Blanchard

Blanchard and Company, Gold and Rare Coin Specialists in New Orleans

Blanchard and Company, Inc. is a precious metals and rare coin dealer founded in 1975 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The timing was no accident: founder James U. Blanchard III had spent years campaigning for the restoration of private gold ownership in the United States, and opened the firm one year after President Gerald Ford signed legislation legalising it in December 1974. The company has remained in New Orleans ever since, with offices at 909 Poydras Street in the city's Central Business District.

The firm specialises in investment-grade gold, silver, platinum, and palladium, together with numismatic rare coins and a particular emphasis on United States rarities. Buyers of gold coins and bars sit alongside collectors pursuing major numismatic pieces; over the decades Blanchard has handled headline rarities including the 1913 Liberty Head Nickel and the 1787 Brasher Doubloon. Since 1999 the firm's rare coin inventory has been chosen under a partnership with John Albanese, founder of Certified Acceptance Corporation.

Blanchard has been accredited by the Better Business Bureau since 1982 and is an authorised dealer of PCGS, the Professional Coin Grading Service. The company is also a member of the American Numismatic Association, the Professional Numismatists Guild, and the Industry Council for Tangible Assets.

The dealer has sold online at blanchardgold.com since at least 2001, and ownership has stayed close to home: Donald W. Doyle, Jr. purchased the company in 1991 and became its sole shareholder, a story told in full on the firm's own company history pages and traced in the History tab here.

From the Campaign to Legalize Gold to Five Decades on Poydras Street

Blanchard and Company's story begins before the company existed. Private gold ownership had been illegal for US citizens since President Roosevelt's Executive Order 6102 in 1933. James U. Blanchard III, a University of New Orleans history graduate, founded the National Committee to Legalize Gold to overturn the ban and launched Gold Newsletter in 1971 as part of the campaign. His tactics were theatrical: he hired an aircraft to fly over President Nixon's second inauguration trailing a banner that read "Legalize Gold", and a Blanchard television commercial is credited with persuading President Gerald Ford to act. Ford signed legislation restoring private gold ownership in December 1974.

With gold legal again, Blanchard founded Blanchard and Company, Inc. in New Orleans in 1975. The business grew rapidly through its first decade, and by 1987 annual sales had reached $115 million. That same year, Allegiance Capital Partners and GE Capital Corp. purchased the company.

Ownership changed again on October 5, 1991, when Donald W. Doyle, Jr., who had risen to a senior role at the firm, bought Blanchard and Company from Allegiance Capital Partners and became chairman, chief executive, and sole shareholder.

Founder Jim Blanchard died in March 1999. The same year, the company formed a partnership with John Albanese, founder of Certified Acceptance Corporation, who took on selection of Blanchard's rare coin inventory. A run of landmark numismatic transactions followed. Shortly after the partnership began, the firm placed the $20 Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle Ultra High Relief. In 2005 it placed the 1913 Liberty Head Nickel, which sold for $3 million, and in 2011 it brokered the sale of the 1787 Brasher Doubloon to a Wall Street investment firm for $7.4 million. In 2016 Blanchard acquired and sold coins recovered from the Spanish 1715 Treasure Fleet shipwreck.

Two institutions Jim Blanchard created alongside the company carried on beyond it. Gold Newsletter, his 1971 founding project, has been edited by Brien Lundin since 1993 and operated separately from Blanchard and Company after its founder's death. The New Orleans Investment Conference, which Blanchard founded in 1974 and which reached its 51st year in 2025, has hosted speakers including Margaret Thatcher, Gerald Ford, Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, Colin Powell, and Ron Paul, and has likewise been managed independently of the dealership.