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ANA Wrap-Up
Coinosaurus
Posts: 9,659 ✭✭✭✭✭
The six day marathon is over. Anyone who went the whole nine days is a true warrior indeed.
Monday: Today was setup day, moving my booth materials from the lovely Rosemont Convention Center parking lot to the show floor where Rich Uhrich was kind enough to let me store material behind his table. I opted for the one-day booth option on Wednesday & Friday since I didn't have enough time to staff a booth for the whole week. After several trips back and forth through the long and winding road that is the Rosemont skybridge, all my boxes were on the floor. After that I headed over to the exhibit area where I setup my exhibit on Tokens & Medals related to Christian Gobrecht (can you get any more esoteric). After that I headed home to the north suburbs.
Tuesday: Tuesday I acted as table assistant for Rich Uhirch, a lot of old friends came by to visit and a number of cool bust and seated coins walked up to the table. Half the fun of working the other side of the table is watching what comes in. Late in the day I actually sold a coin, most of the visitors usually prefer to deal with Rich directly and I am there just to help out. Kinda funny, the coin I sold Rick had bought that morning, a F15 bust half with wicked cool toning, very old cleaning but really nice - I was going to ask for the coin as my payment for the day (based on what he had paid for it) but someone else got to it first. Tuesday night it was off to Bob Chinn's in Wheeling for dinner, with my co-author on the Whitman book Secret History of the First US Mint.
Wednesday: We setup our one day booth to sell copies of our book, having first carried in and setup a couple paintings related to the book. There is a lot to be said for just selling coins and not moving paintings around parking lots, hotels, and convention floors! In any case, the books were in full array and dead time was near zero the whole day. Many friends came by to chat and a good number of copies were sold. Whitman Publishing was right across the aisle from us and they were doing a brisk business as well, many folks purchased over there and came over to us for signatures which we were happy to supply. We gave a Numismatic Theatre presentation on the book in the afternoon (my gracious wife covered our booth in the meantime) which was well received. Wednesday night it was off to Tru in Chicago for dinner, and anyone who has been there knows what I am talking about. A truly delightful experience with a number of my good buddies from the Numismatic Bibliomania Society.
Thursday: Thursday was club meeting day, starting off with the LSCC at 9am. Brad Karoleff, entertaining beyond words (you have to experience it to believe it) called the club auction to the delight of all, and a record amount was raised for the club treasury. After that it was off to the NBS Symposium, where my co-author and I gave a talk on the making of our book, kind of a behind-the-scenes and how it all happended including some of the wacky things that happened during our research trips. Anytiime you can get "Goofus and Gallant" into a numismatic presentation, you go for it. From there we headed over the ANA table to sign books, a very busy hour with people lined up two and three deep at some points. From there is was off to see the beginning of the Stack's sale which featured Dick Osburn's MS seated half set. The 70-CC went for 160K while the 78-S was at 150K. Dick gave a few remarks before the auction started and was pleased with the overall results. Thursday night we hosted a dinner for the librarians of the ANA and ANS, a good chance for them to network. Much of the discussion centered on electronic resources and their future within the ANA & ANS. After dinner we headed over the NLG bash at the Hyatt, where we somehow managed to win the Book of the Year award for Secret History of the First US Mint. I am still amazed and humbled! The competition was quite strong this year, with fifteen books receiving the "Extraordinary Merit" award - a shoutout here to Bill Bugert who received this award for his book on New Orleans seated half dollars.
Friday: We setup our table once again and were kept busy the entire day selling and signing books & chatting with old and new friends. We ducked out for the NBS meeting at 11:30am, with my wife once again relieving us (table assistants are invaluable I've decided). Friday night it was off a dinner hosted by Rich Uhrich for his extended staff, including web master, table assistants, and key suppliers. The dealer-to-dealer guys work behind the scenes while Rich handles the retail side - it seems to work out pretty well for all. A great dinner and I hope we can do it again next year!
Saturday: Started off with the Rittenhouse Society breakfast in the morning, and from there it was off to the Stack's auction where I scored the 1847-O quarter in AU58, a condition census coin that is a nice upgrade to the one I have now. Then went to the SPPN meeting where Fred Holabird, Don Kagan, and others offered well-considered analysis on the authenticity of certain western assay bars. FirstMint gave us some of the historical background (he is writing a book on the subhect) to set the scene. Then moved all our booth materials off the show floor, through the byzantine skyway and into the car. Around 2pm one of my wife's colleagues met up with me at the Whitman booth. He had three kids who were just starting to get cent rolls from the bank and sort through them all. I fixed them with a number of penny folders and there was some genuine excitement from the kids. Very cool & the Whitman folks were great with the kids. Late in the day I finally had a chance to hang out a Pistareen's table where he sorely tempted me with some Comitia Americana medals until his table partner emptied my checking account with one of the gold restrikes of the Libertas Americana medal. The third one I have owned & I think I will have to keep it this time even though I made money off the other two. Finally cleared out my exhibit case in the collector exhibit area and headed home.
