Coins We Love: What Can Numismatics Learn From Baseball?

I recently took an end-of-the-school-year trip to Cooperstown, NY, to see the Baseball Hall of Fame and downtown area with my youngest non-numismatically interested son, Luke. He somehow got my sports interest gene, so his goals this summer were to hit a few more Major League Baseball Stadiums and the Hall of Fame and Negro League Baseball Museum. After visiting Boston, we were able to make a day trip to Cooperstown for the museum and downtown area. For those who have been there before, you understand that it’s hallowed ground for baseball fans. And getting to the museum before it opened was fantastic as the tour groups hadn’t made it in yet. I enjoyed the displays and modern efforts that had been made in the museum to show America’s pastime on display. And frankly, it made me wonder: how can we do some of these things with coins? Unfortunately, as a hobby, we are often stunted by financial gains and losses and haven’t put the forward thinking into the future of numismatics as it deserves. I guess it would also help if we had the payroll of the Dodgers to maintain the museum, but I digress… But it gives me goals that I’d love to see the leadership of the hobby pursue.

The downtown area of Cooperstown is a special place. You turn left out of the museum and the streets are lined with stores upon stores of baseball memorabilia, baseball cards, ice cream shops, baseball clothing stores, baseball-themed restaurants, and more baseball memorabilia. Oh…and baseball books. It’s really a supermarket on steroids for baseball history that you can hold. Thankfully, we do indeed have this in numismatics, but it’s a once-a-year event…the ANA World’s Fair. This year it is being held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania… not necessarily a hotbed for numismatics, but that’s another story for another day. If you want to take a stroll down the numismatic hall of fame, this is the place to be. There are amazing displays, educational talks, club meetings, events, award banquets, dinners… and that’s just Tuesday and Wednesday. In our show planning, we discussed some of the things that occur at the show, and we realized that there are people who literally attend the event JUST for the meetings and never even enter the bourse floor. It’s literally a numismatic smorgasbord that is a can’t-miss event.

We’ll be set up at table 1013 with a nice, large booth, ready to buy and sell coins, talk to old friends, or discuss the world and future of numismatics. And if you don’t know this about DLRC, we’re all about the future of the hobby. In fact, I think if you take the average age of team members, you’ll find that DLRC might have the lowest average age of team members attending the show and working in their office. We’re at least close to that. But don’t mistake that for a lack of experience. We value experience, history, and passion…but we also value the future of the hobby…as we are only caretakers of these historic items for a short period of time.

So, we hope to see you in Pittsburgh so that we can share some numismatic times together. And if there’s anything on our website that’s of interest, now is the time to email us and let us  know! We can bring it with us if you just ask! Email your requests to coins@davidlawrence.com NOW! Thanks again for joining us on this Coins We Love adventure, and we look forward to hopefully seeing you in the Steel City!

Numismatically Yours,
John Brush and Your Friends at DLRC

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