Ep.22 - Building a Great Coin Podcast with Mike Nottelmann #numismatics #collectibles #rarecoins
Hey, folks. Welcome back to the CABG Coins podcast. My name is Tony Grokevich. I am the owner and, operator of CABG Coins. I am very excited about this channel.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Things are going really, really well. My goal for 2025 was to reach a thousand subscribers, and I know we've kinda blew right past that. And we are getting getting closer now, 1,500 or so. I'm super excited to see that. And if this is your first time watching the episode, please hit the like, please throw a comment down below, and definitely please subscribe.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Coming up, I'm headed over to Europe to do a little bit of coin hunting. And in the process of that, my plan is to do a little bit of content creation, showing some videos, just showing where I'm at, what I'm doing. But there's a possibility that we might have a week or so before we missed the podcast. I assure you I will be back pumping these out and getting ready into 2026. So my guest today, let me explain a little bit about who Mike Navelman is and what his work has meant to me in in in the past.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So I got started coin collecting in 2015 as a result of a good friend of mine giving me a Silver Eagle for Christmas. That spurred an interest in silver coins, which then got me interested in numismatics. And then I started trying to learn as much as I could about old US coins. As part of that process, I looked for podcasts. And the first podcast that I founded and the one that I stuck with was the Coin Show podcast.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And that featured Mike Nauman and Matt Dinger. And I started listening to all your episodes. You guys were I remember you guys were on iTunes and there was like 20 episodes. And then I had to go onto the website to get all the back episodes in order to kind of catch up. But I absolutely loved what you guys did.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And it was something that kept me company for for many you know, long while as I did my hikes and so forth, listening to podcasts and do my drive. So anyways, Mike, this is a real honor to have you on the program, to interview you, and to learn, you know, what it takes to build a coin podcast empire as you have. I think so.
Mike Nottelmann:Overstatement, maybe.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Well, welcome to the program. Maybe you wanna tell us a little bit about yourself and what got you going with the Coin Show podcast originally.
Mike Nottelmann:Yeah, sure. So, thank you, Tony. Thanks for having me on. I have to tell you, I'm I'm normally in that seat, not this seat. So this is really kind of a change for me.
Mike Nottelmann:It's like people are generally too interested in in me as a person. So the coin show podcast was actually the baby of a guy named Matt Dinger. And for those of you who don't know, he runs Lost Dutchman Rare Coins in Indianapolis and is currently, running the Indiana State Coin Show. And so we were on a we were on a forum called Coin Talk. Forum still exists.
Mike Nottelmann:Forum is an awesome one to join. I've been on it on it for over twenty years and they don't suffer with with a lot of garbage. They don't do any politics at all. And you only get one shot at a, at a username. So Okay.
Mike Nottelmann:Do not use your name. And they're really, really strict about those things. But given that, it's a really informative place where they have tons of really, really big name numismatists that you just don't realize. I started talking with guys like Mike Diamond, Mike Ellis, you know, these guys were on there, and there's there's been a few that have passed in the in the intervening years. Right?
Mike Nottelmann:But but I didn't even know I was talking to him. And, there's a guy who I think is the most famous example of that is Skip Vissary. Skip Vissary started out, on CoinTalk just as as nobody. His his name was insider. And that's all he said.
Mike Nottelmann:He's like, look, I know a few things, but I really don't wanna talk about who I am or stuff like that. And it turns out that Skip, you know, has worked for almost every grading service that's ever ever existed, and he knows a lot about grading and about how it's done and how it's done in the business. And so he taught us he taught us a lot. So through that group sorry. Got really derailed.
Mike Nottelmann:So through that group, Matt posted a, a thread saying, anybody wanna start a podcast? And quite literally, I was the first person who answered. And Matt will tell the story in that way even though it, you know, kinda like, You know? But I was the first person who answered. So yes.
Mike Nottelmann:And we originally started out with three people, kinda figured it would be a really good dynamic. It didn't really work out as well as we wanted it to. So it but what we did notice right away was that Matt and I had an incredible, chemistry. And so the two of us, you know, we came at it from different points of view. I would at the time, I was working at a grocery warehouse.
Mike Nottelmann:I was I was a teamster, and, you know, I was just interested in getting my union pension and, gave me a lot of time to just think. And so I could come up with all these ideas of what I'd like to do on a podcast and stuff. So the way it's always kind of worked out is that it is it is truly a partnership. It is a fifty fifty kind of thing. We, you know, we split the credit.
Mike Nottelmann:We split the the blame, all that stuff. And I think the way the mat has best describes it is that he powers the motor and I drive the boat. So that's that's kind of how it came about. And, we were doing podcasts, you know, when there weren't any out there. We've been doing it for fifteen years now, and with with Matt, he just wanted to put decent numismatic content out there that people wanted to listen to.
