January 8-11, 2025: The FUN Show in Orlando, FL

Prologue:

Anxiously watching the national weather radar this last weekend, your author was deeply, deeply concerned that our flight to Orlando would be cancelled or delayed, which would of course have been a very poor way to start the new travel year.

But the snow that pounded parts of the country (and caused many people to post videos of 18-wheelers sliding sideways down highways) missed us in New England, our flight showed ON TIME and nothing in the world could possibly slow us down.

Except for 2 things:

1. I have no idea why, but was dismayed to encounter multiple people at the airport who walked directly into your author while not paying any attention to where they were going (including one TSA guy who was engaged in a conversation to his left while pushing a large cart of bins into my knee).
2. A mechanical issue causing them to take our airplane out of service, find us another one, change our gate to one on the other side of the airport and finally get us down to Orlando about 2 hours late.

Where we were delighted to see some palm trees, check into our hotel, chat up some old friends in the lobby, make our way to our room and collapse in a heap after what had by then been an extremely long 15,000 step day.

And now that we’re here we look forward to what we think will be an excellent event during which we expect to achieve the following:

• Buy a lot of cool coins, some which people are bringing specifically to show us, others which we’ll find randomly on the floor like we always do. I’m sure of it.
• Sell like crazy, including coins from our inventory list and new things that have never before seen the light of day.
• Schmooze expertly with a lot of collectors we have not seen since last year at this show.
• Do some grading, though not that much unless we buy a lot of raw coins here which I would say is possible, but not likely.
• View a gazillion auction lots.
• Blog all about everything that happens each and every day of the show right here in this space.

Starting tomorrow.

January 8th: Day 1

Let’s recap Wednesday here in Orlando by ranking each part of our day on a standard 10 point scale:

In-Room Coffee Maker
Let’s see – it did actually produce a cup of coffee, and I was able to operate it in the dark without knocking it over or dumping Coffee-Mate all over the counter. But the lid does not close with confidence, so I cannot go higher than 7.

Hotel Carpeting
Just 4 or 5. Sure it’s plush and luxurious, but that comes at a cost since it makes pushing wheeled luggage to the elevator kinda like dragging it through your front yard.

Breakfast Restaurant
The food here is pretty good, the service is dynamic, and we enjoyed trying to figure out which convention the various diners were attending:

• 50 year old guy in a Stüssy T-shirt and yoga pants? Surf Show.
• Man in a sharp suit at the table next to us who introduced his friend as “Ricardo, this is Bob from NASA.” Some kind of high tech something or other.
• Dude in a Chicago Bears hoody? Obviously the FUN Show.

So this has to be an 8.

Walk to the Show
According to another dealer, it is exactly 1 mile from our hotel lobby to the bourse floor which sounds close as I am typing this, but does not seem so when you are again dragging your stuff across the fuzzy carpet in the gargantuan convention center section of the hotel, up and down multiple escalators, and then walking across the road and then the entire length and width of the convention center North-South building on some kind of Hamster Habitrail-like pathway. Also, it was cold and very windy, so I would say 3.

Convention Center
Let’s see, lot viewing opens at 8AM, and the show kicks off at 2PM, which means the giant lobby outside the bourse room fills up early. Unfortunately, there is only enough seating there for 11 people, which means the other few thousand end up standing around leaning against the walls, or each other. I’ll tell you one thing they are not doing, and that is eating, since there are no restaurants or snack stands open anywhere, and your only option is to trek back to one of the hotels as described above, fish a cough drop out of the bottom of your briefcase, or, if you have dealt with this for years and know the drill, bring something with you. And then when the clock finally strikes 2, you have to descend on an escalator down to the actual bourse level which is always a chaotic and terrifying scene in which there is a lot of yelling, they make you carry your wheeled bags, and there is a very real risk of someone falling and wiping out a big chunk of the numismatic industry in the process. 1.

