About Heritage Auctions - Executive

Born in Boston in 1952, Jim Halperin was an endlessly curious child, who grew up watching his father Ed build a successful manufacturing business from scratch. From the time he was a toddler, Jim admired -- and wanted to someday emulate -- his dad, who often took him to his offices. Jim loved creating projects and businesses, and would routinely draw other children into his various endeavors, including roadside lemonade stands, neighborhood circuses, astronomy shows, and similar enterprises. Jim became a comic book dealer and fanzine publisher at ages 11-12 (his 8 comic book fanzines published in 1964 and 1965 still show up for sale on eBay occasionally) and stays in touch with contributors to those fanzines, including several who later made careers in that field.

As a summer project, Jim formed a part-time rare stamp and coin business in 1968, the same year he received early acceptance to Harvard College. He Immediately noticed that the buy prices in the classified sections of coin publications were much higher than most of the sell prices in the larger ads, and realized that every coin retailer must have had their own grading standards, often one for buying and one for selling. By his third college semester Jim was enjoying the coin business more than his studies, so at the end of 1971 he took a leave of absence to found New England Rare Coin Galleries (NERCG) under the principle that and that there would be far more demand for coins if dealers used the same grading standard for both buying and selling. He also understood that for vintage US coins, the very highest grades tended to be rare, and extremely undervalued when compared to the more popular “affordable” grades. By adhering to a consistent and reliable grading standard, NERCG was an immediate success.

In 1975, Jim co-designed protocols for numismatics’ first mainframe computer system, which would help catapult NERCG to the top of the industry. He also established the first registered rare coin fund (NERCF) in 1975, which raised $375,000, and was liquidated at auction for $2.15 million in 1980, providing its investors a nearly five-fold return after fees and auction commissions in under 5 years.

In 1982, Jim merged part of his business with his friend and former archrival Steve Ivy’s company to form a 50-50 partnership, renamed Heritage, in Dallas, Texas. Concurrently, Jim sold part of NERCG, including its tradename, to an employee.

In 1984, Jim designed -- and graded nearly all the submissions for -- the first privately owned collectibles grading service, Numismatic Certification Institute (NCI). He also wrote a book later re-titled "How to Grade U.S. Coins", which outlined the uncirculated and proof grading standards upon which NGC and PCGS would later be based -- and still are today. Jim and Steve Ivy were also significant early investor-shareholders in both PCGS and NGC and affiliated companies such as CGC, PMG and PSA.

Throughout the last three decades of the 20th century, Jim was widely considered the most successful coin dealer in America, far outselling every other numismatic dealer during that period. Many of the top coin dealers of that period began their careers working for -- and/or being financed by – Jim, both at NERCG and later Heritage, some for nearly half a century. Jim still counts these numismatists among his most cherished friends. It’s especially worth noting that Marc Emory started working at NERCG in 1975, founded its European gold buying operations, then became and remains a working partner at Heritage.

Jim is also a well-known futurist, collector of rare comic books, comic book artwork, early 20th-century American art and other collectibles, venture capitalist, real estate and technology stock investor, and philanthropist. Among numerous other charities, Jim established the Halperin Foundation, a family arts/health/education organization, that he operates with his wife of 40+ years, Gayle Ziaks Halperin.

With Steve Ivy’s buy-in, although not his delight, Jim worked only half-time at Heritage for a year in the mid-1990s while authoring two futurist fiction novels. His first, The Truth Machine, published by Random House in 1996, became an international science fiction bestseller with over a half-million copies sold in multiple languages, and optioned 15 times as a feature film by Warner Brothers, Lionsgate then finally, Revelations Entertainment. Jim's second novel, The First Immortal, published in early 1998 was optioned as a Hallmark Hall of Fame television miniseries. Both remain in print.

Heritage and the collecting field itself benefited greatly when Jim used insights gleaned from his research for -- and marketing of -- those novels to help redesign Heritage’s website, pioneering the use of third-party pricing data on item pages as well as the first free Permanent Auction Archive in the auction business. After launching its new web site in 1998 Heritage quickly became the world’s highest selling numismatic auction house and has remained so every year since. Heritage subsequently hired scores of top experts, expanding into dozens of additional categories including its renowned Comics and Comic Art department, conceived, staffed and still overseen by Jim.

Heritage Auctions (HA.com) is now the most popular auction house online destination in the world. Heritage reported total sales exceeding $1.86 billion in 2024.

Jim still works full-time at Heritage Auctions and has no plans to retire until he can no longer contribute to the company’s goals. He currently donates about one-third of his income, mostly via The Halperin Foundation. Jim plans to eventually donate most of his assets to charity including his remaining Heritage shares.