In 1976, Laura Sperber's eyes were drawn to a 1913 "Liberty Head" nickel, one of the rarest of coins, at a New York City coin show.

"To me, that was, wow, the Holy Grail," said Sperber, now 48. "They let me hold it, and right then and there that forever changed me. It was the coolest thing and I just knew I had to be a coin dealer."

Years later, in 2003, Sperber, a partner in Legend Numismatics Inc., would buy that same coin for about $1.8 million and sell it the next year for $2.5 million. "At that point, my dreams were fulfilled."

It was just the start for one of the few women in the coin business. Sperber bought a second 1913 Liberty Head (there are only five in existence and two are in museums) in 2005 for $4.15 million and sold it this year for $5 million. At the time, it was the second-highest price ever paid for a coin, she said.

New Jersey-based Legend Numismatics deals in the top 2 percent to 5 percent of the coin market in terms of rarity and quality. The company doesn't disclose its address or do business out of a storefront for security reasons, instead making a home in a nondescript office building. When it sells at coin shows, armored car companies ship the coins.

Sperber caught the coin bug at age 10 when she found an old penny. She started going to small coin shows, looking at silver dollars from the 1800s that were shiny, and building a small collection.

Then came the visit to the American Numismatics Association show where she saw the 1913 Liberty Head nickel.

At age 20, she quit her business administration studies at Monmouth College to become a coin dealer, investing about $9,000 in savings to get started.

She was lucky and made some good contacts, including established dealers such as John Albanese, who at the time had a coin shop in Flemington, N.J. He would give her credit and Sperber was able to buy and sell coins. She also read about rare coins and looked through old auction catalogs.

"I showed her inventory, she picked out the best pieces immediately," Albanese recalled. "I knew she had a great eye for coins and she had a passion and she wanted to absorb."

Sperber sold to other coin dealers until the early 1980s, when she began selling to collectors. In 1984, she got a break: a customer approached her to sell a $20 Paquet gold piece from 1861, named after the designer of the coin's back.

It was the finer of the two that are known, Sperber said. She brokered the $764,000 deal.

"It led to more sophisticated collectors gravitating toward me," Sperber said.

A big deal came in 1997 when Legend purchased about 100 Morgan dollar coins, minted between 1878 and 1921, for about $2 million. It was part of a $9 million sale of a major collection.

Last year, Legend bought and sold at least seven coins for more than $1 million each.

Legend's largest deal came in October, when the company brokered the sale of a collection of coins for more than $30 million. They were rare pattern coins, trial pieces made by the U.S. Mint of coins that were never produced. Legend sold the collection to a buyer identified only as "Mr. Simpson."