Home World & Ancient Coins Forum

NYINC Show Report

I made it to the show at 11:00am this morning. The room was packed. Really very crowded, though this was in large part due to the very narrow isles between the tables. My first time through the bourse I hardly got to see any coins, as nearly all the tables were busy with customers and I’m not the pushy type. By 1:00pm or so things mellowed out a bit and I was able to get some time with the dealers.

This was my first time any ancient or world coin show, so the following is written from that perspective. I saw a good amount of business being done. Customers laying down 1000’s in cash or writing checks for similar amounts. Business looked healthy to me. There were dealers with lower end stuff as well and those tables were quite crowded with customers. I overheard a few comments about how their bids got blown out of the water at the auctions, so that venue may have been strong too.

I counted about 25 dealers with significant quantities of ancient greek coins. All of those had Roman too, and some with Roman and no Greek. The majority of the dealers were world coins, not ancient. Every table was occupied. I didn’t see any obvious no shows or a space where a single additional table could have been added. Seems like a sold-out show. There were no exhibits, or budget section, or anything other than standard dealer tables.

I did not see any of the wholesale-only tables that plague other shows, all the dealers appeared to be open for retail business. I certainly overheard a lot of dealer to dealer transactions though, as would be expected.

PCGS and NGC were there. The new French grading company was not. Between 1/2 and 3/4 of the world coins on display were in slabs. It probably will not be long before the medium and high end world coin dealers are all slabs. Slabs for ancients were in the minority, but definitely not zero. Two or three dealers had all slabbed ancient coins. The older ancient dealers (sorry, but older is the right word here) were staunchly anti-slab, but I wonder what the scene will look like 10 years from now.

The dealer community was quite friendly and I learned a lot from them, even though I didn’t purchase much this time. One thing I learned was that I need to increase my budget or decrease my expectations in Greek coins.

The first dealers started shutting down at 5pm. When I left at 5:30pm 90% of the tables were still open and there was a decent number of customers. I real glad I went. The education was valuable. I can’t comment on whether the material on offer was stale, or different than from other years. But unlike US coin shows of late, I didn’t hear much grousing.

Comments

  • U1chicagoU1chicago Posts: 5,552 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited January 12, 2018 8:04PM

    Nice report! Thanks for sharing your experience!

  • 291fifth291fifth Posts: 23,898 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I wonder if interest in collecting is shifting away from US and into foreign and ancient coins?

    All glory is fleeting.
  • mvs7mvs7 Posts: 1,661 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Sounds like it was a happening show... Thanks for the report!

  • Jackthecat1Jackthecat1 Posts: 1,122 ✭✭✭

    I agree that it was a very happening show.

    Member ANS, ANA, GSNA, TNC



    image
  • jt88jt88 Posts: 2,794 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @291fifth said:
    I wonder if interest in collecting is shifting away from US and into foreign and ancient coins?

    If you go to coin show you can tell many US coins available for sale but not many foreign. This should tell you something. I used to have over hundred GSA, more than complete set of peace dollar and almost complete set of Morgan dollar but I sold them all in 2009, 2010 and switched to foreign coin. Many of those foreign coins price went up more than double. I still has a $20 US gold coin but it still under water after more than 10 years. LOL.

Sign In or Register to comment.