Paul Inho Song, the new vice president for auctions at Beverly Hills coin dealer Superior Galleries, said he “played around” with coins as a kid. He also collected bugs and tropical fish.

But after 17 years in the rare coin business, Song, 39, has learned that the money is in the money.

Song’s main objective at Superior will be to help the company refocus after dabbling with auctions of collectibles other than coins.

“It’s hard to compete with full-purpose auction houses like Sotheby’s,” he said. “Superior’s core competency is coins, and it has the deepest retail client base around.”

After majoring in art, art history and Spanish literature at the University of Wisconsin, Song went to Sotheby’s in New York for a one-year crash course in the art and auction business. He stayed on in the coin department, soon becoming the company’s youngest vice president and participating in the sale of more than $150 million in coins. Sotheby’s eventually put Song through business school at New York University.

In 1999, Song oversaw the auction of the treasure from the S.S. Central America, a steamship carrying California gold that sank in 1857 and remained on the ocean floor for 131 years before it was recovered. “We were thinking of selling some of it on Amazon,” he said. “(Amazon founder) Jeff Bezos came to our office, but the client wasn’t comfortable with the Internet at that time.”

For the next two years, Song worked on establishing a joint online auction platform for Sotheby’s and Amazon. In 2001, Song went to Greg Manning Auctions in Los Angeles to set up its West Coast Teletrade.com online auction operations. But he missed the live auction business. “Superior Galleries has an Internet strategy,” he said, “but live auctions are the core of its business.”

Song is married to a jewelry and time-piece specialist, and they have a son.