Coins We Love: Straight from Central States
Coming in live from the Central States Numismatic Society Show in lovely suburban Schaumburg, Illinois! Admittedly, I’ve never been a fan of coming to Schaumburg. The hotel and convention are amazing, many dealers typically show up, but collector attendance is typically poor. This year, however, the public attendance has been fantastic and we hope that continues!
We arrived on Tuesday morning (4 am wakeups came a bit early) and operated in trading rooms for the day. We were buying whatever we could that made sense for collectors and generally perusing everyone’s inventory that decided to show up a day early. It was a success and our attempt to divide and conquer with our 5 buyers at the show allowed us to get a lot done!
On Tuesday evening, I had to attend the annual Professional Numismatists Guild (PNG) board meeting where the new officers were voted on. There will be more mentioned about that in a future edition, but it was an enjoyable time of camaraderie. We’ve had some dramatic changes in the organization in the past year, but despite my usual inclination, change isn’t a bad thing. I’m quite excited about the future of the organization. While much of what the organization does isn’t necessarily public as it’s a dealer-focused organization, the conversations and relationships within the group are always valuable.
One comment on the way that stuck with me was “these rare coins that we deal with are becoming a difficult commodity to locate…” And that seems to be the truest comment that I’ve heard this week. Unfortunately, there are finite numbers of American rare coins and while we’ve seen the market take off in recent years into what may be a slight plateau recently, it doesn’t mean that coins have become more plentiful. In fact, the opposite has occurred and rare coins are not coming onto the market in hoards or major collections anymore, so the current market will be interesting to watch in the next year or so.
Wednesday was the PNG Dealer Day followed by the typical show launch on Thursday. The action on both days exceeded our expectations, so we’ve been quite pleased with the ongoings. This is coming out later in the day on Thursday, but the floor has been active, we’ve sold a handful of coins, and have located some interesting pieces that we’re proud to bring home. Overall, the market still seems quite active and if we’ve experienced a plateau, I’m curious to see if we will soon hit a launching pad once again.
As for now, we hope that you enjoy this week’s Coins We Love and we’ll try to report back with more information next week about our field trip to the Chicagoland area.
Numismatically Yours,
John Brush
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