Unfortunately no. Could someone who attends post their observations. Thanks in advance, Cringely aka EAC 5866
Well attended. Decent show for selling. Tough Tough Tough for buying. Worked my bootie off looking for coins, and walk away with only 6. They're OK, but not thrillers. I gotta say I'm very disappointed at the price v. quality status. Good early copper is insane right now. Getting a good deal requires more work and knowledge than any other area I am aware of.
I have to agree, lots of nice stuff, but the prices were quite high. Only came home with a a nice store card (525D-2a) from my hometown and a new copy of CQR.
Got home last night from the 43rd Anniversary Convention and Show of the Early American Coppers, Inc. This was my first EAC show and wanted to share my experience and observations. In planning to attend it took a bit of effort to understand what was being scheduled and when. Penny-Wise, the EAC club publication, discussed the various programs being planned, so I ended up making up my own schedule of events by day. Of course when you register and pick up your name badge they had a very nice program booklet. I attended two very interesting sessions, first wasThe Grading Seminar conducted by Doug Bird and Steve Carr. After introductory remarks on EAC grading twenty-four coins were passed around the room. Each person was able to view each coin and to note their own Sharpness Grade and their own Net Grade. Then Doug and Steve gave their grades and discussed why. The examples used included whizzed coins, coins that had been recolored, and even a couple fakes from China. I did a lot better that I ever thought I would, and chalked it up to beginners luck. The second session I attended was How to Take Great Digital Photos of Early Copper Coins. Bill Eckberg did an excellent job of reviewing the equipment set up and lighting he uses for taking great photos. He focused on getting a great initial exposure versus any post processing. Very informative and useful. The Bourse was an amazing experience. A total of 59 people occupied 62 tables. Some of the most incredible examples of early copper I have ever seen in one place. Prices did seem high to me, as 900fine noted, and I ended up not picking up any Large Cents I was interested in. Did find a nice 1863 store card from my home town of Jackson Michigan that I brought back home. Met and chatted with many people, including Jack Robinson who sold me his latest issue of Copper Quotes by Robinson. Members, dealers, club officers all were eager to meet this first time attendee, they even put a red dot on my badge so I couldn't hide. The nice folks from Heritage Auctions hosted a hospitality room, be sure to ask them for their chocolate cookie receipe, they were great. Picked up a catalog for their upcoming CSNS auction, some really fantastic pieces in that auction. Speaking of auctions I also picked up the Goldberg catalog of the Dan Holmes Collecton of middle date cents. Lots of eye candy in that catalog. LOL All in all, I had a great time, met a lot of wonderful people, and got to put faces to a lot of the big names in early copper collecting. Met 900fine and his lovely girl friend. I know I'm forgetting some things that will probably occure to me later, but will close with the recommendation that if you ever get a chance to visit a EAC Convention be sure to go.
Penny Guy... did you attend the auction Saturday night ? I've attended quite a number of auctions and spent many hours viewing lots. I must say this was by far the most challenging auction in which I've ever participated. It is extremely difficult to come up with price estimates for early copper, particularly when hard-core die variety collectors are in the room. My estimates often differed wildly from actual prices realized. I'm not talking about 5 or 10%... I'm talking about multiples of 3 to 5 times (sometimes higher, sometimes lower). Things were all over the place. Crazy, I tell ya. In particular... compare Greysheet with Copper Quotes By Robinson. Often you will find R.1 coins in the "same" grade priced 3 to 5 times higher in CQR than Greysheet. The first thing to realize is those aren't the "same" grade. CQR uses EAC grading, while Greysheet uses TPG grading. Early American Copper specialists grade by a different method, and 95% of the time EAC grades are two or three levels lower than the same coin in a slab. Take that into account when comparing price lists. Pricing is an art and a science. With EAC, it involves guesswork as well. SWAG it. Be opportunistic and patient, be ready, and when you see The Right One pull the trigger.
I'm really surprised how low-profile EAC is. I googled "EAC Convention" and the #1 result was "Did you mean EAA Convention ?". The #2 Result was meeting notes from a 1975 Convention at the NYC Sheraton Plaza, and the #3 was this Coin Talk thread. Is that a good thing ? I think not. I'm going to bring that up with The Big Dogs at EAC. I have some concern with the dynamics. I have always felt welcomed and everyone has always been so friendly and cordial. But the demographics of EAC is much more "elderly" than most coin shows. While I do not share the "gloom and doom" some have about age demographics and the future of coin collecting as a whole, I do have some concerns about EAC.
