Road Report

May 2nd: The Exciting Conclusion

Let’s recap the just-completed EAC show in Charlotte through another of our series of random observations presented in no particular order starting right now:

There is something very nice about an event where you know nearly every single person there.

After we did a deal at the very beginning of this show on Wednesday I actually thought to myself that that might be the only business we do here, and if that was to be the case it would be OK. Looking back now, that seems utterly crazy, since we ended up here with a larger sales total than we did at CSNS, and that show was frankly epic.

Based on conversations with other like-minded dealers here, everyone else had a similar experience.

Never did get to try that indoor / outdoor pool.

Part of the fun of these shows is hearing a lot of cool coin stories, like the one where a dealer friend found a pretty decent Chain Cent in a jar of utterly ordinary coins during an appraisal and then bought it for a strong price to the delight of the shocked owner.

We never had time to visit that soul food restaurant we enjoyed in 2016.

In my opinion, this was one of the best run, best organized EAC shows I have ever attended, and I have attended a lot. Not as many as a lot of these other guys, though.

I have never run a restaurant, but it struck me as bizarre that this hotel has 4 people working the breakfast shift where there is a buffet, but just one single solitary employee working the lunch shift attempting to cover the entire restaurant and bar area by themselves. That worked about as well as you would think it did. Maybe they just can’t hire enough people willing to do that job? In which case I will look forward to ordering from one of those Optimus robots next time we come here.

I tried hard to find CRO style coins to buy here, peering in every case, looking at hundreds of potential candidates, but found only 13 coins I liked enough to take home. And that included buying the last two just 30 minutes before I had to leave on Saturday, including this raw one:

And another that was not actually for sale.

Had I known how good this show was going to be I would have stayed through Sunday, but then I would have missed the end of season Curling Club banquet at home and MaryAnn would have been extremely unhappy and believe me, no one wants that.

The next event on our schedule is Baltimore in June, giving us a long stretch at home to rest, recover and crank out an EB or two, the schedule of which will be posted just as soon as we sort the photography out.

So you might want to keep an eye out for that –

May 1st: Day 2

Friday in Charlotte started with some intense 4 AM blog writing, a visit to the hotel gym which took me a while to find, and then a field trip I have looked forward to for years now, planned multiple times at various southern shows on the coin circuit, but somehow never actually made for one reason or other.

I speak of course of a trip to Waffle House. And since I noticed on Thursday that there was one not too far from our hotel, I figured this time for sure. So my friend Greg Cohen from Stack’s Bowers and I headed over, enjoyed some excellent table service and discovered to my surprise that it actually was really good (i.e. not greasy), and no fights broke out while we were there. Sounds like a perfect breakfast to me.

Returning to the hotel just in time to head to the bourse floor and begin what we all hoped would be a good day. You never really know though, and while there were plenty of serious collectors around, I thought it might just be a day heavy on schmoozing.

And I am glad to say that while there was plenty of that too, it came with a stunning dose of coin selling of the generally expensive variety, starting early in the AM and continuing on until late afternoon.

Including 3 highfalutin NJ coppers, some Vermonts, assorted other colonials and, in the late afternoon, a high end half cent that was discussed and vetted by the most knowledgeable guys in numismatics and passed every test.

Somewhere in there we also managed to sell one cool, toned world coin we bought here on Thursday, and then one single solitary US silver coin to a husband and wife collector team I have known online for years, but had never met before in person.

And then I sold a 50% interest in another coin I bought yesterday to a dealer friend better equipped to sell it than I am, neatly stacked a giant pile of invoices in the back case and reflected on a day that turned out to be frankly epic.

Then packed up, boarded a bus and headed to dinner at an EAC event at the Old Mecklenburg Brewery about 15 minutes away. Where some excellent indoor / outdoor coin schmoozing took place on a lovely evening in a neat environment.

Getting back to the hotel on the not-too-late side and then once again falling asleep almost instantaneously after another long, tiring but almost unbelievably successful day here in Charlotte.

And there is still one more day to go, so we’ll see what else can happen, and I will once again try to buy a coin I have been chasing here at these EAC shows for years now.

If I buy it, or even if I don’t, we’ll write all about all of it in our last RR from this show to be posted from the comfort of my couch on Sunday AM.

Until then, then –

April 30th: Day 1

I arrived in Charlotte at about 10:30 AM after an extreeeeemely bumpy flight (described as “moderate turbulence” by the pilot), kissed the tarmac, grabbed my luggage, cajoled (i.e. bribed) a cab driver into taking me the short distance to the show hotel and sauntered in the door just after 11.

At which time I realized EAC dealer set up was at noon, not the 3 PM I had previously thought, giving me barely enough time to stash my bags, pick up my show credentials and attempt to grab lunch in the hotel lobby restaurant.

And then watched as everyone else who ordered after me was receiving their food, while I variously looked at my phone and/or talked coins with the show attendees seated near me at the counter. The good news is my caesar salad (of course) eventually came out so late that they insisted on giving it to me for free, which I said was not necessary three (3) times but eventually capitulated to the super nice but very insistent young lady working the restaurant all by herself.

Finishing up at about 12:15, then racing to the bourse floor at the other end of the lobby, setting up the CRO table super fast and officially opening for business at about 12:30. Just in time to meet a customer, sell a cool coin and buy 10(!) others from him. Including these, for example:

Making for what was as productive a use of the first few minutes of a show as anyone could reasonably expect.

After which I snagged a cool, affordable colonial from a dealer down the aisle as I made my way around the room looking for cool NEWPs, finding several interesting possibilities but not pulling the trigger on anything else just yet.

Returning to the table to show a bunch of different coins to a bunch of different people, as the room gradually filled with dealers, collectors and collector-dealers, all variously looking at coins, buying coins, selling coins and schmoozing about coins while also keeping one eye on my bids in the online HA colonial auction which was running at the exact same time. Wow, that is a lot of coin activity.

Followed by the EAC reception elegantly laid out in the hotel lobby not that far from the indoor-outdoor pool:

Would-be swimmers take note: There is no lifeguard on duty here.

Unfortunately I missed a lot of that, as I was at a restaurant downtown working on a deal with some coin friends since of course we are always on the clock, and this business is not going to run itself.

Eventually returning to the hotel kinda late and then collapsing in a heap since I once again had a 4 AM wake up call and that kind of stuff catches up with you real quick.

But once again I should be rested and ready for action on Friday during which we will dive back into numismatics and do as much buying, selling, trading and, of course, schmoozing as is humanly possible.

EOM

Prologue

Almost unbelievably, CRO is totally rejuvenated, thoroughly organized, loaded to the gills with cool new coins and back on the road again, this time headed for the EAC Show in Charlotte, a city I do not believe we have visited in any numismatic context since this very same event in April of 2016.

Wow – 10 years ago, things were quite different way back then. At that time CRO was selling a lot of cool coins, attending tons of shows, writing RRs from all of them, and your author carried a golf handicap of 8.8. Actually, come to think of it, every single thing is exactly the same except for that last one.

And if this Charlotte show is anything like the last one, we’re going to sell a bunch of cool coins, scoop up a gazillion NEWPs, see many old and new friends, eat some delicious soul food (if that same restaurant we visited last time is still around) and generally have an excellent time.

With (almost) every single thing that happens here to be posted each and every morning of the show, as always, in this RR, which I predict which also include many cool photos since I was remiss in not doing that in Schaumburg.