TooTawl's Impressions of Baltimore

Tootawl

First - I am a network analyst. I don't do impressions.
The first thing I noticed was the lack of the normal crowd waiting at the entrance for the doors to open on Friday and Saturday. On Friday, the number of empty tables does catch your attention. By Saturday noon, I noticed alot of dealers packing up to leave. While walking around, I noticed one dealer who had a somewhat original way of selling slabbed coins. He put paper labels on every slab he had so that you could not see the original label. If you know what your slabs look like, it was easy to see what company the slab came from. I did noticed more gold than anything else. I only noticed 1 or 2 dealers that had the Lewis & Clark C&C sets for sale. I wish I asked what they were going for. I walked away with an AU 1878 CC Morgan and an excellant example of a Hawaii dollar bill for my dollar type set. Everyone has stated how well attended the show us but I just didn't see it that way.

I'll post some stuff on the social life in Baltimore on the Open forum tomorrow.

Myqqy

He put paper labels on every slab he had so that you could not see the original label.

What was the point in that?? Was he trying to cover up the product of a lesser grading company??

centmaster

If I came up to a dealer's table and he had all of his slab labels covered, it would take all of my restraint not to laugh right in his face. There would be no possible answer he would be able to give me to make me stop laughing, either!

lordmarcovan

Sounds like a rather extreme proponent of the "buy the coin and not the holder" mantra!

Weird, though. One wonders why he wouldn't just crack 'em out.

Robgetty

I saw that dealer too. He had large paper labels over the top of the slabs. Now,
I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he was making the grades
easier to read (which was true) even though I quickly realized that he had questionable
quality slabs. It definately caught your eye!

wingedliberty

Thanks for the report.

theboz11

Great report Thanks

MS68

Carl had a table at the show?

Conder101

I've seen that dealer before. He covers the labels on the labels on the top tier slabs as well. So now you can put your money where your mouth is and buythe coin, not the holder. You can recognize the top tier holders so you know the coin is real. Now look at the coin and buy it on its own merits and not based on the number that the service gave it. If you aren't willing to do that then I guess you don't trust your own opinion and maybe you are just buying numbers, don't know what you are doing, and need someone to hold your hand. Or possibly it just isn't worth paying huge increases in price for minute (Imaginary?) differences in grade.

braddick

He'll also do so on his SEGS coins (and, he has a ton of those) other than the top label.

davewang202

I saw that dealer as well, although I didn't look at his stock.

In a sort of related story about dealers with oddball inventory and interesting ways of doing business.

I was walking around on Friday, and ran into another deal with peculiar tastes. I saw a bunch of holed, P01~AG03 Morgans/Peace, and started talking to him. I was just joking with him about people actually wanting to buy the P01 coins and get them holdered by PCGS. Before I knew it, he offered them all as a lot to me for $5 a piece, and I was laughing so hard I just had to buy them. That was where the crappy Morgans/Peace came from.

After I gave him the money for those Morgans, I started looking at what else he had. He had about 30~40 Stone Mountain commems, and aside from that, he's got about 7 or 8 1893-s Morgans and another 7 or 8 1894 Morgans holdered by PCI or some other entity.

Definitely a dealer with eclectic taste. It's either silver dollars for $5 or stone mountains or 1893-s Morgans.