By Legend Numismatics ……….
A BUSY SHOW-HA! THIS WAS LEGEND BEST BALTIMORE SHOW IN YEARS!
First, Mary Counts, David Chrenshaw, and team, did their usual outstanding job of putting on a great show. Baltimore is unquestionably one of the more friendly shows that BOTH dealers and collectors can attend.
This show was so busy, even our fav masseuse stationed out side by the door was too jammed up Friday for us to get our usual 15 minutes! Not only was the attendance strong by collectors, we were impressed by how many who had flown in just to attend. Can’t say we have seen that in a long time.
In the end, Legend has one of its BEST EVER Baltimore Shows. For us it was a “perfect storm” of the right dealers and collectors wanting what we had. If you had walked the floor, you did not see many dealers who were ALL CAC. We definitely attracted the high end buyers at the show!
We did our usual secret meeting with our super secret first shot friend on Tuesday. We’re always nervous about how we’ll do at show until we’ve done our first deal with him. Our first shot buddy is always our gauge as to how we think the show will go. He definitely was hungry for coins! We sat silently hoping it wasn’t a dream as he just made piles for pricing. Then the hope becomes a spin as he starts to look up the coins (how much will he really buy 10%, are our prices too high for him, oh the tension!). Nope he did not crush the dream, he said he would play hard-and he did! He rejected VERY few coins and spent well into six figures. He told us his business was doing very well too. Our feeling at that point this was going to be a special show.
Wednesday was strictly dealer to dealer lobby leaching and room hoping. Typically it is day of frustration for us. Unless they are “crackout” dealers, we usually don’t sell much. We pay strong to buy the best coins-which freezes out many wholesalers price wise. This Wed was different, the very first coin we sold was a $3 1885 PCGS MS65 at our price-and we never stopped after that! Dealers were grabbing us in the hall asking what we had for sale. At the end of the day Wed, we were at a point that anything we did at the show-would be pure gravy! We had never seen a WHOLESALE that strong before at a Baltimore show. Not one dealer asked us to hold their checks either.
Thursday did not start slow at all. We ran out on the floor to buy. We’re at smaller dealers table who we like to buy cheaper type and dollars from. We see another dealer ahead of us put an Early $10 in his to be priced pile. We lean over-OMG its a coin we have been looking for furiously for the past few months! Meanwhile we’re trying to distract the owner and tell him not to sell the dealer the coin (he never saw us waving or blinking). By luck, the dealer had an NGC coin he was in less and passed. Did we exhale! One quick “what is your real best price?” and we were the owners of a $10 1797 LG Eagle PCGS AU53 CAC and made a very picky collector happy. Go try and find a PCGS AU CAC one of those!! Our day was made in the first 10 minutes.
When the public was allowed in, it was even more fast and furious. It always starts off a little slow as collectors like to canvas the room and see what there. Within an hour, we had 6-7 major buyers stop by. In a whirlwind span of 1-2 hours we have retailed well into SIX FIGURES at the show (including a $1 1855 PCGS PR64 Cameo CAC, a $20 High Relief PCGS MS65+ CAC, and a 10C 1827 PCGS MS65 CAC). Then to add icing on the cake, the chief buyer of a major telemarketer stopped by and pretty much cleaned us out of all of our better date high graded PCGS/CAC gold (which is pretty much all he buys). At the end of the day, we couldn’t even print out a sales report as we were so far behind.
Friday was good too. The first half of the day was strong sales, the second half was buying. Dealers got some neat stuff back from the grading services and we got offered many first shots (which can be a blessing or a real shot). We heard not much over all got made, but as you will see in the upcoming week or so we were able to pick off some incredible coins!
Overall, we do not know of any dealers who had a bad show. The market definitely was active and positive-from our point of view!
WHY THE ACTIVITY
We strongly believe people feel good again about their finances. The economy does in deed seem to be on the rebound. Many people we spoke to felt great because they were making money in the stock market. Obviously they are jittery about it and want to park their profits elsewhere. Others finally had extra money to spend. The majority still felt coins overall are cheap.
We are not seeing ANY speculative investors. Even the new buyers are asking us about collections, not portfolios.
The strongest area by far is GOLD. Rare gold is experiencing unprecedented demand. Its easy to see why-newbie collectors feel gold is safe. They tend to feel its a different way to play gold.
QUALITY coins prices ARE inching up. To be current you really have to go by auction prices. Printed rags aren’t even close to actual trades. In fact, we still admonish the CDN (gray sheet) for having the gaul to print prices of coins with less then 5 known that haven’t traded in years! How can anyone make an intelligent decision? If anything, that causes the market to be held back as collectors not having any “insight” wouldn’t know the coin is worth far more thus causing them to miss an opportunity and pass on it.
We strongly believe now that the Feb-March blah has successfully been averted, the coin market will remain strong through at least June. If the stock market should tank-even better, its proven history people run like hell and buy things like coins then! There are so many coins that are still too damn cheap. Every day we get asked. We’ll tell you one of our favorite areas: PR 66 Barber Dimes. In 65 they are $1,400.00. In PR67 they are $3,750.00+. We think BELOW $2,500.00-they are a tremendous value. You can build a set of 24 coins for UNDER $60,000.00!
Read the full market Report Here
WHAT IS WRITTEN HERE ARE THE OBSERVATIONS AND EXPERIENCES OF LEGEND NUMISAMTICS. OTHER DEALERS WILL HAVE DIFFERENT OBSERVATIONS AS THEY HAVE DIFFERENT BUSINESSES. LEGENDS MARKET IS THE TOP RARITIES AND THE TOP 5% OF COINS FOR THE GRADE.