The Bourse Floor
But once you finally make it inside, the show itself is great. The room is gigantic, the aisles are wide, our well-situated booth was ready and waiting for us, all of our supplies and stuff were in order, we had the correct number of lamps and clamps, we were able to set up in 3 minutes flat and we could start doing business immediately. 9.

Selling
Business was pretty good here right off the bat, as we sold a pile of federal and world coins to a bunch of different collectors and dealers of the pre-planned and spontaneous varieties, and have a few more big things in play already. 8.

Buying
If you cannot find cool coins to buy here I have to think it is a you problem, since pretty much everyone who is anyone in the coin business is here, and there were lots of cool coins in every category, grade and price point. Allowing us to snag a bunch of great things in the “ready to market” and “kind of a project” categories. Including some cool, original early type, our requisite old holders and some neat gem world. 9.

Schmoozing
Also top notch, with collectors and dealers we haven’t seen in a while all seemingly in a good mood and ready to dive into numismatics. 9.

Dinner
Our goal was to find a good Mexican place, and that was achieved at TodoVos at the Hilton, where the vibe is upscale, the food was excellent, the Margaritas were well poured and the conversation with dealer friends was sparkling. 9.

So overall that was a pretty good day in Orlando, and we’re feeling quite optimistic with the show starting in earnest tomorrow. Where we’ll do as much business as possible, and then describe everything that happens in detail right here 24 hours from now.

January 9th: Day 2

Things that happened to CRO on Thursday:

We didn’t have time for breakfast, so we grabbed some stuff on the go.

It was even colder and windier on that skybridge than it was on Wednesday.

By the time we got to the bourse floor at 9 it was already teeming with activity, making me wonder what the heck time these other people wake up.

We picked up a bunch of forms so we could get the big pile of to-be-graded stuff that was gumming up our back case submitted post haste.

We sold a bunch of US coins to several different dealers and early bird badge holders.

As I was walking down a show aisle, some guy sitting at another table suddenly gesticulated wildly swinging his arm backward and directly at my head, but I was able to adeptly limbo underneath it and thus avoid a reprisal of the infamous 2012 Bay State show incident where the same damn thing happened. Come to think of it, maybe this was the same guy?

I bought a bunch of dimes.

I was pleased that my pre-show strategy of bringing a lot of world coins here since seemed to have been a genius-level move, since we sold a whole bunch of them. I thought that was a possibility, since many of the potentially competing word dealers would probably already be in NYC for the show next week.

We finally secured the totally cool Liberty Nickel collection we have been chasing for 7 months and now have it in our back case.

The show was so crowded at midday that it was genuinely difficult to walk across the room and try to get lunch.

Speaking of which, the spicy Korean pork bowl there is worth your time IMO.

A customer came buy and purchased a colonial coin that we had had on our last EB, and then not 45 seconds later a second guy came to buy the same coin. I find that surprising, since neither of them ordered it off the EB, and it has been on our site undisturbed and available for the taking since then. Conclusion: Hey, pick up the phone.

We sold a super choice, totally original early dollar to a long time customer which was great, though it did scuttle my plan to list that on an upcoming EB as part of fantastic, well matched, 3-coin early dollar type set.

A few customers came by to look at coins multiple times, and then all of them eventually came back one last time and pulled the trigger. That is almost never the way to bet.

Our last purchase of the day was a neat Cuban coin at about 5:30.

The walk back to our hotel with some dealer friends seemed much quicker than the trip in the AM.

We had a nice dinner with a group of dealer and industry friends during which we discussed a variety of important travel topics, including a side trip to a secret Irish waterfall, a visit to the monkey house in Costa Rica, and of course a golf cart tour of Rome.

After which we got back to the hotel real late and caught the last few minutes of the Notre Dame-Penn State game before finally turning in after another long, tiring but productive day here in Orlando.

And we’ll look forward to doing it all again on Friday (accept for the wild gesticulator), and then blogging all about it right here on Saturday AM.

January 10th: Day 3

Maintaining our early morning schedule of blog writing, coffee drinking, gym visiting and skybridge schlepping, we were back on the bourse floor at about 9:15 where we once again found that most of the other dealers were already there.

