local coin shops are gone in my area, how about yours ?

barberlover

When i was a kid in the 60's or a teen i the 70's, i'd spend my allowance or part time job money at 5 or 6 coin shops within 10 miles of my house. Now their are 0 mom & pop type coin shops left anywere near me [including downtown minneapolis] maybe thats progress or is it? I expext if you live on the coasts of the u.s. you have multiple coin shops to browse but would be interested to hear if the rest of you have better luck than my area does ? I still remember going to a local dealer to buy a copy of coin world off the counter and push the button to flip thru his display case. I really miss doing that.

SarasotaFrank

about seven coin shops within twenty minutes, probably four times that many within an hours drive (which would include Tampa, St Pete, Clearwater).

fcloud

Two shop within 10 miles of home. One is a "big dealer" the other never has anything, because everything he has is listed on e-bay.

DesertLizard

Mom and pop coin shops are going the way of the drug store soda fountain. Dinosaurs.

They in most part refuse to change with the times. Also grading services have killed them, no more inflating the grade on coins by 4-5x.

Lastly, one word, internet. I overheard the auctioneer the other night say 35% of their winning bids came from the internet. At that rate any brick and mortar coin shop is at risk.

In the downtown LA area there is one dusty old shop and they sell msotly jewlery.

coppercoins

Four coin shops in a city with a population of about 200,000 people. Another two about an hour away, and more than I can count in Kansas City and St. Louis.

airplanenut

I have one in town... and another i can take the train to see in 15 minutes from my town, then a 2 block walk... I like it this way

I'm going to my dealer on Monay, too... woohoo! Too bad his hours don't let me go more There are also a few withing driving range if a parent (ie my dad) is free.

Jeremy

airplanenut

Oh yeah... pop here is 20,000.

mbbiker

0 shops pop-51,000

jbsteven

we have 4 full time coin shops in houston with 3 million people. and it is still hard to find coins at the 4 shops. I have spent 14 hours in the last 2 days at the coin show here just so I can get my fix till Long Beach.

LanLord

Within about a 40 minute drive of my house I can think of 9 coin stores. This would cover the Penninsula, South Bay and East Bay area of Northern Cal total pop in this area would exceed 2 million (San Francisco, San Jose, Fremont, Burlingame, Palo Alto and Sunnyvale). And that's still not enough coin stores for me, although it's way too many people.

MrKelso

<< <i>I have one in town... and another i can take the train to see in 15 minutes from my town, then a 2 block walk... I like it this way

I'm going to my dealer on Monay, too... woohoo! Too bad his hours don't let me go more There are also a few withing driving range if a parent (ie my dad) is free.

Jeremy >>



Not one near me.. Tell me where are the shops you speak of? I may be able to drive to them in a 1/2 hour or so. Any in between you and i?

ARCO

quite a few in my neck of the woods. Around BYU in Provo there are 3 small shops, nothing great. In Salt Lake there were four large local shops and one or two smaller ones. One dealer had a heart attack and passed now there are three. They are well established and have excellent material.

up north of Salt lake is another smaller shop, this is all in an extended metro area of 1,250,000

Tyler

gsaguy

While we do have a local shop, the owner calls our town a 'numismatic wasteland'. 'Bout sums it up!

GSAGUY

ccr

My town ( 20,000 ) has only 1 and it`s really lame. More like a pawn shop that advertises as a coin shop. If I want to go to a decent place I have to go 60 miles to a good shop.

hookedoncoins

Around here, there are 2 coin shops that I know of. Both of which are not close at all. I have to pay two toll booths there and two back just to get there. I haven't gone to the coin shop for quite a while. I have been doing most of my buying on ebay lately.

-Jarrett Roberts

Monstavet

There are a few around my area (Pacific Northwest), but have yet to find one that is worthwhile. As near as I can tell, there aren't many coin clubs either.

Android

<< <i>[including downtown minneapolis] /q]

Barberlover, There is an excellent coin shop in downtown Minneapolis. It's called Premium Quality Coins. Park in the Northstar ramp on 7th street. His ( Bill Himmelwright's) shop is located in the skyway. Great guy, great dealer....IMO

I will agree that there just aren't as many shops in the Twin Cities as there used to be, and NONE of the remaining ones are open of weekends!

