Agenial cigar-smoking Arsenal fan, Dimitri Loulakakis has spent most of his business career dealing in coins. He was born in Athens, he was of Cretan extraction. But coin dealing wasn’t part of his family’s game plan. Iinfluenced by uncles who were in Greek politics and he was originally destined for the diplomatic corps. But then he dropped out of the London School of Economics to work in a shipping business, a job obtained through family connections. “I think every Greek youth in London at the time did the same thing.”

Ten years later, at the age of 30, he was European sales manager for one of the largest privately-owned Greek shipping and cruise lines. The entry into coin dealing came when he got interested in the first Churchill Crown, a commemorative coin struck on the death of Britain’s wartime prime minister.