For some time I have been looking forward to the biannual coin show, held at the Holiday Inn in Rockford, (a short drive) and today it finally came. I had been saving for this one. The last month I have limited my coin collecting activities to buying and searching rolls of cents. So I had been socking away cash, for the main purpose that I have been aiming at, a real nice type 1 standing liberty quarter. I had mentioned it to my better half, and she agreed to go with me. I did a bit of research beforehand on prices on the slq type 1 and found that an au for about 220 would be good, higher than that and watch out! The last few weeks the anticipation was building, when I was feeling the urge to hit some coin shops I reminded myself of the coin show, I would satisfy all those urges at once. I mentioned the coin show to some friends at work, oddly enough my friends stated a desire to buy some Saddam Hussein notes, I told them I would keep an eye out for some and we established that I would not go over 7$for any of them. The night before the show, I reviewed my collection, I made a list of some things I was looking for. On the list was a new Mexican Libertad, I have been trying to find one close to spot, but with no joy, so I decided that I would bite the bullet on that one. I looked over my Indian head cent album, and made a list of what coins I needed for holes, what coins I should upgrade. I checked my bust half year list, iI was looking forward to a dealer I met last year, an older man who had lots of fairly priced busties raw and unattributed. When I say fairly priced I mean about 120 or so for an ef, or 80 for a strong fine. Of course the type 1 slq. I looked at quite a few examples on the web, and reviewed some posts here on coin talk. This morning I got up before my sweetheart and had some juice and played with the cat for a little bit. I showered, shaved and did all the trimmings of the wild hairs that as I have grown older seem to appear in every part. My wife slept in, my son got up and went to work, I browsed cointalk and relaxed. I have found that relaxing is something that is very important, especially as I have gotten a bit longer in the tooth. I also decided besides the cash that I had saved I would bring some of my platinum eagles, to see what the going price was for them and in case I needed a few more economic bullets in my gun. My wife got up and I asked her if she would not rather like to go out to breakfast, which we did. After a rather long wait, evidently quite a few other people decided that today would be a great day to go out for breakfast. Breakfast over, we headed to the show. found a good spot to park, went in and registered for the door prizes. The bourse had probably about 40-50 tables, a good crowd. I recognized a few people from my coin shop visits and said hello. We made a quick round first. Last time there were more dealers displaying silver bullion, this time there were hardly any. I spotted a few tables with indian cents in prominence, and some with world currency in baskets. But the thing I was looking most for was the 1917 slq type 1. And way in the back I spotted one, slabbed au58 fh, I stopped and looked at it, asked the price, the dealer would be willing to part with it for 290. A bit more than I was counting on, but I thanked him and decided to look further and told him I might be back later. Besides, the fh was a little iffy imo. I stopped and talked for a little while to the president of the local coin club and ended up buying a Hussein note that I had told one of my coworkers I would look out for him. Price paid, 3 dollars, added with the two dollars we spent to get in the raffle and we were up to 5 dollars. I stopped at another table that had a promising slq, the dealer had it raw graded au55 but looking at it I would have graded it a high ef, we talked a little about the furor that the coin caused back when it first came out and I moved on. My wife remarked that it looked better to her than the first one we had looked at, but she was relying on shininess which sometimes comes from being dipped, the details did not match the previous one we had looked at. They announced a door prize and we took a little break, as gals get older sometimes their internal thermometer gets out of whack, and she needed some air. It was about 40 out and after about ten minutes she felt much better, so we went back in and browsed some more. One dealer had a magnificent example of the type 1 slq, slabbed, graded ms-66 fh by PCGS. It was absolutely great. You could almost see Miss Liberty giving you a wink. The price was 4600 ahhhh but it was beautiful. We stopped at a table with a lot of IHCs and I went for my list and picked out 5, the 58 small letters, in vg, an upgrade for my 07 and 74, and an 82 and 83 in a strong vf, the dealer and I talked and he sold them to me for a bit less than a cnote. I looked at some busties but they seemed to have shot up in prices, I was seeing some efs that were being sold for almost 200, and quite a few had some very bad surfaces, whizzed, polished, bad cleanings. It made me feel that maybe the door for busties was closing, a sad thought. I asked at some tables that had bullion but nobody had brought any new Libertads, which was one of my goals for this show. I talked to one young dealer, he looked to me to be about ten years old, but he sure knew his stuff, I asked about platinum and he showed me some of what he had for sale, and from his sale prices I did not even bring out my slabs for a possible sale, I would have lost probably at least 50 dollars if I had sold. I lingered for a while at a one table that had some great examples of old currency, everything from 1, 1.50, 2, 2.50 all the way up to ten, he did not have a nine dollar bill but he told me that at one time he did have them. He also had some nice examples of the educational silver certificate, which is appealing to me. Some dealers were already starting to pack up, it was about 230, I headed back towards where i had seen the au58 slq fh for 290, just to see if perhaps I could get if for 250 but that dealer was already packed and gone. I left the show, I had spent slightly more than a cnote, I did not fill my goals, but It was my second show and I had talked to more dealers, heard more, seen more and that is the way of progress. A little bit more here and there and eventually I will get to where I am headed to. I think for the next show I am going to want to pick up more business cards, to maybe get there a little earlier and maybe if I see something that I like not to put it off to see if I can get something better, maybe it would have been better to but it then and if I were to run into a better piece to offer a trade plus cash. These shows are fun, but I think that I sometimes need to be a bit less cautious and spend some of that money I saved. http://imgur.com/mBJsQ.jpg
