FLORENCE, Ky. — If “turning loose change into thousands of dollars” was the title of a YouTube video, it’d be difficult not to click on it. That’s what hundreds of thousands of people are doing with one northern Kentucky man’s videos, though he says his titles don’t make any promises that aren’t fulfilled by watching.
Making that kind of cash takes a rare coin, and building that kind of following takes a rare person.
What You Need To Know
- Justin Couch’s YouTube channel Couch Collectibles features videos of him talking about coin collecting
- It’s the most subscribed-to coin collecting channel on the platform in the U.S.
- Couch had to persevere through struggling early on YouTube and in college to reach the success he’s having now
- Some of his videos feature coins worth hundreds and thousands of dollars
While liking things maybe isn’t a rare trait, Justin Couch is certainly a rare person. From a young age, Couch took a liking to collecting a lot of things.
“It started with baseball cards, wrestling figures, which I still collect all that stuff today,” said Couch, who grew up in Ludlow and now lives in Florence.
One set of things in particular, his coin collection, has proved to be worth much more to him than the original value of the coins, but also even more than what their price tags say today. Couch said his grandma first got him into coin collecting.
“This is a $1,000 penny,” Couch said, pointing to a particular coin in one of his many laminated binders, before going through the rest of the column. “$250, $475.”
“The coin collecting thing is what really took off on YouTube,” he said.
Content creation is the flip side of the coin, opposite of collecting when it comes to what Couch really cares about. However, his first go at YouTube never took off.
“I was always just a creative person growing up,” he said. “I always wanted to do YouTube. I had an account in like 2006, maybe 2005, when the platform was just beginning.”
He also struggled early on at Northern Kentucky University on his path to a degree in electronic media broadcasting with a minor in marketing.
But as he learned, imperfections can lead to greater value in the long run, both in life and with coins.
“You see on top of his hat? How there’s like that big old blob of metal? That’s a die break on the hat,” he said, pointing to a coin. “And they sell on eBay for pretty good money.”
Couch persevered in college, graduating with the degree he sought after. Soon after that, he realized how to combine all of his interests into what would become a successful career.
“I got suggested a coin video, and the lightbulb kind of went off at that moment. Because I knew a lot about coin collecting, and then I was going through the videos,” he said. “And I was like, these are kind of poor quality videos, no offense to those videos. But I knew I could create much better content than what was already on YouTube for the coin collecting space.”
He used his marketing skills, looking up how many times a month a certain search term such as “coins worth money” or “rare coins” was used.
“And I saw that it was a good volume of searches each month, and it was a non-competitive niche on YouTube at the time. So I knew if I went in and just hammered down a coin video every day, I could probably take over the space.”
And that’s what happened. His channel, Couch Collectibles, earned thousands of views right away. After six years of producing content, Couch now has the most subscribed-to coin collecting channel in the country, at over 420,000 subscribers as of June 2022.
Those subscribers click on Couch’s videos to watch him talk about coins worth hundreds and thousands of dollars, including some in his own collection.
“I’m not the best video editor in the world, but I’m good at video editing. I’m good at marketing. I’m good at Photoshop and design,” Couch explained. “So if you have a little bit of everything, and combine it, it’s better than just being really good at one thing.”
Kids today who aspire to be YouTubers should take notes. Was there luck involved? Sure, Couch said, but his rise didn’t just come down to the flip of a coin.
“I just got this drive in me. And creativity in me,” he said. “I ran cross-country. And you just got to beat your body to be very good at that sport. So I kind of think of business in the same way. You just got to hammer down every day if you want to do well and grow.”
So before looking through that old couch for a thousand dollar coin, it might not hurt to check out what this Couch has to say first.
Along with his main channel, Couch has three other YouTube channels. Those include one with shorter versions of his main videos, a lottery ticket channel and a podcast.