Coins We Love: September Happenings

This week doesn’t seem to be too remarkable, but things are always moving in many different directions. But, as I’ve said before, the joy in what we do is that every day we come into the office and absolutely nothing is the same. You don’t know what to expect or what might happen on a daily basis. So, it may be humdrum, but it’s always different and most of the time it’s also fun!

This week we find ourselves checking out the Virginia Numismatic Association show in our state capital of Richmond, Virginia. This year the show is being held at a new venue, the Richmond International Raceway. It’s not a show I’ve typically attended due to its previous location in the northern Virginia suburb of Fredericksburg. With it being an easier drive with less traffic, I decided to make the trek, just to see if we’ll be set up on pit row! Looking forward to seeing some more local friends at the show, and hopefully it proves to be a new venue that we can add to our annual calendar.

In other jet-setting news, this past weekend I had the joy of spending some time with my youngest son Luke as we made a road trip to Oklahoma for the Tennessee-Oklahoma football game. I know most of the Sooners probably want me to stop there, but I wanted to comment on our upcoming show next August that the ANA is hosting in the same city. Unfortunately, spending a weekend in late September when the temperature reached an oven-like 98° with zero humidity has me concerned for a week there next August. It wasn’t a location that the board I am serving on was involved with, but it’s a show that we inherited and that we can hopefully learn from in the future. If you plan on attending, I’d suggest bringing a portable spray fan and air conditioner… Overall the ANA World’s Fair is consistently my favorite show on the calendar, so we’ll make the best of it. I just wish it was somewhere a little less warm.

On the ANA front, having spent 14 months on the Board of Governors now, I feel that I have learned a lot more about how the organization works and I hope that I can utilize that newly found knowledge to make my time on the board more fruitful for both dealers and collectors. It was a pretty steep learning curve and we had to make some adjustments upon entering into the fray. Hopefully, we can look to the last year of this term as a time when we can gradually make some improvements to the nation’s largest collector organization that will set it on an even better path in the future. Overall, I’ve been impressed with the staff and team that they have overall. They get the job done and work hard at supporting the goals of the organization. Now it’s our job to help guide the bigger picture so that the organization can serve the most collectors nationwide. I’d prefer that to be in places where I can’t fry an egg on the sidewalk if I have my ‘druthers, but if that happens to be the case, that’s ok too. My love for numismatics can carry a little bit further than a few beads of sweat in Oklahoma!

If you have any input for me to consider as a Board Member of the ANA, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me personally at john@davidlawrence.com. This has been a fascinating challenge and I want to make sure that I’m doing my best to serve those who may be overheating in Oklahoma, freezing in Alaska, or enjoying the fall in Maine. If you’re not an ANA member, tell me why! I’d love to know, so I can try to make the organization even better!

Thanks again for reading this week and we hope that you enjoy this week’s Coins We Love!

Numismatically Yours,

John Brush

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