Charmy's 2019 CSNS COIN SHOW REPORT w/lots of Pics!

I apologize for this report coming late but as I mentioned on another thread, my hard drive got corrupted and had to be replaced. I have a great local small IT shop who have a couple of brilliant young guys who take care of any of my IT needs. Luckily, I didn't lose any of my photos or other information during the transfer to a bigger and better hard drive!

So I had a nice easy flight from OC and arrived in a nice sunny Chicago!

I always enjoy seeing the bright colorful lights over the underground walkway at O'Hare.

I stayed at the Rennasaince which is connected to the convention center. It's a beautiful hotel and the staff is friendly and helpful.

After I checked into my room, I had an appointment with another dealer to look at some coins. They were kind enough to give me a glass of wine while I was looking through their coins. It's a double pleasure to have a nice glass of wine while looking at Pretty pennies!

The hotel has a great bar/restaurant area that is a central the gathering area for everyone. So after my appointment, I headed down to the bar/restaurant to have some dinner where I ran into my good friend, Mitch Ernest, President of CSNS, and his son Sam who is also on the CSNS board. Mitch and his entire family are some of the nicest, kindest, hardest working and most generous people I've ever met. While we were catching up, Mitch told me about a new Q. David Bowers award that CSNS was giving to numismatic professionals who were committed and dedicated to serving numismatics. I asked Mitch if I knew the person receiving this inaugural award so I could make sure to attend the ceremony to support that person. He said yes I knew them and recommended that I attend. So I was pretty excited since I guessed that Rick Snow would be receiving the award.

After dinner, I went back to my room to prepare for an early set up the next day.

The bourse was so clean and deserted before it opened to sponsors at 8 am and all other dealers at 9am. There was quite a crowd of dealers eager to go in and set up their booths.

The usual dealers stopped by my table during set up to show me their newps. I was pleased to find some nice pennies to add to my inventory. These are all the coins I bought throughout the show.

During set up, a dealer friend stopped by and showed me this old Avon Lincoln cent lip gloss holder. I hadn't seen one before, so I asked him how much he wanted for it but he told me it was a gift!

Later that afternoon, I opened up a bottle of my favorite Rombauer Zinfandel that I had brought with me.

After the show on Wednesday, we went to a local steakhouse for dinner, then it was off to the casino in Elgin!

Thursday morning came way too early! I had an 8am Women in Numismatics board meeting. WIN is planning some special events for 2020 to help promote numismatics to more women (which happens to be the 100th anniversary of women's right to vote). We're calling it "The Year of Women in Numismatics" and are emphasizing how numismatics can enjoyable and interesting for everyone. We will have special presentations, raffles, and give aways at the FUN, CSNS, and WFM shows in 2020, and will be giving free WIN membership to all female YN's during the 2020 Summer Seminar.

After our board meeting, we held our general meeting where Mitch Ernst gave a very interesting presentation on “Oscar Roty’s Marianne, ‘La Semeuse’ – France’s Symbol of Liberty.”

Thursday was a pretty busy day, and I was pleased to have some decent sales. Also, it was great to see several forum members stopped by to say hi.

Paul working the ANACS table with Jennifer from the ANA

PCGS busy as usual!

The bourse floor still pretty active later on Thursday afternoon

After we left the show on Thursday, we went to Yu Mandarin, one of the best Chinese restaurants I've ever been to! We started out with 6 people, then I called the restaurant and added a couple more, and ended up calling the restaurant 3 times to increase our reservation. We finally ended up with 11 people - most were copper people, along with my foreign coin dealer friends. Starting from the left in front:

Greg Hannigan, Chris McCauley and his wife Alice, Dino Koromvokis and his wife Lisa, Ron Mirr, Neil Ulrich, Karl Stephens and his wife Joanne, me, and Matt Chapman.

We had a great time and, as you can see, the food was abundant and fantastic!

After we got back to the hotel, I stopped into the bar where I ran into a lot of my fellow coin dealer friends. I stayed for one drink, then called it a night since my belly was full and I was running simply out of steam!

Friday was a very slow day sales-wise for most everyone I spoke to. Luckily I had several people stop by who had questions about some coins they had which kept me somewhat busy. However, it can be hard telling folks that the "unique" and "amazing" penny they thought was worth a pot of gold was actually just some ordinary penny with a tiny die anomaly or post mint damage.

