March 10-11, 2006: The Bay State Show & C4 Convention in Boston, MA

We had a ‘quick-hitter’ of a show this time around.

Dealer set up was Thursday afternoon, we displayed all day Friday and then packed-up mid-afternoon on Saturday. We were gone and our table vacant by 2:30 PM – which brings up an interesting point which is a theme of this recap:

As a collector, nothing would annoy us more than traveling to a show and discovering empty dealer tables on Sunday – let alone late on a Saturday.

As dealers, we are always concerned about how we represent ourselves and the dealer community in general, but we also try to balance that with managing a coin business, watching our expenses and trying to use our time as productively as possible.

And so, this is our view:

In our experience, the bulk of our buying and selling activity in Boston has historically been done at dealer set-up on Thursday, early on Friday and then from 10AM to 2PM on Saturday (it was especially crowded from about 11:30 – 1:30 this year). But from Saturday afternoon through Sunday it is not uncommon for us or other dealers to do very limited business, or, in the case of one loudly complaining table-neighbor, none. Zippo. Nada.

So, for us, the choice is to stay the extra time which is not likely to be terribly productive, or to return to the office, catch up on our paperwork, pick-up and prepare to ship-out coins, add some new items to the website and get ready for our week in Baltimore.

Sometime in there, we also like to spend a little time with our families who really haven’t seen much of us lately.

Keep in mind that many dealers came from Smythe and Stack’s earlier this week, spent several days in Boston and will then turn around and fly to Baltimore on Monday and Tuesday for the ANR auction and then the stay for the show. One can see how compressed the schedule can become at this time of year.

So, anyway, back to the recap. Boston was pretty good. Our sales were OK, primarily in mid-priced coins.

While Boston is a major city, in our experience the show tends to behave more like a smaller, regional event. We see a lot of parents with their children and a lot of people looking for lower priced entry level coins, common date PQ Morgans, average grade common date gold, etc. High priced, sexy coins are generally not in demand at this show and as a result a lot of the big time dealers do not attend.

We brought a modified inventory group which contained a little of everything, but as we look to next year we will probably further modify that to include more lower priced items to cater to the typical attendees.

We were able to buy a handful of interesting colonial and type coins from some unlikely sources for our inventory and for some of our client want lists. We made a few new contacts as well, which we always enjoy.

Next stop: Baltimore – hope to see you there!