I like to talk to my customers and those new at the mint, and we were going to be very customer focused. I was on a mission to demonstrate how government can meet the highest standards of business. And the mint was very far from that when I came in. So I talked to customers, and I spent a lot of time with them. And, you know, they loved American history. That's one thing that's very clear. They loved the art and the stories behind coins.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's an important difference between those two product lines, gold and silver And the market forces that move them, we think of them as both being precious met Them being used in currency, both of them having this long history as a store value, but silver, a much larger proportion of silver, is used in commercial applications and industrial applications. Gold is. So there's this cyclical component to silver that is largely absent in gold. And so gold has been considered a pure form of hedging against bad times than silver has been because silver is influenced by this cyclical. Demand factor. When I became director of demand, I really was not familiar with precious metals or”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's right. That's right. When you open that box of $100,000 worth of silver, And we feel like you've really gotten some.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you can own a lot of gold and hold it in a very small place. So, I mean, and most people will put it into a safe deposit box in their bank along with the jewelry and other things, important documents and the like. And you can own hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars, in a very small space. So I think the storage issue is a bit of a canard and becoming even more so as gold prices have gone from $1,000 announced to $3,400 announce.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think we sourced them from several different sources. And again, it's a highly competitive market. And so, you know, we probably shop like anybody else does. Those bars are typically coming from major refiners. Some of them are in Switzerland. But we are not buying them directly from the refiners. We're typically buying them from some wholesale distributor.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Had not really been able to take advantage of these higher prices by increasing production. And so the miners are weighted by those additional costs. And also gold is now mined more often and politically and economically unstable and corrupt countries. And that adds a risk premium and a cost to doing business that the miners have to bear.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“While mine stocks had tended to underperform the price of gold itself, and there's a simple reason for this, and that is it's getting harder to find and more expensive to mine gold. The clear signal of this is if you look back over world gold production over the last 10 or 15 years, it hit a peak about 10 years ago. And despite the fact that gold prices have skyrocketed since then and the miners have tremendous incentives because of that to increase production, they hadn't been able to. And this is one of the forces that is driving gold prices upward today and one of the reasons why I'm confident it will continue to go up is that, you know, you talk about peak oil. I don't know that we've hit peak gold, but the miners.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“their futures and thinking about the role gold would have. Now the issue comes up whether what percentage of a portfolio should be in gold. I tell people never put all of your money in gold. Don't put in all your money into NES. There needs to be diversification in any portfolio and the right percentage depends on how old you are, you're risk averse you know how large your portfolio is there's no one size fits all recommendation but one of the factors I do recommend people to consider is how optimistic or pessimistic you are about the state of the world the state of your own finances and considering the safe haven history of gold the more pessimistic you are I do recommend a higher percentage of your portfolio in gold.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For 5,000 years, it's always had value. It's had value worldwide. It's the universal safe haven. And what we're beginning to see in some of the market research is a skewing of interest to younger audiences. That includes millennials and Gen Z and some of the research indicates that they have greater interest in gold than boomers do. That was really a surprise to me, but not too much of a surprise once I thought about it because those of us who grew up in the 60s and 70s were less focused on money and protecting ourselves than what our kids are. And so that, you know, that's extraordinarily smart and forward-looking for them to be thinking about.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I was director of the Mint, I was in my 40s and I would describe our buyers as being white male and over 50. And there's nothing wrong with that. I aspired to be one someday. But worry about that demographic was fading out over a decade or two. That's not the case today. World is hugely popular across a very wide spectrum. And that's not surprising given the amount of coverage, news coverage gold has received over the last two years. And these record prices, especially when the stock market is falling, people are looking for safe havens and gold is the ultimate safe haven. It's been around for”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. It's been a tremendous 19 months since this rally, this bull market began. And over that period of time, we've seen prices go up $1,600 an ounce from $1,800 to $3,400 this morning. And it's been one record after another being set. So we see a tremendous increase in demand. I think most people in the industry do”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The copper content was worth more than the penny was. And so the Congress stepped in and changed the composition of the penny. And we had a similar situation now with a nickel where. It's a money loser, the production of the nickel is a money loser, but it might be profitable if there were some changes or at least the amount of money that is lost producing each coin would be decreased. Now one of the things that came out of the Sagajaria coin and the 50 state quarters program and those two huge projects very entrepreneurial projects as you were alluding to Joe those were launched within about a year of each other. And that took the US Mint's profits and our profits, the U.S. Mint's profits, go to the American taxpayer that go into the general fund of the Treasury. And we took profits from $700 million a year when I came into the mint to $2.6 billion after five years. And I told my staff that they'd all be wealthy.