June 18-21, 2025: The Whitman Baltimore Expo

June 18th: Day 1

Just over one month since our last show in Pittsburgh, Team CRO was a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y delighted to be heading to Baltimore on Wednesday for the next installment of the Whitman Expo.

Which we would demonstrate by carefully organizing our wares, packing for the expected hot and humid weather, and making a thoughtful plan to coast calmly into the airport in time to catch our 7 AM flight.

A plan which would go completely and totally out the window at precisely 3:06 AM when your author received a text from the airline which said (and I quote) “You’ve been rebooked to BWI on a flight departing at 5:45 AM“.

And while it took me a few minutes to digest this disgusting new information (and even longer to figure out how to explain it to the still-sleeping MaryAnn), I started to believe we could actually pull this off. Namely by indiscriminately throwing things in my suitcase, jumping in the shower, re-booking the Uber and, amazingly, making it to our departure gate by 5:25.

From where we enjoyed an uneventful, on time flight, jumped in a cab and made it to our Inner Harbor hotel by 7:30.

Where we were very pleased to discover that our room was available, dumped our bags, headed to breakfast and then made our way to the convention center for a concentrated 8 hours of lot viewing, wholesale action, dealer schmoozing and generally super productive numismatic activity.

With our focus on finding a lot of cool new coins, since the site has been largely decimated of late and we really, really need to reload. I am pleased to report that we did, in all categories, including things ready for market, and others that will now wend their way through the grading / CACing process and hit the site at some unspecified time down the road.

And while your author started to fade at about 4 PM, and had a migraine for good measure, I raced back to the hotel to take a fistful of Advil and saw this impressive rainbow en route:

Which seemed like it could be a good omen and apparently was, since I pulled it together in time to roll into the show for dealer set-up at 5 PM.

Where we organized the table instantly (of course), had our display up and running faster than anyone else (also of course) and made our first sales within 10 minutes of walking in the door.

Which would be the first of many during a session which turned out to be, somewhat unexpectedly, both a buying and selling semi-bonanza.

With our last deal of the day a split of two cool coins birddogged by another dealer at about 7 PM, just before we rocketed out the door to make it to our dinner reservation on Fell’s Point with some dealer friends.

Where we had another excellent meal, talked shop and finally finished up at about 9:30. After which we headed back to the hotel and summarily collapsed after what had been by then an excellent but exhausting 20 hour, 15,697 step day.

And we get to do it all again tomorrow, with another early start, a full day on the bourse, and the first appearance of the public starting in the AM.

Where we hope to have another good day. And if we do, or even if we don’t, we’ll describe everything that happens right here in just about 24 hours from now.

June 19th: Day 2

10 Interesting Things that Happened on Thursday

We split coins with 3 different dealers during the day, with each deal falling into a distinctly different category:

• Dealer A found coins which seemed ideal for the CRO site, so we split them and I will list them
• Dealer B had been helping me value a challenging coin I was trying to buy months ago, and so when I actually bought it, I split it with him here out of a sense of fairness
• Dealer C has outlets for a coin I acquired in a deal that is not exactly CRO website material, so we split it and he will sell it

A dealer offered me a cool coin here which he himself described as “way too expensive”. That seemed like an odd sales pitch, but it must have worked since I bought it.

A different dealer offered me two coins which he himself described as “ugly“. That also seemed like an odd sales pitch to me, but it partly worked since I bought one of them.

In the category of not ugly, we are considering a fantastic mega-coin if we can get together with the seller on price.

Another dealer told me a weird story about how he sold a silver dollar on Ebay, learned 6 months later that the buyer had returned the coin to Ebay directly and received a refund which the dealer only discovered when Ebay extracted the money from the dealer’s Paypal account when he sold a different coin of comparable value to someone else. When the dealer complained to Ebay that he was now out the money, and the original coin sold, Ebay sent him a large box containing two 3 foot tall blue gargoyles:

And when he complained about that, they sent him the returned coin back and told him to keep the Gargoyles. I told you it was a weird story.

While the snack bar here in the convention center lobby has eliminated that delicious tomato bisque they used to serve, and generally completely revamped their menu offerings, we were pleased to see that they actually have a few more healthy options than they used to.

I was very surprised to see that the dealer who got kicked out of the show last time we were in Baltimore was back in his usual spot.

Our efforts to complete a money-wiring, mega-transaction here were derailed (at least temporarily) by the fact that Thursday was a bank holiday that all of us had failed to consider.

It was downright busy until about 2 PM with a lot of familiar and new customers at the table looking at coins in all categories, and buying a bunch.

It was pouring when we walked back to the hotel after the show, and for only the second or third time in my entire life I had an umbrella in hand when I actually needed one.

After driving by it 60,000 times during past shows, we finally had dinner at the James Joyce Pub in Fell’s Point with a dealer friend and it was really pretty good. So that could well be on our regular rotation going forward.

