Refinancing? Try Pentagon Federal Credit Union (PFCU)

/ Adam Nash / 4 Comments

With rates plummeting these days, many people are choosing to refinance.  My family falls into that bucket, as we refinanced our home almost five years ago (2004) at the low, low rate of 4.5% for a 5/1 mortgage.  (In case you are curious, we ended up getting a 5/1 because while 30-year rates were also low, we felt it unlikely that we’d be staying in our current house more than 7 years.)  At the time, I remember looking at historical rates and saying:

When will we ever be able to refinance at 40-year lows again?

Silly me, the answer turned out to be about five years later, in late 2008.  Since our rates were about to float, and not trusting the bank to keep the rate reasonable, we decided to lock in rates for at least another five years.  In the process, we evaluated almost every web-based pricing agent, several internet deals, and one professional mortgage broker.

The winner: Pentagon Federal Credit Union

To get a mortgage, you must join the credit union.   You can do this for free if you or a family member served in the armed forces and has proof.  Otherwise, you can sign up to join the National Military Family Association for $20.  Yes, that’s right.  $20.

I’ve been extremely happy with the service.  In fact, when we originally engaged with them, the rates on a jumbo 5/5 mortgage (a unique mortgage they offer that resets every 5 years based on US Treasury rates) were at 5.375%.  They have dropped twice since then, and they allowed us to reset at their current price of 4.625%.

Yes, I know there is probably a better deal out there.  But I also know that most are worse.

In any case, they are worth checking out.  Their rates are updated daily.  Low closing costs.  They depend on Fannie Mae for securitization, so it’s really a good deal if you have a good credit score and fit within guidelines.  No points for loans under 70% LTV.  0.50 points for loans between 0.70% and 0.80% LTV.

If you find a better deal out there… don’t tell me.  I’m happy enough as is.  I may ask for you help again in 2014.

Or, at the rate we’re going, if rates plummet to 100 year lows in 2009, we might refinance again.

3% mortgages?  That’s the magic of deflation…

Understanding Deflation: Bonds Paying 0%

/ Adam Nash / 2 Comments

There wsa a good article in today’s WSJ (requires subscription) describing the unique point we hit today in the bond market.  Some durations of US Treasury bonds are now actually paying negative interest, -0.01% in some cases.

Investors around the world are stuffing their money into a mattress — otherwise known as the U.S. Treasury-bond market.

Fund managers, corporate treasurers, hedge funds, banks and central banks want to show their constituents, or bosses, their portfolios are bulletproof as year end approaches. Even with all the government’s steps to shore up the credit markets, investors aren’t taking any risks. Instead, they are willing to pay a premium, rather than collect one, to ensure they have in 2009 what they have now.

That means that someone is paying $100.00 for the priviledge of  getting back $99.99 at the end of the term.

This may sound ridiculous, unless you think of it in plain English:

“I’m willing to pay the US Government one penny to keep my $100.00 safe and sound for this duration.”

In a world of fear and deflation, this statement starts to make sense.  Hell, you might even pay more than $0.01 for that security in some cases.

Deflation is a very weird financial state.  For most people, it’s completely counter-intuitive. It’s a world where cash today is worth less than cash tomorrow.  It’s a world where commodities (like gold, silver, oil, food) get cheaper over time nominally, not more expensive.  It’s a world where you don’t buy today, because tomorrow the same product will be cheaper.

In fact, the only large segment of the population at this point who likely have an instinctive feel for deflation are people tied to high technology, primarily hardware like hard drives and semiconductors.  They’ve spent 30 years dealing with the fact that their products will be cheaper tomorrow than today.  They’ve even created high return businesses in effectively a deflationary environment.

I’m not going to go into detail about all aspects of deflation in this post.  But I did think it was worth explaining why 0% bonds might make sense.

Think about the dangers for keeping cash:

  • Someone could steal it.  So you have to secure it.
  • It can get physically destroyed (fire, pets, small children)
  • You can invest it, but those investments may lose money (stocks, bonds, commodities, you-name-it)
  • You can put it in a bank, but they may go bankrupt.  (you are protected up to $250K, but you may not get it immediately)

When people are afraid, and liquidity is rushing out of the system, 0% guaranteed by the ultimate “too big to fail” institution in the world can sound pretty good.