Mike Nottelmann:For me, what we noticed when we went back and looked, the only thing out there was like the coin world podcast. And I'm talking about the old coin world podcast. It was super, super dry. Before Charlie Morgan. Yeah.
Mike Nottelmann:It sounded like NPR. I mean, it's just Yeah. This long before Charles Morgan.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Mhmm.
Mike Nottelmann:And and it was just it was brutal. And so Matt decided, hey, you know, let's do something different. And I think it took us, you know, kind of like twenty, twenty five episodes to get our rhythm, to get our feet underneath us, to figure out that it was a two man show, not a three man show.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And,
Mike Nottelmann:once we did that, then it was then it was clear sailing. Everything kind of just clicked. It fit together. We developed segments that we still do to this day, and they're more centered around just kind of adding one education variety and, it it kind of gives us a platform to to kind of go wherever we want. And that is the coolest thing that walked into our shops.
Mike Nottelmann:It's it's, you know, it has been the greatest vehicle of all time because it started out with the coolest thing to walked into match up because I was a collector. And now that I work in a coin shop and, and look, credit to Matt. Matt is the reason I work for Harlem Burke. So yeah, now we come at it from, Hey, I work for one of the biggest coin shops in the country. I work for the oldest coin shop site in the country.
Mike Nottelmann:Look at what I can bring. I just get some monster stuff that walks in And, the and it's always fun to mess with Matt.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I, so there's someone to say, I think just the intro, you, you covered about 20% of the questions I actually have for you just in your intro right there. That that's, that's great. No, that's, that's, that's fantastic. It was awesome to, you know, to have you, have you run with it. I will say, so first off I will say that Harlan J Burke, the coin shop is one of my favorite coin shops for a couple reasons.
Tony Gryckiewicz:One is the location. I really like that, Chicago commodities. What do they call it? The exchange right there.
Mike Nottelmann:That's well, it's it's the board of trade.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Board of trade.
Mike Nottelmann:Bordetrick. We are in the Loop, which is the Financial District. Mhmm. And we are literally across from Daily Center Plaza. So if you've ever watched the blues brothers, the place where they flew the helicopters is literally out our door.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I see. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that that so that building that, that that Board Of Train Building has got one of the most beautiful art deco designs, architectural wise, I think go inside and out. And even just the edifice of the Harlan J.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Burke store itself kinda harkens back to this nineteen thirties, nineteen forties. I don't know. Right right around there, kind of that that that image I would think of as an old coin shop. And, I'm a sucker for architecture. That's just you know, that's my particular, you know, cup of tea when it comes to art is architecture.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So that's one of the things. When I came to visit your shop there, yeah, I definitely I think it's an amazing, you know, really nice shop. It's a really old shop. And anyways, I can go on and on.
Mike Nottelmann:Well, so for people that don't know, our shop is located literally in between the crevices and the street. We're we are in the Chicago Temple Building, which is an old, old church, and it is one of the oldest churches in Chicago. It is currently a Methodist Methodist Church, but we're literally in between the church and the street. So we're in this just magnificent building, but we are literally in the nooks and crannies of that. And so it's kind of interesting in that way.
Mike Nottelmann:Interesting. It's a psychotic building. Oh, and by the way, bonus points, if you can tell me the name of the person the the the goddess that is on top of the board of trade because you're into architecture.
Tony Gryckiewicz:It's Yeah. I mean, if I had to think it would be, Sofia, goddess of wisdom or Athena, which is a feature in a lot of, you know, old coins, but I don't know. I don't know. Sorry.
Mike Nottelmann:So you gotta think Chicago and you gotta think of what they do. Board of trade. We do a lot of grain, a lot of wheat. It is series.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. I'm sorry you're stumping me. I will definitely find an image of series to throw up on the screen here during the during the recording. But, yeah, no, that that that's, that's really interesting.
Mike Nottelmann:I just thought it was interesting. We have a ton of architecture in Chicago that's really significant and really cool. Daniel Burnham and, Frank Lloyd Wright, you know, our Chicago architects and the architecture tourists that you could take downtown in the loop are really, really cool.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah.
Mike Nottelmann:So I I work in a very historic place, in a really cool place. And the shop that I work in has been a shop since 1940. So it originally started out as Ben's coin. And I found I found Aaron Burke and encased set from Ben's coin. It was 31 North Clark in Chicago, so it's got the same address and everything.
Mike Nottelmann:And then and then he took on a partner, Ben. I want to say his last name was Shapiro, but I'm not really sure I could be like messing that one up, confusing it with somebody else. But he took out a partner, Eddie Milas, and they had Rare Coa. And so Eddie and Harlan were the one that made the deal for the shop. And the really interesting part about it is that they made the deal for the shop on a handshake in Italy without a lawyer in sight.
