ANA OKC Show Notes

lilolme · August 23, 2025 12:09PM

Have not been on the Forum for about a month but thought I would throw out some ANA show notes.

I will start at the end with the 'How was your show' thing. First I want to say if I asked 20 tables (probably a little less) and there were 400 dealer tables (probably less throwing out international and non-coin tables), then that would mean I missed 95% of the tables. I asked on Friday how was your show to several tables I was familiar with. As far as negative type responses (not good, could have been better, below average...) there were a total of Zero of these. The worse response was something like 'yeah it was okay'. The other responses ranged from Good to Excellent. Many of these included the word 'surprisingly' as in 'surprisingly good' or wasn't expecting it. This probably due to pre-show talk of location. Several were indicating a record or near record business with responses like: 'hit it out of the park both buying and selling', 'outstanding, maybe the best', 'exceptional'. With all the pre-show negative predictions I am wondering if there is any better way to figure out how a show will go.

While I understand the location as far as air access for some, the facility its self was nice, the Omni nice and basically amounted to crossing the 'street' to get to CC (courtyard was maybe 4 minute walk away) and the area appeared clean with a park like area across the street. Also the website indicated no outside food or drink. Don't know the normal but many brought in Omni bar food, pizza or UberEats or similar food with no problem. Also security appeared quite strong with many police officers present. I overheard one of them telling someone they were told to wear full gear and that is how they looked.

Once again PCGS had lines early on and including dealer day for submissions. I heard (not confirmed) that submissions had exceeded 10K by Tuesday. Early I heard grading was tough. But later a few mentioned that they had good grading results. So might have been mixed.

I heard many indicating good dealer day results but it is, to me, awkward when the bourse is used and most tables are not being used and the dealers with tables spread out across the bourse in their normal locations. But this works since no re-location need for show setup. I believe it was $150 to get in if a dealer did not have a paid table for dealer day.

When 12:30 pm on Tuesday came around I was watching to see how many would walk through the double door entrance. This due to the negative location pre-show talk. This is when the ANA members come in but the early birds are already in. There was a steady flow of people entering for many minutes. Not a trickle of people. Then, while not in the best of location to see, it appeared to be a similar thing at 1 pm when the non-ANA public entered. At this point the bourse appeared nicely full (for a coin show 'today' bourse) and active. The show to me appeared active all of Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday late afternoon slowed I think and Friday was definitely slower but still some light activity for what I could see. I headed home Friday late afternoon so no clue about Saturday but I suspect being free to get in on Saturday might be a good thing since is suspect many departures by then.

At the show I was able to get one coin. Since I finished the mini-type set, I finally decided to focus on and expand a little on the bust halves and that expansion is the 'one'. I often get zero but then that is not the only focus. This show was one of the best for me with the after hours socializing and the dinners which there seemed to be many good places to go. Also there were a few social events - Stacks at the Bricktown brewery (very nice and maybe 100 there), PCGS from 4 to 6 (only glanced in), NGC (missed it) and the NSDR had a remembrance event for John Highfill. Probably others I am unaware of.

Also had some good conversations with several people coming up to my friends table. One who was doing some early bust coinage and appeared quite knowledgeable about much of it. I took a chance on him being interested in photos of the my mini type set. Often when showing photos it is mostly a quick flip through with little interest (and that includes me sometimes). But he liked it and had a few comments. Good conversation. While walking the bourse I saw a face and said I think he is on the forum (had seen an image from a dinner photo or something). So popped over and hit him cold with the 'you a forum guy' question. Results, I was right again. I am now two for two on those.

I took the following photos at the Tyrant display. This only because I have seen an image of the 100 Trillion Zimbabwe note posted on the forum occasionally. This type of hyper-inflation I can't quite get a handle on. Will need to enlarge images to see best and read.

I did have time to lot view some lots of interest at Heritage and Stacks. This included the Desert Find 1889 CC but not for buying and only of interest due to past Morgan collecting and the story. I will not comment on my impression of the dollars since they are at auction. But I did find it interesting some of the conversations I heard. So there were questions about presenting all the 1889 CC's at once versus distributing them over time. Now some are questioning if there will be a Desert Find part 2. Also I heard from some that there appears to be interest in the Desert Find 1889 CC from non-collectors of the series due to the Desert Find story and if this could impact the prices realized to the positive side. Will see next week. I think the Desert Find, which is on the label, in five years (a representative time frame, pick yours) might be more of a What is this Desert Find on this label?

Finally the end.