Preliminary show report from Baltimore.....

coinguy1

The crowd and activity level seem somewhat subdued - for whatever reason (a very hectic auction and show schedule recently?), a small number of very active dealers who attend most major shows are not present. That can and does make a noticeable difference.

Price levels for especially desirable and/or rare material, on the other hand, are not subdued.
A number of my ("silly") high bids for the Bowers sale have already been topped (some of them by wide margins). And, for the most part, it remains extremely difficult to obtain special looking coins at anywhere near “sheet” levels.

As I am in the process of building up my inventory and not offering any coins for sale at this show, I don’t have any first hand information regarding how easy or difficult it is to sell into this market. But, based upon the prices I’m being quoted and seeing what numbers nice material is bringing, I can venture a guess that it would be fun to be selling here.

MadMarty

Great report Mark, wish I was there!!

mrearlygold

Sheeet! We be in a strong market for da good sheet.

Tom

Tassa

Thanks for the report.

Barry

Thanks Mark. Look forward to bumping into you tomorrow.

puff

Thanks for the report Mark.

coinkat

I was there for a brief moment and was turned away because I was told it was open only to dealers today... So the crowd was dealers.

RYK

Thanks, Mark.

"Silly" Robert

Fountainhead

I went to the B&M lot viewing this morning. It looked like a lot of dealers were arriving and setting up later in the day than usual.

I'm not sure subdued is the right word; a number of the dealers looked downright exhausted to me.

DaveG

Mark,

Thanks for the very prompt show report!

Any guesses as to how well attended (by the dealers) the NY Invitational will be on the 23rd/24th?

(Lots of auctions that week!)

dpoole

Sounds like more of the same: high prices for choice pieces, mediocre prices for the other stuff. True?

Fountainhead

I was on the floor this morning. The show looked busy and peppy in many places, but in March, people were standing two and three deep in front of some dealers' tables; today, those same dealers had time to look bored from lack of customers.

Two dealers I had hoped to see did not bother to rent a table at this show; many dealers agreed that with three big shows so close together, they expected Baltimore to suffer. I was reminded that last year Baltimore was especially good because it hosted the ANA.

Tootawl

The first thing I noticed this morning was that they have the show ina smaller area and there were empty tables all over the place. Tomorrow, I've heard rumors that there will be even less.