Now, I doubt this makes sense for individuals with dollars measured in thousands.  With those numbers, you can get 3+% on a CD, guaranteed by the FDIC.  But for institutions with millions or billions, how do you protect your cash?  Seriously.  It’s not a trivial problem when you think about it.

And no, you can’t just “go to gold”.  Even gold drops in nominal value during deflation.

Mathematically, if a country is undergoing 5% deflation per year, that means that $1000 of gold will only cost $950 in a year.   From that point of view, 0% percent interest + 5% deflation = a 5% real return on your capital, adjusted for inflation.

Yes, it seems like a monetary phenomenon from Bizzaro’s home planet, a square world where people say “goodbye” when they come and “hello” when they go.

But that’s what we’re flirting with right now, as it seems like literally $20 Trillion in nominal value may have disappeared off the planet.

The silver lining, however, is that you can make money in a deflationary market, if you re-orient your thinking.  Sell your products quickly, for cash.  Money now is worth more than money later.  Prioritize products that buyers cannot postpone.  Inventory turnover is key.

Intel has made billions turning over products that drop in value 1% a week in some cases.  It can be done.

Google Superstar Joins LinkedIn

/ Adam Nash / 1 Comment

Can’t get much better press than that, right?  The title is copied verbatim from a blog post on the announcement.

From Finance Geek:

A Google (GOOG) rock star defects: Dipchand “Deep” Nishar, who helped kickstart Google’s mobile business, is moving to LinkedIn.

WSJ: Mr. Nishar, 40, in January will become vice president of product strategy for the social-network that is focused on professionals. He will lead LinkedIn’s efforts to develop new products and services on top of its social-networking site. LinkedIn chairman Reid Hoffman, who had previously filled the senior product role, will remain at the company and shift his focus on broader strategy issues…

Mr. Nishar held a range of jobs at Google, including building the back-end infrastructure for Google’s monetization systems, starting its mobile initiatives and, more recently, overseeing product development for the Asia-Pacific region. He worked closely with Jonathan Rosenberg, Google’s senior vice president of product management, and was the recipient of a rare and lucrative accolade given to employees who have made extraordinary contributions to the company, known as the Google Founders Award.

The original Wall Street Journal article is here.  My favorite quote from Deep:

His departure comes as the recession has made a move from a mature company to a start-up more risky. But LinkedIn, which has 32 million registered users, is better positioned than many… “I don’t view LinkedIn as risky by any means,” said Mr. Nishar.

Very excited to have Deep join the team in 2009.  His LinkedIn profile is here for more detail on his professional achievements.

The Right Way to Implement Change

/ Adam Nash

One of the great joys in Product Management is the launch of great new features and platforms that touch millions of users.  Recently, I’ve had the pleasure of watching my team launch one of the biggest and most challenging efforts at LinkedIn to date with the launch of the new LinkedIn Search.

If you haven’t tried it, you should.  It’s fantastic.

Even more exciting to me, of course, is the fact that this new search engine, as great as the features are, is just scratching the surface of what we’ll be able to achieve in 2009 and beyond.  It’s no surprise to me that Search has driven a number of major innovations on the web in the past decade.  Over the years, the baton of technology leadership and innovation has been passed from natural search to paid search to product search, and I firmly believe that technology and customer demand points to people search as an area with the breadth and depth for incredible innovation in the next few years.

Search is a huge piece of the LinkedIn experience for millions of users for obvious reasons – so many of our professional tasks require us to “find the right person” based on expertise, based on geography, based on company, and most of all, based on relationship.  That’s the kicker.  People search, by its nature, must be socially relevant to the searcher.  Completely.  The same query can and should be ordered differently based on your unique profile and relationships, because that’s what matters in this context.

One of the hardest problems in Product Management, however, is how to upgrade and change a product that millions of people are using every day to get their jobs done.  It isn’t easy with consumer software, it isn’t easy with enterprise software, and it’s almost impossible in the 24×7 world of the consumer internet.  Even small incremental changes can be incredibly difficult, so where does that leave you when you have to make large, whole-scale change?

All the Web 1.0 companies have struggled with this, and I don’t think there is a single right answer to this question because every community and product is different to some extent.  But fundamentally, there are approaches that can help produce the best possible outcomes in these tough situations, and they all begin and end with how you communicate, interact and respond to your customers.

That’s why I had to share here this blog post I found tonight about the recent Search launch.

