Sunday, June 1 I attended the Goldberg Pre-Long Beach Auction which, as you may guess, is held in the few days before the Long Beach Coin Expo. The sale didn’t seem to have as many coins as previous sales by the Goldbergs, but there was a good mix of coins available and some really great ones as well. The matte proof Peace Dollars were especially fun to look at during lot viewing. There was a huge run of Capped Bust Half Dollars in the sale, mostly grading in the VF30-AU55 range and all of them seemed to go for very strong money. Several were tougher Overton varieties, but even the common examples were strong. I bid on around twenty of them and won zero. Hardly any of them were won by floor bidders as Internet bidders won almost all of them. The Goldbergs also had an amazing collection of Roman Denarii and a separate catalog for the collection which will make for an excellent reference. The set was all uncertified and very high end, including the star of the collection, the famous Brutus Eid Mar Denarius which was really neat to hold in my hands. Overall, I felt that most coins sold for strong money in the Goldberg sale. Particularly, the early type coins and gold. Sure, there were a few that slipped through cheap, but that happens in all auctions. Wednesday, June 4 Arrived for dealer setup around an hour early. I knew traffic would be bad on my way down to Long Beach so I left really early, but it wasn’t as bad as I imagined. Spent that time chatting with dealers outside of the convention center while waiting to get in. Most seemed pretty excited to be back at Long Beach. When we were let in to go to our tables, we saw that we were not given enough cases and lights. We immediately let the Long Beach Expo staff know about the matter and to their credit they had our extra cases and lights within about 10-15 minutes. The rest of setup went pretty smoothly. It takes around 2-3 hours to get everything set up the way we like it. It could be faster, but some of the vest pocket guys start asking see coins of ours and sell coins of theirs within the first hour which can be sort of distracting. Once we were set up and ready to deal, we did a few deals with the early birds and other dealers, but not nearly the business we typically do on dealer day. It was pretty slow going and we guessed that many dealers went to view Heritage lots for the auction which started that day. The Heritage auctions at Long Beach used to start on Thursday afternoon, but lately they have moved that up to Wednesday which I think takes away from the bourse quite a bit. We did notice several dealers from China on the bourse. The show had been promoting the fact that several mainland China dealers were at the show and many made it over to our table to view coins. Several were interested in only Chinese coins and we had only a few, but others were interested in U.S. coins as well. It was nice to see some new faces at the show, especially those eager to learn about U.S. coins. The language barrier was certainly there with some of the dealers though. One dealer was interested in one of my coins, but didn’t seem to understand the price I was telling him. Punching the number into a calculator and showing it to him seemed to work! It was also interesting to hear all of the public address announcements being repeated in Chinese during the show. Thursday, June 5 This is only my second year of having a table at the Long Beach show, though I have attended the shows regularly for several years before having a table. Thursday started out with tons fo people coming in the doors and we were pretty much swamped with business at our table for most of the day. It was much more busy than the last show in February and significantly more busy than any June show at long beach in recent memory. Many people seem to think the June show is the slowest of the three shows they have at Long Beach each year, but you wouldn't know it based on Thursday’s traffic. From opening until around 6pm, we never really had a good opportunity to step away as customers and other dealers just kept coming to our table to do business. Had very few chances to look through the coins brought by the vest pocket dealers as I like to be available to the potential buyers looking at my coins first. At our table, our display of toned Canadian dollars seemed to draw the most attention. We also had a case with a 1794 Half Dollar and an Original Gobrecht Dollar side by side which many seemed to enjoy seeing. Many were excited that the Mint had the Baseball HOF half dollars for sale. Seems like many buyers were only getting them to walk them across the room and immediately flip them. We heard of dealers paying $30-$35 each for them so people were making around $6-$12 per coin. And some people were certainly buying their 5 coin limit several times over! They are neat coins though and I did get one for our coin club and had it signed by Cassie McFarland to have as a raffle prize at our next meeting. The Mint also had the new proof and mint sets, lots of gold and platinum, the new 5 oz. ATB quarter and lots of cool bronze medals too which are my favorite to look at. I hope the Mint continues to come to the Long Beach Coin Expo as their presence was certainly a draw. Here’s a pic of their case of medals: We saw lots of forum members at our table and seen lots of great new purchases from most of them. Always fun to put faces to the names and to see what cool coins people find on the bourse. Friday, June 6 Thursday was probably the best day I’ve had selling at Long Beach, and Friday was probably the worst. There was nice foot traffic from opening until around 1pm or so, but I had zero buyers! Showed off lots of coins, but none pulled the trigger on any. Traffic slowed down in the early afternoon, but a few of those looking in my cases did finally find a few things to buy which helped a bit, but nothing like the day before. By late afternoon, there were hardly any public attendees on the bourse and only a few dealers strolling around. Seemed like an entirely different show than it had been 24 hours earlier. At 6pm on Friday, I took this photo just in front of our table of our only potential customer... he didn't want coins... he was just there for the pretzel crumbs in the aisle: Since it was pretty slow, I did have time to check out the Collectors' Exhibits over near the Long Beach Coin Club table. There were not too many exhibits this time around unfortunately, but there was a neat one on sample slabs: Saturday, June 7 Thankfully, Saturday was pretty busy and there were buyers. Not quite as crazy as it was on Thursday, but it was a very busy day for a Saturday. I had planned on taking a few submissions to PCGS on Saturday morning, but it was just too busy to step away from the table for 10-15 minutes (or more) that it would have taken, so those submissions will have to be mailed in later. In all, this was by far our best Long Beach show to date. Sold a bunch of coins and bought several nice new ones. Here’s a quick pic of some of the new purchases: We also participated in the YN Treasure Trivia Hunt on Saturday which is pretty fun. We had about 75 kids show up at our table and we gave out a BU 1959 Lincoln Memorial Cent to each and passed out information on our local coin club. Our club was founded in 1959 so it works out well. It was fun to see how excited some of the kids got when they got that shiny new 1959 cent. Apparently, some of the YNs who are part of our coin club spread the word to a few other YNs that I like sample slabs. I had several YNs come to the table after the treasure hunt to try to sell me some of the prizes they get after the trivia treasure hunt. It was really fun negotiating with them and some were pretty tough. For example, one YN offered to sell me a slab for $6 and it was funny to counter back at $8, haha. Another offered me three slabs for $15, and I countered back at $20! I sure hope they don’t expect the same deals in about 10-15 years! Here’s a pic of me dealing with one of the YNs from my local club: Another YN from the Long Beach Coin Club brought me 5 different slabs that were duplicates in his collection. After he told me that he collected sample slabs I think I surprised him by offering to trade him straight up for a Morgan Dollar in an old green sample slab that he didn’t yet have in his collection. I’m sure he got the better end of the deal, but his shock and his ear to ear grin made up for it. Here’s a quick shot of the different samples I was able to acquire from the YNs: Already looking forward to the next Long Beach show in early September! Mike
Oh geez, you must have been like RIGHT across from me! I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to go over and say hi! Great report & pics -- love the lone buyer in the aisle!
Hello Mike, I know it was a year ago, but that was my display on sample slabs. Thank you for the kind words. The show used to give small cash prizes and ribbons for exhibits. Now that the exhibits are noncompetitive, there are only two or so per show. Still, I am grateful that the Expo keeps giving us (the Long Beach Coin Club) a free table.
