This is the sales pitch from Brett Eversole about his “secret currency,” part of an ad for Stansberry’s True Wealth newsletter…

“Speaking conservatively, I believe an investment in the Secret Currency today could potentially double your money in the next six to 12 months.

“And a 5 times or 10 times return over the next few years wouldn’t be surprising.

“Remember: The last time we saw conditions anywhere close to the ones we’re seeing today (in the late 1970s), investors made 1,195% profits.

“Of course, no investment can be guaranteed. But we believe the Secret Currency is one of the best investments in the world right now, in terms of risk and potential reward.

“I think it makes sense for every American to own at least a small stake, with a small percentage of your overall holdings.”

So… what is he actually talking about?  The ad’s headline says….

“The Richest Americans Are Pulling Their Cash from Banks at Alarming Rates…

“Here’s where they could be stashing it… and why it could also hand you 5X returns – no matter where stocks, bonds, or the economy go next.”

So this is a message that’s well-tuned to the affluent and anxious… what is it they think you should buy?

“Historically, in times like these, the rich have poured money into one little-known investment. It’s not a money market or high-yield savings account. It’s not Treasurys, corporate bonds, commodities, or stocks… and it’s definitely not cryptocurrency.

“It’s a much more secretive investment, with a long and rich history. A fascinating financial story that we’ve tracked for years…

“And in the next few minutes, I’m going to show you the investment the world’s elites have used to protect and grow their fortunes, even in the most uncertain and volatile of times.

“American presidents, international business tycoons, and ultra-wealthy families have used it for generations…

“It’s a lot like gold. But as I’ll show you, it’s actually better than gold.

“It’s used as a store of value in every state in America and every country on Earth.

“It’s completely anonymous.

“It’s returned several hundred percent during some of the most volatile and uncertain periods in American history.

“… And it could be why bank deposits have crashed, especially among the country’s richest families.

So what’s the story with this “opportunity 50 years in the making?”

Well, it turns out this is just an old teaser pitch from Steve Sjuggerud, who used to run this newsletter… and who promoted buying gold coins a few times from about 2005 to 2013.

So yes, the “secret currency” is still “gold coins”… but it’s a little bit more complicated than that.

There are genuinely rare coins out there, which cost gazillions of dollars and have very little connection to the price of gold (or silver, or whatever they’re made of)… and there are extremely common coins that simply represent an easy way to get an ounce of gold or silver, they’re called “bullion coins” and they’re generally available from a bunch of national mints, at prices a couple percent above the gold they contain. You can buy these coins, like the American Eagle or the Canadian Maple Leaf, from any reputable dealer, and often from the mint itself.’

But there’s a third category of gold coin, too, and that’s generally what Steve Sjuggerud and his collegues have pitched in the past as the “secret currency” in Stansberry ads, so it’s very likely that’s still what they’re talking up. That’s the coins which are old and collectible, but not extremely rare, so there’s a pretty active market for them and they usually move up and down pretty meaningfully with the price of gold. The most common of these are the Pre-1933 U.S. gold coins, the gold coins which were widespread and used as legal tender before Franklin Roosevelt outlawed private gold ownership and “recalled” all gold coins in order to reset the value of the U.S. dollar (which was at the time, and for the next 40 years or so, specifically backed by gold).

The consensus is that the most attractive of the pre-’33 gold coins is the St. Gaudens Double Eagle $20 coin, which was minted from 1907-1933, and I’m not an expert on numismatics but that still seems to be the most commonly traded gold coin from that era. That coin has just under an ounce of gold, about 0.96 ounces, and it therefore could always be melted down and worth just a hair less than the bullion coins… but it’s also widely-collected, so it typically trades at more of a premium to the gold price than modern coins do. And historically, that collectibility has sometimes risen in importance when investors fear another “gold confiscation,” because the argument has been that if gold is ever confiscated by the government again, they wouldn’t confiscate “collectibles.”

I have no idea if that argument holds water, but I also don’t think it’s remotely likely that the U.S. government would try to confiscate gold ever again… and, perhaps more important, there wouldn’t be much of an obvious policy reason to do so (FDR had to confiscate gold in order to “reset” the dollar’s value, and create inflation to pay for the government’s response to the Great Depression — as we’ve seen, the government has absolutely no problem creating inflation these days). Maybe in some future dystopia there’s a roundup of civilian assets in general, who knows, perhaps if there’s a huge war with China, or some great currency upheaval that causes the launch of a gold-backed U.S. currency again… but it’s not on my list of worries. Lots of really scary stuff is more probable than that, I think.

The core of the spiel from the Stansberry folks hasn’t changed much for this “Secret Currency” in the past 20 years… for a while, Steve Sjuggerud’s brother worked on True Wealth, too, and called this “Rich Gold” — here’s how he described it:

“It’s a secret many rich people are taking advantage of, but it’s basically ignored by the middle class.

“You see, most people think that all gold bullion is the same.

“But the truth is, there are two very different types of gold bullion.

“Regular bullion essentially just follows the price of gold. When gold goes up 10%, regular bullion goes up 10%. When the price of gold goes up 20%, regular bullion goes up 20%.

“But there’s a second type of gold (my contact called it ‘Rich Bullion’) that follows a very different pattern.

“‘Rich’ bullion has a tendency to absolutely skyrocket in value, many times higher than ordinary bullion, in times of financial distress.

“For example…

“From 1970 to 1972, the U.S. government’s debt increased by about $50 billion (source: U.S. Treasury Dept.). And the price of gold during that period went up 80%.

“But from 1972 to 1974, right after these increases, ‘Rich’ gold bullion shot up an incredible 348%….

“… this type of gold could not only protect your money… It could make you 500% or more over the next few years.

