Sorry for the delay in posting this, but life has been very busy with work and family. I have been wanting to post these thoughts since April. I am fairly new to coin collecting. I live in Joppa which is just North of Baltimore. I have a friend who lives in Canton(downtown Baltimore), and I always meet him at his house and we go together to the Whitman Show when it comes to town. He is very new to this hobby as well. Both of us grew up collecting baseball and football cards, and have only recently found coin collecting. I am 38, and he is 41. Both of us are primarily interested in Morgan Silver Dollars. I have been working on a collection of Philadephia Mint Morgans. I have also purchased a couple of ASE's and found Wheaties over this past Winter when Silver prices spiked. He collects Morgans as well, but likes Indian Head Cents too. He likes Carson City Morgans. I work for a bank and normally have to work Thursday, Friday, and Saturday mornings. This means we always hit the show on Saturday afternoons. Over the last two years we have attended four or five of these shows. It is hard to pass these up when they come to your backyard! This Saturday was the norm. I had to work in the morning, so I met my friend and his five year old son after work. We arrived at the Baltimore Convention Center around 2PM. This is the first time we took him, and were unsure of how this would go over. Would he be bored, and would we be leaving fairly quick? The local Baltimore coin clubs man the doors. They always sell raffle tickets, so both of us purchased a couple to supprt the local clubs. My friend won a gold coin at the last November(2010) show. We did not have a winning ticket this time. My first observation was to survey the bourse floor and gage the crowd and dealers. As always on Saturday afternoons, I am amazed at the amount of dealers who have already packed it in. My work schedule does not permit me to arrive any sooner. I always have a list of dealers I want to check out. Normally two thirds of my list are still there, but less than half were there this time. I was a little dissapointed in this, but I can not tell someone how to run their own business. I was able to acquire two new coins for my Philadelphia Mint Morgan collection. I picked up a PCGS 1881 MS64 and a PCGS 1902 MS64. This show was when Silver was almost at its high, and I nearly paid full retail for both. The 1881 came from Pocket Change out of Pittsburgh, and the 1902 came from SMFM Investments out of New Hope, PA. I got a fair price for the first coin, but paid a little too much for the second. The 1902 had a CAC sticker on it, and I think I got a little too excited in wanting to add it to my collection. It is my first CAC coin. My daughter just work from her nap, so I will continue this story this evening. Stay tuned.
I went to that show too silvercowboy and picked up a few really nice things. I went down on Friday with merlin and we got together with a few other CT'ers while down there (Kanga, Penny Lady and one or two others). Several members of our local coin club also made the trip, so it was almost like a homecoming reunion. I've been to about 3 or 4 other Baltimore shows, but this was the first in several years. I like the shows a lot, very professionaly run and well attended by a bunch of top shelf dealers. It's a shame that so many dealers had left by the time you got down there on Saturday. We'll be going in June also so maybe we'll see you down there. Congrats on your new pickups. Bruce
Meant to say "woke" and not "work"... Yes, I will be attending. Still unsure if I am going Saturday afternoon again or if I can somehow rearrange my schedule to go Thursday afternoon or sometime on Friday. Thanks Bruce. My quest continues. I am looking to pick up another coin or two again in June.
So...my impressions/observations continue. I admit that I overpaid for the CAC coin. I was mesmerized by the sticker, and this booth had several attractive young ladies working as well. I always "enjoy" walking through the rows. LOL! I am not going to name individual dealers, but again, I am always amazed when a dealer pays for a booth and then does not man the booth for the entire show. Just one person's opinion. As I wrote previously, I always have attended on Saturday afternoons. Not only do dealers pack up early on Saturday, but it is my impression that they have packed, boxed, and packaged their goods up for the entire weekend. I see a lot of booths that have nothing left at all, and even more where dealers are packing/arranging for shipment back to their shops and/or offices. ??? I wonder if Sundays are even worse than Saturday afternoons. ??? I have been told by a member of the local coin club that the tables cost $1000 for the show. If it were me, I would try to make $ale$ and contact$ the entire weekend. If I personally could not man the booth for the entire show, I would hire an attractive lady and/or a knowledgeble assistant to be there in my place. I was not a member of NGC, and had been thinking of joining for a while. I went by their booth, and it looked like the morning after a Kiss concert. Food and drinks all over the place. No staff members anywhere. I had some questions I wanted to ask in person, but was not able to do so. I have since answered these questions, and have joined the NGC. I read in Coin World today where they will be offering a special grading service for $30 on Morgans valued under $500 at the June show. Call me cheap, but I do not think this is that great of a deal. Maybe I am missing something. After the show I always meet in the lobby with my friend to compare purchases and notes to see if maybe we had missed something. My friend told his son he could pick out some coins and he would get them for him. I was happy to see that he was interested in this. I always see Boy/Cub Scouts there, and think this is good for the hobby. The little guy was treated like a "King" throughout the day. Dealers went out of their way to talk with him. Several of them offered him free coins. He does not know the difference between a dime and a quarter, but he had a ball. Guess what the little guy picked out that he wanted for himself? Copper Bullion. Yes, you read correctly. He picked himself out a couple of bars of Copper Bullion and was very proud of himself. His dad basically said it was a much better purchase than anything he could pick out at Toys r Us, so knock yourself out. I got a kick out of this. I made a joke to my friend that he was going to be a copper baron when he grows up. Here is a lesson. Watch what you say around children! They are sponges! LOL! Upon arriving home that afternoon, he announced to his mother that he was going to be a copper baron when he grows up! LOL!!! Whitman also had an actor dressed up like Lincoln for the kids. They could get their pictures taken with him, and he was signing graded Lincoln Presidential Dollars and giving them to the kids. Again, I was really impressed with this. I am hard to impress, and I think Whitman did a great job in promoting the hobby with this. I feel I may be getting long winded now. I hope this helps paint a picture for you if you have never attended. It is really an impressive sight to see. My advice is to save your pennies, make your own coffee, and pack your own lunch leading up to the show. You definitely will feel like a little kid in a candy store.
Silver, if you can swing it, Friday is a good morning to go. I went Friday and tables were packed. Although I had some different experiences, overall I had a good time. There were more than a few dealers that seemed to get huffy when you asked to see a coin. Maybe there was a lot of "tire kicking" on Thursday, but they are professionals. I got to meet Gail Watson from JJ Teaparty who went out of her way to show me all the coins I wanted to see. They received the bulk of my business, and I have worked a lot with them since on want lists and such. I believe this is also the reason their table was full of people when I was there. The show is great to see some really awesome coins. I saw plenty of Morgans there so I am sure you had plenty to search through. I am set for the June show. I plan on going Friday morning again and of course my first stop will be with JJ Teaparty.
Silvercowboy, I always try to go on Friday and many dealers are already packing up by then. Keep in mind that a lot of the dealers leaving early are there largely to do wholesale and presumably can do that in the first couple of days. A good number of dealers don't go to big shows primarily to deal with the retail public. I think I know where you bough your CAC Morgan -- that booth tended to attract a lot of male attention.
