LordM FUN show report, Orlando 2023

Getting back to the hotel was a tiny taste of hell. Gridlocked, nobody fully in their lane, and nobody moving, even with a green light.

Smaller-city life has spoiled me. I couldn’t live in a place with traffic like this, and maintain my sanity.

 

So this was my final purchase of the trip. As with most of my purchases, I got it for below the sticker price (@$390).

This one also came from Tom Wood, the Coins of the Holy Land dealer who let me camp out at his table and stash my stuff there. Made some nice new friends, I did.

Tom, in addition to the biblical coins, also carries a smattering of American Colonial stuff. I liked this NJ copper for its contrasting patina. He had three I liked. This was the middle-of-the-road specimen in terms of price.

 

And I’ll leave you with a picture I took on Friday with ol’ Ben. I initially held it back, because seeing myself in this one made me cringe. But since I never had a chance to give y’all a decent selfie, here you go. Two old guys in funny hats.

 

Oh, wait… did I forget to post my eichbaum (oak tree)? I think I did.

Edit: no, wait- I did post it earlier. Sorry. Repeating myself here. Tired.

The dealer liked one of the holey love tokens on my hat, so he took that as a (small, partial) trade-in on this piece. I’ve wanted one of these for a while- I dig coins with trees on ‘em. I wasn’t after a white one, but that’s OK. And AU58 is good because these get pricey in Mint State.

@messydesk shot me some better pics of this one when I was at his table. They’ll arrive later, in my email.

Aside from the goal of buying a full thaler from the 16th century (mission accomplished!), I wasn’t really on a mission to buy all that much German coinage. It just kinda worked out that way.

I ended up with this one for a smidge over $200, after the love token trade-in.

 

@potty dollar 1878 - you’d have been in Spanish real heaven there. I meant to scoop up a few, but it didn’t end up happening. I really wanted a nice cob- and there were some nice ones there in both silver and gold, but the stuff I truly liked was all out of my reach.

I never went back to recheck the price on this frosty 1774 8R, but I’m sure it was north of a grand, if not more.

Update: nope, I guessed way low. LOL



Likewise, I did not end up with this cool squarish 8R cob- it was either too rich for my blood, or the dealer was away from his table. I forget which.

 

I ended up passing on that one, though I was sorely tempted. Later noticed a faint “H” graffito in the field (zoom in on the second pic). So I bought that Saxony thaler I posted earlier, instead.

 

Well, there’s just the one. But at least now I can say I have one!

Aside from the occasional low-end Widow’s Mite, I’ve not owned any Judaean until yesterday.

(I did once have a Vespasian Judaea Capta denarius, but that doesn’t really count, does it, coming from the side of the oppressors?)

 

Here’s “the one that got away”. I spied it on Friday morning and shot these pics, intending to think about it overnight and perhaps return for it Saturday morning. The dealer said I could have it for $1,800, which would’ve blown most of my budget for the whole show. Still, I was tempted to “go big”.



In the meantime, I had asked @tibor privately what he thought of the coin. He said he wasn’t thoroughly familiar with the type, and, though he said it was very nice, he advised me that I might be better off getting several other nice pieces of lower price rather than blowing most of my bank on a single big-ticket purchase.

Saturday AM rolled around, and I was decided to go against that advice and take the plunge on it anyway. So I went back to that dealer’s booth.

The coin was gone. The dealer said someone had just traded him a Krugerrand for it.

So I guess that worked out the way it was supposed to. I was halfway relieved that the other buyer had just saved me from myself, and I ended up buying several other pieces instead of one big one, just as @tibor had advised.

Perhaps I should have asked @panzerman or @GDJMSP about this one.

PS- @GDJMSP - Hey, Doug, @ldhair and I spoke about you. He reminisced about past times y’all had spent at FUN.

I wondered if you might be there this year, and hoped you would, but I know you’re mostly retired from collecting now, so I wasn’t sure if I’d run into you or not. We could have compared hats.

 

It's a decent example, looks to be correctly graded, and price was about right. I've had the same thing that happened to you - happen to me.

Sorry Rob, but as Larry knows, my coin show days ended some years ago. Not because I don't collect anymore, I've gone to more coin shows after I quit collecting than I care to count. I finally had to give up going for health reasons, I just can't do it anymore. And yeah, I thought about being able to see you in person for the 1st time, and of course see Larry and a great many others that I haven't seen in years. It woulda been fun ! But sadly, it's just not to be.

 

Wow. Out of my league as I had pretty much expected, then. I didn’t really have a clue on price-guessing portrait 8R pieces in near-Gem MS grade.

That one could never have come home with me, but it sure caught my eye.

Hopefully that just means I’ve got good taste, if not the budget to match, right?