Dallas, March 1-5, 2016. I am attending the 3rd, 4th, and 5th. This is from my article about the show on the ANA website under Community/Forums/ANA Conventions. This was my first convention since Pittsburgh 2004. Before that, I made six in ten years. So, I look at this two ways: an insider and an outsider. It was nice to see friends. But I have been away for a while, and I understand that if I were here for the first time, it would be overwhelming. There was no way to find what I was looking for, except to walk up and down the aisles looking at hundreds of dealers. The Show Guide did not identify specialties. Finally, I just starting asking people I knew who they knew. If I did not know anyone I would be lost. And I met someone who was. Having paid his $15 parking, he took one look at the bourse floor from outside the hall - I don't think that he bought his $8 entry; maybe he did - and he left. He had no desire to walk into such a chaos. The upside for me was working as an Exhibit Judge. I spent the better part of the day carefully reading displays about the art and science of the forms and uses of money. I also found two dealers that I can work with tomorrow on a project. I bought the new book on Netherlands Gold Ducts (reviewed here on CoinTalk.) It is a nice book. But before I give it any stronger reviews than I already have, I want to test it on the floor against actual coins. I found two dealers with Netherlands gold ducats from the 16th through 19th centuries. I will meet with them on the floor first thing tomorrow. And, although I am not a collector, I did find a couple of historical items for myself. One was a little 6-krajczar billon coin, struck for the Hungarian revolution of 1848-1849. The other was a little dinar of Maximilian II 1586 Kremnica Mint. All together I spent $25 on the pair.
@kaparthy Thanks for the report, Michael! Just out of curiosity, can you tell me anything about this 2004 ANA Medal from the Pittsburgh show? Chris
That's nice to hear, but I've never really done medals. I own a couple random pickups, such as the Portlandia one from 2015 because I really liked it and I felt guilty not being a PNNA member. I believe that there isn't an 'official ANA' medal from the ANA itself, rather it comes from the host coin club or organization - e.g. PNNA did the medals for the Portland show. I didn't hear about or see anything from this show (usually the host club has a sales booth set up, the DCC booth was more a meet & greet). TNA had a booth also as a meet & greet & join. This year the ANA was selling the 500 specially slabbed ASEs for the 125th anniversary. Free if you join at the 42$ leve, extend your membership for 3 years or contribute $125 (which is sort of unfair to those of us who are already LMs). The pictured piece looks more like a 1oz silver round with the state quarter-like motif on the obverse and a place for engraving on the reverse. I've never heard of a catalog of silver rounds, I would have to guess there are 1000s of pieces, most from small producers. A CCF member did a 'token' and recently posted the economics of it. For small runs, the die making charge plus the manufacturing costs all for something that just sells a few and only at a small markup from spot = suck. He's hoping to break even in 10 years. I doubt there was a set of SQ design rounds or anything like that (subscribe to the set and receive a free wooden box with your fourth shipment). While the Pennsylvania design was created by John Mercanti (then the Chief Engraver of the United States Mint), other SQ designs are copyright by outside parties and can't (legally) be copied w/o permission.
There was a time when the ANA contracted to have medals produced for the National Convention. I have the 3-medal sets that were produced by MACO from 1969-1982. http://www.robecsimages.com/chris.html Chris
