Featured Brief ANA Show Report with a few dozen pics (not just the Gold Kennedy!)

This was my first time travelling to an ANA World's Fair of Money, but I did attend the 2009 show in Los Angeles which was not far from home.

I had been vacationing with family in Missouri and had planned to end the trip to the Midwest by driving up to Chicago to see some family and friends and also to go to the big show.

Anyways, I did have a good time at the show, despite all of the craziness surrounding the gold Kennedy half release and the few greedy dealers who made all dealers at the show look like scum. I was able to sell several coins I brought to the show and I also bought a few cool pieces too. Will not be including details/photos on that though as I don't want to be spamming the forum.

Here's a shot of the lobby just before the show opened up at 10am on Tuesday 8/5. And another shot of ANA President Walt Ostromecki giving the opening remarks.




Here are several photos of some of the neat items that were part of the ANA Museum exhibit:














***Please note that I had to omit part of my report w/ more photos as this forum only lets you do 20 pics per post. Will upload that part of my report in a subsequent post in this thread.***

So yeah, my sister and I drove up to the show from Missouri and just happened to get to Chicago around 6am, which was advertised as the starting time for the line for the gold Kennedy. It was also advertised that only those ANA members who had pre-registered for badges would be permitted to be in that line and those without pre-registration would have to wait in a separate line for registration. Since we had both pre-registered, we decided to head straight to the show to get the new coins instead of checking into our hotel. Well when we arrived at 6am the line was already down the block from the convention center and full of folks that didn't even know what they were in line to buy. Many didn't have badges until the big shot dealers showed up with bags of badges for their buyers. Pretty disappointing and really gave my sister a bad introduction to the ANA show and the hobby itself as it was only her second ever coin show (haven't been able to drag her to others and after this will be unlikely to do so again now!). Here's our spot in line the first morning (there were about 525 people in front of us we found out later). The start of the line is near the bridge in the distance.



I still wanted a coin though, mostly to bring back to my coin club meeting to show off on August 8. So I went back that night to wait in line for day 2. Fortunately, I was in line next to a forum member I know so the long wait through the night went pretty fast. Even though it was very disorganized and crazy, and sometimes even scary given the people in the line, I did make it in with the first 500. This was the holding line to buy the coins after the 500 tickets were handed out.



Here's the Mint counter inside the bourse.



Here's the coin that only took about 11 hours of waiting to get!!!! I was probably one of the only ones who actually opened the box and look at the coin before completing my purchase. I looked at three different examples and all three had minor issues, either light spotting or small marks in the fields. The Mint would not let me look at any others so I had to pick what I thought was the best of the three. I quickly got it graded by NGC since the label is the only thing that makes the coin "special" from those not bought at the show... pretty silly (and it graded 69 as I expected given the issues - even though I overheard some of the dealers buying for huge prices that they knew they would all come back 70). I did turn down $3300 for the coin just seconds after I bought it at the Mint counter (probably not the best financial move I've made), but everyone at my coin club really liked seeing it Friday evening at our meeting, so that is worth something, haha



The Mint also had a prototype set of the 2014 silver Kennedy set on display, pretty neat.



Finally, here's the front door of the Convention Center on Thursday afternoon after the announcement was made!

 

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Here is the rest of my report that I could not include in the original post because of the 20 pic limit:


Here are several shots of some of the cooler items I saw around the bourse floor.












Some interesting items from the Collectors' exhibits.



The Low-Ball Morgan Set @ PCGS

 

Cool write-up!

 

great pics. looks like you had a great time. lucky you.

 

Nice write-up & thanks for sparing us from food & wine pictures.

 

Neat report indeed ... and @mackwork , while we may not find each and every food photo appealing, I do like them if they show that, for/among the dealers, there is social life beyond the booths.

Christian

 

Thanks. The no guns sticker on the door, is that new or have they been around forever?

 

Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the US. Its been there probably as long as the door.

 

Excellent pictures! Thanks for the write-up.

 

The CAC stickers on the PCGS lowball Morgan set were a little interesting. Not sure if a sticker on a Poor-1 graded coin means it's a nice Poor-1 and almost a Fair-2. Or if it means it's a really nice coin at the bottom end of the Poor-1 grade Haha!!

 

Right, so a CAC P-01 in a gold CAC would be a P-00? Or as a low ball, it should be lower?

 

Amen!!! and pictures from planes

 

Or maybe a gold sticker on a Poor-1 would be a bad thing since a gold sticker means solid for the next grade higher (Fair-2). Maybe even green stickers are bad on Poor-1 coins as a lowball collector may not want a coin solid for the grade, but would instead want one at the lower end of Poor-1, haha!

 

BUT! Here is something to ponder, since it is supposed to be the worst, would a gold sticker mean that it worse than you thought?

 

As one who couldn't attend, thanks for letting us see some of the sights.

 

Thanks again everyone.

Had a few questions via PM. The first Pan-Pac set was at the Legend Table (along with the Sunnywood Toned Morgan Set). The set also included the original box with the top plate that was also reportedly made of pure gold! Pan-Pac sets are always cool, but the first one struck is just amazing.

The Brasher Doubloon restrikes were being sold for $1975 which included NGC certification. I heard that lower prices were available if you bought in quantity. I really was close to buying one, but without a limited mintage I held off. They said they'd only do up to 500 at the ANA show, but wouldn't say how many more after that. Presumably they could strike thousands more... they were really cool though and it was really neat watching them being made right at their booth on the screw press, then being hand hammered on the edge by Ron Landis. Tons of attention to detail and looked really close to the real deal MS63 example that was only display only steps away.

 

They also did some in pewter for the Young Numismatist program on Saturday, though I saw a dealer who had been given one on Thursday.

 

I also saw the peweter pieces at their table earlier in the week and it said they were for YNs only so I didn't try to get one. They appeared to be simply struck on the die, but not hallmarked on the edges and I'm not sure if they had the EB punch on them.

It's too bad they didn't make some in silver for a more reasonable price.