Albuquerque Coins: Your Guide to Numismatics in New Mexico

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Nine reference pages, one subject

Shows, club meetings, dealers, auctions and metal prices in Albuquerque, written for collectors at any level and sourced throughout.

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Coin shows and club nights

What is on across New Mexico, and what each kind of event is actually like to attend.

Spot prices explained

How the London benchmark is set and why a dealer quote differs from it.

The New Mexico quarter

The Zia sun design of 2008, its mintage and how to start a set.

Auctions without surprises

Buyer premiums, reserves and settlement, written out in plain terms.

New to collecting?

Begin with the youth and beginners section: it explains grading, storage and the first purchases without assuming any prior knowledge.

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What this guide covers

Albuquerque Coin Guide is an independent editorial project about coin collecting in Albuquerque and the wider state of New Mexico. It explains how local shows and club nights work, how precious metal prices are set and quoted, what happens at a numismatic auction, and how to read the coins that turn up most often in New Mexico collections. It is not the website of a coin club, it collects no membership dues and it runs no sales.

The guide is written for two kinds of reader. The first has inherited a box of coins and wants to know what is in it and who can look at it. The second already collects and wants the practical detail: when the shows happen, what a dealer premium covers, how a consignment is settled. Both get the same treatment here, which is plain description with the source named whenever a number is involved.

Where to start

If you are new, three pages carry most of what you need. The beginners and youth section covers handling, storage and the first purchases. The spot prices page explains the daily benchmark that every dealer quote is built on, so that a quoted price stops looking arbitrary. The dealers page sets out what to ask before you sell anything.

If you are looking for a specific coin, the most asked about in this state is the New Mexico quarter of 2008. It has its own page with the mint figures and what they mean for its value.

How the guide treats facts

Every figure on this site is attributed. Mint quantities come from published mintage tables, benchmark mechanics from the body that runs the benchmark, and event details from the organiser's own pages. Where something changes year to year, such as show dates, the guide links to the page that holds the current version instead of freezing a date into an article that nobody will update.

The guide publishes no price lists, no valuations of individual coins and no buying recommendations. Grading and valuation are judgement calls that depend on the coin in hand, and a website that has not seen the coin cannot make them.