WebProNews: LinkedIn Looks to the Community For Improvement.  The Right Way to Implement Change.

While I am excited about the new search product features, and I am excited about the new technology and platform we’ve built, I’m even more excited in this case about how the team researched, built, tested, and launched this product.

I’m excited that Sarah, our Principal Designer on the new Search, wrote this blog post about the importance of the customer in our thinking and process.  I’m excited that Chris at WebProNews (among other blog posts I’ve seen) noticed that we cared.

It’s a truism on the consumer internet that if you’ve ironed out all the risks and uncertainty in product improvement, you are moving far too slow and with too little tangible feedback from your customers.  Usability testing, competitive research, site metrics, customer service, quality requirements, innovative engineering, and communication will not, by themselves, guarantee success every time.  They can’t because the inherent complexity and pace of change is too great (thankfully) on the consumer internet.

But I believe that, over time, these techniques properly utilized increase your odds of success, where success is defined by the utility and delight that you provide your customers.

I’ve had a number of proud moments at LinkedIn, but I just wanted to say here how proud I am of the user experience team at LinkedIn, and how proud I am of the teams that helped make the new search a reality.

I’m proud of what you’ve built, and more importantly, I’m proud of how you did it.

The Right Way to Implement Change.

Recession Began in December 2007. Official PDF Here.

/ Adam Nash

I’ve been looking all over the web for the actual technical document that was published today that declared the recession start as December 2007.  Personally, I found the news reports on this terribly lacking – it’s really quite confusing how the recession could start before two sequential quarters of GDP growth.

The full PDF is here.  The synopsis:

The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research met by conference call on Friday, November 28. The committee maintains a chronology of the beginning and ending dates (months and quarters) of U.S. recessions. The committee determined that a peak in economic activity occurred in the U.S. economy in December 2007. The peak marks the end of the expansion that began in November 2001 and the beginning of a recession. The expansion lasted 73 months; the previous expansion of the 1990s lasted 120 months.

A recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in production, employment, real income, and other indicators. A recession begins when the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends when the economy reaches its trough. Between trough and peak, the economy is in an expansion.

It looks like the discrepency is based on some of the differences in measurement for GDI (Gross Domestic Income) and GDP (Gross Domestic Product), which should be equal, but due to measurement issues, often are not.  Predominantly, it looks like employment peaked in December 2007, making everything afterward post-inflection.

My personal opinion is that too much was made of this today in terms of the stock market – a lot of trading these days seems to hinge on which historical analogy happens to be in vogue that day.  Today, the meme was “long recession”, with the December 2007 technicality confirming that we’ve “already had a recession of 12 months!” which is historically long for a recession.

Anyway, I’m sure readers out there with an economics background will appreciate the actual report, versus the drivel in the popular media.

Top Five Candidates for the Fifth Cylon (Potential Spoilers)

/ Adam Nash / 23 Comments

Look, don’t read this if you are worried about spoilers.  Seriously.  Why are you even reading a post about the Fifth Cylon if you aren’t curious, right?

The number of people who read my blog always surprises me.  What surprises me even more is that almost everyone who tells me this asks when I’m going to post about Battlestar Galactica again.

Since January is around the corner, it’s about time for another post.  Here we go.

First, there is a Season Four promo up on SciFi now.  If you haven’t watched it, you have to.  Now.

SyFy Portal broke a story yesterday that basically says that they’ve known the identity of the Fifth Cylon for some time.  They don’t come right out and say it, but they give a list of the “Top Five Candidates”.  I thought I’d reproduce the list here, with my own comments on their likelihood:

