John Saunders has made a fortune through buying and selling some of the smallest and most valuable collectables in the world.
And he hasn’t done so bad buying, operating and selling a slightly larger commodity—commercial real estate.
Saunders owns Newport Beach-based London Coin Galleries Inc., one of the largest coin-dealing firms in the U.S.
The privately held company reports annual sales of more than $20 million, and Saunders has gained a reputation as one of the world’s foremost experts in ancient coins, having sold more than 500,000 of them over the years.
He also owns Saunders Property Co., a Newport Beach-based real estate firm that through various affiliates owns more than five million square feet of real estate, much of it in Orange County.
He’s one of the area’s largest private investors in commercial real estate, with a variety of office, retail, apartment and mobile home park assets to his name.
The firm values those assets at over $1.3 billion.
Either one of those business lines would make Saunders one of OC’s most notable businesspeople.
Taken together, they’re the reason he was among the five winners at the Business Journal’s annual Excellence in Entrepreneurship Awards on March 8 at Hotel Irvine (see related coverage, pages 1, 6, 9 and 10).
London to OC
Saunders was an international banker by trade. Not long after getting an economics degree—with a 4.0 GPA—at Florida’s Eckerd College he got a job as assistant treasurer at American Express Bank, and became one of the firm’s youngest appointed officers.
Saunders first got his start in the coin world as a hobbyist in his teenage years. A few years into his banking career, he switched gears, turning the hobby into a full-time profession.
He opened his first coin dealership in London, where he had been assigned as a banker, in the 1970s. It was a move that came to the chagrin of his father, he recalled from the awards podium.
That skepticism didn’t last too long.
“I made twice as much with coins than I did as a banker,” with success taking place early in the company’s operations, he told the luncheon crowd.
London Coin Galleries was one of the 10 largest coin dealerships in England within four years.
The firm’s second location opened in 1990 in Newport Beach.
The company’s office near John Wayne Airport has offerings that run the gamut of collectibles, with antiquities, shark teeth and other fossils, ethnographic art, shipwreck items, diamonds, fine jewelry and luxury watches also available for sale.
The local area’s collection of wealthy residents was a big reason for the local store’s success.
“One of the luckiest things I did was move to Orange County,” Saunders said.
Timing also proved to be fortuitous.
The area was in the depths of a real estate downturn when Saunders decided to start buying buildings on the side with his own cash as an investment.
“In the ’90s, they were giving real estate away,” he said.
Within a few years, he had amassed a lengthy local collection of buildings, including a number of relatively small properties around the airport in Newport Beach.
Saunders’ deals have gotten larger over the years.
In 2004, he was part of a venture that paid a reported $42 million for a 300,000-square-foot office in Mission Viejo, his largest-ever deal at the time.
Since then, he’s made a number of buys topping $50 million, including a pair of large mobile home parks near the ocean in Huntington Beach.
His most valuable property outside of Orange County is believed to be a 321,000-square-foot office in Pasadena on Colorado Avenue, the city’s main thoroughfare and famed route of the Rose Parade.
In 2014, his firm paid a reported $81 million for the 11-story office, which was sold by AT&T.
Saunders hasn’t sold many of his 100-plus real estate assets over the years, but the Pasadena building could prove to be an exception.
The Colorado Avenue trophy has gotten a major renovation since he took it over. Local news reports say the property—whose tenants include AT&T, WeWork, iRobot and Fleming’s Steakhouse—was listed for sale late last year with an asking price approaching $130 million.
