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Baltimore Coin Show Report, March, 2019

Baltimore Coin Show Report, March, 2019

Posted by JonSullivan on Mar 4th 2019

The Baltimore coin show is just over, and we're back in our office working away at preparing for resale purchases from the show, as well as getting caught up on the regular backlog of customer orders, emails and other things that tend to get built up when we’re away at coin shows. 

 

Overall, we were pleased with the Baltimore show. We purchased a moderate but decent amount of fresh inventory for our customers. Some small groups of errors and some individual nice errors we were able to purchase, but overall there was not a lot of material available at the show this time. 

 

We sold a surprising amount of coins at the show, with a fairly large number of “holes” in our display of coins by the time the show was over. Some of our regular customers showed up, and we sold a number of 4-figure coins, as well as some less expensive errors. Unfortunately, due to limited space when traveling, we typically are only able to bring our more expensive inventory with us to shows since the bulky, less expensive material tends not to be brought. We do plan to start bringing a little more “affordable” coins to future coins as space permits, since young collectors need access to “entry level” error coins in order to get started in the hobby (and adults who are on a tighter budget.) 

 

Not a lot of collectors typically come to coin shows anymore (at least, compared to 10 years ago), and shows tend to bring in a small number of collectors and therefore become primarily “wholesale” events for coin dealers. This isn’t a bad thing, just the way coin shows are nowadays. Most coins are sold online, and collectors prefer buying coins form their armchair than getting in their car and spending the day looking through dealer’s coin cases for what they could more easily have found on their computer. But we are always glad to see our customers in person, and chat about errors and the hobby with them.

 

U.S. coin dealers all seemed to be having a good show overall—not super busy, just “good.” There really wasn’t a single dealer at the show that we met who were unhappy with the show, and all were selling and buying.

 

Our next show will the the ANA in Pittsburgh, PA at the end of this month. If you are in the area or are able to attend the show, we look forward to seeing you there.