22 ms·

A tiny niche in collectible coins grows into a $5 million mini-empire

55 points by chwolfe 17y ago

jeromec 17y ago
Wow, he may end up in the dictionary next to the word 'capitalist'. I love that he has positive cash flow. I know websites and Internets are all the rage but he may be actually making more profit than Facebook, and certainly more than Twitter.
- clistctrl 17y ago
  Twitter may not be making anything right now, but when they decide to start monetizing it, they have the potential to rake in huge profits.
  - jeromec 17y ago
    "...when they decide to start monetizing it" You say that like it's as simple as making the decision. Why would they hold off on making money? I think it's because they don't know how to monetize it. I'm curious to see what they come up with.
    - dugmartin 17y ago
      Because as soon as they start bringing in real money all the hockey stick revenue charts that they present to VCs start having real data points.
    - jfarmer 17y ago
      Because money often interferes with growth, and in any case if your first priority is growth it's best to focus on that rather than bring in secondary or tertiary concerns.
      - jeromec 17y ago
        According to a Mashable article in March '09: "The latest numbers from Nielsen Online indicate that Twitter grew 1,382% year-over-year in February, registering a total of just more than 7 million unique visitors in the US for the month." I'm not sure how much you can interfere with that kind of growth. My point is that people seem to talk easily about monetizing all those users, but nobody seems to be able to give specifics on how to do it.
        abstractbill 17y ago
        Even if users don't mind the ads, it can take a depressing amount of time to integrate ads into a site [1]. Assuming you don't just use adsense, each advertiser often has their own way of doing things and will have one-off requirements for how their ads should behave on your site. That's engineering time that could be used to fuel growth by developing features and working on scaling. [1] I'm speaking from personal experience. For about six months, I worked on nothing but integrating various advertisers' products into justin.tv. Video ad providers are particularly difficult to work with, since it's still quite a young market.
        jeromec 17y ago
        Ads may be their obvious route, but I wonder how much of a turn-off that will be for users. I'm totally rooting for Twitter to be successful, I just wanted to highlight the contrast between this small $5M business actually making money vs. "hot" web companies that may be faddish, and have yet to prove a model to make money, yet get all the press plus $100M investment.
        jfarmer 17y ago
        I think it's great that Twitter is focused on only one thing: being the first social network to reach 1Bn users. I mean, honestly, who gives a shit whether Twitter is making money now or not? Twitter doesn't, their users don't, and their investors don't. Who else matters in this equation? The only reason people talk about it is because other people say "Yes, Twitter is big, but how will they make money?" People said the same thing about Google and (some) still say the same thing about Facebook.
  - shaddi 17y ago
    Potential to make money is not making money, particularly without any idea of how to turn the former into the latter.
nazgulnarsil 17y ago
he calls himself a serial entrepreneur even though he's still on his first business and his second is going to be T-shirts (notoriously bad business sector)? I forsee bad things in the future.
- clistctrl 17y ago
  That was my thought too
- jeromec 17y ago
  In his first business he noticed a profitable demand and filled it. Now he has the advantage of capital to try other ventures, as well as real world business experience. He may do well. I love stories like this.
- cruise02 17y ago
  He's been successful one time in a row. I admit that that's a better success rate than I currently have to my credit, but it did make for a rather lame ending to an otherwise good story.
- icefox 17y ago
  I was also thinking this falls under the luck category also. ~8 years ago I got into selling Transformers on ebay. Classic G1 toys were going for a lot and I was making a nice margin. And then Hasbro and Takara started re-releasing the toys. My bad luck.
- jasonlbaptiste 17y ago
  He's been successful, which I'm pretty sure gives him the right. Whether he'll do it again, is yet to be seen. I bet people would have said selling coins would be a notoriously bad idea/sector,etc. but he did well. I foresee good things in his future.
- jamesbressi 17y ago
  HAHA... I thought that too until I finally understood what he meant. Remember, he started off with just Marine coins, then... "In the past five years, Morin has expanded his coin business beyond the Marines to include other service branches, weddings, sports teams, and corporations such as Starbucks, Delta Air Lines and United Parcel Service. He hired a Web designer to jazz up the online site. He changed his company name from Marine Corps Coins to Coins for Anything and has expanded into trophies, pins and lanyards (the neck straps to which security badges or credentials are attached)." So you say, "he expanded", but he views these expansions as additional businesses and treated them as such "... estimate that Morin's companies earn a net profit of around $1 million; he didn't deny that estimate. He is rolling most of that profit back into his enterprises. A competitor offered to buy the coin company for $4 million a couple of years back." Furthermore, I wouldn't downplay the t-shirt business everyone. I would have said the same thing about the coin business until I read this. Only difference is I know a bit more about the t-shirt business and the money is there.
shaddi 17y ago
It bears repetition: make things people want and sell them at a profit.
patio11 17y ago
For folks wanting to see samples http://store.coinsforanything.com/c-9-other-coins.aspx http://store.coinsforanything.com/c-9-other-coins.aspx P.S. Legacy media: When we cite folks on the Internet, we include links. I should not have to use Google to complete your articles for you.
- jamesbressi 17y ago
  Thank you! I was just about to use Google to find the link and then realized I'm on Hacker News and if there were comments already on the article, someone beat me to it. +1 for you, and another +1 for catching legacy media up to speed ;)

