John Feigenbaum at the Staples Center

Whew…what a long, strange trip it was…this year’s ANA event, which for us encompasses the pre-show and ANA event. 9 full days of numismatic mayhem with just one day off in between. John Brush, my 12-year old son Ben, and I made the trek to the pre-show in Beverly Hills on the prior Wednesday with little expectation.

Sure, the coin market has been gradually improving over the past few months but wholesale-level spirits were dampened in a big way earlier in the week with the news of the NGE bankruptcy. I assumed everyone would be licking their wounds (and there are a lot of guys who got nicked out there!) and everyone would sit on their hands. Shockingly, this was not the case. Almost from the moment we arrived in the old Superior Building in Beverly Hills (soon to be a Heritage Auction showroom), the dealers in attendance made it clear that they were there to do business. We brought a limited amount of expensive inventory and the stuff was flying out of the boxes. We bought some great coins there as well… all it all it was a tremendous way to start the long event and Ben and took Sunday off to explore Santa Monica and prepare for the ANA.

John Brush left at this point to pick up an $800,000 fresh deal from a collector in upstate New York (tentatively called the Summer Sunset Collection)! He’d been working on this deal for over a month and we beat out a major auction company with our CASH offer. (We’ll put our offers up against anyone in this market!) This collection consists of about 1000 slabs and will be sold in three parts starting late August.

Back to Los Angeles…

Now it was up to Ben and I to man the ANA show from Monday’s PNG dealer setup — in downtown L.A. Again, we had low expectations on the assumption that we had sold strongly the week prior and the big guys would be played out. Again we were wrong. The influx of new attendees kept the momentum strong and we did some great deals on the buy and sell side. Our favorite purchase was an 1891-CC Morgan PCGS MS68 PL from the Eliasberg Collection. What a fantastic coin — quite possibly one of the crowing jewels in the entire series for its status as a finest known.

I bought the coin on spec, put it in the case, and owned it for less than 12 hours before it was discovered by another dealer who didn’t hesitate to buy it. This coin alone created a lot of energy on the floor as a lot of dealers buzzed about it… so many folks were upset that they didn’t buy it. To me, it’s an indication of an improving market and he who hesitates now is lost. Forgot what you could have bought coins for last month, or April (the low), or whatever. Coins are on the rebound and there are stuill great deals out there. You just can’t snooze.

The rest of the show was business as usual and a bit of a grind. It’s hard work spending 12 hours on the bourse floor, but I really enjoyed spending the quality time with Ben who is coming in to his own and getting very familiar with life in the coin business. It certainly reminds me of my childhood, travelling with my father to coin shows everywhere.

In Summary…I’d say that the coin market is steadily improving. It feels, actually, like the entire economy is slowly thawing from the “big freeze” of 2008-9 and we seem to add a few new clients every week. Starting today, we have a lot of new purchases and consignments from the show in our auctions. Take a look…and don’t snooze!