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you can't miss it. But yes, all the details are in the legislation. But the mint does attempt to produce those coins in the most efficient fashion possible within those constraints. And the penny has blown away our capacity to make profitable for over 30 years. was the first mint director 30 years ago to recommend elimination of the penny and you can see how much influence i had but it's long overdue to be eliminated there was a problem back in the 70s i believe where the penny had negative seniorage and i can describe what seniorage is here in a minute but it's basically profit and so and the coin was being it was all copper at the time Was being melted down because copper”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A percentage of these coins the sale price of these coins typically goes to a charitable purpose. We have been very supportive of the US Navy memorial. So that's one of the ones we got it. Really stood behind.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A little bit about that. Those aren't really coins. Okay. When they're produced, they had to be legal tender to be coins. And, you know, you see it football games and coin toss. Well, those aren't coins. Those are medals. They're medallions because they're not legal tender. It's not a US coin. We usually don't put royalty, foreign royalty on our coins. And this is Queen Elizabeth in this case. These are coins by other nations that the U.S. mint does not do this. It does not produce bespoke coins according to order, but other nations do. And it's not unique to U.S. money reserve. Other companies do this too. But we have been more aggressive in developing coins through other governments in limited quantities that are collectibles in precious metal and marketing those typically we are celebrating an anniversary.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, they do. There are two versions of it produce, the Boolean coin is produced in very large quantities. By law, they're supposed to be produced to meet public demand. The law states, although sometimes the mint runs into bottlenecks and cannot fully meet demand. And they are produced in a very rapid mass manufacturing processes. The Eagle is also produced in a collectible. And it's called the proof gold eagle. And it is produced according to those very high standards I was describing earlier and is sold at a significant premium above the spot price of gold.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Design, raise the design, and get the polished finish of those coins. And because the production process is much more detailed, there are fewer coins produced, many fewer coins produced. They are priced differently. They're marketed differently. They're sold directly by the United States mint. And those coins, a substantial portion of the cost is reflected in those additional costs. And so vary depending on which metal you're talking about, but maybe 10% of price or so of a gold coin or a platinum coin is represented by those additional costs. Whereas for a bullion coin, as I was saying, those are highly competitive, they're produced in very large numbers, they're not produced as collectibles. Sometimes they are collected, but they're not produced for that reason.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, it's important here to distinguish two different kinds of coins, actually three different kinds. One is bullion coins, precious metal coins that are sold at a slight premium above the spot price of gold when they are sold. Then a second type is a collectible coin, like a numadic coin, a US mint produces annual sets, also precious metal commemorative coins, and then circulating coins. So the precious metal coins that are buoyant coins and collectible coins are priced and marketed in very different ways. Commemorative coins are produced to much finer quality. And the strike is they're almost one-offs. There are multiple strikes in order to get that fine.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, just like any other product, and you're exactly right that we had created a number of new products as typical commercial product launches. And so just like any other product the manufacturer has a markup, the distributor has a markup, and then also the retailer has a markup. And that's true for all bullion coins that are produced by other nations as well. And it is a competitive market. In the US, you can purchase any number of bullion coins produced by other nations, and they market them in similar fashion and mark them up in a similar fashion. It's a very competitive market.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they're calling the Secretary of the Treasury in the head of the Federal Reserve and complaining. So we want to take care of them as fast as we can. So it was an enormous success and not just because people collected it, but because they were also using it. But banks don't like coins. They like bulls. They don't like coins because coins are more expensive for them to handle. And we expected that. There was a natural resistance to it. My term expired in early 2000. So Sakajuia lost a champion at the top of the mint at that time. And the momentum was lost over the next several years.