Coins We Love: 😅We Survived the ANA😅

We survived the 2022 World’s Fair of Money. Instead of doing a complete write-up this week, I wanted to share a few bullet points of interest.

Funniest Part of the Show: The shoe shine guy had his booth set up about 20 feet from our table. After three days of hearing the same ballads blaring out from his radio (with him singing along), Julia, Andy, and I couldn’t help but sing along…"Do you believe in life after love"... All day long!

Highlight of the Show: My wife and kids attended their first ANA since the Anaheim event held next to Disneyland seven years ago. My kids ran around as pages on the floor for a few hours. It was fun to watch them helping other dealers get their coffee orders delivered. Hopefully, a few of the orders were correct! A close second was the honor of receiving the ANA’s Dealer of the Year award. It was such an honor to receive that from an organization that really cultivated my interest in the hobby from a young age.

Favorite Exhibit of the Show: The amazing submersible robot that was used to discover the wreckage and relics from the SS Central America. I took a few pictures, but it doesn’t even compare to how interesting it was. It was the best display I’ve ever seen at an ANA show!

Celebrity Sighting: The new US Mint Director attended the show for several days and I had the opportunity to chat with her for a few minutes and take a photo. She was a delightful and brilliant woman and I’m excited to see where she leads the mint over the next few years.

Favorite Display: The Hansen Collection of Seated Quarters. The breadth of this collection is amazing, not to mention the number of high-quality pieces. It was certainly a highlight of the show and it garnered a lot of attention.

Favorite Comment: A principal from a large auction company came up to view the Hansen display and he said “Man, your display is the nicest on the floor from a dealer.” I graciously thanked him and jokingly offered him $100 to improve their display (which had far more value, but a little bit less eye appeal). Great work Andy and Julia!

Favorite Purchase: The Panama-Pacific $50 Round highlighted in last week’s CWL from the Bass Collection. The coin was super nice and we were able to place it with one of our favorite customers locally. He was just as excited about it as we were!

Best Food: This is tough. But I have to lean towards the Lou Malnati’s Chicago Pizza that we ventured out for one night. As much as I like eating at Gibson’s once or twice, the count was eight meals from the lovely restaurant and that was a bit much…

Best Value: This year we had a video playing in the background of our Hansen display, but we had to have a TV to play it on. We thought about renting a TV, but when the rental price was double the purchase price of a new one, we wandered over to Target and procured a discounted piece that we were able to gift to some friends at the end of the week!

Bonus points if you can find the doppelganger in the photo below! :)

Is it over? As of midnight EST Thursday morning, I’m still sitting through the auction events from the week. I am thankful that these events occurred the week following the actual show, but with the sales starting at 2:00 PM and running past midnight consistently, I’m looking forward to Friday night when these end. On the bright side, we’ve had some incredible opportunities to improve the D.L. Hansen Collection and we’re excited to add these new acquisitions. We have a few sets that needed a coin or two to reach the number one All-Time placement in the PCGS Set Registry and once we’re able, we’ll be adding those. Once the auctions conclude, we’ll try to highlight a few of these acquisitions in next week’s CWL!

For those of you wanting more: Yes, the show was incredibly active. We sold far more than we expected, bought a TON (a record amount for DLRC in quantity, quality, and value actually), and met a lot of old friends. Unfortunately, the public attendance continues to wane in Rosemont, but the dealers who came were there to deal. It was a week of action! Some members of our team hung in there from Sunday to Saturday!

Once we catch up with the post-show processing and finish the week’s auction bidding, we’ll try to get some well-deserved rest and see where the market takes us! But, for now, we’ll leave you with a few highlights that we hope you enjoy in this week’s Coins We Love!

Numismatically Yours,

John Brush

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