Coins We Love: Live from the World's Fair of Money
The Super Bowl of the numismatic year is occurring this week and we’re coming in live from the bourse floor in Rosemont, Illinois, at the ANA World’s Fair of Money. In the beginning of the week, I had a wild idea that we would try to communicate the excitement of the show on a daily basis via our blog. Unfortunately that dream ended on arrival when we first stepped into our hotel room on Monday morning at 2am. However, if you follow us on Instagram, you can see a lot of the daily goings-on here at the show. Overall, it’s been an incredible event for us as the collectors who managed to attend have all been hungry for coins. And when you take a look at the overall dealer attendance, you see that the market is still frothy with excitement and that the desire for coins is incredible. Every dealer that I’ve spoken with has stated how great the show has been for them on a wholesale basis. While this doesn’t initially bode well for the collector population, it does show that these dealers have insatiable appetites from their customers at home and that is continuing to drive the marketplace into the stratosphere. In discussing attendance, I probably sound like a broken record, but Rosemont is still not the place to help the educational mission of the ANA. It’s financially the most feasible option, but the lack of variety in locations over the past few years has continued to hurt the retail attendance on the bourse floor. As a dealer, it’s perfectly fine (and easy to get to and get around), but we still hope for a broader focus on the collector for future convention sites.
As for the show, we were proud to offer one of our more elaborate setups this year as we displayed both the Circulation Strike and Proof issues of the D.L. Hansen Barber Half and Trade Dollar Collections. While our location wasn’t necessarily ideal, we were pleased to face the Tyrant Collection exhibit that was placed in the back of the room and the foot traffic has been fantastic. It’s always a pleasure to share such special pieces at the highlight event of the year and the feedback and interest has been rewarding. While a million thoughts have gone through my head about this event, I don’t feel that I have a good grasp on what has gone on in the big picture of this year’s event yet. There have been so many introductions, smiles, fist bumps, and long distance waves that the focus has been on visiting with people I haven’t seen in 18+ months and that’s been nice. However, I’m curious what my view is going to be like next week when we have the benefit of hindsight. But, while living in the moment, it’s been a fun week and one that we’ve missed over the past 2 years.
I’ll conclude by offering a brief introduction to some of our offerings from our Super Sunday Sale that will be ending this Sunday night. While the offerings are limited in quantity, the quality, rarity, and overall variety is rather exciting and we hope that you’ll find some pieces that may fit in your collection or that you’ll at least enjoy seeing why we love them ourselves!
Numismatically Yours,
John Brush
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