And now we’ll look forward to more interesting adventures on Friday, and then blog all about all of them in our next installment of the RR to be posted here early on Saturday morning.

EOM

June 20th: Day 3

Despite a late night on Thursday, and general exhaustion, Team CRO schlepped to the gym early Friday morning and felt super proud of ourselves right after.

Then made our way to the show for the 9 AM start and enjoyed a pretty busy morning, which started with us selling a bunch of world coins to a collector at the table, and then buying a few more nicely toned type coins to add to our growing NEWPs pile.

After which we started organizing coins given to us by customers for consignment variously to Stack’s-Bowers, Heritage and Great Collections.

Then submitted our last grading to PCGS and NGC.

Followed by working on a couple of spreadsheets for potential deals and trying to figure out values of a couple of expensive coins offered to us.

Pausing briefly to have a respectable Caesar salad for lunch.

Finishing that just as a collector came to the table looking to trade 1oz American Eagle gold coins for numismatic items. Which worked excellently, allowing us to sell a cool coin, and then flip the gold immediately.

And then we learned that the money-wiring, mega-transaction mentioned in yesterday’s RR was shockingly completed just before our bank closed on Friday, allowing us to deliver the coin to the buyer here at the show, and avoid either having to get an insurance rider to ship it, or hand deliver it next week. So regardless of anything else that happens here in Baltimore, that made the show extreeeeemely productive.

Speaking of mega-coins, two new PCGS graded, CAC-verified Slugs then walked up to the table so of course we snapped them up instantly, if not faster.

Followed by a dealer coming to the table and telling me that he had a neat colonial coin which could be of interest to us. Intrigued, I asked what it was, but he could not remember. So I followed him to his table to see it, but he could not find it. I can’t decide if events like this are merely annoying, or if they are fascinating adventures like in an Indiana Jones movie. So stay tuned Saturday to find out if this coin turns out to be imaginary, or real, and, if the latter, how many more steps are involved for us to locate and identify it.

Returning to our table just in time to buy two charming, original and downright affordable EB-style coins right before closing.

So as of this moment, our next Early Bird is shaping up nicely. And that’s good, since we are now down to one single check left, which we hope to use for something super deluxe on Saturday before we pack up and head home.

From where our final installment of the RR will be written just before we zip off to our local Deven’s show on Sunday AM where we will continue our (almost) non-stop efforts to buy and sell cool coins.

June 21st: The Exciting Conclusion

Now back home, let’s recap the just completed Whitman Expo through a series of random observations presented in no particular order and starting right now:

The city was nice, we got to visit some good restaurants, our travel (except for that minor adventure getting here on Wednesday) was all on time and uneventful, and the whole experience was positive.

A lady came by the table, looked at a few coins and then asked if you could actually see the date on an MS63 Buffalo Nickel in our case. When I showed her that in fact you could she screamed directly into my face. Hey, numismatics can be exciting.

During the course of the show another dealer told us that a customer at his table had mentioned us when asked for a reference. I found that strange, since we have never done any business buying or selling with that person which puts us in the awkward position of having to say “Sorry – we cannot vouch for that guy”. I would have thought it goes without saying, but maybe not: We are happy to act as a reference for customers we know and have had successful transactions with, but if that’s not the case I think it would be best to use someone else.

While the traffic at this show was pretty lean, and many of the dealers we see here in the spring and fall either did not attend or skipped out early, most of the like-minded dealers I spoke to here said they did well on the selling side, but struggled to buy enough cool stuff.

For CRO, our sales were about typical for this event, and we left here with more than our fair share of interesting NEWPs.

The “Indiana Jones” situation described yesterday was resolved on Saturday morning with the dealer in question not only finding the mystery item (coming soon to a CRO list near you), but also offering me three other coins which I snapped up instantly (ditto). To be honest, I found this whole thing to be a totally shocking outcome.

Also shocking: This turned out to represent only 44% of the cool coins we acquired on the last day in Baltimore, bringing our total NEWPs haul for the show to 33 coins.

Many of the YNs we see at these shows are super nice, very knowledgeable and unfailingly polite.

I was told that there is a plan afoot to have some kind of PNG dealer day in Baltimore on Wednesday at the next show. I guess that would be good, since the wholesale activities are currently happening anyway, just in several different, widely scattered convention center rooms.

A gentleman came to the table during the show and found it amusing that anyone would bother sending a “bullion coin” like an 1884-CC $20 to CAC. I suppose we could have engaged him in a discussion about this, but it was pretty clear we were not going to have a meeting of the minds in any way, shape or form.

As we were leaving and saying our goodbyes to dealer friends, most of them said their next major show would be the ANA in Oklahoma City in mid-August almost 2 months from now. That’s true for us, too, though as noted yesterday we do have a local show today, so we need to stop typing this and start getting ready for that right now.

Finito