  • Lee Adama. Adam’s Odds = 1%. Sorry, exactly how would Adama raise a Cylon from birth and not know it?  To justify this, pretty much everyone would have to be a Cylon in one form or another.  I like this theory even less than Zak Adama… I’m giving it 1% out of respect for those who believe, and as a hedge against the remote chance of lameness on the writers’ part.
  • Felix Gaeta. Adam’s Odds = 50%. Some potential indicators that Gaeta is the one.  First, he helped the resistance, like the other four of the final five.  Seems to have always been around the one in command – either Adama or Baltar.  Sings strange music when injured, as if he is enjoying the “humanity” of pain and emotion.  Also, killed the doctor with a pen to the neck in a fairly brutal way.
  • Laura Roslin. Adam’s Odds = 4%. Sorry, I know this is a favorite for some people.  “Imagine the drama if Adama’s love interest is a Cylon!”  Maybe if Battlestar Galactica were on Lifetime I’d buy it.  But not on SciFi.  Not with this writing crew.  I’m giving it a nudge above Lee Adama because at least it puts a Cylon at the head of everything from the start, answering the question of why she was the only surviving member of the cabinet.
  • Ellen Tigh. Adam’s Odds = 20%. Not a terrible option, given that Colonel Tigh is one of the five, and the resurrection of Ellen would be an interesting cathartic moment for Saul given the murder.  Also helps explain the visualization of Number Six as Ellen, somewhat.  Problem with this answer is, well, it’s not really that interesting.
  • Cally Tyrol. Adam’s Odds = 25%. Am I the only one who was glad to see Cally die?  Really hope it’s not this one, but it adds a very strange option to the mix, since it makes their baby a product of two Cylons.  Always nice to have a Cylon hater turn out to be one.  I personally can’t imagine this as a good choice, but so many people like it, I’m bumping the odds based on crowd-sourcing.

Of course, I still like the idea of Zak Adama as the final cylon, since his ghost has been haunting the show since the beginning.  But too many people think that it can’t be a character we haven’t seen before.

Battlestar Galactica resumes on January 16th.

Connectez-vous avec moi sur LinkedIn français

/ Adam Nash

Google Translate, don’t fail me now!  🙂

I’m excited to say that LinkedIn launched its third language last night: French! You can find Jean-Luc’s blog post on the LinkedIn blog.

A nice intro video is now live on Youtube:

With the exception of Jean-Luc, of course, everyone’s French is… well let’s just say they get an “E” for effort.  Fortunately, our partners in France seem to think our new French site is très bon.

A very special thanks to Sunil Saha and Ace Yamaguchi who stepped up their efforts considerably in the last two months to make this launch a reality.

It took us over five years to launch our second language (Spanish, July 2008), but just four additional months to launch our third (French, November 2008).  Of course, we now support profiles in 41 languages already.

I’m extremely excited about the global opportunities for LinkedIn in 2009 and beyond as we build out the world’s largest global professional network.

Lots of great work for our new lead for International product.  Can’t wait for 2009.

Handbrake 0.9.3 is Out! A Must Have for Digital Movie Conversion.

/ Adam Nash / 1 Comment

Handbrake 0.9.3, the best application for converting DVD video to MPEG 4 just got updated.

The new version has over 600 feature changes and improvements.  Some of my favorites:

  • A new “Apple Universal” preset to ensure universal rendering of files to play on everything from an iPod Nano to the AppleTV.
  • Ability to encode ANY source file, not just a DVD.  This is huge for people converting video from other formats using other software (like Quicktime).  One step, and hopefully a lot faster.
  • Caching of video queues to disk.  Finally!  I can’t tell you how sad it is to queue up 20 movies for conversion overnight, and then discover in the morning that a crash not only happened during the second movie, but that on restart the queue is empty!  Now, at least crashes will be recoverable.

Go here to read more and download it now.

One small negative – the new version no longer bundles DVD decoding.  It seems that one of the contributors had requested the change.

No worries, however.  If you have VLC 0.9.x installed, Handbrake 0.9.3 will find it and use it’s DVD decryption library.  You can download VLC here.

Memories: The Leonard Speiser Mask & GoldenPalace.com

/ Adam Nash / 2 Comments

A couple weeks ago, there was a great reunion party for many eBay Product Managers & User Experience Designers from the past decade.  I didn’t get an exact count, but at least 70 people were there, including many of the early Product Managers from before I joined the company in 2003.

I was happily reminded of an event that I absolutely would have shared on this blog at the time – if I had been writing this blog at the time.  It seemed worthy of a posting now, three years later, especially since it comes with some dot-com bragging rights.

The event?  The time I sold a Leonard Speiser mask to Golden Palace Casino on eBay for $400.

speiser01_pic_1011

Strangely disturbing, isn’t it?

Details

The auction was put up in May, 2005, shortly after the official “going away” party for Leonard, which we held at the Tied House in Mountain View.  It was a large event, and we took up the back room.  There was food, drink, and the requisite roasting of Leonard “see attachment” Speiser.  (We’re not rolling back, we’re rolling forward!) It also included infamous video from a particular usability test, on permanent re-run.