Mike Nottelmann:And that's almost never done any. They shook hands and it's like, and then Harlan got the rights to the lease. And it's, it's, it is a location business. It's like where we're at. It there's just amazing stuff.
Tony Gryckiewicz:You must see some amazing things that come through that shop there because just the location, the Financial District. I mean, Chicago is, you know, a very, very famous, very old city in The United States. A lot of, money involved and and and and just crazy stuff.
Mike Nottelmann:We have a very large concentration of wealth just outside of Chicago in the suburbs. There are some suburbs that are that are just, you know, the the per capita income is obscene. It's like that. So it's like, I think at one time it was like the second or third highest per capita county in in The United States, which has since gone away, but but still the same kind of thing. Some fairly wealthy people here as well.
Mike Nottelmann:An example of that would be, there was one guy. So we are we are on Clark Street at the corner to the left is Madison. Madison and Clark, Madison is zero. And right there is Chase Towers. So this is where all the chase bank is and the, all the offices for chase, and they're closing a lot of their safe deposit boxes.
Mike Nottelmann:I don't know if that's going on everywhere in the country, but they're definitely doing it here in Chicago. All the banks are closing their safe deposit boxes and they're making people come in and get their stuff. And this guy had, he had, I want to say it was 27 kilos of gold. Wow. In his safe deposit box.
Mike Nottelmann:And he sure wasn't going to take that home. So he decided he was going to move it to cash and then move it someplace else into something else. Wow. And he brought it into us and it's like, I have a picture. It's it's all these kilo bars just sitting on a table.
Mike Nottelmann:And it's like, it doesn't even make a very big pile, but it's $4,000,000 worth of gold. It's just sick. And it just, you know, didn't walk in. You know, that was arranged. He called us.
Mike Nottelmann:He's like, Hey, you know, you're, you're a block away. We had an armored, you know, former cop and Russ Bega, who, if, you know, if you ever, yeah, he's a fairly large man and spent some time as a Sergeant in the army, not too long ago. So, very, very safe, very capable, you know,
Tony Gryckiewicz:You guys just did your two hundred and fiftieth episode right at the Baltimore Whitman show.
Mike Nottelmann:We did.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Is that correct? Did you guys do anything special for that episode? Was there kind of a celebration two hundred and fiftieth, episode, any special segments or special guests?
Mike Nottelmann:Okay. So we decided to do our two hundred fiftieth episode at the, Whitman Baltimore Expo because we had just a nonstop parade of guests. And so if you go I'm gonna plug myself. If you go to youtube.com/thecoinshow, you will see our interviews with John Feigenbaum, who is the head of Greysheat and Whitman Redbook, John Albany's, who's the head of CAC. You know, we had Donald Doctor.
Mike Nottelmann:Donald Kagan. We had David McCarthy who works for Kagan. Yeah. But David McCarthy is one of the, one of the coolest researchers you'll let, and we just let him go. He was like, kind of like I'm doing it right now or I'm dominating.
Mike Nottelmann:We let him do that for, and he went forty five minutes of talking about this book that he should write.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. He's offered to come on this program, so I need to get him on here to talk for free.
Mike Nottelmann:Oh, McCarthy. He's difficult to get because it just happened that he was there at the show. Interviewed Don Kagan, who's his boss. And so there was definitely a reason for him to come on. And I think Don kind of said, Hey, you need to do this.
Mike Nottelmann:Yeah. Because, you know, it's not that he's not willing. It's he's a very humble guy and he nerds out on stuff. And, you know, it's like, like I said, if you go back and you watch that. So we had him, we had, we had Bianca Barton, her dad, Fred, who are, experts in paper money errors and wrote the book for Whitman on paper money errors.
Mike Nottelmann:You know, last last time we had Jeff Garrett, but so we did all this for our two hundred fiftieth because we were gonna have that that parade of people there. In conjunction with that, we ran a contest, and it's still going. I don't know if it will be by the time this year, so that's you'll have to check. But, what we did was Matt and I each took 200 we went out and bought a coin, bought the coolest thing that we could buy. And on our Facebook group, we have a private group called Friends of the Coin Show.
Mike Nottelmann:If you go to Facebook and you ask to go in there, can see the poll and you can vote for which coin is cooler. I bought, an MS 64 Oregon Trail. Did you get a chance to see that one, Tony? So I I got an MS 64 Oregon Trail blast white. It's in an NGC holder.
Mike Nottelmann:It's a beautiful coin, and probably closer to a 300 coin than a $2.50 coin, but somebody they liked what we were doing, and so they gave me a break on the coin. And then Matt got a large or no, Matt got a a Vermont copper, so it's you've got two. So here's the thing. We have people voting to see who had the coolest purchase. The people that vote for each coin are going to be part of a drawing for that coin and we're giving them away.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Cool.
