Baltimore Spring 2025 Roll Call
alefzero
Posts: 1,017 ✭✭✭✭✭
Well, the show is next week and I have not seen a thread for it. (I wish the search feature here would sort by last reply date. It is insufferable and is such a simple and obvious database query addition.)
Who is attending/ setting up? I will be there at booth 837 (Select Rarities). The dealer list is on the site, but share dealers included is not always complete and I can't always keep people's handles on here straight with their names/faces/companies.
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Everyone be very careful.
We'll be at booth #442, as always.
Coin Rarities Online
Like Long Beach, this is another show that is dying.
Thursday for me.
WS
Safe travels to all. Viya Con Dios
Friday for me
Collector of Liberty Seated Half Dimes, including die pairs and die states
Our usual location great coins and great candy. Stop bye and say Hi
Everyone have fun and be safe!
I want to see lots of show reports. 😉
Please and Thank You. 🙏
Sometimes, it’s better to be LUCKY than good. 🍀 🍺👍
My Full Walker Registry Set (1916-1947):
https://www.ngccoin.com/registry/competitive-sets/16292/
We are close to a sell out for March Whitman Expo -- it's going to be a great event. Also, Jeff Garrett and I are doing an exclusive pre-release signing event for the 2026 Red Books on Friday 10-12. Hope to see everyone there. Here's more info: https://expo.whitman.com/
Whitman Brands: President/CEO (www.greysheet.com; www.whitman.com)
PNG: Executive Director (www.pngdealers.org)
Friday if I can swing it - if not, then maybe Saturday, but not sure if it is worth it with so many empty tables
Successful BST Transactions: erwindoc, VTchaser, moursund, robkool, RelicKING, Herb_T, Meltdown, ElmerFusterpuck, airplanenut
No, Saturday is definitely not worth it. Unless and until @JohnF can impose and enforce a requirement that dealers who take tables staff them from the minute the show opens on Thursday until the second it closes on Saturday, it is 3 day show in name only.
Legend complained in its January Market Reports that it was banished to Siberia at the last FUN show. Undoubtedly because they previously bailed early, against FUN's wishes, so they lost access to prime show real estate. THAT's why FUN has a great show. If Whitman is not in a position to do that, it what it is. A day and a half show. Plan accordingly.
It is well known that dealers start bailing Friday afternoon, because their business is mostly done by then and they want to be home for the weekend. They don't care about the casual retail that shows up on Saturday, and the place is always at least half empty from the minute the doors open on Saturday.
And it just gets worse from there. So, unless you live around the corner, or know for a fact that a dealer you want to see will be there on Saturday, it is absolutely not worth the trip on Saturday.
Thursday for me.
M
https://www.pcgs.com/setregistry/gold/liberty-head-2-1-gold-major-sets/liberty-head-2-1-gold-basic-set-circulation-strikes-1840-1907-cac/alltimeset/268163
Not this go-around... I'll see everyone this Summer...
Successful BST transactions with: SilverEagles92; Ahrensdad; Smitty; GregHansen; Lablade; Mercury10c; copperflopper; whatsup; KISHU1; scrapman1077, crispy, canadanz, smallchange, robkool, Mission16, ranshdow, ibzman350, Fallguy, Collectorcoins, SurfinxHI, jwitten, Walkerguy21D, dsessom.
I have always maintained that Saturdays should have a vest pocket waitlist who can pop up in the empty tables. Not only would it provide an infusion of fresh stuff into the channels encouraging foot traffic later in the show, the additional setups and foot traffic would encourage the dealers to stick around a bit longer as well. Win Win Win while potentially adding a small but tangible bit of additional profit for the show as well
11.5$ Southern Dollars, The little “Big Easy” set
The face that greets you
as you walk into the Baltimore Whitman Coin Show.
He is busy attributing coins that no one else will authenticate and then figuring out if he should price them at 200% of Greysheet or 500%.
chopmarkedtradedollars.com
It is good to see Julian out at a show again.
I'm afraid I don't understand how vest pocket dealers without the means to pay for a table would add an infusion of anything on the last day. They are free to roam the aisles and set up outside the doors now, and do so. So no dealer who wants to bail is going to stick around to see what a vest pocket dealer shows up with on Saturday. Just like they don't stick around for the marginal sale to the general public.
Sure, giving it away to vest pocket dealers on Saturday would give the public more to see. But at the expense of show revenue for Whitman. Give it away at the end, and lots of smaller dealers who take tables now might get pissed at having to pay full price up front. Then you have a race to the bottom. So that's just not going to happen.
Vest pocket dealers can either take a table or do what they do now. No major show operator is going to incentivize them to not take tables by giving them away at the end of a show.
