blog

We recently attended the Long Beach Expo, which is a coin show helps three times a year in Long Beach, California, at the Long Beach Convention Center. This show was January 31st-Feb-2nd. The show is a show we attend fairly often in the past, and have made it a permanent fixture in our show schedule every year due to the oftentimes good business we are able to do at the show.

Although error coin collecting has largely moved online, and in-person local coin clubs, coin shows, and the like have become less popular in the last couple decades, coin shows at least will never go away. They are too important to the hobby, as they allow “online” dealers to interact with customers, fellow dealers, and also are useful venues for buying and selling coins (albeit more wholesale than resale most of the time.) We love coin shows, and look forward to them every few months. 

This Long Beach show was a good show for us. We bought and sold a lot of mint errors, and it was one of our best Long Beach shows on record, returning to our office with lots of coins to send off for certification and otherwise sell to our customers. 

It was a surprise to us how many retail customers we ran into at the show. Usually the Long Beach show is light on retail, but there were a number of our “regular” customers at the show, and also other “occasional buyers” who shows up and created a number of “empty slots” in our display cases. We also made a new customer, who was excited to begin his error collection—it’s always fun to start a new coin collection!

Although there were a small number of auction lots in the two auctions being held, most of the coins went for relatively high prices, and we were amazed to see some of the coins bring far in excess of what we would value them at. Perhaps because there were so few lots, collectors went a bit “overboard” in their bidding! This was also our observation at the last FUN show in January—the tiny number of lots on auction brought strong money. 

We will be offering some VERY nice mint errors in the coming month or so, including some major proof errors, off-metals, and a nice selection of state quarter missing clad layers. There are other coins as well—all are currently out being certified. 

In a few weeks we will be attending the Baltimore show, and then a month or so later the ANA in Pittsburgh. If you are attending either show, please be sure and stop by our table to chat about errors, or if you are looking to buy or sell. 

We hope everyone is having a great year, and if you have any error collecting needs, please let us know: jon@sullivannumismatics.com