Mike Nottelmann:Yeah. I mean, just a nice little thank you to our listeners for hanging out with us for man, it's been fifteen years.
Tony Gryckiewicz:It's, always a fan it's always a fantastic episode to listen to. And the reason I gravitated towards it and the content was very educational scope, And I really identified with a lot of the listener questions, the people that would write in with listener questions about various series, US coin series. At that stage of my education in numismatics, every single one was a rabbit hole. Yeah. Absolutely.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And so I just I found that you guys would would mention really relevant topics. So you kind of discuss really relevant topics, and I could learn a lot in every single episode. That's why I gravitated towards that that that show. So but you've also recently started I know. I could say how recent it is, but another really successful podcast, which I absolutely love, and I watch it on YouTube in the evenings.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Oftentimes while I'm eating dinner, I'll watch this podcast called the ancient coins podcast with Aaron Burke. Correct. Last yeah. I mean, some of the episodes I've seen you guys recently do, you have over 500,000 views. I mean, the the channel has got incredible number of subscribers.
Tony Gryckiewicz:It's unheard of for
Mike Nottelmann:podcast. Channel is blown up. There's no question about that.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So take us back to like, what was the genesis of that? Why did you start the podcast? What was kind of the, the, the, the approach initially? And when did you, when did you guys stumble upon this or, or come upon this, this amazing success?
Mike Nottelmann:When Aaron hired me, he hired me to run his counter downstairs in the shop. And there was not, there was a fairly explicit agreement that I, I really wasn't there to do podcasts, but that if I wanted to goof around with stuff like that, was more than welcome to. And I had to pour a lot of my attention at first into learning the business because although people I know and coins I know, there's my job at Harlan Burke is is I buy a lot of the stuff that comes across the counter. And in doing that, you have to find a really fine line where you're gonna make the customer happy, but you can still make money. And so that was kind of what I had to learn is I had to learn where that was, how to do it, you know, and how to really find that that happy spot for people so that we could take care of people.
Mike Nottelmann:And and it's really odd because I told you I was a, was a teamster. I used to work in a warehouse. At the time that Aaron hired me, I was a customer service manager for Blue Cross Blue Shield. So I was all about customer service and taking care of people and, you know, doing all that stuff. I told Aaron, I said, you know, I don't, I don't really know what's going to happen, but I know your, your Google reviews and your Yelp reviews are probably going to get better.
Mike Nottelmann:And so, you know, it's like I, I was given a chance to really learn the business to kind of figure out what I was doing and what I want to do. And after a while, I kind of got comfortable and I started trying to do some videos of this and that. Nothing really kind of worked or stuck. And at one point I looked at Aaron and I said, well, first thing I did, and this is the honest gut truth because Matt, I give a lot of praise to Matt. Matt literally when Aaron was looking for somebody for his shop, Matt said, have you ever thought about hiring Mike?
Mike Nottelmann:And he was literally the genesis of me getting the coolest job I've ever had in my entire life. So it's a lot of praise to Matt. But, I went to Matt and I said, you know, would you really care if I did a podcast with Aaron? And he's like, no. Go ahead, man.
Mike Nottelmann:Just do what you do. And so me and Aaron started talking about it, and what we finally stumbled upon was that I mean, a very simple fact is that I know nothing about ancient coins. And so me guiding a show about ancient coins was gonna be kind of difficult. But Aaron had ideas and and had what he wanted to do. And so we we figured out that what he was gonna do is he was gonna teach me ancient coins.
Mike Nottelmann:And so you go back and we put all of these on our on the Harlan J. Burke website at hjbltd.com. And you can go back, you watch from the very beginning and Aaron will teach you ancient as he teaches me. And he covers important coins that come up for auction. We talk about them.
Mike Nottelmann:We talk about why they're important, what they are, where we expect them to sell at auction, things like that. And then generally the next episode, we will go back and we will look at them and we'll talk about them a little bit more and you get that kind of reinforcement with that. From my kind of expertise with podcasts, I added some elements to it. I said, okay, so we need a pearl of wisdom. We need something for people to, you know and it gives us a place to really hammer something educational.
Mike Nottelmann:So we do that. The next thing that I added, or that I brought to the party was, I was like, we need a map. Absolutely have to have a map so that when you're talking about Thrace, I can see on the map of the modern world exactly where that is.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Nottelmann:And so, Aaron developed this map that we have, and I think it's on the website where if you go in, you can zoom in and you can see all the emperors and all the coins and stuff like that in this map. And it's just, you know, Aaron wants, Aaron wants to educate people. And, and so, you know, my thing was, his name is valuable in the business people, you know, they have a reputation. Let's capitalize on that. So it's the Ancient Coin Podcast with Aaron Burke.
