A-Mark Precious Metals Subsidiary, Collateral Finance Corporation, Announces Agreement with Certified Collectibles Group

EL SEGUNDO, Calif., Feb. 02, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A-Mark Precious Metals, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMRK) (A-Mark), a leading fully integrated precious metals platform, today announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Collateral Finance Corporation (“CFC”), has entered into a branding and marketing agreement (the “Agreement”) with Certified Collectibles Group, LLC (“CCG”), a leading third-party certification service focused on coins, paper currency, sports cards and other categories such as comic books and sports memorabilia.

As part of the Agreement, CFC will be appointed as a non-exclusive “Approved Financing Service” of CCG and CCG will be appointed as a non-exclusive “Approved Grading Service” of CFC. CFC was founded in 2005 and has extended several hundred million dollars of loans to date with a history of no principal losses. This Agreement creates an opportunity for CFC to provide loans to CCG customers looking to access liquidity via their coins, paper currency or sports cards. Both companies plan to engage in co-marketing efforts to increase the respective brands’ awareness and creation of the arrangement.

“We are pleased to announce this new relationship with CCG as we extend CFC’s lending services to their customer base and utilize their industry-leading authentication and collectibles rating services,” said A-Mark CEO Greg Roberts. “We look forward to providing increased liquidity options to their customers through CFC’s secured lending solutions.”

“CFC is one of the leading secured lending providers to the precious metals industry. We believe this partnership will be beneficial to our customers as we expand our liquidity options while offering our leading certification services to CFC’s customers,” said CCG CEO Steve Eichenbaum. “We are eager to collaborate with CFC as we embark on this arrangement to our mutual benefit.”

About A-Mark Precious Metals
Founded in 1965, A-Mark Precious Metals, Inc. is a leading fully integrated precious metals platform that offers an array of gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and copper bullion, numismatic coins, and related products to wholesale and retail customers via a portfolio of channels. The company conducts its operations through three complementary segments: Wholesale Sales & Ancillary Services, Direct-to-Consumer, and Secured Lending. The company’s global customer base spans sovereign and private mints, manufacturers and fabricators, refiners, dealers, financial institutions, industrial users, investors, collectors, and e-commerce and other retail customers.

A-Mark’s Wholesale Sales & Ancillary Services segment distributes and purchases precious metal products from sovereign and private mints. As a U.S. Mint-authorized purchaser of gold, silver, and platinum coins since 1986, A-Mark purchases bullion products directly from the U.S. Mint for sale to customers. A-Mark also has longstanding distributorships with other sovereign mints, including Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Mexico, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. The company sells more than 200 different products to e-commerce retailers, coin and bullion dealers, financial institutions, brokerages, and collectors. In addition, A-Mark sells precious metal products to industrial users, including metal refiners, manufacturers, and electronic fabricators.

Through its A-M Global Logistics subsidiary, A-Mark provides its customers with a range of complementary services, including managed storage options for precious metals as well as receiving, handling, inventorying, processing, packaging, and shipping of precious metals and coins on a secure basis. A-Mark’s mint operations, which are conducted through its wholly owned subsidiary Silver Towne Mint, enable the company to offer customers a wide range of proprietary coin and bar offerings and, during periods of market volatility when the availability of silver bullion from sovereign mints is often product constrained, preferred product access.

A-Mark’s Direct-to-Consumer segment operates as an omni-channel retailer of precious metals, providing access to a multitude of products through its wholly owned subsidiaries, JM Bullion and Goldline. JM Bullion is a leading e-commerce retailer of precious metals and operates six separately branded, company-owned websites targeting specific niches within the precious metals market: JMBullion.com, ProvidentMetals.com, Silver.com, GoldPrice.org, SilverPrice.org and BGASC.com. JMB also owns CyberMetals.com, an online platform where customers can purchase and sell fractional shares of digital gold, silver, platinum and palladium bars in a range of denominations. Goldline markets precious metals directly to the investor community through various channels, including television, radio, and telephonic sales efforts. A-Mark also holds minority ownership interests in three additional direct-to-consumer brands.

The company operates its Secured Lending segment through its wholly owned subsidiaries, Collateral Finance Corporation (CFC) and AM Capital Funding. Founded in 2005, CFC is a California licensed finance lender that originates and acquires loans secured by bullion and numismatic coins. Its customers include coin and precious metal dealers, investors, and collectors. AM Capital Funding was formed in 2018 for the purpose of securitizing eligible secured loans of CFC.

A-Mark is headquartered in El Segundo, CA and has additional offices and facilities in the neighboring Los Angeles area as well as in Dallas, TX, Las Vegas, NV, Winchester, IN, and Vienna, Austria. For more information, visit www.amark.com.

About Certified Collectibles Group^® (CCG^®)  
CCG is the world’s leading provider of expert, impartial and tech-enabled services that add value and liquidity to collectibles. The CCG companies include Numismatic Guaranty Company™ (NGC^®), Numismatic Conservation Services™ (NCS^®), Paper Money Guaranty^® (PMG^®), Certified Guaranty Company^® (CGC^®), Classic Collectible Services^® (CCS^®), Certified Sports Guaranty^® (CSG^®), Authenticated Stamp Guaranty^® (ASG^®) and Collectibles Authentication Guaranty^® (CAG^®). Since 1987, the CCG companies have certified nearly 75 million coins, banknotes, comic books, trading cards, sports cards, stamps, estate items and related collectibles. Today, CCG serves the world of collectibles online and at its offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and China. To learn more, visit collectiblesgroup.com  

Important Cautions Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
Statements in this press release that relate to future plans, objectives, expectations, performance, events, and the like are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These include statements regarding expectations regarding future macroeconomic conditions and demand for precious metal products, and the company’s ability to effectively respond to changing economic conditions. Future events, risks, and uncertainties, individually or in the aggregate, could cause actual results or circumstances to differ materially from those expressed or implied in these statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ include the following: the failure to execute the company’s growth strategy as planned; greater than anticipated costs incurred to execute this strategy; changes in the current international political climate which has favorably contributed to demand and volatility in the precious metals markets; failure to achieve the anticipated benefits of the arrangement; increased competition for the company’s higher margin services, which could depress pricing; the failure of the company’s business model to respond to changes in the market environment as anticipated; changes in consumer demand and preferences for precious metal products generally; general risks of doing business in the commodity markets; the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the eventual return to normalized business and economic conditions; and the strategic, business, economic, financial, political and governmental risks described in in the company’s public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The words "should," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "anticipate," "foresee," "plan" and similar expressions and variations thereof identify certain of such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the dates on which they were made. Additionally, any statements related to future improved performance and estimates of revenues and earnings per share are forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements.

Company Contact:
Steve Reiner, Executive Vice President, Capital Markets & Investor Relations
A-Mark Precious Metals, Inc.
1-310-587-1410
sreiner@amark.com

Investor Relations Contacts:
Matt Glover or Jeff Grampp, CFA
Gateway Investor Relations
1-949-574-3860
AMRK@gatewayir.com

Source: A-Mark Precious Metals, Inc.