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Coin Connection is a Studio City, California coin and precious metals dealer operating out of a storefront on Ventura Blvd since 2001.
The business buys and sells rare coins, gold and silver bullion, estate jewelry, watches, diamonds, and other collectibles, and it markets itself heavily around pre-1933 U.S. gold coins, which also explains the company's web address, pre1933.com.
This review looks at what the shop actually offers, how customers describe their experience, and where the sticking points show up.
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Key Takeaways:
- Coin Connection has operated in Studio City since 2001 and focuses on rare coins, bullion, and pre-1933 gold.
- Customer feedback is mixed: many reviewers describe fair pricing and friendly staff, while others report inconsistent offers and slow follow-up.
- The company offers appraisals, grading through PCGS and NGC, and additional services like jewelry evaluation and estate consultation.
Background and What They Sell
The shop sits at 12301 Ventura Blvd in Studio City, near the intersection of Ventura and Laurelgrove. It's a family-run operation, and according to the company's own site, it's now in its third generation of ownership, with Todd Griffiths listed as a second-generation dealer bringing over 40 years in the industry.
That's a long tenure for a brick-and-mortar coin shop, and it matters here because numismatics is a field where reputation and longevity tend to carry real weight with collectors.
Walk through the inventory and you'll find a fairly standard lineup for a shop of this type:
- Rare and collectible U.S. coins, including Morgan Silver Dollars (minted 1878 to 1904, and again in 1921, at 90% silver)
- Pre-1933 U.S. gold coins, including $20 Double Eagles designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens
- Modern bullion in gold and silver
- Estate jewelry, diamonds, and fine watches
- Scrap gold and silver
- Foreign coins and currency
That last category matters because it's also where some of the friction in customer reviews shows up. More on that below.
Services Offered
Coin Connection isn't purely a buy-sell counter. The company lists several adjacent services on its site, aimed at collectors, estate executors, and people who just inherited a box of coins and have no idea what's in it.
| Service | What It Covers |
|---|---|
| Coin and currency appraisal | Formal reports for insurance, estate planning, or resale documentation |
| Jewelry appraisal | Evaluation reports covering various jewelry types |
| Third-party grading | Coins submitted through PCGS (Professional Coin Grading Service) and NGC (Numismatic Guaranty Corporation) |
| Retirement and legal consultation | Referrals and guidance tied to precious metals in retirement accounts |
| Free walk-in appraisals | No-cost evaluation with no obligation to sell |
Third-party grading is worth flagging on its own. PCGS and NGC are the two grading services most widely recognized in the U.S. coin market, and having a dealer that routinely submits to them (rather than grading in-house and hoping you trust their word) is a reasonable signal of legitimacy. It doesn't guarantee a good price, but it does mean the coin's condition isn't just the shop's opinion.
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Reputation and Reviews
Here's where things get more complicated, and where I'll shift from describing the business to describing what people actually say about it.
On Yelp, the listing shows over 200 reviews and has been active since at least 2014, with references to "50+ years serving Studio City" in more recent promotional copy (a figure that reads more like combined staff experience than the age of the business itself, since the shop was established in 2001).
A number of reviewers name specific staff members by name, Todd, Mike, Jaclyn, Desiree, David, Kevin, which suggests a fairly stable team and a shop where regulars build relationships with individual employees rather than dealing with a rotating cast.
The praise pattern is consistent across platforms: people describe getting a fair price, feeling like the offer wasn't pressured, and appreciating a staff member who explained why a piece was or wasn't valuable.
One longtime customer described doing business with the shop for over 15 years and specifically called out honesty as the standout trait.
The complaints follow their own pattern, though, and they're not trivial. Multiple reviewers describe:
- Offers that dropped significantly between visits (one account describes a $6,000 offer one day and a $4,700 offer the next, attributed by the reviewer to a shift in who was staffing the counter)
- Coins or foreign currency being told they had no value, which the reviewer later disputed
- Slow or absent follow-up on specific buy requests
- At least one detailed complaint from October 2025 describing poor communication on a jewelry buyback and a threat to escalate to the Better Business Bureau
None of this is unusual for a business of this type and size. Coin and jewelry buying is inherently subjective at the counter level, spot prices move daily, and any shop with 200-plus public reviews is going to accumulate some bad ones.
But the volume and specificity of the pricing-inconsistency complaints is worth taking seriously if you're planning to sell rather than buy.
Pricing and Trust: What to Actually Watch For
If you're walking in to sell, know two things going in. First, gold and silver spot prices change throughout the trading day, so an offer made in the morning and a different offer made the next afternoon isn't automatically a red flag on its own.
Second, offers on rare or graded coins depend heavily on who's evaluating them and how familiar that staffer is with the specific series or mint mark.
A generalist counter buyer and a specialist appraiser can land on very different numbers for the same coin.
Practical steps that come up repeatedly in the positive reviews: ask specifically who will be appraising your item, request the offer in writing if it's a high-value piece, and get a second opinion elsewhere before selling anything you suspect might carry numismatic premium beyond melt value.
This isn't specific to Coin Connection. It's standard advice for any coin or jewelry counter, and the reviewers who reported the best experiences tended to be the ones who'd already done some homework before walking in.
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Should You Use Coin Connection?
For buying pre-1933 gold, graded rare coins, or bullion, the shop has the inventory and the grading relationships (PCGS, NGC) to back up what it's selling. That's a reasonable baseline of legitimacy in a market full of less accountable sellers.
For selling, the picture is more mixed. Go in with a baseline price in mind from spot market data, ask for the offer in writing, and don't treat a single day's number as final if the item has real numismatic value.
The strongest reviews come from people who did exactly that and walked away feeling treated fairly, while the weakest come from people who felt the number shifted under them.
Conclusion
Coin Connection is a long-running, third-generation Studio City coin and precious metals shop with real grading credentials and a loyal customer base, but its review history shows real inconsistency in pricing and follow-up depending on who you deal with.
Do your own research on spot prices and coin values before selling, and you'll likely have the same positive experience many long-term customers describe.