Mike Nottelmann:And then it was born.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Well, I think it's fantastic. The thing that I've gravitated towards has been this conversation looking at these auction catalogs, these auctions, the auction lots, leading into the auction, getting Aaron's expert opinion about what is a good quality ancient versus a poor quality ancient or something that he would stay away from. Learning a lot about the history, of course, which is a big part of ancients, but it's about how to select coins. And I've tried to focus a little bit about that in this pot in this program by bringing me on some experts in. We recently had one in large sense, late date large sense, which is really great.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Matt Mesowitz was fantastic talking about late date large scents. I had another one on the Indian Head scents. So I'm doing a lot of copper stuff, but I'm also hoping to do one on cat bus tabs at Morgan dollars or on Barbara, Barbara Coinage, for example, specifically getting the advice of an expert who is going to kind of reveal sort of like insider secrets about how do you select a good ancient. And that's what I've gotten from, the the podcast so far with, with with Aaron Burke. And then also doing the review and he's talking about stuff like the Doofus purchase.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I, I, I love it. I mean, it's so catchy. I know that's your creation, you know, this is the segments you have.
Mike Nottelmann:Actually that was him. Have to give you a yeah, he did the, he came up with the idea of the doofus purchase. So That's great. Yeah. But I mean, the the whole idea with with what he does is he points out not only what's important, but why it's a good coin to buy or why he'll be keeping an eye on this one.
Mike Nottelmann:And and you know, lot of these auctions are in Europe.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Mhmm.
Mike Nottelmann:And most people here in The United States wouldn't know anything about them, know, without that. And so, you know, it's where a lot of the bigger coins come up. And so Aaron is constantly talking about provenance pedigree and what it takes to bring it into the country and, and all of these things that people can trip up on. So it's fun to, to learn this and to learn it from him. And I am constantly humbled at how little I know, you know, and yet how much I enjoy it in the short time I've I've done it.
Tony Gryckiewicz:That incredible success. You know? And speaking of Coin Podcasts' success, I mean, you've obviously launched and, brought two pod Coin Podcasts as success, but a lot of them struggle to find their rhythm. A lot of there there's been a number of Coin Podcasts that, you know, have put out 25, 30 episodes, and then kinda we we haven't heard much from them. What advice would you give to newer creators, people, you know, like myself, about consistency, pacing, about how to build a structure, a great podcast that's gonna last?
Mike Nottelmann:To be honest with you, a lot of it has just been trial and error. You know, it's like we've tried different things. I tend to like to mix in something that's just a little absurd. So in the coin show podcast, maybe one of people's favorite things about what we do is so we we start every episode. We're talking about the news in the world of coins.
Mike Nottelmann:And to be honest with you, I just kind of look at, at news aggregators and I, I pull up stories that I think are interesting. It gives us a chance to talk about the new coins that are available. It gives us a chance to show them. Duh. So in kind of an homage to one of my favorite radio shows growing up, Steve and Gary here in Chicago, they used to do these skits and stuff like that.
Mike Nottelmann:And they would always have a sponsor and it was always something stupid, like watching my thumbtacks. And so I revived that for our thing. And I write almost all of them. I have a list. I honest to God, I took the file with us for our two hundred and fiftieth episode because I was going to be like, okay, you know, if there's enough people in chat, we'll look at it and we'll, you know, we'll kind of go through.
Mike Nottelmann:I'll ask people what they want to see. And it's like, I started realizing how big this file is. I mean, it's, it's enormous. You know, there's over, there's over a 100 episodes worth of, of dumb spots like hammers, belt loops. Yeah.
Mike Nottelmann:It is just, you know, staplers, you name it. But what what we're really doing is is we're injecting some humor and we're pointing out to you that we don't take any sponsorship, and we make a point out of that. We don't want super chats. We don't want any of this other, you know, it's like, look, like, subscribe. Those things feed the algorithm.
Mike Nottelmann:The algorithm puts us in front of more people. And when you do that, the show will kinda take care of itself. I think that a lot of people now are too focused on getting people to give them that super chat to give them that, you know, that which look, it'd be great if people wanted to, you know, give us, like, 56. That's that's awesome, but I just don't know what that does. Right?
Mike Nottelmann:So I would rather you spend your money on enjoying coins and, you know, let us kind of give you some advice or misguidance or whatever you want to call it. And, you know, like I said, being a little absurd is okay with it. And that's that I think is also something that's important to, to our podcast is that there's a certain amount of just fun. Yeah, because coins are a nerdy thing and we can sit here and we can talk about it. Well, don't call it a penny, call it a cent.
Mike Nottelmann:And are they really make have they made the last penny like it's been all over the news lately, right? And the fact of the matter is is no, they haven't. They made the last for circulation and if you listen to the stories, that's what they're saying. Next year, there's going to be sets. They've already planned them.
