A ribbon cutting was held at Winnebago Coins. Holding and cutting the ribbon were, left to right, Dave Schmidt, Ryan Hatlen, Logan Hatlen, Teresa Hatlen, and W’bago mayor Jean Anderson.

Winnebago Coins celebrated its grand opening with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Wednesday, May 28, and owner Ryan Hatlen has already had a few eager customers come through his doors.

“The neat thing about being in the coin business is that almost everybody knows somebody who collects,” Hatlen notes. “Either they have a family member who collects, or they’re a collector themselves, or they have some coins from someone who collected that they don’t know the value of. I get to help people figure out what those coins are worth, and help put some of that money back into their pockets.”

Hatlen and his family are originally from Oregon, where they ran their own coin shop and did online sales through a variety of methods, including Facebook Marketplace, Ebay, and Whatnot. They moved to Winnebago last summer, and from the start, Hatlen knew that it was the right town for them.

“I grew up in small-town Oregon, outside of Portland, and I knew that when we moved I wanted to go back to that small-town way of living,” Hatlen shares. “My wife did a lot of ministry work with our home church, and when we were looking at places to live in Minnesota, we found out that Winnebago was home to Genesis Classical Academy, so that was a really big draw for us.”

While Hatlen has been a coin collector since childhood, the COVID-19 pandemic proved to be a profitable time for the business, as physical storefronts closed and businesses moved online.

“COVID was when I really started to buy and collect coins through Facebook, and gradually I started to sell there as well,” Hatlen recalls. “A lot of the big coin shops around the country shut down because of the pandemic, but ours stayed open. I really found success when I started selling online.”

These days, Hatlen’s primary online market is through Whatnot, which is a website where sellers can schedule and host live show auctions over video. Audience members can then tune into an auction broadcast and place bids for items in real time. However, Hatlen also emphasizes the importance of having a physical storefront to support the business.

“Whatnot is great because you can instantly sell stuff, but the one thing I was missing were the over-the-counter sales,” Hatlen explains. “I opened my shop here as a way to serve the community, and I’m really looking forward to being able to help people out.”

Hatlen’s business is located in the old Blue Earth Valley Eye Clinic building at 21 Main Street South, which he purchased from the former owners. Currently, his business occupies the middle suite, but he already has plans to expand further into the space.

“This building was an incredibly convenient place for me to move into, in part because the original owners are still paying rent on the space until October, even though they’ve already moved locations to Blue Earth,” Hatlen notes. “Once their rent term is over, I’m planning to expand into the front area of the building and open up some space as a community gathering area.”

For now, though, Winnebago Coins is big enough to suit his present needs: buying and selling coins, along with the process of appraising them.

“I specialize in silver coins, but I’ll look at gold, platinum, and copper coins, too,” Hatlen shares. “I don’t deal with a lot of paper currency, but I do work with jewelry and custom pieces. I also have some low-mintage pieces and old American coins like steel pennies and buffalo nickels.”

As with all forms of currency, rare coins are prone to all manners of counterfeiting, so an important part of Hatlen’s job is validating a coin’s authenticity. Aside from a coin’s minting number (which tells you how many of a given currency were made) or mint name (the location that the currency was made), he also utilizes a variety of tools to determine things like metal content and density.

“My main tool for determining if a coin is genuine or counterfeit is a Sigma Pro metal machine, which scans all the way through a coin and detects its density,” Hatlen explains. “This way I can check to see if a coin is one solid metal all the way through, and if it weighs as much as pure silver or gold should.”

Hatlen also uses more traditional tools for testing authenticity, including a jewelers loupe or other magnifying glass, a set of scales, a blacklight, and an acid test kit. He also keeps a stack of coin collector’s magazines and books on hand, which help him determine a coin’s demand, as well as whether a specific minting is more or less common.

“You’ll hear the term numismatic value sometimes, and what that means is if a coin has any extra value based on the mintage,” Hatlen says. “A coin’s mint year and location can impact its value a lot. CC coins – those that were made at the Carson City mint in Nevada – are always going to be more valuable than others made the same year, since that mint was only in operation for around 20 years.”

Along with the coins that his customers bring in to sell, Hatlen does a lot of buying behind the scenes. He regularly attends coin shows around the country to find new stock, and is more than happy to hunt a specific coin down upon request.

“If people are looking for something specific, there’s a good chance I can find it,” Hatlen shares. “The hunt is part of the fun for me. Finding a coin to complete a collection, or discovering something new, or finding a graded coin in really good condition at a good price is always exciting.”