Coins We Love: 🍀Better Luck in Baltimore🍀

As some of you know, we decided to take a quick buying trip to the ANA National Money Show in Colorado Springs last week. We weren’t intending on fully attending the show as the logistics for the trip were difficult and the location of a show in Colorado during the winter was quite suspect. However, we decided to bite the bullet and give it a shot in hopes of working with a few customers and acquiring some new inventory. In the end, the trip was fruitful in acquiring some quantity of coins but unexciting in acquiring any real highlights. We were thrilled to see a few old friends drop by our table and we did a few deals that were interesting, but overall it was nothing to write home about.

The Colorado Springs airport doesn’t have a quantity of larger planes that dealers typically need to fly on, so we ended up visiting the Denver Airport and a few shops in the local area before heading to the Springs. It was a pleasant trip for John Call, Amandeep, and I and it turned out to be rather fruitful as we made some new friends and brought home a couple of boxes of hand-picked inventory there. The next day at the show there was a snowstorm coming through and a few inches of the light fluffy stuff settled on the ground while we were working the show. Unfortunately, the loading dock doors were wide open for the day, so the bourse floor was around the outside temperature and a bit chilly. The host hotel, the Broadmoor, is the longest-running 5-star hotel in America and the convention hall was as nice as can be expected, sadly for us the show ran out of hotel rooms so we weren’t able to secure a bed there, but the scenery was breathtaking! After a day and a half on the bourse, we had to head back home as another storm was approaching and there was much work to be done in the office, but overall the quick jaunt to the beautiful mountain city was successful on many accounts for us. The three observations that stuck with us from the event were interesting:

The dealer attendance was surprisingly quite strong. However, almost everyone was there to buy, while bringing very little inventory. So, there wasn’t a lot of buzz or action going on. I heard this comment more than anything “we only came because the Broadmoor is one of our favorite hotels!”

The local collector population in Colorado Springs is rather strong (probably due to the clubs, shops, and the ANA offices), but unfortunately, it’s not enough to support a major show like this. The number of advanced collectors was abnormally high, so the conversations were a bit different than at most locales.

I love the scenery in Colorado and the location was amazing! But hosting the show in the winter in a limited access locale is probably not the best for the growth of the overall hobby and the organization. Am I glad we went? Yes. Was it ideal? Not at all.

That being said, there’s a smaller, more regional show there at the end of June and we’re considering heading to it. It should be far better attended (though far smaller) and might prove to be an opportunity that’s worth considering.

That’s the show update for the current market. This show wasn’t a great opportunity to highlight strength or weakness in the market, but it certainly denoted the lack of supply on the market, and the fact that dealers are traveling out of the way now to replenish inventory is a sign that the market is likely to continue growing and strengthening in the next few months.

Baltimore in two weeks will be the next bellwether event and we’ll have to see what that event holds!

Numismatically yours,

John Brush

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