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The Record - Hackensack, New Jersey

Aug. 21--Looking for an 1893 silver dollar minted in Carson City, Nev.?

Or an ounce of gold?

Or how about 7 million quarters?

Then Jeffrey Angello is your man.

Once destined to become a doctor, Angello, 42, instead turned his hand to dealing in coins and precious metals, and he hasn't looked back.

Over the past two decades, he has transformed the business started by his father -- the American Coin & Stamp Co. -- into a treasure house for investors and collectors, who know that the hard-to-find item can be found there.

The 50-year-old company, which calls itself "New Jersey's oldest and largest" rare coin exchange, is behind an unassuming façade on Clifton's Main Avenue. Inside, guarded by more than 20 surveillance cameras, the store is packed with bags of old cents, stamp albums, glass cases holding now-obsolete coins, ingots of precious metal and even a historical document or two.

The five-employee business last year had revenue of $6 million, the majority of it from the purchase and sale of precious metals such as gold, silver, platinum and palladium.

Yet it's the business of numismatics -- the study or collection of coins -- that Angello finds most intriguing.

"The skill of the numismatist is to recognize quality and authenticity," Angello said. "It's to know the market, most importantly. Probably equally important is knowing the material."

Angello and his staff keep abreast of the market with a continual search for coins. They place advertisements, seeking particular items, scour trade publications and take part in auctions across the country, either in person or by phone.

That, and a little luck, has helped the company thrive, says Angello, whose mild manner appears almost too soft to be that of a precious-metals trader.

"In the last few years," he said, "it's been a phenomenal market."

He and other coin dealers say that demand for coins has risen as investors have sought an alternative to weak stock-market returns and low interest rates. A big boost came in 1999, when the U.S. Mint launched a 10-year program of special Washington quarters honoring the 50 states of the Union and began running ads encouraging people to collect them.

"The overwhelming number of collectors used to be white males," said David Ganz, the mayor of Fair Lawn, who is also a board member of a national coin dealers' trade group, the Maryland-based Industry Council for Tangible Assets.

"That's no longer true," Ganz said. "It has spawned an entirely new generation of collectors in all age groups and both genders."

Angello said public interest in coins was fanned by nationally televised infomercials offering coins to the entire country that previously were often available only in auctions and coin shops, often located in big cities. That turned into a bonanza for American Coin & Stamp Co., which was contacted first by one infomercial company and then another, looking for the newly minted quarters to sell on the airwaves, Angello said.

Eventually, American Coin & Stamp Co. Inc. tracked down 7 million coins for the marketers. It even created sets of 50 quarters, hiring a company to "colorize" them before sale to the marketers, he said.

"I felt like a smut merchant," he said. "It's kind of tacky. Coloring coins is not mainstream numismatics. But there was a demand for them."

A typical day at the store might include regular collectors dropping by or a dedicated numismatist, each looking for particular coins. If he doesn't have them, Angello will do his best to get them, pocketing the spread between his buying and selling prices.

Every so often, he will track down a rare prize -- such as an 1839 silver dollar designed by Mint engraver Christian Gobrecht, which he bought recently at a California auction and sold to a customer for about $30,000.

Regular customers say Angello has the key trait needed by a coin dealer: honesty.

"I always felt very comfortable there," said Fred Rosenberg, a Fort Lee collector who dealt with Angello and his father over 15 years before selling his entire collection to the store a few months ago.

"I never had to worry about anything," he said. "They were a pleasure to deal with. -- I didn't bargain with him. I trusted him."

The store was started as a hobby shop by Angello's father, Joseph, who moved into numismatics in 1955, when he borrowed $200 and bought a customer's coin collection. The younger Angello joined the company full-time in 1985 after he became sick and dropped out of preparing for medical school.

He had a "reawakening -- that life was too short to worry about making a four-point-zero average," he said.

Since then, he has invested his efforts in the company, taking the helm in 1997, when his father retired. He is currently diversifying the business to include the sale of old documents. Among those currently on sale are a 1789 military appointment signed by George Washington -- price tag about $20,000 -- and a ship's passport signed by Thomas Jefferson in 1804, priced at $10,000 or so.

To celebrate the company's 50th anniversary, Angello in April spent a day buying goods with 107 moderately rare coins, slipping them into circulation to see if anyone would notice their value and return them to the store. Though their face value was just a few dollars, the coins' value to collectors was about $4,000.

The goal was to give something back to the community and the hobby that has given him so much, Angello said. So far, a few have surfaced, and he is confident they all will appear in the end.

"Some of the best coins that I am able to buy today my father sold 30 years ago," he said. "Eventually, they have a way of coming back to where they were sold."

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