Charmy's Feb 2012 LONG BEACH SHO"W Report w/Lots of Pics!

For those of you who haven’t been to the Long Beach Convention Center, I took a few photos of the outside and surrounding area. It really is a beautiful building, with lots of great restaurants and activity right across the street.













Set up was Wednesday afternoon and went very smoothly. After my booth was organized and ready for business, we relaxed for a minute with, of course, a nice bottle of Italian wine.



My dealer friends, Rich and Frank


Rick


Then I walked around to see if I could find some coins I may need, say hi to friends, harass Todd and his dad, etc. Then it was off to dinner. We went to our usual Wednesday night Italian restaurant, Piccolo’s. There were six of us and we each brought a bottle of wine so we could have our customary wine tasting. Yes, I know, six bottles is quite a lot of wine, even for me and my group, so we did have quite a bit left over that we took with us. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of our table filled with all the wine bottles, but you can imagine the stares we received from the surrounding tables!

On Thursday, the show opened with quite a few people streaming in. We were very busy most of the day, and I did a lot of buying. I was offered some amazing and top quality coins that I couldn’t pass up! I think I spent more at this show than I have at any one show in the past! I kept feeding Todd little bunches of coins to photograph throughout the show – I can’t wait to get them up on my website!






Here are some of the forum members who stopped by

John/Claychaser


Mike/Illini


Seth/Sgrenald


KennyMac


Bob/WaterSport


Matt/BillyGoats


Sandy/PCGS – she is always extremely helpful and cheerful!


When I was taking Sandy’s picture, my good buddy Larry walked by so he was more than happy to pose with Sandy!


Cindy of VAMS & More brought me these two bottles of wine. She said the chocolate wine actually tastes like chocolate and kaluha but is made from wine. She said the Pride wine is one of her favorites – I can’t wait to try them both!



Later in the day I was able to walk around, see the exhibits on display and some interesting booths

This is Mike/Illini’s exhibit that won first place in its category


Another exhibit


This booth was just down the aisle from mine – it had very interesting African artifacts on display/for sale!






I just thought this very old Cola tray was really cool!


Thursday night after the show, a couple of my booth helpers, along with my hubby and son, went out to dinner at our favorite local Mexican restaurant – SuperMex! They make the best salsa and Cadillac margaritas!!

Friday, as is typical, was slower than Thursday so there was a little more “goofing off” time. A friend of mine who collects very interesting and often rare and unusual coin-related items stopped by my table and showed me some of his purchases….

He had the authentic bronze plaque of Lincoln that was designed by Victor Brenner in 1907 – two years before the Lincoln penny was created! It’s very similar to the one discussed in a recent Coin World article.


This is a very usual Hobo nickel – look at his nose!


This is a rare South American counter-stamped store card – it says “Business House of F Pinto – Manager”



This one has something to do with a baby’s potty training!



Mike/Illini was at the table when my friend was showing us these coins, and Mike pulled out this neat counterstamp


Rich, my table helper, brought these two bottles of wine, which we consumed with a lot of help from customers and other dealers who “just happened by”! They were both delicious!


On Friday night we went to PF Changs for dinner, then it was off to the Commerce casino for some poker. I was happy to end up about $60 ahead!

Saturday started out slow, but soon picked up. There were lots of kids for the pirate treasure hunt, and lots of families helping kids find the coins they were looking for. I didn’t think we were going to do much business, but I was pleasantly surprised when I sold several larger, more expensive coins later on Saturday, including an 1856 Flying Eagle in PCGS PF63 and an 1877 Indian cent in PCGS MS63 RB, so that really helped make my show – not to mention that it will help pay for all the coins I bought at the show!!

By the way, I heard that after next year, Collectors Universe will do away with the February Long Beach show. I was very surprised to hear this, and hope they will reconsider, but we will see. All in all, this has always been a good show for me, but I understand some changes need to be made in order to bring back the overall success of this show – and I do hope that more effort is put into doing just that.

So my next show(s) will be the PCGS Las Vegas show which overlaps with the Las Vegas Coin Club Show at the Palace Station in early March, so it will be easy to do two shows in one report!

 

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Very nice write up! Glad to see these. Thanks for taking your time to show us all.

 

Sounds like it was tons o' fun, Charmy! Unfortunately, I never made it to the show due to transportational issues, so maybe next time I'll plan ahead.

Thanks for the solid report!

-Brian

 

Thanks for sharing another fun report.

Having recently read this NGC article, Ten Numismatic Predictions for 2012, (see #5), I am not surprised to hear about a show being eliminated.

 

I was there friday, but you werent at the booth when I walked by.

Always enjoy these write up's Charmy, thanks!

 

FYI, Don Willis posted this on my PCGS thread:

"We have no plans to close any of the Long Beach shows. Actually our plans are the complete opposite!

PCGS will be working hard with Expos to make all the Long Beach shows "must attend" events.

I heard nothing but rave reviews from every dealer I spoke with at this last show. Our business was great with lines of submitters every day."

 

You read Legends Market Report on Long Beach? Its the opposite.

 

Thanks for the write-up. I thought it looked pretty busy on Friday. FWIW I was trying to sell a few coins at the show and a few of the dealers I dealt with seemed to be whining about how they didn't have any money...this table cost me Yada yada....I paid too much for gold last week now it's down.. One guy was looking at a few of my Morgans,picked up my 1896 in MS64 set it down, said I can't afford that one(before I gave a price.), and asked about the 1882 MS63. Neither is an expensive coin. Maybe it's just their buy strategy, but it really sounded like they were in dire straits. I definitely prefer dealing with the guys/gals that will just say sorry not interested or I will pay X. Glad the show was good for you Charmy. I definitely had fun, even though I didn't win the PCGS grading contest.

 

Great report. You sure get around!

 

Nice report, Charmy. Good to see you at the show.

Remember that Legend doesn't deal in the same "market" that 99.9% of coin collectors are dealing in... her report also said she only heard of one or two retail sales being made at the show, that is just silly. Unless she is only counting retail sales over $50k per coin or something like that. Just about every dealer I spoke with at Long Beach was excited about the increased amount of traffic and business at this show compared to recent Long Beach shows.

Like bigjpst mentioned, I found many dealers very tight on buying coins. That said, I was able to sell coins that were pretty liquid like 25th Anniversary sets and some of my certified classic commemoratives. I didn't get retail prices for any of them, but I thought the prices were reasonable in that I was able to get cash in hand instantly that was comparable to what I would have gotten after listing on eBay and paying all of the fees. But on the more specialty coins like certified high grade varieties and on pretty much anything uncertified, most dealers weren't even interested in looking and those that did made offers that were borderline insulting. I was able to buy a few things at the show and was able to cherrypick a few unattributed varieties so that was nice. Of course some the same dealers who offered extremely low prices when I offered my coins were trying to set new record high prices on the coins they were selling, hahaha. But there were still some reasonable sellers at the show that wanted to deal.

Unfortunately, I didn't win the PCGS grading contest either, haha!!!