“Keep in mind: These two types of gold bullion look very similar. Almost identical – except for one very important identifying difference.

“And this difference has made ‘Rich’ bullion a prized asset among a lot of wealthy investors throughout history.”

And they’ve used some more inflammatory headlines, too:

“Outlawed for 41 years… Now LEGAL Again

“This Unique Gold Investment Launched the Largest Family Fortune the World has Ever Seen…

“And Could Return 665% in the Next few Years”

So how does one choose how to invest in this collectible version of gold? Most of these early 20th century gold coins were technically circulating currency, but the highest-value ones didn’t spend a lot of time rattling around in pockets, so all the ones you see are likely to be in very good shape. The gradations in condition are critically important to their value to collectors, so you’ll generally see the best of the coins given a “Mint State” number and encased in plastic with an authentication certificate from a coin grader (MS-70 is “perfect” — most of the ones that get authenticated and encased in plastic and sold at most online dealers are in the range of MS-62 through MS-67 or so, PCGS has some photos of what those different conditions look like… it’s probably not worth the cost of grading if they’re lower value — and if they’re higher value and close to perfection, they’re probably going up for auction and have no real connection to the gold price).

Probably True Wealth’s most successful recommendation in this vein has been the graded (MS-64 or MS-65) pre-1933 US $20 St. Gaudens Double Eagle coin, which rode up dramatically with the price of gold from 2004 to 2013, and in the 1970s and 80s, but has not quite shown that same kind of leverage with the most recent surge in gold prices.

There are manias in the gold coin collecting world as there are in any other collectible, so sometimes these coins have been extraordinarily valuable — coin enthusiasts like to cite times when these Double Eagles in average condition were going for multiples of the gold price (I’ve heard $4,000 for the coins in 1989, when the gold value would have been less than a tenth that amount), so that’s the real value proposition: they can’t be worth less than bullion since you could always melt them down, but they can go up a lot faster than bullion if the collectors get excited.

We looked at one of Stansberry’s “secret currency” pitches in 2010, when gold was around $1,300 and the specific coins he was most likely teasing, the MS-64 PCGS St. Gaudens, were around $1,800… and the last time I wrote about one of these ads and noted the pricing was in 2015, when gold was around $1,200, with those same St. Gaudens Double Eagle coins at about $1,550. The graded coins definitely fluctuate more than the gold price, but they don’t generally go below it — they just trade at either a small premium or a large premium, depending on the level of collector enthusiasm.  (We also covered this pitch more recently, during the gold surge that followed the COVID shutdowns in the Fall of 2020 — Steve Sjuggerud was still writing the newsletter then, and that ad was likewise pretty similar to this one).

Right now, the premium seems pretty low — which means that if you bought those coins at almost any point during the past 15 years, you would have been better off just buying a bullion coin, the gold price has gone up more than the price of these coins. The less collectible St. Gaudens coins (like the ones that have been cleaned in a way that destroyed their value to most collectors), are now available at very close to “melt” value — you can get a cleaned St. Gaudens for $2,320 from APMEX right now, for example, while gold is at $2,350/oz (remember, there’s slightly less than an ounce of gold in these coins… so the melt value is actually roughly $2,260 for one of these coins right now). The MS-64 coins are going for only about $2,500, so the graded coins that have sometimes traded at a 30-40% premium over the past 10-15 years are now trading at only about a 10-12% premium to their melt value.

Which is interesting… though I don’t know what it means, really. It could mean that coin collecting is just less popular now, it could mean that maybe investors just haven’t come around to this asset yet, but they will do so again… or it could mean that these coins were the libertarian “look out for the government” asset of choice 20 and 30 years ago, but now that sentiment drifts more easily to Bitcoin.

You can also see a variation of Sjuggerud’s past recommendations along these lines from Stansberry books and special reports being posted freely on their website from time to time — so there’s a quick look at this topic from Sjuggerud called “The Secret Currency of Rare Gold Coins” available at the moment— in that note he specifically says he’s “willing to pay 80% above the price of gold for MS64s,” which is FAR higher than they trade at these days.

But for whatever reason, you can buy some beautiful old gold coins, containing almost an ounce of gold each, and they’re widely-traded and easy to sell at near their melt value, just like modern gold coins, but there’s some chance that they’ll again have real scarcity value and might shoot up faster than the price of gold, either for political or sentimental reasons. If that’s an appealing idea to you in general, then the pricing is relatively attractive right now.

Personally, I do hold some coins that have collectible value beyond their gold or silver content, but that’s been more or less an accident and I haven’t made myself an expert on this stuff and don’t plan to, so I don’t make big investments in collectibles — I’d urge you to make the study of such things a serious hobby if you plan to invest serious money into these kinds of assets, whether they’re classic cars or old musical instruments or Victorian bed pans or, yes, old or rare gold coins. I don’t own any of these particular St. Gaudens $20 gold coins.

So… ready to hide some of your money in this “secret currency,” like wealthy families have sometimes done in the past? Have particular coins that you like? Let us know with a comment below.

P.S. I mention APMEX just because that’s the online coin dealer I’ve mostly used to buy coins over the past decade, I’ve found them fair and convenient, and they have good prices, but I don’t know if they’re the best and I’m not being paid to mention them. I suspect that the Stansberry folks are still recommending you call Van Simmons at David Hall Rare Coins, since he has long been in the Stansberry orbit and currently serves on the board of MarketWise, their parent company (he’s also been active in establishing coin grading standards, and was a co-founder of Collector’s Universe), and the David Hall website explains those particular coins if you’d like a more expert description, or some more specific info about the specific coins that are most desired by collectors.

P.P.S. If you’re interested in the more conventional gold investment the Stansberry folks have been teasing, check out my article about Stansberry’s “#1 Gold Play for 2024.”