Coin collecting and selling is growing in popularity, according to CoinHub Founder Blake Alma.
“We’ve seen 33 percent growth, year after year since we started selling coins in 2022,” Alma said. “I created the media part of the company in 2020, but I didn’t start selling until 2022, and the hobby as a whole, especially ecommerce-wise, from 2022 to about the end of 2024, saw about a 1,000-percent growth, month after month, for about two years straight.
“It’s had quite the boom,” he said. “I think part of that is because of COVID, and people looking for things to do at home, and that was an easy thing to do. You could buy online, and watch people sell coins,” Alma said.
He said the e-commerce business in coins has had tremendous growth with the explosion of platforms such as Whatnot, TikTok and eBay. COVID also attracted more people to the coin-collecting hobby because they were looking for something to do.
“The collectable hobby as a whole continually does grow,” Alma said. “Unlike stamp collecting, which has fallen by the wayside because it didn’t catch up with the times, coins had that opportunity with COVID. People started posting things on social media about coins,” he said.
“We have 1.9 million followers on our social media, and most of that was grown during the COVID era, and that got a lot of people into the hobby. And, of course Whatnot came out during the COVID era as well, which got more people into the hobby. Then, the coin industry has been very adaptive to ecommerce in the past few years.”
On average, coins see an investment return of five percent a year. Blake said it’s a “low-risk” way to invest. He said “silver, gold and coin collecting is one of the greatest hedges against inflation.”
“The coin industry is a multi-billion-dollar industry,” he said. “There are several companies that do billions of dollars in sales like Stack’s Bowers, who exclusively focus on coins, and Heritage Auctions, but there are over 35-million avid coin collectors in the United States. So, it’s a very fast-growing hobby.”
Alma started his business with $800, and he bought coins with that money. In the beginning he had small, five to 10 percent profit margins.
“Thankfully, that added it up. I started it on my own with not much help at all. None, really. It’s hard work and determination that makes things work but what helps anyone become an entrepreneur is if you’re going into entrepreneurship, what you need to do is find out what your passion is, and find a way to make income off of that passion,” he said.
Alma said this year, he’s been successful on TikTok. Since 2022, on Whatnot, TikTok Live and eBay Live, his company has generated over $10 million dollars in sales.
“This year, the one that’s been the most successful by overall sales volume is TikTok. We’ve done over two million dollars in sales since March of this year on TikTok,” Alma said.
In opening a new, physical storefront that buys and sells coins, he is excited about seeing new coins come in and interacting face-to-face with customers.
“There’s never a dull moment, and there’s never-ending knowledge,” Alma said. “So, there’s always something new and exciting. They still make remarkable coins to this day. In 2026, they introduced the Semiquincentennial Coin program to celebrate America’s 250 years, and they’ve made some beautiful coin designs.”
“Thomas Jefferson was an avid coin collector,” he said, “And it’s so cool to hold a coin, which could have potentially been held by him, or another exceptional historical figure. If you love history, coins is one of the greatest hobbies you can be a part of, and history is one of my all-time favorite topics.”
CoinHub's grand opening in Lebanon on Halloween is more than a move to a bigger space: The new downtown location at 110 S. Broadway St. will be the company’s first full retail shop. It has in-person sales and trading in a location that is about five times larger than the previous Lebanon shop at 27 N. East St., which has only purchased or bought coins that were sold online.
“A few years ago, I did move to Lebanon, and I chose it because it is in a central location, between Dayton and Cincinnati, and I love being close to both, and that way, I can attract both demographics. The long-term goal was to open this shop one day. Almost all of our sales have been done online, so the goal was to open a physical retail location.
“I came to Lebanon because of how central it is, and our downtown is like a Hallmark town. It’s very quaint and historical,” Alma said.
He said he likes being able to hold a tangible item, like a coin, which is worth money. He appreciates the idea of a “handshake deal” and “working with the customer, one-on-one.”
“I’ve dreamed for two or three years of putting a shop in downtown Lebanon, in the heart of it, and it is quite popular. So not a lot of spaces become available, and finally, after two or three years of waiting, a location opened up, and I jumped on that as soon as I could. I’m excited to be in the heart of downtown Lebanon. It’s beautiful and I think it’s the perfect place,” he said.
Alma was 9 years old when he was first introduced to the hobby of coin collecting by a man at his church named Tom Estes. One day, Blake sat next to Tom, and Tom opened his Bible, and he had a 1957 Silver Certificate, which he gave to Blake.
“I didn’t know what it was, and he told me. He said back in the day, you could exchange the certificate for a physical silver dollar coin, and it was a receipt, saying you owned precious metals, and I thought that was cool. He said, ‘you know what Blake, I want you to keep this, but you have to promise to keep it until you’re really old like me.’ I said, ‘Yes, sir.’ I still have it. I have it framed now because it’s what started everything. He passed away a few years later, but that act of kindness changed my life, and it made me a coin collector for life,” said Alma.
“In 2020, right before COVID, I created a TikTok page called CoinHub, and I started making videos about my love for coins. I had a $50 cell phone. It was nothing amazing or fancy. I just had fun with it, and it blew up,” he said.
In 2022, he decided to leverage his social media following, and he built an online store, predominately through Whatnot, the live shopping app.
Alma, 26, started CoinHub at age 19 in January 2020. Born and raised in Sharonville, he has built a family-run business. His brother Luke Alma, who serves as operations manager and his best friend, Micah Carter, who acts as assistant store manager, are among 11 employees that help to run the business. The company reports more than $10 million in cumulative sales across its operations. Blake moved to Lebanon in 2022.
“I will be very involved with this. We’ve done several projects at CoinHub. We have published several best-selling books, we have a massive media website, where we give people information about coins, it’s called the CoinHub Journal, (coinhubmedia.com), and we have all of these billable apps in our website, where people can keep track of their coins, coin inventory and learn, and of course, we sell online through several different platforms,” Alma said. “There’s always a new opportunity, and this is probably the most traditional of all of the opportunities that we have done, and it was naturally the next step in the growth of our business.”
CoinHub’s Lebanon Coin & Jewelry will host a Halloween grand opening from 1–7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 31. There will be a ribbon-cutting at 1 p.m., followed by free food with Skyline Chili at 1:30 p.m. Additionally, there will be Halloween candy for children, games and coin giveaways.
“It is all-new territory, which is exciting in itself, but I love interacting with other coin collectors, getting to know them, their love for the hobby and hearing their stories, and then, seeing new coins, and selling coins out of a physical shop, which is something we’ve never done,” Alma said.
With 14 display cases, the store will carry gold and silver coins, common coins, certified coins, rare coins, paper money, collectable bills, jewelry and more.