R.I.P THE PHILADELPHIA SHOW
Whitman has tried shows in Atlanta, Nashville, and Philadelphia since they bought the Baltimore coin Show. Hard to believe, not every city will be a “coin town” like Baltimore has turned out to be. Even though Whitman worked really hard to produce the Philadelphia Show, it never caught on in the local area. We kept telling them its the same market as Baltimore, it was draining the business. In our opinion, this past show was a bomb. Whitman has announced this was the final Philadelphia show.
While we lived for the show-it was soley because of the out of this world Reading Food Market across the street. If you ever got to Philadelphia you MUST stop at the Reading Market to eat! Only our tummies are sad to see this show end.
Sadly, like the majority of Phili Shows, this one was only worth the trip to the Reading market for us. While a small crowd showed up, it was just that, small and wanting to buy cheap coins. We did have a few regular customers come to do business, however they felt the show was too small and quiet to stimulate them to be aggressive. Pretty much at any given time you could roll a bowling ball down the isle. That does not exactly make you feel like you want to spend a lot.
Wholesale business was the key for the majority of dealers and for us. Our first sale was to our ‘super secret” buyer. He spent over $100,000.00 and actually wanted to buy more. We really couldn’t let him as we wanted to save our better coins for our customers. Wholesale was exceptionally strong through Thursday. It wasn’t so much about the price of gold jumping, as it was the ANA Show activity was wearing off and dealers needed coins again. We felt dealer attitudes overall were positive.
We are not sure how this upcoming weeks Long Beach Show will be. We expect it slightly better then Philadelphia.
One thing that was very hard for us to adjust too: we spent millions at ANA. At Philadelphia, we spent LESS then $50,000.00! Yikes! We couldn’t even buy a PCGS/CAC MS67 Morgan (we did see a really nice 80S MS67 but the dealer wanted $1,200.00) or a PCGS/CAC W/M MA66 Saint! The floor was as dry of nice coins as we had ever seen for ANY show this year.
LIFE IS COMING BACK
Slowly but surely the disastrous OMG will coins ever sell again time is ending. The week started out dead for us. By the end end of the week we were getting calls again and selling coins off our web site. It generally takes through mid October for this slump to end. Remember, at ANA you have TWO of the biggest auctions of the year coupled with the biggest show of the year, which is immediately followed by a major transition from summer to fall. So a 30 day breather should be expected.
SOME SUGGESTIONS
Every day people ask us what to buy or for suggestions. We generally like to keep them private for Legend customers. However we will mention something we think is a great buy (besides PR Barbers) that’s a huge area and is out there for everyone. Has any one other than us noticed you can buy PRE 1915 coins in GEM with pops of LESS then 12 for UNDER $5,000.00?
If you really think about, after 25+ years and millions of coins graded, isn’t a coin with a pop of UNDER 12 really RARE? Your talking so few coins. At this point there is also a high probability not many more will be graded. Here are a few coins we think potentially represent awesome purchases:
3CS 1868 PCGS PR65 $2,750.00 est
H.10 1847 PCGS MS67 $5,000.00 est
10C 1864 PCGS PR66 CA $3,500.00 est
25C 1893 PCGS MS66 $4,000.00 est
50C 1888 PCGS PR66 $4,750.00 est
There are plenty of nuggets out there if you look. We think these are grossly overlooked and WILL have their day. You won’t find a better time then today to buy these grossly Undervalued rarities.