Mike Nottelmann:They have a dual date. You know, it's like they're gonna be available in mint sets and maybe by the roll. They have the blanks, they've already bought them. That's going to happen. Yeah.
Mike Nottelmann:We also have done in our news reporting, you know, stuff on midages and the midage of the $20.25 pennies is absurd. It's it's a couple of 100, couple of 100,000,000. I want to say it's, it's probably over like $2,000,000,020.25. So, you know, the president issued that executive order. I think it was in February or March.
Mike Nottelmann:And since they have made over 1,000,000,000 pennies.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So what is something about running a coin podcast that the audience would be surprised to learn?
Mike Nottelmann:It takes a lot more work than you think. So you know, it's funny you asked about what what kind of separates the wheat from the chaff and if you're you're running your own podcast, here's my best piece of advice to you. Go back and listen to your show. Because if you don't want to hear it and you don't want to listen to it a second time, most people won't want to hear it the first time.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Well, I will tell you that I listen to everyone in these episodes. And now granted, this is in preparation for broadcasting and preparation for publishing the episode, but I at minimum three three times per episode in terms of the editing. But then once it's launched, I, I watch it again in other YouTube channels I have on YouTube once it's actually live. I also listen to it in the car. So I listen to the audio version that's available for you folks on Apple Podcasts.
Mike Nottelmann:Quality control is important.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. But that's an interesting one. Like, to go back to the first ones and to rewatch or listen to the recordings and to ask yourself, yeah, do I actually enjoy listening to this or not? That honestly, it's one of the things I do with editing is some people don't know there are these these episodes they use a recorder usually about an hour and fifteen minutes. I usually edit them down to be less than an hour.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So we're usually cutting out about twenty minutes worth of conversation. And my barometer, kind of my test is I just I'm watching it a couple times and seeing, am I getting bored right now? Mhmm. Am I getting bored of listening to myself? Or or whatever.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And then if I am, then I'm thinking about how do I edit this and how do I kinda clean it up in order to keep it, you know, keep the pacing going and and and so forth. So
Mike Nottelmann:Yeah.
Tony Gryckiewicz:It is a lot of work. It is a lot of work.
Mike Nottelmann:It will. It's it's just more work than you think. And, and a lot of a lot of new podcasters, you know, they have an interest, they have an expertise that they want to share. But even in that, you need to do your research and do your homework. There are several that I can think of that are fairly new and fairly small that they'll have a subject in mind and they'll start talking about it, and they'll have even a website to show you what they're talking about.
Mike Nottelmann:But then if you ask them detail about it, they don't know, and they have to then go into the website to look at it. Well, if you're showing me this, be familiar with it. Guide me towards what I might be interested in it at least having have read it. So, behind me you'll see a lot of books, right? Whitman has sent me books for a long time because I do book reviews and it's it's one of those things where it's really important that you at least peruse the book because they send them with these press releases, and once you start reading book reviews you start realizing that they're almost verbatim the press releases.
Mike Nottelmann:It's like this, this, this, this, this. Here's your price. Here's where it is. And I I mean, it's a great racket. But Beth Deysher did a book called Cash In Your Coins, and it's one of my favorite books of all time.
Mike Nottelmann:And I interviewed her shortly after she put it out, and she looks at me. She goes, you read the book. And I'm like, yes. I read the that's the point. It should not shock you that the journalist in front of you has done his homework.
Mike Nottelmann:That's and that's, I think the other thing is it looks like fun and games and it is, and it can be. But at the end of the day, you have to be a journalist And there are certain rules that you have to you have to do. You know, do your homework. Be careful. Try not to say something stupid because God, that's really easy.
Mike Nottelmann:And if you say enough stuff, eventually you will.
Tony Gryckiewicz:If it any segments or ideas that you tried that didn't work, what did you learn from those experiments?
Mike Nottelmann:Okay. Yes. There have been lots of things that didn't work. I talked about some of the failures that we had earlier. Even having a third person just didn't work.
Mike Nottelmann:Was too crowded. And at the time we weren't doing video. Yeah, we were doing audio only. And so we were doing it through a Skype phone call. So we couldn't even see each other.
Mike Nottelmann:Right. And so we felt uncomfortable about interrupting each other. And that was when it became very apparent that Matt and I had this chemistry. We kind of knew when to move in and when not. Sure.
Mike Nottelmann:Know, it worked out really well. So, yeah, that's that that would be my my best.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Well, I mean, scheduling, it becomes really difficult. It it is difficult enough just to do one guest. I can't imagine some of these podcasts, there's some very, very popular, famous podcast podcast I listen to, and there's four hosts, and they show up every week to do the podcast. And I can't believe that they that they that they do.
Tony Gryckiewicz:It is difficult to, to to adjust the scheduling things.
