About Us

Our Business

Coin Rarities Online (CRO) is a full service rare coin business owned by John and MaryAnn Agre.

We offer choice, hand-selected, high quality coins in a wide range of grades and price points in four major categories:

Colonial & Early American Coins
United States Coins
World Coins Used in Early America
Esoteric Numismatic Items

You can find us online, at coins shows around the country, and at numismatic auctions, large and small.

We also work closely with clients and provide a wide range of numismatic services, including consulting, appraisals, help with grading and CAC submissions and assistance buying and selling at auction.

And when you contact us, you will speak directly to an owner who is 100% committed to your satisfaction.

Our Philosophy

We believe in absolute honesty and integrity in all of our dealings.

We believe it is our responsibility to add value for our clients, and we hope that if we do that we can earn a fair return for ourselves.

We believe in research and scholarship, and we are convinced that there is simply no substitute for doing one’s homework.

We believe in the preservation of numismatic history and abhor the recent trends of conserving perfectly fine original coins in order to secure higher grades.

We believe in modesty and discretion over hype and marketing flash.

We believe there are many ways to enjoy this great hobby and respect every individual collector’s own definition of what is right for them.

And, finally, we believe that coin collecting should be fun.

Our Staff

John Agre John@CoinRaritiesOnline.com

John got an early start in coins, attending local shows with his father as a 6 year old in 1969.

First collecting Jefferson Nickels, then US type, world coins and ultimately Colonials, which became a serious interest bordering on an obsession that he mostly satisfied by poring through auction catalogs and memorizing issues of Bowers and Ruddy’s Rare Coin Review.

By the age of 11 in 1974, John had started to build the condition census of colonials he still maintains today, and was dealing in coins bankrolled by his grandfather, but to him it was just a fun and sometimes lucrative hobby, not something he ever imagined as a career.

Instead he went off to college to study Economics and Fine Art at Northwestern University and then Japanese and Business in graduate school at Cornell University, got married, worked in Tokyo, then Singapore and then traveled the globe for 15 years running international businesses in a perpetual state of jet lag, dabbling in coins only as time and travel permitted.

But as much as he enjoyed the business, and the travel, and had countless interesting adventures, he started thinking seriously about opening his own business. It was at that precise moment his father called, announcing that he had retrieved their old coins from the bank.

That would turn out to be a life-altering phone call. Within 2 weeks John had written a business plan for an online coin company and made the decision to get into the coin business full time, leading to him joining CRO in 2005.

Today John is a well known figure in the industry, a fixture at national coin shows, a contributor to the Redbook, and one of the 100 Most Influential People in Numismatics per CoinWorld Magazine.

MaryAnn Agre MaryAnn@CoinRaritiesOnline.com

MaryAnn is the brains of the operation at CRO, a voracious reader and financial whiz who obtained her joint degree in English and Economics at Vanderbilt University.

After spending her senior year abroad at the University of Leeds and traveling extensively in Europe, MaryAnn worked for the Bank of New York, then Banker’s Trust before earning her MBA from Cornell, working for a start-up in Budapest and spending time in Japan.

MaryAnn’s next job was as the Vice President of Operations for Morgan Stanley Asia in Singapore, a role that had her overseeing US$2 billion in trades, working 15 hour days, answering calls at 3 AM, eating the occasional scorpion on shrimp toast and taking those loooong trips from Singapore to London to New York.

All experiences that make her well qualified to be a partner in an internet coin business like CRO.

Aleka Agre Aleka@CoinRaritiesOnline.com

A recent addition to Team CRO, Aleka is a 2021 graduate of The Tisch School at New York University, works full time as a professional motion graphic designer and runs all of our social media activities on the side.