Andy

Barry

One coin and stamp coin shop here (cutesy main street w/buildings dating back to the 17 and 1800's outside Philly). Don't know how they make a living. Older couple, small shop, minimal inventory, doesn't do shows. Does advertise in local paper for collections in the classifieds regularly. I've been in there twice. Never bought a coin, only an album once.

MacCoin

for me when I growing up there were no coin shop anywere now there are. none in my town but there are in the town I work in, so I do get to go to the shop anytime I want. the show are a bit of a drive for me but its well worth the time.

1956Quarter

I'm on the east coast and we don't have BO here either. One shop is about 20 minutes away and the owner does coins and jewelry as a second income so his shop is small with very meager coin stock thats never of high quality, hence he may as well not be there. We have another one about 50 minutes away who has a decent selection, but his stock turns over very slow in the coins I collect. In fact he told he he doesn't buy them because the market is poor. Poor for Washington Quarters and Franklins????? What he is really saying is that he wants to stick with the high dollar coins like scarce CC Morgans, and MS Barber stuff that brings in big bucks on each sale, screw the little guy, show me your doctors and lawyers with deep pockets. So essentially he nas NOTHING for me. There is another about 1 hour away in a flea market, but he sells garbage mostly and at indiotic prices to the unsuspecting. For the only real nice dealer, I have to drive about 2 1/2 hours. He is the only dealer in the area that has nice stuff across the board and prices fairly.

dwood

Closest one to me is about 90 miles away, in Birmingham.

But at any one time, I do have 68 Canadian Geese, 15 loons, 8 whitetail deer, 1 possum, 2 aramadillo, 2 fox, 3 coyote, 4 chipmunks, and 1,273 squirrels within 1 mile of my back door I especially love the loons

And I finally have DSL, so "the local coin shop" is much better than it used to be

Fairlaneman

The Portland Metro area has 10 Shops,think I got them all. Three are in Downtown Portland and plain do not go there. The rounds are made to the others about every 2 to 3 months and usually find nothing. Almost always when the subject of New Inventory is discussed the owners say oh yes but it is all junk. Basically a Waste Land here also. Population in the Metro Area is somewhere around 2 Million I would guess.



Ken

Twowood

I have Miller's Mint here on Long Island ( (www.millersmint.com)and they're all I need. Twowood

dakra

Like I mentioned on the board yesterday... I went around to 3 dealers yesterday, 2 of them I could not even find and one was renovating. I had to make a trip back home check the online yellow pages for a 4th, luckily that one was still in business.

20 years ago, my town had a coin dealer within walking distance... Gosh...20 years ago... but I really did not have the interest in coins that I do now. Come to think of it, we had 2 dealers within a half mile of one another.

The one place that all us kids would go to was called "Woody's Coin Shop" or perhaps the guys name was Woody. There are three things I can remember about that place. The guy sold miniture pennies, he rolled his own cigarettes (atleast I think they were cigarettes) and he had a table top pinball type game that I believe he gave away prizes if you got a certain amount of points.

I wonder what ever happened to Woody.

-Dave

nucklehead

I have several shops around me here in Orange County,Calif.one of which is J.Rettew whom I never visit.I go to the Anaheim show each month so that pretty much is enough for me plus I'm close to Buena Park that has a great show twice a year and Long Beach to boot.I found a great shop in Huntington Beach called, The Huntington Beach Coin Exchange,it's an awesome store with a huge bid and buy board,much better than eBay as you can see what your buying before you buy it.

TONEDDOLLARS

I live in the suburbs of Boston. We have several coin shops available to us. J.J. Teaparty, Northeast coin,,Lexington coin just to name a few. They all have great stuff. We also have 3 shows a month around here to choose from, all with in a 50 min. drive. From the sound of it I guess I'm pretty lucky. I also travel up to Rare coins of New Hampshire (1 hr.) on occasion.