Thursday At Long Beach
Elcontador
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Got there late. Traffic was light and it was a nice drive there and back.
Show didn't have the pop of February. Many dealers I'm used to seeing weren't there and I saw fewer people on the floor. More people selling currency (U.S. and foreign), and I saw more raw affordable coins were for sale. Not as many tables as February, either.
Several dealers mentioned that ANA courses are going on now; I don't know how much this affected the show.
PCGS was busy with people lining up up to get their coins and sports cards graded.
Witter Coin had three slabbed gold coins from the first decade of the 19th century in MS 64. Angel Dees had a nice spread of high grade cents and nickels. I saw a lot of RD Unc. Lincoln Wheaties. A fair amount of Unc. IHCs. The usual plethora of Unc. Morgans and late 19th - early 20th Century gold.
Not much early copper, or Draped Bust material. Kagin's had a nice MS 61 2 Leaf Flowing Hair Dollar. Clean surfaces. I think it would have graded MS 63 if it didn't have a big hit in the middle of the eagle's breast.
I got rid of some early date circ Lincolns I collected as a kid. My main reason for going was submitting rolls of RD MS 1959 P & D, 1960 D & D, 1963 P and 1964 D RD Lincoln Memorial Cents for bulk grading. Got them in the early 1980s and don't see any point of keeping them any longer. Many are nice; hope I can get enough of them into 7 holders to make some money.
Had nice conversations with Jim at Heritage, David at Kagins, and Todd's dad (we always talk about travel). Also spoke with a guy selling foreign currency I've never seen. We both like to travel, and I encouraged him to visit the Falkland Islands and hang out with the penguins.
"Seu cabra da peste,
"Sou Mangueira......."
Comments
Great report. Thank you for sharing.
Bummer that there were less tables than in February, but I’m sure there were good reasons for that. Hopefully the Sept show will be better.
Dave
@Elcontador - if you don’t mind, I’ll add a few comments to your post rather than starting another thread.
I flew down from the Bay Area on a crack of crack flight. Notably, I flew on the newest plane I’ve ever experienced. This 737MAX even smelled new. Even the flight attendants were all giggly about all the new features. I think I was the first person ever to use the restroom:
After getting a rental car and driving to my hotel, I walked over to the convention center, arriving about two hours prior to the opening:
I walked to breakfast and arrived back at the convention center, where I joined the registration line:
By a few minutes before the bourse opened, the crowd had swelled considerably:
I did not attend the February show but I was impressed with the activity at most tables:
The submission line at PCGS was steady all day but largest in the few hours after opening:
After circling the floor to say hi to a few dealers (Seth at Witter, The Coin Geek, the gang at GC), I wandered over to the SS Central America Shipwreck exhibit to view some massive gold bars:
A couple of the highlights for me was the 1901 Proof Set in NGC Black holders and the sheer amount of 2x2’s at one booth:
Overall, I felt there were as many or more sellers as buyers on the floor and at the booths. I did notice some general softness in the old holder category, perhaps due to a larger selection than I’ve seen in past shows. However, overall activity was still strong and many tables had a constant stream of visitors during the 5.5 hours I was at the show.
Tim
I was there today too. @pointfivezero I like how that dealer tips his bargain bins over letting the coins spill out over the table all haphazardly like that. I took a picture of that too. I’ve watched people going through them the last few shows too, very popular, but the coins are basically spilling onto the floor. I find this amazing for some reason, very user friendly to attract new collectors, but a bit crazy.
Mr_Spud
How much is the 1901 proof set worth? That is hard to imagine owning that.
Tough question. I guess we will know in 29 days. One can buy a full 1901 proof set ($.01 to $1) for under $10K:
https://www.greatcollections.com/Coin/1349292/1901-1c-1-Proof-Set-NGC-Proof-62636465-Including-CAC-6-Coins-Toned
However, the NGC black set is PF65/PF66, all CAC with one gold (albeit missing the one cent) with consecutive cert numbers:
Seeing that it is over $45K (with the juice) with a month to go, I think it will land somewhere between $75 - $100K.
Tim
Very nice report.
I was set up at the show. Location was a double corner that McIntosh generally had.
Thursday was not bad for me. June Long Beach is usually the poorly attended show. I was actually not planning to set up until close to it happening, as my booth assistants were both unavailable and I just usually do not have a good June show there. (February was terrible too for me at Long Beach.) I mainly did it because I had a new book printed. But I had a good day.
Friday was very weak. I forget if I sold more than one coin that day.
Saturday is always a coin flip of a day at Long Beach, but June is almost always poorly attended on Saturday. That is the retail, 9-5 M-F worker attendance day. Those folks generally do family vacations instead. Hotels are also more expensive in LA County after Memorial Day. Sometimes, Saturday is very well attended though. I had low hopes when I came in late for the dealer hour and only about 35 retail folks for in the lines waiting to get in. However, the traffic did steadily pick up. It was not a super Saturday, where i go to get the car at 5pm, but had business through 3:30.
Wasn't a buy show for me. I did take delivery of a number of pieces. My ANACS orders were not yet ready. Got some groovy Continental Dollar [Brashlow dies] restrikes from Jeff Shevlin as well as his book. Flipped the coins to ANACS just before they were leaving. Had a number of very pleasant conversations with great guys in the hobby/business, which is really the best reason to attend shows IMO.
There were a number of unfortunate incidents on the bourse and outside of it. I am sure I will see threads on some of them when I catch up scroll here. I only seem to have had a few books stolen. But that was almost an expectation when I put a box of them on the table. The honor system is not always honored.