It was a fun time, and as party favors everyone was given these hand-made copies of Leonard’s face, taken from his Halloween rendition of Harry Potter.  They were just color copies, stapled onto rulers.

On a lark, I listed one that night on eBay, hoping to raise money for his going away present.  I had recently launched the first version of eBay Pulse, a popularity page ranking queries, stores, and most watched items on eBay.  (There is actually a patent pending on the latter).  Through a grass roots email campaign, I got a sufficient number of eBay employees to watch the item, propelling it onto the “Top 10” list for most watched items on eBay.

At that point, Golden Palace Casino found it.  At the time, they were buying up crazy items on eBay as a form of PR, starting with the famous Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich.  Yes, I know the memories are coming back to you now.

After some furious bidding, they won the item for $400, providing enough cash to buy Leonard an engraved video iPod (the hot item at the time).   He claims he still has it.  🙂

In any case, we delivered the item, signed, to Golden Palace, and they posted it on their website.   It’s hard to find now, but a little Google sleuthing uncovered it.  Here’s what they had to say:

A handheld sign, made from a ruler and a cut-out of Leonardï’s head, was sold on eBay for $400.00. GoldenPalace.com bought the item, which was made for Leonard Speiser, an eBay Product Manager who was leaving his job. In order to raise money for the send-off party and roast, the sign was auctioned off on eBay. The sign has staples in it to roughly make a slot for the ruler, which you use to hold it up.

Itï’s funny to see actual eBay employees putting items up on eBay, but we are assured that: “this listing in no way, shape, or form represents any type of official eBay business. This listing is purely a loving gesture for one of the truly great members of the eBay community.”  Leonard will apparently be greatly missed by many, and they are trying to raise money for a going away present, to be given to him at the party. All the online casino got for their money is the sign and ruler; nothing more, nothing less.

Leonard Speiser went on to found Bix.com, which was acquired by Yahoo in 2006.  Leonard is still there, as you can see from his current LinkedIn profile.

Just in case he tries to feign ignorance of this whole event, I have proof he was a party to it:

speiser01_pic_100

This is such a fun memory, really symbolic of some of the best times at eBay… I’m really happy that I’m getting a chance to capture it here.

New Dutch Architecture Five (5) Euro Coin, Programmed in Python

/ Adam Nash

Yes, I said Python.

First, special hat tip to Mario Sundar for finding this lead.  Mario is not a coin collector, but he reads my blog often enough to know that I have a special interest in coins.  This one is a beauty, since it combines creative visualization with a unique engineering tale.

Here is the coin design:

dutch_coin_design

Here is a brief description, from the Dutch Mint website, on the coin design:

A new 5 euro commemorative coin pays tribute to the history of Dutch architecture. Both our historical architecture as well as our innovative conceptual architecture and modern design are popular across the globe.

The Architecture five-euro coin was designed by artist Stani Michiels (b. 1973). The design on the obverse of the coin pays tribute to the history of Dutch architecture, with the portrait of Queen Beatrix being distinctively constructed using the names of important architects from Dutch history. The artist used the internet as a popularity-meter to determine the names’ order of appearance.

The reverse of the Architecture five-euro coin draws attention to the striking fact that many Dutch architects have also included publishing books on architecture in their professional activities. To illustrate this phenomenon, recent books on architecture rise up from the sides of the coin like buildings. Through their careful placement they combine to outline the Netherlands, while birds’ silhouettes suggest the capitals of all the provinces.

This blog post, however, from the designer, is where the real beauty lies.  It’s too long to reproduce here, but it goes into significant depth about the design inspiration, concepts, and visualization at work.  If you have a background in design, you will appreciate it.

Here is the summary from the post, and I think you’ll see why this contest winner gets substantial geek cred, as he goes into detail about the technology used in the coin design:

The whole design was done for 100% with free software. The biggest part consists of custom software in Python, of course within the SPE editor. For the visual power I used PIL and pyCairo. From time to time also Gimp, Inkscape and Phatch helped quite a bit. All the developing and processing was done on GNU/Linux machines which were running Ubuntu/Debian. In the end I had to collaborate closely on location together with the technicians of the Royal Dutch Mint (coin factory). So all the last bits were done on my Asus Eee PC. (I am still wondering why Asus doesn’t offer Ubuntu on its netbooks.) The Eee laptop took a bit longer (30 seconds instead of 3 seconds to generate a whole coin), but did the job just fine. For looking up the number of hits on the internet, I rediscovered Yahoo, which provides a much better api for automatic querying than its competitors. Of course the jury judged only the design and not the software used as others used Maya, Illustrator, …

