By laura Sperber – Legend Numismatics ………
This was an “off” show for sure. It had only about half the normal attendance, no auction (only one per quarter), and we believe the 100 degree temperatures limited public attendance. No, the PCGS Invitationals are not in any danger of collapsing or becoming miserable. What happened was scheduling. The majority of dealers have done five shows out the last six weeks and the only thing that’s good for is causing people to suffer from sheer exhaustion (including us). Included in those six weeks of shows was the huge Central States followed by out of the way New Orleans just last week. The human body can only take so much travel and intense work (we had to pack in 3 days worth of work into 2 before we went to LV), so this particular PCGS show became the “throw away” one for several dealers. In July, Legend-Morphy Auctions has another tremendous auction which we know WILL be a huge draw, and the show really is a set up for being a mini “pre ANA” which will bring out more dealers. We expect it to be business as usual at the July show.
ACTIVITY
Several of the bigger players DID attend. Two in particular were especially eager to buy GOLD. They wanted everything from generics to RARE dated gold. They were actually paying top dollar with what seemed like no real regard for the fact that the price of spot gold was dropping $10-$20 a day. The bigger gold pieces (like $5 Indians in MS65, an Early AU $10, or anything over $10,000.00) were bringing strong premiums and CAC gold…forgettabout it! Most NEVER even made it to the show as it was almost all bought in the rooms prior to set up.
Other coins sold strong as well. If you had something special vs what you would see in the majority of cases (common stuff you see such as MS64 Walkers, $20’s, minor grade Morgans) you’d have little to no problems selling it. We did not hear of any dealers having significant cash flow problems. Even though it was a smaller show than normal, activity was strong!
Since we had seen the majority of people last week, we did not see many ‘fresh’ coins. Making matters worse, PCGS really held the line and not much got made that was for sale. In fact, we’re lucky, because we’re still living off the two of the three big deals we got to do in New Orleans. Without those deals, we’d only be adding 4-5 NEWPs from the PCGS Show.
Not surprisngly, activity in our office was back to normal, even with our website being down for 12 hours Monday/Tuesday. On Sunday night, it seemed like we were selling coins as fast as we were posting them. We sold coins very well EVERY day this past week. Our sales for the month are already OVER $2 million! We still dream about what our sales would be if we could find even 1/4 of what’s on our Want Lists!
GOLD
Guess for now gold is settling lower. Hard to say where it will be in 30 days. The ONLY areas of numismatics that will start to be affected will be generics. Right now NON CAC generics are down probably 10% from last month. CAC generics are for the most part are NOT down (its a supply vs demand issue). We expect the overall generic market to suffer only slight price adjustments unless gold has a few days of sudden steep drops. Demand seems to be steady to strong currently in most areas of gold (generics can get dicey).
People prefer to build great collections vs buying stocks, putting their money in banks, or even buying real estate. When this happens, gold coins (especially better) become a “go to”. Better gold coins are enjoying more demand now than just a few months ago. Collectors LOVE the fact BETTER gold coins are really rare, have lower mintage’s, and are made of gold. Coins like better date Saints have historically been an “entry level” area for the biggest players (these people built COMPLETE choice/GEM sets: Newhouse, Grodendike, Browning, Simpson, etc). Its interesting that no new MAJOR complete (27D included) Saints sets are being built but the better Saints are enjoying strong demand again (last year they were soft).
There are many good buys stil out there for gold. If you are perplxed as to what to buy, we recommend you simply build your self a Type Set. Then you can learn more about each series and see which fits you the best. Plus, with a type set, you can make it all rarities, or make it all generics. We think its one of the best “plays” in gold today.
Another note on gold: We are high sightUNSEEN bidders still on W/Motto PCGS (only) MS66 Saints at $3,700.00. Load us up! we are also the sightUNSEEN high BID on W/Motto PCGS MS67 CAC Saints at $12,500.00. We especially need those. Have not owned an MS67 Saint in almost a year now! We don’t think many are being beaned or even graded at the services.
