I attended the Denver Coin, Stamp & Sportscard Expo today (Friday). This was my first time to attend this particular show. It is a 3-day show but I will only be able to attend the first day (even though my ticket is good for all 3 days). I was able to stay for about 5 hours.
I took my new camera with me today and talked the show manager into letting me take a few shots as long as I promised not to use a flash. I was experimenting with the camera by shooting in RAW format and now I cannot figure out how to convert them to JPEG. (Help, anyone? I do have Adobe Photoshop Elements.) I'll post some pics as soon as I figure out to convert them.
I was very impressed with this show. I don't know how many dealers were there but there were quite a few there - some from as far away as California and North Dakota. There was a good mix of material - mostly US but I saw some quality ancient and hammered material at one dealer and a fair amount of World Coins here and there. I also saw some jewelry but no sportscards. The US Mint was there handing out coin holders for the Prez dollars and one free State Quarter per attendee. (I got a New Mexico.) ICG and ANACS were also there. (The Denver Mint, ICG and ANACS are all local so they did not drive as far as I did to get there.)
Some dealers had some REALLY nice stuff. I saw quite a few early Proof coins - some VERY nice - Morgan Dollar, Seated Dollars, Halves, Quarters, etc., Barber Halves and Quarters (I was salivating over one exceptionally nice PF-64 Barber Quarter but the $1,400 price tag was a bit more than I can handle just now), a very nice 1936 Proof Set with Matte Proof Lincoln Cent and Buffalo Nickel, a VERY nice 1938 Proof Set, Proof Indian Head Cents, Proof Shield and Liberty Nickels, Proof Two Cent, Proof Buffalo Nickels and Proof Mercs, etc, etc.
I tried to moderate my purchases today having spent $550 at a smaller show a couple of weeks ago. Below is my modest haul from today:
1926 Oregon Trail Half MS-63 raw (but I think it could go 64)
Crude Original Hobo Nickel (punched on an EF-45 1920 nickel)
1907 French Indo-China .900 Silver 27 Gram Coin (Cast Counterfeit)
1967 Kennedy Half (holed - for my Holed Type Set)
At the other show a couple of weeks ago I picked up the following:
3 Capped Bust Halves (1824, 1830 & 1835)
1830 Capped Bust Half (crude contemporary counterfeit)
3 common Three Cent Nickels (with nice die clashes)
Common Shield Nickel (with a couple of die cracks)
German Notgeld 5 Pfennig coin and a couple of Notgeld notes
1964 10 Kroner (Norway) (just an attractive coin)
At today's show I took along a coin that I will discuss at another time. Suffice it to say that it fooled 5 out of 5 dealers that looked at it. That coin will be the topic of another thread.
If you are in the Denver area you should check out this show. Admission is $3.50 and parking is free. You can find all the details at
www.coinshows.com.