But of course it is not a race, and I was personally confident we did not miss much.

We then spent some time getting ourselves organized, settled a split deal with a business partner, delivered coins sold yesterday, paid off a couple of open invoices, picked up some coins we purchased earlier in the show and started organizing NEWPs for photography. A LOT of NEWPs.

So when the show opened to the public, we were totally ready for action. But honestly there wasn’t very much, and I started to think maybe this show was winding down already.

A thought which I completely abandoned about an hour later as activity exploded (in a good way), we had non-stop action at the table, we sold tons of coins to collectors and dealers, people kept coming by to offer us coins (many of them great coins, it turned out), and your author found some fantastic things on the floor being offered by people I know well, and guys I just met here for the very first time.

It was as though someone turned back the numismatic clock to 2007 when your author would be running around a major show non-stop for 8 hours, and every time I got back to the table there were 3 people waiting to do something urgent. It was exhausting, and exhilarating, and business was pretty fantastic in every category and price point, from a few hundred dollars to well into the 6-figures.

But this is how you know things are really humming:

1. Every person who looks at a coin and says they may come back later actually does and consummates the deal.
2. Every person who says “I have a friend who might want this coin and I will email him now” actually gets the guy to call us and buy the item(s).
3. Every person who buys a coin is within a few minutes followed by another guy who was interested to buy the very same item.

It was kinda uncanny. And it continued like that until about 5:30, at which time we finalized the photography coins, then showed a customer those boxes and sold a coin which we were really not trying to sell. Then bid in Sheridan Downey’s auction in which some cool coins sold for moon money (or money equivalent to other moons orbiting distant planets). Then got a serious offer on a mega-coin.

So by the time we packed up to leave, your author’s head was spinning (again, in a good way).

With the only real negative the entire day being the PA announcement at about 3 PM saying that dog poop had been found on the bourse floor – twice – and anyone with a dog was reminded they were responsible for clean up.

But we somehow survived that, and will be back at it again on Saturday where we have no idea what to expect, but at the rate things are going, it would not surprise me a bit if we did tons more business before we leave town.

And if we do, or even if we don’t, we’ll blog about all of it from the comfort of home on Sunday AM.

Until then, then –

January 11th: The Exciting Conclusion

Now back home, let’s recap the just completed 2025 FUN show though our patented series of random observations presented in no particular order:

We sold another 9 coins at the table, which is – yes – a lot for a Saturday. A lot a lot.

A long time friend I had not seen in years came by the table and offered me a fantastic and unusual gold coin. Of course I bought it.

We sent in a ton of submissions to CAC and PCGS just in the nick of time, but we were too late to get our last box in. That was very disappointing.

We did win at least one coin in Friday’s Sheridan Downey auction, but on my way to pick up the lots I ran into Sheridan himself hauling his luggage out the door, a pretty clear indication I was too late. I’d have come earlier, but I could not escape from our table.

I bought a totally cool, original, high grade, old holdered early dollar on the bourse floor on Saturday from a guy who had a lot of lesser ones.

While I was understandably trepidatious, I decided to risk it and have one of those “reverse Vesuvius” crepes for lunch. So I asked them to double cup it, took about 65 extra napkins, ate it out of a leak-proof blue PCGS box and STILL got melted cheese all over our back table. Not on me though, which I considered a great victory.

Of every interesting CRO-style coin I saw on the floor here or got offered at the table all week, I bought all of them but one. I seriously considered that last one too, but I just did not think it would be a great use of money. That’s important.

We stayed all day Saturday, made our last sale at about 3:30, and ended up doing more business this week than we have ever done at any FUN show, ever. I expected this to be a good show, but I found that total totally shocking.

Also shocking: We managed to fly home without any delays whatsoever, which is never the way to bet leaving this event.

And now we are going to kick back and relax for about 45 minutes before we unpack, repack and get ourselves organized for the NYINC show from where our next RR will be written in a shockingly short 2 days from now.

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