Agenial cigar-smoking Arsenal fan, Dimitri Loulakakis has spent most of his business career dealing in coins. He was born in Athens, he was of Cretan extraction. But coin dealing wasn’t part of his family’s game plan. Iinfluenced by uncles who were in Greek politics and he was originally destined for the diplomatic corps. But then he dropped out of the London School of Economics to work in a shipping business, a job obtained through family connections. “I think every Greek youth in London at the time did the same thing.”
Ten years later, at the age of 30, he was European sales manager for one of the largest privately-owned Greek shipping and cruise lines. The entry into coin dealing came when he got interested in the first Churchill Crown, a commemorative coin struck on the death of Britain’s wartime prime minister.
A colleague suggested he talk to a friend at Spink Co – who turned out to be the legendary coin expert Howard Linacre – and, “within a week I was a confirmed numismatist. It quickly went beyond a hobby to become a lifelong passion.”
Three years after that, at the end of 1968, he decided to set up shop on the Fulham Road as a coin dealer, with five pounds in cash and his own modest collection, by then worth around £3,000, as collateral and stock combined.
“Everyone thought I was bonkers,” he says, “but I went headlong into it. I never do anything by halves. The people at the bank next door were taking bets on how many weeks I would survive.”
One advantage was that in his final years working in shipping Loulakakis had travelled widely in Europe on business, taking care as well to visit every numismaticcoin dealer he could find in pursuit of his hobby. “During that time I got to know every coin dealer of note in Europe,” he says.
A couple of years ago Chelsea Coins, his fledgling business, begun in 1968, was absorbed into Noble Investments (UK), currently the only listed coin dealer in the UK stock market. Mr Loulakakis, now in his early 70s, remains an executive director. He is also an adviser to and coin buyer for the Hellenic Numismatic Museum, for which he seeks out specific items when the Ministry of Culture budget permits.
In a lengthy career as a coin dealer there have inevitably been high and low points. Mr Loulakakis says that his lowest ebb came when his car and entire stock of coins were stolen while he was attending a coin show in 1968. “It took me a long time to make my mind up to persevere.” To this day he strongly advises his clients never to leave coins in a car unattended.
The high point was in 1971, when he was the first British dealer to attend the Long Beach Coin Show, a long-time fixture for American coin collectors numismatists and dealers. Having put together every coin he could muster, he sold out within four hours, then toured the show buying more stock, and sold out again, repeating the trick several times before the show closed. “It made my name in the business,” he says.
Mr Loulakakis naturally believes that coin collecting is an excellent moneymaking activity, but admits it is not one that appeals to everyone. He observes, though, that “over the years, and especially over the last five decades, there has been an average annual increase in coin prices of around 11 per cent a year”.
“It is a hobby that’s a bit esoteric. You can’t really show off your coin collection in the same way you can show off a painting or a Chinese vase. But you do get the satisfaction of handling your coins and seeing your collection increase in value.”
His own collection is relatively modest. His main interests are a collection of 20th century French coins assembled for his wife, who is French, and a collection of Cretan coins and medals that reflect his own family’s background.
His tips for good areas for collectors to look at now, however, include the Victorian era “where the coins are relatively plentiful but very attractive”, and early English gold coins from the mid-14th century reign of Edward III onwards.
One reason for folding his coin dealing business into the potentially much larger operation of Noble Investments is that he sees great potential for developing an investment market in coins in the UK. As he notes, “the American market is a hundred times more powerful than our own, and it has got to that stage almost entirely as a result of investor money”.
“There is no reason why a late 19th century US one cent coin should sell for $100,000 whereas a 1798 Dorrien Magens shilling, of which there are probably fewer than ten in existence, will only set you back £15,000. But that is a fact.
“What we are trying to do now is to attract serious investors into the English coin market, to treat them like collectors and to turn them into lifelong numismatists.”
A passion for Arsenal
‘In 1938, when I was four years old, my uncle visited London and returned to Athens with a programme from Highbury. I was fascinated and I told my best friend that he could support whatever team he liked, but that I was for Arsenal no matter what.
‘The first thing I did when I was a student in London was to go to Highbury. There were occasions when I went without food just so I could afford the one shilling and sixpence that a ticket for the terraces cost in those days.’
‘For me, the high point has always been when Arsenal did the double in 1971. I remember it as though it were yesterday.’