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Coin will be accepted by the American people and then we'll order it. Well, that was a catch 22 for us because, of course, unless they ordered it, we couldn't make it work. And so I ended up going to Walmart and asking if they'd be interested in launching the coin in all Walmart and Sam's locations on the same day at the end of January two thousand. And they caught the vision of what that would mean and was a huge success for them. And we produced over a billion secondary coins in that first year and distributed them first through Walmart. We had a contract with them to provide $300 million and we had to go back to them after the first half had been delivered and say we need to be let out of the second half of that because now the banks are calling and they haven't ordered any and they're really unhappy that customers have come to them. They don't have the second jewelry.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That we face. And you would think that it would be relatively straightforward because the Federal Reserve is our customer, the U.S. Mint's customer for circulating coinage of U.S. mint produces the coins, the Federal Reserve purchases them at a markup, believe it or not, U.S. men is a profit-making enterprise. And then they're distributed around the country and then banks purchase them from the Federal Reserve. But when we went to the Federal Reserve in part of our market research and talked to the banks, they still remembered sort of the disaster that the Susan Dean Anthony launched had been twenty years actually forty years earlier. And they said, well, all you have to do is prove to us.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, really a circulating coin like the Sacjuya Golden Dollar is successful if it circulates, if Americans use it in commerce. And we saw, but one of the challenges you face is a priming of the pump unless you get a lot of coins in circulation immediately, then it doesn't really enter circulation. And one of the constraints that coin space is the change tray in a cash register. At least that was the case 25 years ago when we were launching the golden dollar and there's not really a place for a new denomination coin unless that is made by the commercial entity, like by taking a quarter rolls out of one of the bins. And so that was the first big challenge.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we ended up having the design competition for a design that fit that theme. And we ended up with a beautiful design done by Germany Goodacre. And as a result, also we did a lot of market research on what would be necessary to make this coin successful. And when we launched it through Walmart, they had people standing in lines around blocks all over the country. We had something like 150 million of them distributed within the first month. And it was an enormous success. But one of the things that is always a challenge for a dollar quantity in the United States is you've really got to withdraw the dollar bill when you introduce the dollar coin. And that's been the case all through the Western economy. where the high denomination bill has to be eliminated when this high denomination coin comes in.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Also, the design was not a popular design. Susan B. Anthony was not attractive on that design. So one of the things we wanted to do when we introduced the new Dollar Coin was to find a topic that the topic itself would be hugely popular. And the book, Undaunted Courage had come out probably about a year before we launched that coin. And of course, a part of that story was the story of Sacagawea and her role in leading the Lewis and Clark expedition across the Rocky Mountains. And that had really captured the imagination of Americans and especially the story of Sakharovia carrying her infant son, John Baptiste, on her back through that entire”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are a number of factors go into it. One is the denomination for obvious reasons, the bigger, the better, also the metallic matters, gold more popular than silver, and design also is hugely important. And this is something that we really played on with Sacajawea golden dollar. It's important that a coin be distinguishable, that it not be confused with another coin. The Susan B. Anthony had that reputation with confusion with a quarter.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right now, of course, this has been a hard year for stocks, and stocks are down probably the last time I check. Of course, this changes daily, but down about seven percent, and gold is up twenty seven percent this year. But last year was a great year for stocks, and stocks were up 23%, but gold beat it at 28%. And when you look back over the last 10 years, five out of ten years gold has been meet the S&P 500.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're a retailer of gold, silver, and platinum coins to the US market. We sell mostly U.S. government coins issued coins, but also coins of other nations. We are probably in the upper mid level of the marketplace. And I'd say that we're different from our competitors because we market very differently. I have a very different approach in the industry. This is something that I've really focused on for the last several years. For example, all of those advertisements that really harp on the end of the world and how gold is your go-to investment for really hard times, a lot of that is met. And when you look at the record, gold has performed extraordinarily well. Over the last 25 years in good times and bad times. And a great example of that is.”
2025-05-12 · Odd Lots · Philip Diehl on the Booming Business of Gold Coins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source