Mike Nottelmann:We just got to the point a long time ago where we said, we're going to put out something really cool and something really fun, and we're just going to do it as often as we can. With the ancient coin podcast, there's a fairly strict schedule. We do it every two to three weeks period, end of statement. And Aaron is really, really insistent on that. It helps feed the algorithm.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah, sure. Absolutely.
Mike Nottelmann:But you know, it's like you look at the difference in the numbers and I will tell you that there's two entirely different strategies at play. If you look at the coin show podcast, I mean, we started out as an audio podcast. And to this day we have over, I want to say close to 4,000,000 downloads of the audio podcast. If you look at our YouTube channel, you're like, well, we've got 10,010 subscribers. This is not a huge number, but it's like, you take that and you add it to the we're on iHeartRadio.
Mike Nottelmann:We're on, Spotify. We're on, you know, I mean, any place you can get a podcast, iTunes, Apple Podcasts, all that stuff. We're on Facebook. We're on YouTube. We're on Instagram.
Mike Nottelmann:We're all these different platforms. The ancient coin podcast is on YouTube. That's it. It's on Aaron's channel specifically. And when Aaron started doing the show, he started realizing that there were people when he traveled the world that started going, I've seen your podcast.
Mike Nottelmann:He walked into a shop in, in, oh God, Portugal. And the shop owner looks like he goes, I've seen your podcast.
Tony Gryckiewicz:That's great.
Mike Nottelmann:So what Aaron did was he realized that from a business standpoint, it was something that worked as advertising. And so he invests advertising money into it. But I mean, fact of the matter is is that because we're we're timely and consistent after a little while, YouTube started saying, okay, we'll start pushing it a little bit. Yeah. And what ended up happening was we got a strike and we hired, hired this company out of Bangladesh to kind of take apart our shows, break them into little segments, make shorts for us and do all that stuff.
Mike Nottelmann:And they put together a short and they entitled it erotic coins. Yeah. And YouTube didn't like that. And so they took, not only took down the video, they took down our channel.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah.
Mike Nottelmann:And we were just at like 98,000 subscribers at that point. And I was healed. I was off the chain because it's like, we worked really hard for this and they took it down. Well, after a couple of weeks they put it back up and then they said, we understand, but you got to strike because you have a strike. You're not going to get your a 100,000 award until the strike drops in
Tony Gryckiewicz:a year.
Mike Nottelmann:And then what they did was they, they really didn't push the show very much. And if you look, it's like a lot of those episodes are 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 views, but it steadily grows just a little bit and a little bit and a little bit. Now, like three weeks ago or maybe a month and a half ago, they removed the strike. Finally got to that point we got our YouTube award in the mail right and now we have 380,000 subscribers and now the algorithm is pushing us and pushing us out there. So now we're getting like a half million views and that is just a product of, know, repetition, and a little bit of boost.
Mike Nottelmann:I mean, it's, you know, people look at YouTube as a way to make a living. It's, it's probably a better way to supplement your, your living than make one.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Well, I'm noticing already that this podcast is phenomenal from a marketing perspective. The number of people that walk up to my table at a show and say, seen your podcast is staggering. It it's shocking to me how many people at this stage already at only producing 22 episodes. This is gonna be, yeah, the twenty second episode. It's incredible to me.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And also the people that are reaching out and wanting to purchase some of the coins that we feature in the program or that are offering to sell some coins or looking for someone to make an offer on coins that they have for sale is incredible. People from across the country. And I asked them, well, how did you find me? I'm in Pennsylvania. You're in Texas.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And they said, well, I was looking for a coin dealer because I'm looking to sell these these coins. And I found your podcast, and you seemed really genuine and authentic and kinda approachable. And I liked your content. So I thought I'd reach out to you at your you know? And and and this is all came from the podcast.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So I can absolutely see this from a business perspective and marketing perspective as someplace that's really good to invest time and money and, you know, to help try and make this channel grow.
Mike Nottelmann:It is a phenomenal outreach. It is it is advertising that goes, you know, an hour long. You wanted to on your business, specifically your point of view, your expertise, and it showcases our personalities, which I think actually is what you know, that's what breeds the business is people look at you and they go, oh, he seems like a pretty decent guy. You know? It's like, let me talk to him.
Mike Nottelmann:Let's see what's going on. And that's really all it takes.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So where do you see both your podcast heading? Any new formats, collaborations, or topics you want to explore?
