Today was the second day of the New Hampshire Coin and Currency Expo in Manchester. I drove the hour and a half down from the wilds of northern New Hampshire. It was a decent-sized show with about 50-60 vendors. Most of them had little in the way of world coins, but some of them had a solid selection of what I collect, and a couple had some truly amazing pieces that were out of my budget at present. I went in with a list of my high-priority coins, and I managed to score a handful of them at reasonable prices for both buyer and seller. I also got my daughter a couple of little things: a 1937-S Buffalo nickel for her book and this Italian silver 1913 1 lira (very quick and dirty snap - I didn't even bother to brush the lint off the face of the flip): She was thrilled with a 100-year-old silver coin, and I confess I like it too. Good, honest VF wear with reddish toning around the rims that is more interesting in hand than in these pictures. The design is interesting too, featuring the Roman goddess Victoria in a quadriga, reminiscent of ancient Roman coinage. Finally, the price, at $3, was irresistible. Here are two others I got for the world silver half-crown and crown collection: United Kingdom 1913 1/2 Crown Peru 1914 1 Sol I only have two complaints about the show. The first is that there was supposed to be a coin supply vendor there, and there wasn't. I need some Air-Tites in various sizes but if you buy online you have to get them in higher quantities than I need. Alas. The second is that there really wasn't anything on my priority list that I could find in high-grade mint state for less than $200. I went in thinking that I would focus on getting one really nice coin within my budget (about $150). But I never found that coin, and so I ended up going more for quantity than quality - which has always been my weakness! The dealers were friendly, and I had some great conversations and made good connections. Hopefully those pay off in the long run.
Ugh. Wish I knew about this one. I'm just in Maine and I'd TOTALLY be willing to travel for this. Great picks!
The italian silver looks like if modern coinage and ancient coinage had a baby. I just went to my first show too in August of last year, and I'm hoping to go to FUN in Jan 2020.
Thanks! I'm really starved for a meatspace coin shopping experience where I am (Upper Valley), so I'd been looking forward to this show for months. Might eventually need to drive down to NYC for one of the really big shows they have - but that's really hard to do in a single day.
FUN sounds amazing, but I don't know how to justify the expense of travel just for the coins. I'm not buying the super-high-end stuff! But wife hates the winter here, so there may be an opportunity for, ah, "synergies."
I don't live very far from Orlando. It's like a 4-5 hour drive so not as expensive for me as it would for other CT members.
