Trading cards get upgrade to silver and gold
Sometimes, at night, Kenny Duncan sits around and thinks about domain names. If one sounds particularly good, he’ll check availability and plunk down the $12 or so per year to put a flag in it. A year and a half ago, Duncan — who with his brother Matt runs the Houston-based U.S. Coins and Jewelry — was thinking in such a state when celebritymint.com came to mind.
“It was just a random thought I had,” he says. “And I knew immediately, ‘This will be huge.’”
Since that night 18 months ago, Celebrity Mint has grown from a name to a company that announced its flagship product, the first-ever legal tender trading cards, this week. The Duncan brothers have merged two worlds of collectors with a
“It was just a random thought I had. And I knew immediately, ‘This will be huge.’”
Kenny Duncan
series of precious metal coins, now configured into the shape of trading cards.
The first cards will debut with a wooooo on Oct. 14 at the New York Comic Con. Wrestler Ric Flair and his “woo” calling card will be on hand for the coin-cards debut at the event. He’ll appear at the convention’s eBay booth in an event streamed on eBay Live. Celebrity Coin will sell its wares on its own website, through eBay and its own brick-and-mortar location on the Katy Freeway.
Celebrity Mint’s products will be minted in gold and silver. And its first client was boxer “Iron” Mike Tyson.
Kenny Duncan had a friend who was connected to the former heavyweight champ.
“We met at a restaurant in Houston, and there we did a handshake deal for half a million dollars,” Kenny says. “He was our first. It wasn’t hard to get talent after that.”
Flair came next. The initial offering also includes boxers Jake Paul and Floyd Mayweather and baseball player Pete Rose.
Some of the 18 months of development were spent negotiating with the athletes. Much of the time was spent on design. “We weren’t interested in creating cheesy tokens,” Kenny says. “These are made with 3D state-of-the-art technology from Europe. We’re working closely with the talent to make
sure the images are something they want out there.
“When we showed Tyson the early designs, he was blown away.”
The Duncans’ father, Richard Duncan, founded U.S. Coins in 1985 as a wholesale rare coin trader. The family business expanded over nearly 40 years, and today, under the siblings, appraises, buys and sells rare and gold coins, gold and silver bullion, diamonds and jewelry, Swiss watches and, more recently, sports collectibles.
“When Kenny came in with the idea, we had a store full of people. It was a busy day,” Matt Duncan says. “So it took everybody here a minute to get the idea. But people love sports, so there’s an audience. We’ve been in coins all our lives. But we were interested in a new avenue, dealing with cards.”
Kenny hints at more big names soon to be announced through Celebrity Mint. His vision extends beyond professional athletes. In fact, before the dinner with Tyson, he originally thought of the idea as offering another revenue stream for collegiate athletes under the new NCAA guidelines for NIL (name, image, likeness) established in 2021.
“There aren’t a lot of cards for college football players,” he says. “This is a product you can sell to fans of that player, fans of the university. How cool would it have been to have 500 customized coins from Zion Williamson? Maybe the player blows up and you have a cool and unique collectible. If they don’t, you still have a cool item; no harm, no foul.”
Kenny points out that the coins in this series are actual numismatics — coins with value independent of the intrinsic value of the metal — that will be registered in the World Coins Catalog.
“There’s a perfect storm rising in this area,” Kenny says. “There have been amazing coin designs from world mints. The world of sports card collecting has blown up completely. We’re hoping to capture a small part of all that, to bring these people together.”