And the winner is…
I am proud to announce that I won the competition! So soon 350.000 Dutch people will use the fruits of free software. I would have loved to release the coin under the GPL, which could maybe solve the financial crisis. However for obvious reasons I was not allowed to do that. There will be also special editions for collectors which can be bought world wide: a massive silver edition for € 30,95 and a massive gold edition for € 194,95. They will be probably sold out quickly as these are real collectors items. The coin is released in all Dutch post offices to the public the same day as the Intrepid Ibex: 30th October 2008.

You can purchase the coin here at the Royal Dutch Mint.  They seem to still have the gold version available, but no sign of the silver version.  Maybe it sold out?  If you find it, please comment here with a link.

LinkedIn and Reid Hoffman: Recession Ready

/ Adam Nash

I don’t usually post every article here about LinkedIn, but this BusinessWeek piece is worth reading:

LinkedIn and Reid Hoffman: Recession Ready

The online version is an extended version from the print magazine.  I think the only reason to read the print version is the unique and slightly intimidating picture of Reid across the center spread.  🙂

Here is my favorite passage:

It was at the bleakest stage of the dot-com bust, in 2002, that Hoffman began to build his empire. He had been a key partner at PayPal, the online payment company ) bought that June for $1.5 billion. Flush with his share, he looked for next-generation investments—and found himself nearly alone. “The common wisdom was that the consumer Net was dead,” he recalls, and “that it was controlled by Yahoo, eBay, and Google. I thought it was just beginning.”

So he devised a strategy. He would start a company to run the business side of the social Net—LinkedIn—and he would participate in the consumer side as an investor. “The huge majority of things I have invested in are massively successful,” he says. Many of the investments, of course, are still locked up in companies, including Facebook and LinkedIn, which haven’t yet gone public. The return on Hoffman’s holdings hinges largely on how they navigate the coming downturn. Still, he continues trumpet the economics of Internet businesses. “This is the only time in human history when, for somewhere between $5 million and $30 million of capital investment, you can create a sustainable ecosystem for 10 million-plus people,” he says.

When discussing his career, Hoffman can sound positively utopian. He says, for example, that he left academia for business because he wanted more “scaled impact” in his quest to make the world “a much nobler place.” He regards LinkedIn as a system where the good are rewarded by the community for their deeds, while liars and cheaters are exposed.

I feel exceptionally lucky to work for Reid and to benefit from both his experience and his unique strategic insight.  When you remember the issues the PayPal team had to navigate, and the timeframe in which they did it, it’s an even more impressive story.  How many companies managed to IPO successfully in 2002?

Check out the full article if you haven’t already.  More to come.

Two More First Spouse Coins for Sale

/ Adam Nash

As I wrote last week, I’m saying goodbye to my First Spouse coins.  I’m moving through the series step by step.

The first coin sold for about 10% over the original purchase price last year.  Since that’s roughly the cost of eBay & PayPal fees, let’s just say that owning the coin did no damage financially.

This week, I have both Abigail Adams and Thomas Jefferson’s Liberty up for sale.

Bidding is on eBay all through the week.

Enjoy.

2009 Presidential Dollar Series: Worst Ever?

/ Adam Nash

The 2009 Presidential dollars are coming… and it’s shocking how uninteresting they are.

Let’s review the four Presidents that will be featured:

  • William Henry Harrison
  • John Tyler
  • James K. Polk
  • Zachary Taylor

I’m guessing the US Mint is already stockpiling coins to get ready for the stampede of demand.  🙂

Actually, my guess is that given the waning interest in the series, we might actually be in the realm of coins that, 30 years from now, will be very hard to find.  Remember that, paradoxically, the least interesting coins generally end up with the lowest mintage and availability, and hence, the most value long term.

That assumes, of course, that there will be demand in the future to collect the series.  I’m not sold on that fact at this point, although the historical interest in the Presidents and the relatively low cost of the coins gives at least some hope.

In any case, if you think these four Presidents will be unpopular with collectors, can you imagine paying $2400+ for the gold First Spouse companion coins?

I thought not.