As many of you already know, the week of the Long Beach Expo is a very busy week in Southern California when it comes to coins! First is the Goldberg Pre-Long Beach Auction and this sale was pretty impressive. Of course much of the attention was on the sale of the Missouri Cabinet Half Cents and all of that hype regarding that collection was well deserved. The coins were just amazing and I spent well over an hour during lot viewing looking through the coins as I knew I’d likely not have the opportunity to view them again for many many years and may never have the chance to view so many top quality Half Cents in a single sitting ever again! The rest of the Goldberg Pre-Long Beach sale didn’t seem to have as many coins as usual, but the bidding was very strong and I was outbid on most everything I wanted to win. I was able to come home with a few nice lots so it wasn’t a complete bust. A member of my local coin club also attended the auction and won a really neat set of 20 hobo nickels in a large custom made display and he was very happy about winning. After the Goldberg sale it was time to get ready for the big show! Wednesday morning, I was up early, packed the car and headed out for the drive to Long Beach. The day was starting out to look like a really nice day, bright blue sky and decent weather. The weather in SoCal has been pretty nice lately, 60-75 degrees during the day, 50 or so at night. Of course, by the time I got about half way to Long Beach, which for me is right around Santa Monica, Marina Del Rey and the Los Angeles International Airport, it was dark and grey as the marine layer over the ocean hadn’t yet burned off. Most of the drive down the 405 is pretty boring, lots of stop and go traffic and the 60 mile drive that I have can take well over two hours. Right before turning off onto the 710 to get into Long Beach is the spot where they park the Goodyear Blimp which is pretty cool. By the time I made it into the City of Long Beach and made it to the Convention Center, most of the grey sky and burned off and turned back to blue. Dealer setup went pretty smoothly. I share a table with Jay Robinson Rare Coins (bigjpst on the forum) when we arrive all of our cases and lights are already there so all we really have to do is clean up a little and put the coins in the cases. Of course, they sell early bird passes to the show and many vest pocket dealers take advantage of that to come into the show on Wednesday. Most will leave you alone while you are setting up and wait to try to deal and look at your coins once you are done setting up or at least mostly done. But there are always a few that don’t extend that courtesy, but we do our best to accommodate all. We did several deals on Wednesday, but I know that I’ve had better setup days at past shows. I thought that without a Heritage auction at this Long Beach show that there would be more dealers walking around on Wednesday doing deals but that didn’t seem to be the case. It seemed that some dealers just didn’t show up as early to set up and/or took their time setting up instead of making extra time to shop on the bourse. Thursday was very busy when the public came in. There was a huge crowd from the time the show opened up at 10 until at least 2 or 3 in the afternoon. Here’s a couple of shots of the view from our table a little while after opening to the public. Also on Thursday it was announced that Heritage will be back as the official auctioneer of Long Beach at the June show so whatever problem there was for this show seems to have been resolved. We did a fair amount of business with the public on Thursday and met several forum members which is always fun. A few gave me some nice feedback/suggestions on my new website which was great. I also ordered new business cards for this year which came in later that I had planned but luckily I received them just before heading down to Long Beach. The company I used was certainly not the most inexpensive, but I was able to have color on both sides and have different reverse images on the cards if I wanted. I was very happy with how they came out and I received many compliments on them. After a long Thursday at the show, we checked traffic and it was horrible. So, instead of sitting in traffic Jay and I decided to kill some time across the street of the Convention Center and had dinner at Hooters Fun stuff! I had tried to see the recently discovered 1974-D Aluminum Lincoln Cent which was on display at the Heritage table on Thursday, but both times I went to go check it out it was not in the case and there was just an empty stand. A little frustrating, but when I tried again on Friday the coin was there and it was pretty cool to see. At the other side of the bourse, there was a sports display with several Ty Cobb items and several Michael Jordan items. Being from the Chicago area originally, the Jordan stuff was my favorite. I took close up shots of a copy of his University of North Carolina course schedule as well as the letter he received from the University of North Carolina after they first watched him play in high school. Very cool! Friday traffic at the show was still pretty good, better than the last few Long Beach shows I thought, but for the amount of traffic we had it seemed like there should have been more buyers. We did have a YN friend of ours come to our table and he was able to help us with a value and grade on one of our Chinese coins which after grading may turn out to be quite a bit more valuable than we had though. We had a few more forum members visit our table as well as some folks from our local coin club, the Glendale Coin Club. As you may have seen on the Collectors Universe BST forum, we’re having a medal made up for our club this year by Daniel Carr and a few forum members asked us for details about it and a few of them placed orders too which is great. Can’t wait to see them in hand in March! I was too tired to stick around Long Beach on Friday night after the show so I ended up heading back home. I needed to finish putting together a few more PCGS submissions and an NGC submission to be turned in first thing on Saturday. When I went to drop off the submission on Saturday morning, PCGS was pretty busy. Lots of folks submitting coins and I saw several folks signing up for new members and then also submitting coins. PCGS seemed pretty busy all throughout the show with their show crossover special they were running and the reholdering special they had in connection with their new holders. Traffic at our table was really strong on Saturday, but sales just were not there. We sold some, but compared to past Long Beach shows, it was a poor Saturday. It wasn’t all bad though as we had lots of folks looking at our coins and had lots of nice conversations with folks. It was nice that we had lots of interest in the more unique items in the cases, not necessarily the more valuable. Everyone seemed to really love the error set Jay recently picked up: And most folks seemed to like looking at my proof-like Canadian toned dollars many of which really pop under the lights. We also had lots of traffic at our table on Saturday as we participated in the YN Treasure Hunt for the first time. Participating dealers are each given a multiple choice question and the YNs much hunt down each table and give us the correct answer to that question. When they answered correctly at our table, we gave out some free coins and just about all of the kids seemed excited and seemed to be having a good time with it. One YN from our coin club know that I like sample slabs so he came back to our table after the Treasure Hunt to sell me his sample slabs. It was one of the tougher negotiations of the entire show, haha, but some of the samples were pretty neat: Now I’m back home and ready for the Super Bowl! Have lots of new purchases to go through and image, but that’ll have to wait until next week! Already looking forward to the next Long Beach Expo too!!
Great report on a great show! Thank you! I would have loved to have seen those rainbow toned Canadians up close, but only attended Saturday. I think I missed seeing a lot of people, but at least have a photo with the Penny Lady and some Newps to show for it Can't wait for June!
It's all in the imagination my dear 'Jester. The mind is most powerful and profound. Great write up and report Illini420!
Thanks for sharing your impressions! And I suppose that selling coins is just one aspect of such a show - being present, making contacts, and letting visitors know about your business is important as well. Christian
Great writeup! Were you in the 400 aisle on the far left wall as you're facing the main entrance? I almost thought I could see myself in the way background of one of your pics -- I was in the 500's Sent from my iPad Junior Numismatist, Alhambra Coin Center www.lifeatthecoinshop.com www.facebook.com/lifeatthecoinshop
Thanks! Yeah, we're at Table #448 which is in that first row towards the back of the room near the ANACS table and right behind Todd of BluCC Photos who sets up with his photo booth. If I turned any further to the right in my photos of the bourse, all you'd see is Todd's black curtain of his photo booth, haha.