I'm in the process of comparing EAC grading to TPG. A quick look at the last Goldberg and Heritage (57 half cents where there was both TPG and EAC grades) indicated that (on average) that EAC grading was~10 points or 1 1/4 full grades below the slabbed TPG values. Eventually I will get more data and extend it to large cents.
Thanks for your efforts; your formality and precision will be a benefit to everyone. I'm eager to hear your results. My guess is Large Cents will show a bigger difference 'twixt EAC and TPG.
Even after adjusting for the different grading methods, Greysheet is of questionable value when estimating early copper prices. The earlier the coin, the crazier it gets. People that blindly use Graysheet - dealers included - are likely to either overpay or more likely do without copper, since Greysheet tends to be low. Again, this is very inconsistent. It's really very scattered data. Beware of sweeping generalities.
I didn't stay for the auction, I needed to be back home Saturday evening. I guess it doesn't suprise me that prices realized swung widely. Most of what I saw on the Bourse floor seemed high to me, but that might just be cause I can be kinda cheap. Need to get the "prices realized" list to put with the catalog, so I'll go through it then. Greysheet has never been to useful to me on early copper. Either their sources don't truly reflect values or a disconnect on grading could be involved. I agree with the low visibility of EAC. An outreach to the wider collector community would be helpful. Work on an active web site, that is updated frequently would be an effective advertising tool as well. All in all I was glad I attended.
My dealer has told me they buy off gray sheet and they only note major varieties. He welcomes me to cherry pick his large cents. I just have not found a good way to do that yet.
Frankly I would rather EAC remain low key and relatively "unknown". It allows us to keep it more of a "scholarly" organization, and you have to realize that if a lot more people did come into the field most of the collectors and scholars would be forced out. These coins, especially the early dates, are just too scarce for the mainstream. Prices are already high but it would only take a relatively small increase in the number of collectors for todays high prices to triple or more. That happened in the Conder tokens. When I started collecting them prices were low and the Conder token club was just beginning. Ten years later even with only around five hundred members of the CTCC prices have more than quintupled and coins I used to buy for $20 are now pushing $150 to $200 and I've pretty much been priced out of the market. If we had as many members as EAC does now i would not be surprised to see them at $1000 or more. Already more and more of the nicer EAC coins are already being siphoned off into the investor market and lost to the EACers. EAC is one of the few areas that still retains its old time fellowship that was so common back in the late 19th early 20th century. We care about the coin and the friends we share. I have never found a group as open, friendly and as eager to share what they know with beginners than EAC. We just love to share our coins. And there is something about trust in our small group. At my first EAC a dealer had a double row box of several hundred loose draped bust cents that I wanted to go through but his table was crowded. No problem he handed me the box and said "There's an empty table over there on the other side of the room where can look at them." and he went back to his other customers. This was the first time I had ever met this dealer and he didn't know me from Adam, but I was EAC and that was good enough for him to trust me with an uninventoried box of cents worth maybe $8K. (This was a long time ago. Today that box would be over $50K.) The first EACer I met was in the hotel. He asked if I was there for EAC. I said yes and we started talking copper. The next thing I know i'm holding (raw, slabs didn't exist at the time) two of the six known 1834 N-7 cents! Who the heck was I talking with! I'm a 24 year old kid making less than $4K a year. He's a multi-millionare who collects middle dates by variety, but only the finest known specimens. And we are having a fine time. At the hospitallity get together I shared a table with some of the major names in the copper field and Walter Breen. He was passing around portions of the Early Date encylopedia manuscript and reading selections from the Cynics Dictionary. Things like this do not happen in any other group, and I am afraid if we really opened up we would lose this close friendliness. (And it's not just among ourselves either. Last year when we met in Cincinnati I overheard some of the hotel staff talking and and they were saying "We get a lot of conventions here but not like these EAC people, they are just SO friendly!" I've never heard that from the hotel staff at any other coin convention.