55 points by chwolfe 17y ago

Wow, he may end up in the dictionary next to the word 'capitalist'. I love that he has positive cash flow. I know websites and Internets are all the rage but he may be actually making more profit than Facebook, and certainly more than Twitter.

clistctrl 17y ago
Twitter may not be making anything right now, but when they decide to start monetizing it, they have the potential to rake in huge profits.
- jeromec 17y ago
  "...when they decide to start monetizing it" You say that like it's as simple as making the decision. Why would they hold off on making money? I think it's because they don't know how to monetize it. I'm curious to see what they come up with.
  - dugmartin 17y ago
    Because as soon as they start bringing in real money all the hockey stick revenue charts that they present to VCs start having real data points.
  - jfarmer 17y ago
    Because money often interferes with growth, and in any case if your first priority is growth it's best to focus on that rather than bring in secondary or tertiary concerns.
    - jeromec 17y ago
      According to a Mashable article in March '09: "The latest numbers from Nielsen Online indicate that Twitter grew 1,382% year-over-year in February, registering a total of just more than 7 million unique visitors in the US for the month." I'm not sure how much you can interfere with that kind of growth. My point is that people seem to talk easily about monetizing all those users, but nobody seems to be able to give specifics on how to do it.
      - abstractbill 17y ago
        Even if users don't mind the ads, it can take a depressing amount of time to integrate ads into a site [1]. Assuming you don't just use adsense, each advertiser often has their own way of doing things and will have one-off requirements for how their ads should behave on your site. That's engineering time that could be used to fuel growth by developing features and working on scaling. [1] I'm speaking from personal experience. For about six months, I worked on nothing but integrating various advertisers' products into justin.tv. Video ad providers are particularly difficult to work with, since it's still quite a young market.
        jeromec 17y ago
        Ads may be their obvious route, but I wonder how much of a turn-off that will be for users. I'm totally rooting for Twitter to be successful, I just wanted to highlight the contrast between this small $5M business actually making money vs. "hot" web companies that may be faddish, and have yet to prove a model to make money, yet get all the press plus $100M investment.
      - jfarmer 17y ago
        I think it's great that Twitter is focused on only one thing: being the first social network to reach 1Bn users. I mean, honestly, who gives a shit whether Twitter is making money now or not? Twitter doesn't, their users don't, and their investors don't. Who else matters in this equation? The only reason people talk about it is because other people say "Yes, Twitter is big, but how will they make money?" People said the same thing about Google and (some) still say the same thing about Facebook.
- shaddi 17y ago
  Potential to make money is not making money, particularly without any idea of how to turn the former into the latter.

nazgulnarsil 17y ago

he calls himself a serial entrepreneur even though he's still on his first business and his second is going to be T-shirts (notoriously bad business sector)? I forsee bad things in the future.

clistctrl 17y ago
That was my thought too
jeromec 17y ago
In his first business he noticed a profitable demand and filled it. Now he has the advantage of capital to try other ventures, as well as real world business experience. He may do well. I love stories like this.
cruise02 17y ago
He's been successful one time in a row. I admit that that's a better success rate than I currently have to my credit, but it did make for a rather lame ending to an otherwise good story.
icefox 17y ago
I was also thinking this falls under the luck category also. ~8 years ago I got into selling Transformers on ebay. Classic G1 toys were going for a lot and I was making a nice margin. And then Hasbro and Takara started re-releasing the toys. My bad luck.
jasonlbaptiste 17y ago
He's been successful, which I'm pretty sure gives him the right. Whether he'll do it again, is yet to be seen. I bet people would have said selling coins would be a notoriously bad idea/sector,etc. but he did well. I foresee good things in his future.
jamesbressi 17y ago
HAHA... I thought that too until I finally understood what he meant. Remember, he started off with just Marine coins, then... "In the past five years, Morin has expanded his coin business beyond the Marines to include other service branches, weddings, sports teams, and corporations such as Starbucks, Delta Air Lines and United Parcel Service. He hired a Web designer to jazz up the online site. He changed his company name from Marine Corps Coins to Coins for Anything and has expanded into trophies, pins and lanyards (the neck straps to which security badges or credentials are attached)." So you say, "he expanded", but he views these expansions as additional businesses and treated them as such "... estimate that Morin's companies earn a net profit of around $1 million; he didn't deny that estimate. He is rolling most of that profit back into his enterprises. A competitor offered to buy the coin company for $4 million a couple of years back." Furthermore, I wouldn't downplay the t-shirt business everyone. I would have said the same thing about the coin business until I read this. Only difference is I know a bit more about the t-shirt business and the money is there.

shaddi 17y ago

It bears repetition: make things people want and sell them at a profit.

patio11 17y ago

For folks wanting to see samples http://store.coinsforanything.com/c-9-other-coins.aspx http://store.coinsforanything.com/c-9-other-coins.aspx P.S. Legacy media: When we cite folks on the Internet, we include links. I should not have to use Google to complete your articles for you.

jamesbressi 17y ago
Thank you! I was just about to use Google to find the link and then realized I'm on Hacker News and if there were comments already on the article, someone beat me to it. +1 for you, and another +1 for catching legacy media up to speed ;)