By early afternoon, having finished/shared my Rombauer the day before, it was time to open the second bottle of wine I had brought with me. This bottle of Pessimist was a gift and I had no idea what it would be like but I was very pleasantly surprised how nice it was.

Since everyone knew about the snow storm that was arriving on Saturday, we were all afraid our flights would be changed or cancelled, and some dealers decided to head out early Saturday to beat the storm. So Friday night we kept it low-key, and just had dinner at the bar with several friends. Also, I had to get up early again so I could make it to the awards ceremony to see Rick receive the Q. David Bowers award (so I thought!).

Ron Sirna, Dino and Lisa, Rick and his son Kenny

Saturday morning I headed to the CSNS awards ceremony where I was a few minutes late because I stopped to grab a cup of coffee and a banana so I sat in the back row. Right when I walked in I heard them describing the Q. David Bowers award that was newly established to honor a numismatic professional who had demonstrated dedication, commitment and service to numismatics. I know Rick has all those qualities and was just waiting for them to call his name, when instead I heard my name being announced. I just froze, my jaw dropped, and I became confused. I think I audibly gasped. I began walking up the aisle with the banana sticking out of my pocket so I quickly tossed it to Rick's son Kenny who was sitting on the aisle. I made my way up to the podium, still shocked and immediately started getting tears in my eyes. I think I made my dear friend Mitch speechless as well, so I just grabbed and hugged him in gratitude. He told me the decision to honor me with this award with Kevin Foley and his bourse committee.

As I mentioned in Rick's thread about this award, Rick and Mitch had me completely bamboozled! I am deeply grateful and honored to have been given this award, but truly I wasn't alone in this venture into the wonderful world of numismatics - there were a lot of people who helped and mentored me along the way, including Rick.

By the way, Rick also received a special award at the ceremony. He received the Mitch Ernst Sower Award which acknowledges Rick's service in sharing his love for numismatics and planting the seed in many people throughout his years as a numismatist.

The awards ceremony also honored all those creative numismatists who spent a lot of years and time accumulating, researching, and preparing an educational exhibit to share with the rest of us. I understand that, in spite of the new $75 exhibitors donate to participate in the CSNS competitive exhibiting program, it was completely sold out with a waiting list of additional exhibitors wanting to participate. So after the ceremony, I went over to the exhibit area to see all these wonderful creations. Here are some of the ones I especially enjoyed.

I also ran into Mitch who showed me their new CSNS tee shirt which he helped design!

Around 10 am, the snow began falling pretty steadily and was accumulating on cars and surfaces, except on the road.

Several dealers I knew already had their flights cancelled and had to rebook to leave on Sunday and Monday. My flight wasn't until 8pm Saturday night so I had my fingers crossed that the storm wouldn't be too bad by that time. After I head about the storm, on Friday I tried to rebook my flight but many flights on Sunday were already full, and my hotel was full for Saturday night as well. It was very nerve-wracking wondering whether or not I'd have to spend another night in Chicago and scramble for a hotel. But I had faith that O'Hare knew how to deal with snow and airplanes!

Most likely due to the snow storm, Saturday was very light with not a lot of public at the show. So after continually checking my United app for flight updates, and having received no delay notifications, I left early for the airport with my fingers crossed. My other concern was, even if my flight was delayed by one hour, with the 11pm curfew that the John Wayne airport has, my flight would be diverted to LA and I would have to be bussed back to OC, but that would still be better than not getting to SoCal at all!

So just before boarding, we found out our plane was diverted to another gate and they had to scramble to find a new plane, which they did pretty quickly. But then the plane had to be de-iced. So now I was scheduled to arrive in OC at 10:55pm, and that's exactly when we arrived in OC - wow, talk about cutting it close!

My hubby is back in Mexico this week, yes, he's at the same NORRA 1000 race to Cabo where he broke his neck a few years ago. But he is no longer racing, instead, he's pitting and chasing for his buddy's team and loving every minute of it! But look who is always waiting for me when I get home!

So all in all, even with this show being on the slower side sales-wise, I sold enough to pay the bills and it was still a good show for me - I was able to buy some nice pennies, spent time with some wonderful folks, had some great food and wine, saw some amazing exhibits, and even won an award! What more could a coin dealer ask for?!?

Next up: Las Vegas Numismatic Society Show at the Palace Station (May 16-19), then Long Beach in June