Jonathan K Kern Company address, phone, website, and more. Jonathan K. Kern was born in 1952, and at the age of 8 started collecting coins of the Netherlands East Indies while in Indonesia. After returning to Lexington, Kentucky in 1962, with the encouragement of his mother, he joined the Bluegrass Coin Club, of which he was later secretary and president. While attending the University of Kentucky in 1969 with a major in geology, he got his first over the counter coin retailing experience working for Larry Goodman’s Jewel Box. After three semesters, he dropped out and worked for $35. a week running Paul Stockton’s Pioneer Coins while apprenticing in the art of coin restoration and conservation. After being fired from this last job ever, and losing the $1 an hour income, he quickly evaluated his life and got married. Confident that he could live on $2000 a year from flea markets, coin shop rounds, and driving to coin shows, he was happy never working for anyone else again. Attracted back to the University of Kentucky by its Honors Program and topical major options, he graduated in 1973 with a Bachelor of Arts with a major in numismatics. About 25% of all credit hours were topical, and his independent research thesis studied Spanish Colonial coins from the Colombian mint with non-destructive thermal neutron activation analysis.
Jonathan Kern opened his first coin shop as Bluegrass Coins and attended hundreds of coin shows in the 1970s including bourse tables in London, Munich and Zurich. In addition to foreign and US coins he started dealing avidly in ancients by the mid 70s. He joined the ANS, became an ANA life member and joined many other state and regional coin organizations. After the boom of 1980 he sold Bluegrass Coins and began regular Coin World advertising as Jonathan K. Kern Company while still attending all major and Midwest regional shows. Jonathan is very grateful for all the opportunities in life brought to him by the rare coin business in the last 35 years, including meeting and sharing our hobby with some of the finest people in the world.
Address: 441 S Ashland Ave, Lexington, KY 40502
Phone: (859) 269-1614
Fax: (859)-266-7900
Website: http://www.jkerncoins.com
Email: jon@jkerncoins.com
