SINCONA's 100th auction
SINCONA is not actually a name, but an abbreviation standing for Swiss International Coin Auction AG. Jürg Richter pondered for days before settling on this name: “When I founded my auction house on May 1, 2011, I needed a distinctive name that was also easy to pronounce in all languages. I had dozens of ideas and rejected them all. Then, at some point, I came up with SINCONA. And with this memorable name, it became part of the numismatic world.”
A banking crisis leads to the founding of SINCONA
But how did SINCONA come about in the first place? To understand this, we need to go back a few years, to when Jürg Richter was still managing director of the numismatic department at UBS. In this role, he also experienced one of the darkest periods in Swiss banking history. In 2008, UBS suffered the consequences of the subprime crisis; it had to make large write-downs in the first quarter of 2008, and there were also many negative headlines in connection with the management of its American clients.
Jürg Richter reports: “The numismatic department also suffered as a result, even though we had nothing to do with private client advisory services. The whole thing then escalated in January 2009: I wanted to go to the international coin fair in New York and was stopped by US immigration. They left me sitting there without my passport for two hours. As rude as the official was, he ultimately had to let me go because there was obviously no connection between the allegations against UBS and me. But I didn’t want to go through that intimidating experience again.
Coin trading under difficult conditions
Jürg Richter continues: “After 2009, many processes within the bank were reviewed and re-examined; what had worked perfectly for many decades had to be redefined. Since many of these planned adjustments and changes – particularly in the area of compliance – did not always correspond to the customs of the numismatic industry, a suitable solution had to be found.
For business policy reasons, UBS subsequently decided to discontinue the numismatic department, so we sat down together at the round table and found a fair win-win solution for both sides.
The first own auction
On May 1, 2011, Jürg Richter founded SINCONA and immediately faced the next problem. How would his customers find out about this very important step? Due to banking secrecy laws, UBS was unable to disclose the addresses of its numismatic customers. Jürg Richter recounts: “We were in the fortunate and comfortable position of already holding our first SINCONA auction on June 29, 2011. And we found a very good solution with UBS. The bank itself sent the first two catalogs to our numismatic customers at the time. We simply enclosed a letter with the catalogs explaining the situation to customers and asking them to provide us with their addresses. Our second auction took place in October. By then, we had already received an attractive collection of Russian and Byzantine gold coins. The results were outstanding, and SINCONA gained international media coverage.”
The company is growing
Back in February 2013, Jürg Richter founded SINCONA Trading AG for physical precious metal trading and other services. In doing so, he filled an important gap that had arisen because fewer and fewer Swiss banks wanted to engage in physical and marketable gold trading.
In the same year, the company moved to Limmatquai 112. Jürg Richter recalls: “Someone told me that an entire building was for sale on Limmatquai. It was ideal because it had been a bank branch and already had a large vault area. When I inquired about the price, I quickly came back down to earth. Unfortunately, a purchase was out of the question, but I got to know the buyer personally and subsequently became a very satisfied tenant at Limmatquai.”
Incidentally, the internationally positioned SINCONA not only includes the Swiss parent company, but also two German subsidiaries, SINCONA Deutschland in Weil and, since 2018, Frankfurter Münzhandlung Nachf. GmbH.
Jürg Richter is delighted with the many very happy personnel decisions that have placed SINCONA among the elite of the European coin trade: “The family atmosphere has always been very important to me. I want to work with people who are not only professionally skilled and enjoy what they do, but with whom I also get along on a personal level. I had already written many books with Ruedi Kunzmann, so I knew that we worked well together. Michael Hardmeier joined us in 2012, bringing with him his legal background and his enthusiasm for numismatics. Arne Kirsch, an experienced numismatist, is also a great fit for the SINCONA team; he joined us in 2014. At that time, he was president of the IAPN. He has brought us many international contacts and made SINCONA even better known in the numismatic guild. Our latest addition is the equally experienced Berlin numismatist Michael Otto.
With Benoît Schöni and Jochen Schmälzle, some of whom were long-time colleagues back in the UBS days, as well as my daughter Angela Richter, SINCONA Trading is perfectly staffed.
Enjoyment of coins as part of the corporate philosophy
Jürg Richter and Ruedi Kunzmann are known to many Swiss collectors for their numerous standard works on Swiss numismatics. Their “New HMZ Catalog” is considered a kind of bible of Swiss coinage. But Jürg Richter is also passionate about other topics. “I have worked on shooting medals, Swiss banknotes, and Swiss samples. I enjoy compiling catalogs and giving something back to collectors. They should share in the knowledge I acquire every day at SINCONA.”
At SINCONA, the joy of coins is the focus of everything we do. Jürg Richter says: “When I wake up one day and no longer feel like going to work, then it will be time to stop. But I’m not there yet, far from it. Every day brings new surprises. Every customer could have an exciting piece. Just look at our title piece for the anniversary auction. Three days before the editorial deadline, someone called me to say he had a coin. No idea what it was. It had a city on it, probably Zurich. And then he unwrapped the coin! I told him right away that we would include it in our 100th auction. Of course, he was delighted. And so was I.”
The earthly paradise of numismatics
When asked whether he would have preferred a career in banking, Jürg Richter smiles and says: “My idea of ‘paradise’ is sitting down with good friends over a glass of fine wine to talk about coins.”
We wish Jürg Richter and his colleagues many more opportunities to do just that.
Click here to visit the SINCONA website and view the current auctions of Swiss International Coin Auction AG.
You can find Auction 100 via this link.
Text and Images: Ursula Kampmann
