I landed in Houston Wednesday evening while the sun was going down. We had to sit on the tarmac for about half an hour since another plane was still parked at our gate, so I took some photos of the sun setting on Houston from the plane. I ran into the Bruders at the airport so we shared a taxi to the convention center so we could unload our inventory at security before heading to our hotels. (It’s funny, because I also ran into the Bruders a couple weeks ago at the Baltimore airport – unplanned – and we shared a taxi then as well!) I’ve never stayed at an Embassy Suites hotel before and was nicely surprised to see that I had a full living room, kitchen, and separate bedroom – all for just lil ol me! Here is the view of the convention center from my room at night and in the morning After I got settled in my room, I went back over to the Hilton to meet some friends – the Hilton is right across from the convention center and next to a very pretty park that is already decorated with lights. In the morning I walked over to the grocery store to pick up some supplies, including of course a nice bottle of wine! Here’s the park in the daytime Then I headed over to the convention center which is HUGE! Set up was from 9am to 1pm. Here is the Greater Houston Coin Club’s table – note their really cool table cover! These guys at AOCS are the ones who created my copper Coin Card, and they are set up just up the aisle from me. Here is their pretty 1 oz. Christmas round, as well as their own Coin Card. When the show opened, there were probably 50+ people waiting in line to get in. When I took this photo, the crowd of people were already entering and spreading out in different directions. Here are the PCGS and NGC tables which were both very busy on Thursday afternoon. One of the first people to stop at my table was Al/HardTimes – a local from Texas – he wanted to make sure I tried some of their yummy Texas wine so he brought me this wonderful bottle of Malbec from Fredericksburg, Texas. I opened it to let it breathe for a couple hours, and Al and I shared a cup together! Several more forum members stopped by! Christian/CMerlo1 Wade/FrankieFanatic (formerly MorganHunter2) Joe/JoeFro Edwin/Edix (who actually sang “Red Red Wine” so he could get one of my Coin Cards)! Glen Holsonbake/PonyExpress Ray and the rest of the Houston Coin Club volunteers do a great job putting on this show. They are very friendly and accommodating to both dealers and collectors, they spend a lot of money on advertising including several large freeway billboards, and are always walking the floor interacting with the dealers. Here are a few of the volunteers. They even put on a bbq dinner with live music for the dealers at the end of set up day. Even though I’ve heard the bbq dinner is very good, a few of us opted out and went to The Grove which is just across the street. The atmosphere there is wonderful, with hug open windows that look out on the park which had huge Christmas ball decorations and green floodlights. Ron chose this absolutely wonderful bottle of 2008 Italian Ca’Marcanda wine, one of the best bottles of wine I’ve had! I also tried some quail for the first time – and it was actually very good! After dinner, we headed over to Sambuca’s where we heard they had a band playing. There also was this interesting character (Charles) who apparently is a fixture at Sambuca’s Parked outside the club was this wonderful horse and buggy. Here’s is what the bourse looked like around 11:30 on Friday. As far as how the show is going, though it was quite busy yesterday with good attendance, and in spiteo f the tremendous amount of advertising the Greater Houston Coin Club does to promote this show, most dealers are reporting that sales are very slow. And so far, unfortunately, today is not much better, and attendance is down quite a bit today. Hopefully, things will pick up, but most dealers are not holding out much hope for huge sales at this show. But we’ll see as the day goes on. I’ll post more later!
See you tomorrow Charmy. We had a show last week on the south side of Houston in which dealers reported really nice sales.
Part 2: The weather here in Houston has been wonderful! Very mild and pleasant, similar to Southern California (though I hear we had pretty heft winds back in Orange County on Wednesday night!). Friday at the show was a pretty slow day for everyone it seems, though surprisingly sales for me did pick up later in the day. I’ve talked to a few dealers and everyone was very disappointed that there was no auction here, and they felt that probably helped curtail attendance at this show. When a show is slow, it does allow me the opportunity to shop around and buy a few nice pieces for inventory, including a beautiful 1872 Indian in PCGS MS65 RB and a pretty toned 1910-S Lincoln PCGS MS65 BN. Here are a couple tireless people who work hard to put this show on – Patty Fenner and Carl Schwenker I also walked around and viewed the exhibits – they had quite a diverse selection of exhibits that you could tell people put a lot of time and effort into creating. So after the show on Friday a group of us walked up a few blocks to Three Forks for dinner – wow! Now that is one amazing steakhouse, with superb service and wonderful food!! And they had a stunning selection of wine! We ended up having three bottles of this wonderful Napa Starmont Cab (we had a large group of people who also love wine)! After we rolled ourselves out of the restaurant, a few of us went to a small club outside of Houston called The Spot Club to listen to a local band. You can’t beat the atmosphere in a locals bar! The band was really good, and we even played a few games of pool. On my walk over to the show this morning, I spotted this cute tiny little fog hopping on the sidewalk so of course I just had to take its picture! Saturday has been pretty slow again, though there were quite a few scouts running around. I saw a couple forum members today, but they didn’t want their photos taken. It’s afternoon now and several dealers have left or are packing up, including me in a couple hours.
Yes, I haven't been to a show in quite a while, but your telling and pictures makes me wish CICF was going to be sooner than next April. I may have to go to a local show in the meantime. Thanks for all your hard work Charmy, we do appreciate it. Chris
Charmy, with wine at the table, have you ever made a bad buy with rose colored glasses? Can coins look better later in the show with "beer goggles"? I presume it might just put one in the zone or help weather out a slow show like a bad snowstorm. Either way, it looks like a lot of fun! Speaking of FUN, I look forward to seeing you there again. I'll try to fit a bottle in my bag in case I have to get into some serious negotiating. :smile Matt
There's the NYINC in January in NYC, good for Ancients or if you're just feeling anxious. It's probably warmer in NYC than MN then too if you need a break from the cold. Thanks for the report Charmy, very enjoyable to get your perspective on shows, attendance and the local atmosphere of different cities you visit. :smile
You are killing me. Yeah, the NYINC is a great show, I went a couple times when it was in Dec in the twin towers, but haven't been at the Waldorf. Its pretty pricey for me, especially with a 2 month old at home.
There's a big coin show right here in NYC?!? Man, I really need to get up to speed with coin shows. Never gone before, but all this talk is making me drool. =/'''
The NYINC is for world and ancient coins. Here are some others throughout New York State, Connecticut, New Jersey.
I'd love to! Looking at the Houston show, I hope I'm not overwhelmed by the first time experience. Anyone else here going to that one?
Maybe you can put the feelers out in a new thread in the Ancients/World forum here on CT... and we can hand back this thread to Houston.
If you want to find other members on CT who are going to NYINC you might start a new thread in the World/Ancients forum on CT, because it's a more appropriate place to find people of like interests and we are hijacking this thread by having a separate discussion from that of the Houston show report. It was just a suggestion.