General observations:
Spent some time, but not enough, with RYK (fab exhibit at Doug Winter's table) and AirplaneNut who had done photography for the book and signed a special bookplate for me. MessyDesk came over during the show and did some additional photo work on the spot. One of the curators from the Smithsonian came over to our table during the show and we had a great conversation about future projects.
I have a much better attitude about Rosemont after this show. The walkway was much better ventilated than I remembered, a good thing since much of the show was spent moving between the parking garage, the Hyatt, Hilton, and convention center. The show floor is plenty big enough with lots of space in the aisles to move around. The meeting rooms are well appointed and nicer than other convention centers. Rosemont is Vegas-like in that you have to take taxis between some things, but they are short rides and the taxis seem to be in good supply. Weather was good this week and I was able to walk outside pretty comfortably as needed. I'll need to schedule in some more downtime next year - the pace was intense - but all in all it was a great week.
Edited to add:
Brad Karoleff came over after the NLG award and asked us to inscribe a copy. Behold his mock humility, below. He remarked that we had "squealed like 13-year old girls at a Justin Bieber concert" when we won the award. I was going to sign his copy, "Yes, it's true we squealed like 13-year old girls at a Justin Bieber concert," but then thought the better of it
Monday: Today was setup day, moving my booth materials from the lovely Rosemont Convention Center parking lot to the show floor where Rich Uhrich was kind enough to let me store material behind his table. I opted for the one-day booth option on Wednesday & Friday since I didn't have enough time to staff a booth for the whole week. After several trips back and forth through the long and winding road that is the Rosemont skybridge, all my boxes were on the floor. After that I headed over to the exhibit area where I setup my exhibit on Tokens & Medals related to Christian Gobrecht (can you get any more esoteric). After that I headed home to the north suburbs.
Tuesday: Tuesday I acted as table assistant for Rich Uhirch, a lot of old friends came by to visit and a number of cool bust and seated coins walked up to the table. Half the fun of working the other side of the table is watching what comes in. Late in the day I actually sold a coin, most of the visitors usually prefer to deal with Rich directly and I am there just to help out. Kinda funny, the coin I sold Rick had bought that morning, a F15 bust half with wicked cool toning, very old cleaning but really nice - I was going to ask for the coin as my payment for the day (based on what he had paid for it) but someone else got to it first. Tuesday night it was off to Bob Chinn's in Wheeling for dinner, with my co-author on the Whitman book Secret History of the First US Mint.
Wednesday: We setup our one day booth to sell copies of our book, having first carried in and setup a couple paintings related to the book. There is a lot to be said for just selling coins and not moving paintings around parking lots, hotels, and convention floors! In any case, the books were in full array and dead time was near zero the whole day. Many friends came by to chat and a good number of copies were sold. Whitman Publishing was right across the aisle from us and they were doing a brisk business as well, many folks purchased over there and came over to us for signatures which we were happy to supply. We gave a Numismatic Theatre presentation on the book in the afternoon (my gracious wife covered our booth in the meantime) which was well received. Wednesday night it was off to Tru in Chicago for dinner, and anyone who has been there knows what I am talking about. A truly delightful experience with a number of my good buddies from the Numismatic Bibliomania Society.
Thursday: Thursday was club meeting day, starting off with the LSCC at 9am. Brad Karoleff, entertaining beyond words (you have to experience it to believe it) called the club auction to the delight of all, and a record amount was raised for the club treasury. After that it was off to the NBS Symposium, where my co-author and I gave a talk on the making of our book, kind of a behind-the-scenes and how it all happended including some of the wacky things that happened during our research trips. Anytiime you can get "Goofus and Gallant" into a numismatic presentation, you go for it. From there we headed over the ANA table to sign books, a very busy hour with people lined up two and three deep at some points. From there is was off to see the beginning of the Stack's sale which featured Dick Osburn's MS seated half set. The 70-CC went for 160K while the 78-S was at 150K. Dick gave a few remarks before the auction started and was pleased with the overall results. Thursday night we hosted a dinner for the librarians of the ANA and ANS, a good chance for them to network. Much of the discussion centered on electronic resources and their future within the ANA & ANS. After dinner we headed over the NLG bash at the Hyatt, where we somehow managed to win the Book of the Year award for Secret History of the First US Mint. I am still amazed and humbled! The competition was quite strong this year, with fifteen books receiving the "Extraordinary Merit" award - a shoutout here to Bill Bugert who received this award for his book on New Orleans seated half dollars.
