Baltimore Show report (no pics and I am no Ed Murrow)

panexpoguy · November 5, 2016 9:02AM

A friend and I decided to go to the Baltimore show for the first time. We did not plan on attending too long ago but made flight reservations through Southwest and the flight was only an hour. It was also only about half full, which is a rarity these days, so we had plenty of room to spread out. Arrived at BWI at 1:45pm on Wednesday and took a shuttle to the Sheraton Inner Harbor. Given that we had not been to the show before, we decided not to venture out and explore and had dinner at Mortons in the hotel.

The following morning we got up early and wandered around for a while and ended up having breakfast at Chick Fil A. There is a fair amount of construction around the area so it was noisy and busy early on, but there were not as many people around as I would have expected and every third person was either a cop or a fireman or a paramedic.

Got back to the room and organized my coins and we made our way over to the show. Of course, we turned the wrong way leaving the Sheraton and ended up walking the long way around to get to a convention center entrance and it ended up being quite a way from the correct one which would have been a much shorter walk.

We walked around the convention center a bit and finally found the correct area for the show. We had pre registered and so check in was effortless and we quickly joined the crown outside the doors. There were a fair amount of early birds inside already and by the time that the doors opened there were a good 100-150 folks lined up outside for the Thursday open and more people trickled in after the doors opened.

I had a number of pre planned things care of so I had a map of the floor layout handy and made my way to Reeded Edge. Sold them a number of coins that I had pushed out of my sets through upgrades. Always a quick and efficient process to sell to them. They paid me half in cash and half by check. Deposited the check via my cell phone to help cover show purchases and walked over to BlueCC and dropped off two blue boxes of coins to have imaged by Todd. There were several of us there at the same time and Todd was gracious enough to expedite the process so we could pick up the coins by the end of the show Thursday since we were flying out early Friday morning. Now it was time to pick up newps so I walked over to NFC to complete a deal made a few weeks before the show.

Sat down at NFC and looked at the 1935 D Merc MS 67 FB they had for me. I had been looking for the right example for my set for about two years and this was it. Frosty surfaces with a crescent of orange toning around the right side of the obverse. Really pretty coin. Paid for that and then navigated over to Pinnacle.

Met Kathleen at Pinnacle and picked up two coins she had been holding for me. A 1937 D MS 67+ FB Merc with nice toning obverse and reverse and a 1937 D MS 67 Washington with lovely original surfaces. While I was there I asked to see a Peace dollar she had on her site. It was a 1934 D which was heavily toned on both sides. Blast white is the preferred appearance for most Peace collectors, and I love them that way, but this coin was an exception. Beautiful maple, gold and orange toning with areas of red, green and blue near the perimeters. Pinnacle's pics were good, but in hand it was even more appealing. I will get it to Todd in the future and post some pics.

At this point I sat down and assessed my war chest to see what was left. I had made notes of a number of upgrade Peace dollars at various dealers that I wanted to look at. I stopped at Mike's Coin Chest, Larry Shapiro and PQ Dollars and the items I was looking for had already been sold at each table. Not good for me, but hopefully a sign that business was good for the dealers. I wondered around a bit longer and ended up at Polonsky Coins and Collectibles. They had a number of Peace dollars that I would have loved to own but were beyond my reach. After a bit I spotted a 1934 Peace in MS66 that was a beauty. Blast white and pristine surfaces with a strong strike. I asked myself how long I was willing to eat ramen noodles for breakfast, lunch and dinner after I got home and I decided I was willing to eat them for a very long time, so I picked it up too.

My friend is a currency collector so we made the rounds of that end of the room and he made a number of purchases for his Cleveland Federal Reserve collection and we managed to occupy ourselves for a couple more hours by enjoying everyone's offerings and agreeing how nice it would be to own an Educational note or two.

At just before 5pm I made my way back to BlueCC and Todd had my coins complete so I picked them up and we left the show. It seemed pretty busy all day Thursday, and it seemed that coins were selling, but it was my first Whitman so I have no baseline to compare. We were up at 4am the following morning and off to the airport to head back to Columbus. Flight was uneventful and we were home by noon Friday. We both agreed that it was a show we wanted to attend again.