Shows make money by maintaining price integrity for tables. Not by conditioning people to wait for deals, in an attempt to induce dealers to stay when they don't want to, or by trying to provide something for the general public that pays no admission fee in the first place.
If you are serious about inducing dealers to stay until the end, you do it by punishing them for not doing so, assuming you have the leverage to do that. As FUN clearly does. Not by giving vest pocket dealers free or deeply discounted tables.
"Win win win" for Whitman would probably be ending the charade and making it a two day show, rather than promising something to the general public on a weekend that they can't deliver. Or maybe, open the show on Saturday, if you want to have a weekend show for the public. Making it clear to dealers that they won't be home on the weekend if they want to participate. Assuming there is an appetite for that.
The Whitman Baltimore show **should post **on the front page of website that dealer participation may be limited on Saturday. Good not to upset those who were expecting a full table show.
The Long Beach show made that statement posted on website.
Normally. I ride up on Fri or Sat, but my two sons and wife that are here in town usually go and we stay at MGM national harbor so they can play at the casino, but this weekend my youngest son who is a teacher, has his class theatre presentation so Have to skip. Will hit the june one. I did give a customer my submission and consignment to drop off for me.
I’ll throw this idea out there. All you collectors show up Sat with cash in your pockets. Then dealers will stay and bye the way I was one of the last dealers to leave. Why because I feel bad for the folks that work during the week and can only make it in on Sat. And with that said I bought some terrific coins and sold a bunch too.
Chicken and egg. You are a good guy, and it's great that you stayed. But just how many tables were occupied at 12:00 Noon today?
I'm sure it was a lot less than half. In which case, no thanks. I don't need to show up with cash in my pocket, like Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, waiting for you to report to your friends how great the show was for you on Saturday afternoon, in the hope that maybe a few more dealers might decide to stay an extra day next time.
Just not worth my time, when I can hang out with Ian on GC from the comfort of my home. Chicken and egg.
The dealers have to make the investment in time and effort, and then I will maybe show up with cash in my pockets. Not the other way around. I'm not the one promoting a show that turns out to be a 3/4 empty room the only day people don't have to take off work to attend.
There really should be no such thing as "one of the last dealers to leave" because you should all be required to be there until the bitter end. Because otherwise, all you have is a death cycle.
Dealers don't stay, so the public doesn't show up. And then Whitman is stuck wasting money on an empty convention hall. Until the show dies. And then you're left telling us how great IMEX is going to be. Wash, rinse, repeat.
I made the trip to B-more today, not a long one but boy are folks out on the road! Anyway, somehow got lost a little bit and made it in the door at 10:15 with a B-line straight to CAC as I had a couple of dimes to drop off to CACG - cross my fingers and say a prayer on the 1895-S Barber that has P-L surfaces on obverse (not enough on reverse), the 1921 Philly Mercury that is a nice AU & the 1920-S Mercury that I am really crossing my fingers on & don't want to jinx with GTG....
Dropped a boatload off across the street that were foreign. I kind of rotate as on last visit I did so with hosts.
Anyway, I noted that even more dealers had pulled up stakes by 11:30 when I made my exit & I made a quick run looking without looking (LOL) through the aisles.
Well, just Love coins, period.
I think you missed my point. I didn't say give the tables to Vest pockets or collectors just provide them as available for a discounted fee since they missed the meat of the show anyway. While vestpocket guys do deals at the eating tables they aren't open display and they are mostly doing deals for specific coins to specific contacts. Buy allowing them to set up in cases behind security they would allow for more to view buyers and dealers alike.
Its not a race to the bottom it is prorating the cost considering the value is frontloaded anyway in the earlier days. This injects buzz and transactions and gets more collectors interested in attending and the types who could fill a case or two with dupes are the types most dealers like at the shows. Its providing value, foot traffic and opportunity to the full freight dealers.
Its no secret that fresh material at shows can be hard to find and people who attend multiple shows know that the same guys carry 75% the same inventory and it gets repetitive. By allowing the non or semi-professionals to set up it provides an infusion of new inventory on the floor and that presents opportunities to dealers and collectors alike. It can be tough to cherry pick a case that has been picked over 1000 times no? It also could make for greater attendance as people would see more activity on the last day causing less to avoid it, if the trend was reversed and the last day generated a buzz, I suspect more dealers would stick around and it would make the show stand out a bit more.
Call it the "Collectors" show and provide "display" opportunities at open tables on Saturdays with "no" transaction
prohibition enforcement. That would protect them (somewhat) from the resale documentation requirements and the show could resale space by the case. I know lots of serious vest pockets and collectors that would jump at the chance. To walk the show one day and set up for a day and pretend to be a dealer even if they learned more than they sold. Butts in chairs and feet on the floor is Whitmans job afterall. Descoping the show might be whats best for a few dealers but not the show or audience.