Mike Nottelmann:Collaborations are going to definitely be a part of it going forward because I I have always felt it's important to support other podcasts to help the people that are pulling on the same end of the rope. So I think the biggest danger, the biggest problem that we have in podcasting right now is misinformation, misinformation, disinformation, and click bait that gives it to you. So I'm actually working on something that might help set the separate the wheat from the chaff in a visual way, which might help really people to guide them towards that.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. I, I do want to second that point you made about disinformation, clickbait and so forth. With the rise of AI and, you know, the proliferation of, of a lot of, channels on YouTube, some of them just generated generative AI that produces some of it. Just the fact that the algorithm and so many channels are rewarded by click by clicks and by likes, and therefore there's an incentive to create kind of clickbaity stuff. There is the possibility for people that are trying to learn about coins or trying to get the coin collected to get a lot of bad information, a lot of information that's kind of not very helpful to them to to steer them in in the right direction.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So I think that's very important, like you're stating is that those some of the podcasts, like, like I'm hoping this one would be definitely Coin Show podcast and Ancient Coins podcast with Aaron Burke. All these podcasts have been about education and about equipping new collectors as well as seasoned collectors in good principles for coin collecting to, to get the most out of a hobby, to participate in the hobby in a greater level. I mean, I always try telling people about coming out to coin shows, come to coin shows. You're going to meet so many people. You're gonna interact and you're gonna network and you're gonna find you're gonna see coins in hand.
Tony Gryckiewicz:It's so much different than
Mike Nottelmann:Yes.
Tony Gryckiewicz:You know, for eBay. You know, stuff like that.
Mike Nottelmann:Coin dealers are generally good people. They're pretty easy to get along with. And regardless of like your politics or your religion or any of that other stuff, when you all like coins, you all kind of have something that brings this together. If my mission, you know, is always to educate. It's always to, you know, push things a little bit forward and a little bit more forward.
Mike Nottelmann:One of the other things that I like to do is have you ever heard of the Newman numismatic portal?
Tony Gryckiewicz:I've heard of it for sure. Haven't spent any time on it.
Mike Nottelmann:Eric P Newman set up this, this, I wanna say it's a it's a foundation or something like that, but it funds this source of knowledge for numismatists, and it's called the Newman numismatic portal. And if you search for it on Google, you can find it. You can click into it. In this portal, he has archived every auction catalog he can find for the last hundred plus years. There are all sorts of different types of records.
Mike Nottelmann:There's there's pictures. There's stuff like this, and it's a searchable database that you can go into and you can look stuff up. You can look up old issues at coin world, the new Mismatist, all kinds of things, new Mismatic. And so every year, actually I think it's twice a year, they do what's called the Newman Numismatic Symposium. And I have had the honor of closing that every time they've had it.
Mike Nottelmann:So they've been doing it, I think six years. And if you go to the last Neumann numismatic symposium, you will see a presentation that I did on clickbait and how to combat it and you know what it is and what we can do to get rid of it. There are a couple of people that are tremendously hard to get rid of that are really, really tenacious and just insist they have millions and millions of followers, which is just insane. But like I said, when you get down to it, if you really, really, really want to buy a million, you can. So I don't know what they're doing.
Mike Nottelmann:I don't know what their what their their, I don't know what their point is. I don't know why they're doing it other than to maybe personally get off on, you know, people, people, right? I mean, yeah, it takes all kinds.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So I just want to say thank you because this has certainly been a little bit of a dream come true for me. I was allowed to be a podcaster for many, many years. I was inspired by your podcast. I got into coins and then I never thought I'd have a coin podcast. And I got a chance to interview the the, the famous, Mike Navelman.
Mike Nottelmann:Oh, god.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Wow. Start multiple coin podcasts and massive success. So, thanks a lot, Mike, for doing this. I really appreciate it. I'm hoping people out there, who are thinking about starting to do create some content for in the coin business, get inspired by your work and also by this podcast and and and get going.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So, if people want to just get in touch with you, ask you a question, whatever, what's the best way for them to do that?
Mike Nottelmann:There are multiple ways to do it. So first off, thank you for the the price. It's very high praise. I appreciate it. It's nice to have your hard work pay off in some way and having people appreciate it.
Mike Nottelmann:As far as getting ahold of me, you can always email me, Mike@coinshowradio.com or Miken@hjbltd.com. And both of those if you go it's like the email address is so hard over the phone. We they they, like, have the worst email address of all time because it's @hjbltd.com, and the letters all sound the same. So it's like we like to get on each other when somebody's on the phone with somebody trying to give them their email. How many times is it going to take?
Mike Nottelmann:Cause it's always three or four. So if you go to the Harleberg website, you go to about us, you'll find my picture, click on that. It'll email me. So you could do that too. Nice.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. I had other email addresses that I learned from trial and error were not very easy for people to re either remember or to type in or to mix up with other letters or numbers. So it's now just tonycabbagecoins.com. You cannot, I think, best that one up. It's tonycabbagecoin dot com is the way to
Mike Nottelmann:get off It's the pretty easy. Yeah.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. All right, Mike. Thank you very much. Have yourself
Mike Nottelmann:a Oh, has been an honor to be on your podcast. Thank you so much. And I wish you continued success.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Thank you. Appreciate it. Have a good one.
Mike Nottelmann:You too.