Friday: We setup our table once again and were kept busy the entire day selling and signing books & chatting with old and new friends. We ducked out for the NBS meeting at 11:30am, with my wife once again relieving us (table assistants are invaluable I've decided). Friday night it was off a dinner hosted by Rich Uhrich for his extended staff, including web master, table assistants, and key suppliers. The dealer-to-dealer guys work behind the scenes while Rich handles the retail side - it seems to work out pretty well for all. A great dinner and I hope we can do it again next year!
Saturday: Started off with the Rittenhouse Society breakfast in the morning, and from there it was off to the Stack's auction where I scored the 1847-O quarter in AU58, a condition census coin that is a nice upgrade to the one I have now. Then went to the SPPN meeting where Fred Holabird, Don Kagan, and others offered well-considered analysis on the authenticity of certain western assay bars. FirstMint gave us some of the historical background (he is writing a book on the subhect) to set the scene. Then moved all our booth materials off the show floor, through the byzantine skyway and into the car. Around 2pm one of my wife's colleagues met up with me at the Whitman booth. He had three kids who were just starting to get cent rolls from the bank and sort through them all. I fixed them with a number of penny folders and there was some genuine excitement from the kids. Very cool & the Whitman folks were great with the kids. Late in the day I finally had a chance to hang out a Pistareen's table where he sorely tempted me with some Comitia Americana medals until his table partner emptied my checking account with one of the gold restrikes of the Libertas Americana medal. The third one I have owned & I think I will have to keep it this time even though I made money off the other two. Finally cleared out my exhibit case in the collector exhibit area and headed home.
General observations:
Spent some time, but not enough, with RYK (fab exhibit at Doug Winter's table) and AirplaneNut who had done photography for the book and signed a special bookplate for me. MessyDesk came over during the show and did some additional photo work on the spot. One of the curators from the Smithsonian came over to our table during the show and we had a great conversation about future projects.
I have a much better attitude about Rosemont after this show. The walkway was much better ventilated than I remembered, a good thing since much of the show was spent moving between the parking garage, the Hyatt, Hilton, and convention center. The show floor is plenty big enough with lots of space in the aisles to move around. The meeting rooms are well appointed and nicer than other convention centers. Rosemont is Vegas-like in that you have to take taxis between some things, but they are short rides and the taxis seem to be in good supply. Weather was good this week and I was able to walk outside pretty comfortably as needed. I'll need to schedule in some more downtime next year - the pace was intense - but all in all it was a great week.
Edited to add:
Brad Karoleff came over after the NLG award and asked us to inscribe a copy. Behold his mock humility, below. He remarked that we had "squealed like 13-year old girls at a Justin Bieber concert" when we won the award. I was going to sign his copy, "Yes, it's true we squealed like 13-year old girls at a Justin Bieber concert," but then thought the better of it
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Comments
- Jim
<< <i>Excellent report. I was touched by your inscription in my book. Thanks.
Up your nose with a fire hose?
Camelot
<< <i>
<< <i>Excellent report. I was touched by your inscription in my book. Thanks.
Up your nose with a fire hose?
I thought there was another Fonzy here. FWIW, the expression, I believe, is:
"Up your nose with a rubber hose"
and that is not what was written in my book by Len.
Jeremy, OTOH, came close.
I like reading them all.
Mike
<< <i>Nice report. That '47-O is a tough tough coin as you already know. I was outbid on two quarters, one in the Heritage sale and one in the Bowers sale. Did however manage two out of the Bowers sale. That was an excellent group of tough dates in the Bowers sale. >>
I expected more competition on the 47-O, but the reality is that true whale money is reserved for the next grade up on this coin.
I strolled by the Rittenhouse breakfast at the Hyatt and had a sudden sad feeling like the guy who left the dance alone.....
<< <i>He remarked that we had "squealed like 13-year old girls at a Justin Bieber concert" when we won the award. >>
I believe he immediately revised that statement to be "12-year-old"
<< <i>
<< <i>
<< <i>Excellent report. I was touched by your inscription in my book. Thanks.
Up your nose with a fire hose?
I thought there was another Fonzy here. FWIW, the expression, I believe, is:
"Up your nose with a rubber hose"
and that is not what was written in my book by Len.
Jeremy, OTOH, came close.
"Up your nose with a rubber hose" is the correct quote, but it is from Welcome Back Kotter.