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The Baltimore coin show this month was overall a good show. A number of customers showed up, both dealers and collectors, and buying for us was decent. We picked up a nice assortment of errors that will be offered for sale in the coming days and months, as some is posted as early as this week, while other coins will be a few months, after they are sent off to be graded and returned to us. 

We saw a few really nice errors, but the owners wanted top dollar, and so we simply weren’t able to acquire them. This is always the case at coin shows, and there’s a continual effort to find major mint errors at fair prices, so we can in turn sale them to our customers at fair prices. Occasionally, for a coin that is truly rare and the owner want way too much for it, we will contact a want list customer and let them know “this is for sale for such and such a price, but in our opinion it is overpriced—but IF you do want it, we can get it for you.” Sometimes, a customer has been waiting years for a rare piece, and do not mind paying too much for a coin they really need, which is understandable—you might not want to wait another 5 or 10 years for the coin to come on the market! 

At other times, at a coin show the error coins being offered are simply way overpriced, and in that case there’s really nothing to be done but to wait for the dealer or collector to learn more about the error coin’s true value over time, and for “reality” to eventually set in and for the price to come down. A coin is worth what is is worth, and error coins do have values that are based on reasonably predictable factors such as current demand, rarity, grade, and how much eye-appeal the error has. Prices can be understood fairly well by looking at auction prices realized, understanding the particular coin series/error type to know if your coin is particularly “special” (or rather un-special!), and by reviewing dealer’s inventories and seeing what the error goes for. 

Although a number of customers showed up, sales were light, which was in part due to our not having in stock some of the coins that were being asked for. We may have had one last month, but we’re now out of stock on that coin. Some other customers were asking for a particular coin series of errors, and we didn’t bring perhaps that coin series or the error that needed from that series. When attending a show, you can only bring a relatively small part of your inventory, and picking what to bring is always a bit hit and miss and certainly can effect the number of sales at a show. 

Overall, all the dealer seemed to be having an “ok” or “good” show. Collector attendance was good, and all in all, if the show was a scorecard for the coin market, it got a decent grade. 

Our next coin show is the Central States coin show in Schaumburg, Illinois. If you are attending it at the end of April, be sure and stop by our table, “Sullivan Numismatics.” 

Here are some pictures from the show.

Above: One of our cases of mint errors at the show.

 Above: Half cent expert Ed Fuhrman stopped by the table and showed this (likely authentic) piece of half cent strip, which is leftover web scrap from the punching of blanks. The only example known to us. 

 Above: A major off-center bust half, one of many coins we looked at searching for inventory at the show. 

 Above: a really scarce transitional off-metal 1943-P Wartime nickel struck on a copper nickel planchet!