Road Report

October 23rd: Day 1

Like a thoroughbred, Team CRO raced up to New Hampshire for the 3 PM start of dealer set up, joined the queue of dealers impatiently assembled in the anteroom, zipped to our usual table the instant they flung the door open, quickly set up our standard local show-sized display of two (2) cases, plugged in our lamps and declared ourselves officially ready for business at 3:09 PM.

At which time your author took off and raced around the room looking for cool NEWPs, which worked great, as I got first shot at at a dealer friend’s table for the first time I can ever recall, and bought a couple of fantastic early type coins. Which would be the first of about two dozen coins we vacuumed up at various tables during the course of the afternoon.

Returning to our table intermittently to sell a couple of coins to two different dealers, buy half interest in another, get handed a fat check for the recent sale of a partner coin, take a few coins on consignment, and generally do lots of business of all kinds.

Which continued until about 6 PM, when we called it a day, headed to the hotel bar, and then walked down the street to dinner. Which might sound like it went off without a hitch, mostly because I judiciously skipped the part about forgetting my briefcase in the hotel bar and not realizing it until about 4 hours later when I was 50 miles away.

Which explains why I am currently typing this blog on my wife’s computer, but only after trying to imagine how I was going to replace every single thing in that briefcase (and the briefcase itself) over the next week or so. Fortunately, that is not going to be necessary, as I called a dealer friend at the hotel, he went down to the bar and retrieved it, and all was well with the world.

So we have no excuses for tomorrow as we will be there bright and early, briefcase in tow, ready for whatever action comes our way. And then blog all about all of it first thing on Saturday AM.

October 24th: Day 2

The most interesting things that happened on Friday in New Hampshire:

Upon arrival, I had to wait outside the bourse floor while MaryAnn went in, retrieved my now famous briefcase from our dealer friend and brought it back out, allowing me to extract my badge from the pocket and walk into the show all official like.

Literally 3 minutes after we got to the table, two different dealers came over and intensively studied some of the expensive coins in our case, causing your author’s heart to flutter like a butterfly.

I went over to pick up a couple of coins we bought from a dealer yesterday, discovered a third one that was maybe even cooler, and bought that too.

Bought a nice world coin of a type that circulated in early America which has been a rare occurrence recently, since CRO-style original and eye appealing material like that seems to have all but completely dried up in the numismatic marketplace.

Snagged a bunch more of those robust metal lamp clamps from a dealer who sells them, meaning that we now never again have to use the crappy plastic ones supplied at most shows, since those tend to shoot off the table right when you are about to sell a Seated Dime, for example.

Saw more national dealers here – some who had come from great distances – than we have ever seen before.

Also saw more Colonial Coin Collectors Club members here than I can ever recall. When I mentioned this to a local collector friend, he remarked that he was not surprised since they were all from New England. Since several of them were actually from New York and New Jersey, I asked if he considered these states to be part of New England which nearly caused a riot at the table since around here those are fightin’ words.

Had an above average burger for lunch at the snack bar.

Sold a bunch of neat old holdered dollars at the table, while nearly simultaneously buying different neat old holdered dollars from various dealers around the floor.

Sold one of the expensive coins those dealers were intensively studying hours earlier to a different customer later in the afternoon.

Spent about an hour poring through a recently acquired set of Capped Bust Half Dollars with a dealer friend with whom we split the deal, solidifying our next steps for every coin, which in some cases will include listing it on the CRO site real soon.

Bought a cool Peace Dollar on the floor from a dealer friend who apologized for not selling me others which I had never seen. Gotta admit I’m curious about those . . .

Even missing out on those mystery coins, by the end of the day we had assembled about 40 NEWPs in the back case, a very respectable haul at any show, but especially so at a regional event like this

Headed out for an excellent dinner with some dealer friends at the LaBelle Winery in Amherst, a neat restaurant about 20 minutes away introduced to us by a local customer last year at this show. Notably, we saw NO other coin dealers there, which despite the distance was still slightly surprising to me since some of those guys travel very, very well.

And we’ll be back at it again on Saturday here in NH, looking to do as much business as possible before the show winds down in the afternoon.

With whatever happens to be described right here on Sunday AM –

October 25th: Day 3

Saturday at the New Hampshire show has historically been busy, so we had pretty high expectations when we walked in the door at 8:47 AM on Saturday.

And I am delighted to report that our expectations were actually exceeded on a day that was crowded and active throughout, with a hearty buzz on the bourse floor, a lot of familiar and new customers stopping by the table, plenty of sales, some late purchases and some deluxe schmoozing.

We also got quite a bit done with partners on various deals that needed to be worked out in person, involving more of your author’s patented spreadsheets.

And all of that was before lunch.

That would usually signal a serious winding down of activity and us beginning to pack up, but on this day we kept on going for another couple of hours, made a couple more sales, delivered a big coin, collected checks, wrote others and finally walked out the door at about 2:30 after what had been another excellent event here.

And now we’ll be back home for about 10 days before heading to the last major show of the year, the fall Baltimore Expo from where our next RR will be written on November 6^th.

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