Today, I traveled to Dalton, Georgia to go to the 52nd Annual Blue Ridge Numismatic Association coin show. Today was the 1st day of the coin show and it continues tomorrow and the last day is on Sunday. I got to the coin show about 8 minutes before the show started (started at 10:00 AM). I waited in my vehicle until 10 AM. As I was waiting in my vehicle for the show to start, I noticed that there was a steady stream of cars coming in to the venue and the parking lot was starting to fill up with cars and this was before the show started. When I arrived at the venue (about 9:52 AM), spot gold was at $1855.10/oz and spot silver was at $42.08/oz. It seemed to me that there were more people that attended this first day of the show than this time last year. There appeared to be more people buying gold and especially silver. There were also some people selling gold and silver but I was not paying too much attention to the people who were selling. Overall IMO, there was plenty of silver bullion to be had and they had all different types of silver from 100-oz Engelhard bars to the 1-oz .999 generic silver rounds. Of couse my first goal was to find some silver art bars to add to my collection. I found some silver art bars that I liked very much but I had to look closely because some of them were easy to miss. As I was looking for silver art bars, I came across some prices on various other types of gold and silver bullion. Here are some prices that I have observed: SAE's = $46 to $50 2011 SAE = $48 1/10 GAE's $200 to $205 1-oz .999 generic silver = $43 Silver art bars = $44 was the lowest price that I saw but certain rare and semi-rare ones started at $50 and went up from there. 10-oz silver bars = $430 to $440 Of course, they had 1-oz gold eagles, 1-oz gold Kruggerands, etc but I did not pay attention to the prices on those. They also had 90% silver, 100-oz silver bars as well as some numismatic coins (slabbed and raw). It felt more crowded this time than last year and I saw some other silver art bar collectors at this show and we got together and talked. I had a very good day today at the show and I picked up a few silver art bars that I liked and I am happy with my purchases. I plan to go back to the coin show tommorrow to see if I can find any more silver art bars.
I am probably going to stop by tomorrow on my way out to my parents property in Alabama - thanks for the update!
I went back to the show today. It appeared that it was more crowded today than it was yesterday. I did buy another silver art bar today and I paid $45.00 for it. I spent most of the day looking around. The last day of the show is on Sunday but I do not plan to go back tommorrow. Overall, it was a great weekend for me at the coin show and I am very satisfied with my silver art bar purchases and I was also very happy to meet and talk to some other silver art bar collectiors. I plan to go back next year to this show.
I stopped by today and it was much busier then it has been in the past. Although I must say I was a bit dissapointed. I got there about noon with some bullion to sell, and of several dealers I asked all of them could only write a check, claiming they were "all tapped out". REALLY? Tapped out?? These guys have $100K in bullion in their little cabinet and couldn't even come up with $1000 in cash? That is just ridiculous. Total waste of time and gas money to drive up there. Very dissapointed, I will not be attending this show any more as I could go to my local gold buying pawn shop and get the same money they were offering at the show, but actually walk out with CASH.
Thanks for posting that because I was not aware of that. I have not been paying too much attention on the selling that was going on at the show. I am sorry that you were disappointed with this. I know of two dealers who do not bring any cash and only do checks but the others probably did not bring enough cash to begin with but I do not really know that. I guess that a lot of those dealers were "Bullion rich but cash poor". Or perhaps they simply just underestimated the amount of people that were going to sell gold and silver and some of these dealers thought they they had enough cash on hand to handle that. This is just a wild guess on my part. If it makes you feel any better, during this year, there were some other coin shows where I have driven 2 hours to and I came away empty-handed and disappointed in not being able to find certain silver art bars that I was looking for at that time. With that said, I would try again that following month and have better luck finding what I was looking for. Counting this Dalton Summer show, I went to a total of 15 coin shows so far this year in 3 states and I had some success in most of the coin shows that I went to this year but there were some shows that I traveled to and ended up leaving empty-handed.
I also attended the Dalton show on Friday, and when I first arrived it was quite busy but by mid afternoon it had cleared out a lot. I carried a couple of XF bust dimes with me that I had interest in selling, but had no takers. I spoke to Larry Briggs who is a specialist and he said my coins were nice, but he was over inventoried. I showed a few other dealers my coins, they also said they were nice, but that they preferred to buy VF coins because there was such a jump in price from VF to XF. I think the market is geared up for bullion, but that's to be expected when the PM market is like it is. In regards to not finding what I'm looking for: I may just be lucky, but I always seem to find something even at the smallest of shows!
Yes it was definitely busier then it ever has been, this being my 4th show attended. I am sure if I tried a bit harder and asked every dealer there I would have found someone to sell to, but I am still suprised. I will probably go back to the show again if I am looking for something in particular, but since I collect/invest mainly in collectible bullion (06w,07w,08wGold, 5ozATB etc.) I usually don't find what I am looking for at shows, or they are asking moon money because they are the only one there selling it. On a side note, of the items I had to sell today were 4, 10oz Silvertowne bars. APMEX is listing a buy price of $430 each, $7.50 more then the highest offer I got today... Maybe I'll just wait to see what silver does this week, after all a few more days like Friday and it will all be worth while
