Review: Mesa (AZ) Coin Show (1/23 & 1/24)
TigersFan2
Posts: 1,442 ✭✭
Before going to this show today, I was very biased to not enjoy it. Last year I attended the show and found it too crowded with no elbow room. Today I had the complete opposite experience. It was an awesome show and I enjoyed myself a lot. The space is still a bit cramped, but going at 2 PM and not at 9 AM helped a lot as there were fewer people there. I do think if they desired, they could get a larger room with more dealers and really "go big," but I'm unfamiliar with the costs and logistics of putting on a coin show.
The show attracts dealers from across the state and the parking lot outside the Mesa Convention has RVs and such.
99.999% of the stuff at the show doesn't interest me to purchase. It's either (a) high-priced coins outside my budget, (b) over-priced coins, (c) over-graded raw coins, (d) junk buckets of coins, (e) foreign coins or (f) bank notes. But with time, I can find a few things to buy for my collection that I both want and are reasonably priced. It's the hunt for those few things which makes going to the show fun.
Perhaps there's a large segment of the coin collecting population that doesn't buy on Ebay. It reminds me to not limit my view of coin collecting to my own experience. I spend a lot of time looking at auctions on Ebay and am very familiar with the Ebay prices for the type of coins I collect. Then to go to a coin show and see these same types of coins priced much higher than what they sell for on Ebay.
The show also got me wondering about how much of the collecting population collects only raw coins. Perhaps those of us collecting PCGS coins are in the small minority of the coin collecting population and the market for raw coins really is large. Personally, my grading skills for assessing MS coins is poor as I probably wouldn't be able to properly assess a raw MS65 vs. a raw MS62. So for me, I don't want to spend several hundred dollars for a MS Peace Dollar as I don't trust my grading skills nor the MS65 the dealer has written on the 2x2. Anyway, it's interesting to see all the raw coins. It's just a market I'm uncomfortable at spending a lot of money in.
A guy named Barry was there and is very good for the hobby. He has thousands and thousands of coins in 2x2s of all dates and conditions. Lots of circulated coins and great for collectors who are filling Whitman folders or Dansco albums. He's also very good with kids and I was listening in as a boy about 10 was finding some coins to buy. Barry was coaching the boy on negotiating with him and of course he gave the kid a great deal on the coins. It was funny to listen to.
PCGS is the only grading company who's graded coins I collect. I was looking over a display of coins where the dealer had mostly ANACS coins. He was telling me that ANACS is the most accurate third-party grader. That's the first time I've ever heard anyone say that. I've always heard people say that PCGS and NGC are the best and that ANACS is a very respectable 3rd.
I definitely like dealers who have prices marked on their coin slabs. It makes it easier to shop rather than ask them what the price is of this coin or that coin. One guy would look it the price in a magazine.
I noticed that many dealers only put their best coins out in their display yet have many others in boxes behind their table. When I bought a MS63 Morgan dollar, the dealer then went to his box and put a MS61 Morgan dollar of the same date/mm in the display to replace the one I bought. That's a good thing to have learned because I don't always want to buy the highest grade.
Even though the show goes until 5 PM today, several dealers started shutting down for the day around 3:30 PM.
I did buy 4 PCGS coins: 1959-D Franklin Half (MS64FBL), 1960 Franklin Half (MS64FBL), 1881-O Morgan Dollar (MS-63), 1899-S Morgan Dollar (XF-40). The 2 Franklin halves were marked as $28 each and when I handed the dealer the money, he said $40 for both. A super great deal given that the PCGS Price Guide lists them at $45 and $48.
Comments
I am guessing the ANACS fan was the Carefree Coins guy and wife at the first table to your right as you walk in the door against the wall?
About half of the dealers there are local and can be found at the monthly Camelback Collectors show. I overheard that the attendance was much higher than the Tuscon show last week
I was there from 11:00 to about 1:00 and at first it was too crowded to get a look at the inventories but at the end it thinned out enough to get an idea of what each table was dealing with.
I am guessing the ANACS fan was the Carefree Coins guy and wife at the first table to your right as you walk in the door against the wall?
About half of the dealers there are local and can be found at the monthly Camelback Collectors show. I overheard that the attendance was much higher than the Tuscon show last week
No. The ANACS fan was the far opposite corner from the entrance door on the inside circle, one table further over from the very old guy at that inside corner. But I remember the Carefree Coins guy and his wife (and dog). They had slabbed coins from many different companies. He also had in his display a sign saying "1963 Bust Halves. I questioned him about the date. He said it wasn't a date but the number of Bust Halves he has in a box behind his table. Now I just have a big "huh?" as I think about it. That's an unbelievable number. Perhaps if he's at the Phoenix Coin Club show in early March, I'll ask him about it again.
One thing different from the show a year ago... A year ago there were two huge dealers with huge inventories of Chinese coins and notes. No such stuff this time.
My Washington Type B/C Set
I learned that years ago...quite by accident... and after that always asked if they had any
of what I was interested in 'behind the table'.....got some good deals that way. Cheers, RickO
Nice purchases, too.
Thanks for the report.
Check out the Southern Gold Society