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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;V. Kurt Bellman, post: 2368074, member: 71723&quot;]Part 2-</p><p><br /></p><p>Well, Thursday did not NEED no stinking line management... AT ALL! There were no lines. There almost were no attendees. I&#039;m telling you, you could have fired a .30-06 down the aisles and not hit anyone not associated with the show. I needed a new assignment, so I grabbed Rob Kelly who put me to work photographing for him. I had my new Sony alpha6000 24MP model and the standard 16-50 zoom, and I was set. Smallest crowd for opening speeches I ever saw at an ANA show. It was a struggle to find angles that weren&#039;t sad.</p><p><br /></p><p>The hosts, the Dallas Coin Club and the TNA, couldn&#039;t have been more hospitable. Superb people. The orange shirts struck me as a little FUN-ny, but hey, it&#039;s just a color, right?</p><p><br /></p><p>Then I found out who was among the missing. No one from NumiNews (Krause) was there. No one from Coin World (Amos) was there. The &quot;numismatic press&quot; was CoinWeek and David Lisot&#039;s video operation, period. What the...?</p><p><br /></p><p>How about the dealers? They seemed, umm, happy(??!). It was a classic example of no quantity, extreme QUALITY of customers. Those who were there were BUYING, and those who were there selling had GOOD STUFF.</p><p><br /></p><p>This was the first ANA show with the new rates for attendees - $8 for daily, $14 for the whole show, free for ANA members, free for everybody on the last day. This seems to have pushed the &quot;tire kickers&quot; to a Saturday-only status. Most dealers seemed to like it. Alan Berman, aka King Alanus of Bermania, was a dissenter. He likes more quantity in his customers. One dealer, the famous Kagin&#039;s, sold a 1944 zinc cent (or was it a &#039;43 bronze? I forget.) within the first hour and his show was made.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here is my key observation about this show&#039;s material - raw coins were king. Slabs were the business of the &quot;every big show&quot; dealers. The more localized dealers were 80% or more raw coin inventory. I even saw a PF63-ish 1856 Flying Eagle cent in a cardboard 2x2. The 2x2 was marked $17,000, sans slab. Take THAT, Matt Dinger! High 3-figure and 4-figure value coins in flips and 2x2 were there literally by the hundreds.</p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;ve learned that slabbing is a regional taste - either collectors love it or hate it.</p><p>(more to follow)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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