On Thursday I attended the Central States coin show, a pretty major show that happens to be in my backyard, so I attend every year even though it's not really aimed at collectors like me. As someone who exclusively collects foreign coins, that's one strike against me as this is about 85% dealers who are almost exclusively U.S. coins. Besides that, my favorite way to shop for coins is to dig through big bins of coins for hours to find some hidden bargains, and hardly anyone at this show provides such a thing, so that's another strike. On a related note, I tend to go for quantity over quality, rarely spending a lot on a single coin but instead buying a lot of cheaper, interesting coins, and this show tends to be dealers with high-end stuff on display. Last year there was a local dealer who had a big bin of foreign coins for 25 cents, and I was finding a lot of good stuff, but I only took a half day off from work and I ran out of time. This time I took the whole day off, and that dealer was the first I sought out. I was already planning to spend a good amount of time there going through everything. Unfortunately that dealer did not bring the 25 cent bin this time so I didn't even stop. The show is arranged so that currency, world and ancient dealers have their own sections, but I walked by the U.S. dealers first because I feel I am more likely to find deals on foreign there. Sadly, no one had the sort of thing I was looking for, which in past years a few of them always did. First I stopped by Harlan Berk, which is a Chicago dealer that always has a lot of good foreign stuff. They had boxes priced at $1, $2, $3, $5, $10 and a few higher amounts, but those were the only ones I looked at. I bought several from each of these boxes. One interesting group I got here was they had a bunch of 1978, 1979 and 1980 5 and 10 kina from Papua New Guinea. I knew these were unusual dates for this series and I did a quick check on my phone to find that they had mintages ranging from 700 to 1,100 or so. For $7 each I scooped those up, even though they were all a little damaged. I would pass some dealers that had boxes or albums of individually priced foreign coins, but in my experience, 99% of the time those coins are extremely overpriced and are for suckers who either don't know what stuff is worth or don't have the patience to look for a better deal. Usually I'd take a look at the prices on a few to get an idea of how reasonable the dealer was and then quickly move on. Finally I visited the foreign section. I felt like there were fewer dealers here than last year. If you were there for ancients (which I was not) I feel like you would have been disappointed. One dealer had a big box of world crown sized modern coins and I bought some animal themed ones for my collection. This dealer too in the past had a box of $2 or $5 loose uncarded coins that I found a lot of good ones in, but this time only had overpriced carded coins in those boxes. The last dealer I bought from had a bunch of boxes of individually priced carded coins sorted by country, which is usually overpriced, but these were all half price so I took a look. I found some decent coins here, several from the Vatican/Papal States, communist Vietnam, German East Africa and a few other places that interest me. With the half price sale in effect I was able to find some that were actually reasonably priced and ended up getting maybe 30 of them. Here are a few highlights: That was it. The other dealers were all either too high end or high priced. I asked around about a Mombasa 1 rupee, which has been on my wishlist for awhile, but no one had one. I was done by 12:30 and left with money still in my pocket. I was disappointed that some of the dealers I had bought from in the past either didn't bring the sort of things I had bought from them before or weren't there at all. Even the ones like Harlan Berk who had the kind of coins I was looking for brought a lot fewer of them than in the past. It's frustrating when you show up looking to buy and can't find anything to spend your money on. I maybe bought about 50 coins total, which might seem like a lot, but I went to my LCS earlier this week and probably got about 400. As I said, I know I'm not really the target audience for shows like this, but this year more than most I felt like there was less for the low-end collector.
I plan on going tomorrow. From you description @Hiddendragon sounds like the show might not be as nice as last year. But I'm going regardless, because I like to look for super gem (MS65 and higher) slabbed early clad Washington quarters and these shows are one of the best opportunities to find such. Plus, I'm getting into 30mm and larger early (18th, 19th, early 20th century) Muslim country's silver coinage.
Some nice finds! It certainly was more sparse in terms of world coins, especially raw. I think I stopped at the dealer you mentioned who had bins of world coins in 2x2s that were overpriced from the small sample that I looked at (I know the Kazakhstan coins there were higher than I've paid in the past from a seller in Kazakhstan).
My main buys along with several high grade raw early clad Washington quarters and some large pure nickel coins: MS66 1963 Yemen 1 Riyal. I already have this type raw and unc but it’s got some surface verdigis so this is a definite upgrade. 1818 Brazil 960 Reis with over-struck Spanish 8 reale showing.
One coin I wished I’d had the funds to get yesterday was a pcgs or ngc graded MS67 1982P Washington quarter. that would have been a nice long term hold for the collection.