Sure some of these shows are devolving into giant dealer to dealer shindigs that they can get their business out of the way early and call it quits. But that the problem not a justification, lots of dealers aspire to retail business and that requires foot traffic and collectors.
11.5$ Southern Dollars, The little “Big Easy” set
No, I didn't miss your point. I was just a little loose with my language.
When I said "giving it away," I meant deeply discounted as well as literally free. No difference to the promoters. Conditioning people to wait for deals means missing out on full price sales.
In this case, for nothing. As I noted, sure, members of the public showing up on Saturday might have more to pick through. But the show will still suck since the original table holders will be gone, and the scavengers replacing them are no substitute.
Whitman doesn't need the incremental revenue from a one day deeply discounted distress sale of empty tables. Public throngs won't be attracted by whoever is bailing on a flea market for the day to man a table in Baltimore.
Serious dealers, vest pocket or otherwise, who want "to set up in cases behind security" pay for tables. Others "do deals at the eating tables." Whitman wants the latter to become the former. But you don't get there by "giving it away" on the last day.
No dealer who is paying for a table, and then leaving early to get home for the weekend, is going to stick around to see what the guy at food court brings to a case on Saturday. And, to the extent they did, there would be no empty table for the scavenger to grab.
No, the answer isn't devaluing the tables by selling them by the day, deeply discounting them on the last day. It's incentivizing dealers to stay. Or shortening the length of the show if you can't. Or starting the show on the weekend if you are serious about running a show worth attending for the general public, as opposed to retirees and serious collectors, in addition to professionals.
I see your point but it is very much dealer centric where mine is attendee centric. We agree on somethings like Thursday start times for mid level shows encourage Dealer to Dealer transactions and allow them to run their course doing the normal business week hours and discourages swathes of collector participation leaving the show to the retired and show groupies who travel regularly who like the dealers like leaving early as they too have run their course by Friday night and like cheaper tickets home. This creates the self fulfillment of the problem we are discussing as the trend cements into the status quo
Your other points about the price economics of tables is sort of speculative as you're assuming rock bottom pricing which I have never said. Your points of making it worth the shows time and not penalizing full freight dealers all have merit and are obvious so one (me) just assumes those would be considered when setting the rate so not really a show stopper in my mind. The value proposition for the collectors would be 1) Skirt the paperwork for resellers under some guise of (show & display & trade) 2) potential for premium locations without reservation/seniority if vacated 3) ability to buy partial tables as little as one case for value focused newbs and while a discount due to duration, I assume if one was to get a full table 4 cases (what ever) it would be cheaper than the full show but more than 1/3 established dealer prorated. Also it gets people thinking about dealing into Whitman's pipeline of comms and some would assuredly step up to full tables and become full freight dealers.
You said "In this case, for nothing. As I noted, sure, members of the public showing up on Saturday might have more to pick through. But the show will still suck since the original table holders will be gone, and the scavengers replacing them are no substitute". Im not sure I agree with that. Half the serious collectors and most of the dealers are looking for gaps in valuation of material vs the quality for opportunities as they walk the floor. Those types of opportunities are rare in OG dealers cases as the ones that were there are long gone save for the tiny percentage of "fresh" material on any given floor that might pose a new opportunity. Less established people setting up in numbers will provide a flood of new opportunities. You're right there will be cases of over dipped morgans and bags of coin silver and AU classic commemoratives (just like the dealers cases) but there will be collectors trying to liquidate their collections too and vest pockets with cherry dups. This selection isn't really present on a show floor and when it is the dealers are hoping it walks up to their table and they get first crack at it. Giving the foot traffic a crack at it is what would create the buzz. I would concede there is an argument against these tables that the dealers shouldn't have to compete for those buying opprutintes with the public as that is one reason they bought their table in the first place. I would counter that all the rest of the shows still give them that and hopefully the extra numbers coming in off sets this while giving more dealer a shot than the one it walks up to first.
Your last point if it got so competitive where the waitlist for open tables had trouble issuing because it became too popular and dealers decided not to vacate to see the action that isn't a problem that would be a huge win for the show and would require expansion or modifying of the rules/structure to accommodate while proving me right. At least in my mind.
If that was the case when I had shown up last Sat with my 14 year old son we would have seen more than 33% full tables which were rapidly shrinking. After all we are talking about saving a show, it will take something different and bold. The same old same old will only continue the same old trends unless they get lucky and external factors change like a flood of new collectors or the surge to online sales regresses.
11.5$ Southern Dollars, The little “Big Easy” set