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SLNA St.Louis Coin Show report. A dealer's perspective.

morgandollar1878morgandollar1878 Posts: 4,006 ✭✭✭✭✭
edited February 10, 2019 9:35PM in U.S. Coin Forum
 After getting up on Thursday morning and finding a half inch of sleet and freezing rain on my vehicle I was kind of dreading the three and a half hour drive to get to St. Louis for the show.  I picked up a friend of mine and we left at 11am. We got there  just after the doors opened for setup a little after 3pm thanks to the good work of MODOT for clearing the highway an making it safe for travel.  I was completely setup by 5pm and had virtually no time to look around myself because I was so busy with early bird customers and other dealers coming up to may table and making purchases. Setup ended at 7pm and by closing time I ended up having the best setup day that I have ever had. According to many other dealers I talked to they also had a very good setup day.  There was a great amount of activity on the bourse floor and most were serious about making purchases and getting what they needed.

 On Friday morning the doors opened at 10am to the public and the bourse quickly filled with the many collectors that were lined up to get in.  If you have not been to this show, you don't know how cramped the bourse is and the isles usually have traffic jams  because of the amount of people.  I have dubbed the bourse as the "sardine can"  because of the lack of space for dealers and their stuff. The show should look for a bigger location, however I tend to look past the cramped space and appreciate it for being a quality show.  This first day of the show was pretty busy with many people stopping by my table to view my inventory and making purchases.  Most dealers I talked to at the end of the day said that they had a very good opening day.  Since I had a friend with me at my table I was able to get out on the bourse and make a few purchases for my inventory and get a couple want list items for customers.

 Saturday the doors opened again at 10am and for a very short time there was a pretty good crowd, however by noon things got pretty slow.  I had a little more time to get out on the bourse and look around. I stopped at one of the wholesale dealers that I usually do business with and started to put together a group of coins to purchase for my inventory. In the mean time many dealers were starting to pack up and leave after the news of nasty weather coming in Saturday night in to Sunday morning.   

 Sunday morning the St. Louis area was greeted by a quarter inch of freezing rain making everything an ice rink.  Sunday is usually a pretty dead day for the show since many dealers leave after Saturday.  When the doors opened at 10am I think I heard a couple crickets, but of course that was expected due to the weather.  Most of the dealers that were remaining visited each other and made their final purchases.  There were a couple handfuls of collectors that walked in to view the aftermath.  My buddy and I got our stuff packed and were on the road by 2:30pm.

  I have heard people say in the past that good coins just don't show up to coin shows any more.  I found this to be quite the opposite and I saw many good coins in dealers cases, such as a PCGS PR63 CAC 1895 Proof Morgan, a 1856 Flying eagle in PCGS PR65, some very awesome Matte Proof Lincolns that were all PCGS graded, and some great looking Proof Indian cents with spectacular color and eye appeal just to name a few.  I know I am leaving out some other spectacular coins but those are the ones that I remember off the top of my head for now.

Of course it was nice to see @DIMEMAN again, and it was nice to get to meet @Shrub68 although we never really got a chance to talk since we were both busy at the wrong times.  Overall I would say that it was a pretty successful show as it usually is, but I was surprised at the lack of attendance on Saturday.  There were several regulars that come to the show, but did not make it this time around.
Instagram: nomad_numismatics

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