Got to Orlando on Wednesday and made our way to the Sonesta Suites on International Drive. My travel agent wife got us a great rate there, and we also found out it was very centrally located. Our rental car sat idle the whole time; we either walked to where we needed to go or took a shuttle. It was about a mile walk to the convention center, which is probably about the same distance if you parked by the north/south concourse buildings. Between other fun things (Universal Studios, putt-putt golf, happy hours), I attended the FUN show most of the day Thursday and a few hours on Saturday morning. Here is my take on the 2015 show, my second FUN: 1) Thursday started out fairly crowded, and got to see the ribbon cutting to open the show, which was cool. The traffic seemed pretty steady the whole time on Thursday. Saturday appeared to be quite a bit lighter, but still steady. 2) My main search was for nice type coins, usually look for capped bust halves first, then seated halves, then toners, then large cents, then other stuff. First show in awhile I didn't pick up a single capped bust half. 3) Submitted a handful of raw coins to PCGS for grading, results will be in a future thread. 4) Picked up an auction win from Great Collections. 5) Got to talk for a bit with David Kahn, TPRC, Brian Cushing, Dennis King, and a few others during the show. 6) Visited the Paragon Numismatics table, where they had the 'comet' and a blue-green monster Morgan on display. These coins belong near or at the top of the monster list IMHO. 7) Submitted a couple of bids in the Sheridan Downey auction, went 0 for 2. Quite a bit of nice stuff in that auction! 8) Visited with the U.S. Treasurer Rosa Rios for a bit; she was very personable and nice. 9) Panned for gold and managed to snag a couple of decent little gold nuggets. This is a neat part of FUN. 10) Found more coins for my collection on Saturday than I did on Friday, usually the first day is the most productive. So much stuff to go through. 11) Nice no-problem circulated seated halves were very scarce. Way too many blast-white dipped out VF's and XF's (slabbed and raw) for my liking, ended up with a total of zero there too. 12) Missed the PCGS luncheon and the Pawn Stars stuff. Would have liked to have been one for two here, you can guess which one. 13) Overall I had a blast, will most likely check out Tampa next year too. Now for the pics... Opening day crowd waiting to get in: Rosa Rios speaking at the opening: Me and my wife with Rosa: Rosa signed all these bills for us, any currency starting with 2009 on up has her signature: Morgan monsters at the Paragon table, my pictures don't do them justice: Now for my purchases: Large cents from David Kahn, 1803 S-258 in PCGS VF-35, 1817 15 stars in PCGS XF-45: Picked this Morgan up from Great Collections, 1881-S PCGS MS-65: Picked up this neat endroll toner, PCGS MS-64 CAC: Blue Franklin, PCGS MS-66: Last coin bought at the show from Dennis King, PCGS MS-68:
Nice large cents!a 15 stars a tough coin to find in decent shape. I always had a real soft spot for that one as it was my first ever large cent over 30 years ago
I didn't get there until Saturday. Some dealers were dismantling their booths, but those who were still working looked busy. Every dealer I spoke with said it had been a very good show.
I heard mixed reviews at the show, some good, some not as good but that's just from the sampling I took. Attractive, eye-appealing coins that were below moon money seemed to be doing just fine; I saw way too many AU classic coins with just OK toning with 5x to 10x PCGS guide pricing.
Very nice report, and some nice coins to boot! I was able to go last year for the first time......wow! My son picked me up from the airport on Tuesday, so we went straight to the convention center where Heritage had a room all set up for viewing already. I knew what I wanted to see......a few of the "big" coins that were upcoming in the auction, if at all possible. I had my camera in tow, so I could get shots for my coin club presentation. Can you believe I was able to get in, and they were kind enough (under the watchful eyes of security and HA employees) to actually allow me to HOLD and take pictures of: 1. The 1787 Brasher doubloon. 2. 1913 Liberty nickel. 3. 1927-D $20 St. Gaudens 4. 1893-S Morgan $1 MS-64!!!! These 4 coins sold a few days later for well over $10,000,000!!!! I was on cloud 9 all week long! Quite a time for a far away northern Minnesota boy in the dead of winter!
As in any coin show - if the dealer has a good offering with reasonable prices, he does good. If the offering is not as good, overgraded stuff and high prices, the dealer will complain about anything and everything, except for his poor stock and high prices. I've been bourse chairman many years, and I always see the same trend at all the coin shows. Last year, we had a coin show, with a reasonable turnout on Saturday, and a real bad snow blizzard on Sunday with very little traffic. The same feedbacks was received from the dealers - the well stocked and reasonably priced dealers said they did great, and the others blamed the snow, turnout and everything under the sky, except for what they had (or didn't have) to offer and/or their unreasonable prices... JMHO and 2 smashed cents worth.
