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Back to Road Report Archive 2006

June 21-24, 2006: The Mid-America Coin Expo in Rosemont, IL

stephensconvention

We packed up late Saturday after a rather unexpected little show here in Chicago.

Generally speaking, the Mid-America Expo is a nice regional event. Most of the national guys show up, but not all. The auction is usually decent, but not a blockbuster affair. Foot traffic is OK given the time of year, etc. And we went in with that mindset.

And, overall, that was pretty much what we got – with one minor exception. Wednesday (before the show actually began) was the biggest single selling day we have ever had. Ever. Which put us in what could be characterized as a ‘good mood’.

OK then, here are a few highlights for you:

  1. Some guy at lot viewing had a banana on his lamp.
  2. NGC had a table – PCGS did not. It would have been nice had PC been there, as we find it easier and more efficient to submit coins to them at shows and their absence will probably delay us a few weeks in getting some new coins to the website.
  3. Another dealer told me that after a flight its important to shower to get the ‘kerosene residue (jet-fuel apparently contains kerosene) off of your skin’. I am not making this up. I wasn’t making up that thing about the banana either.
  4. We bought 2 extra large items at the show. One of them might actually be XXL, but we prefer to err on the side of understatement. We also bought some medium-sized stuff that we really, really liked.
  5. By my rough guesstimate, 25% of the dealers (including most of the ones in our row) were long gone by end of day Friday. Saturday a number of collectors with slightly bewildered looks asked me if all those empty tables were because the other dealers hadn’t arrived yet, or if they were ‘just taking a break’. I felt pretty lousy explaining to them that the dealers had actually left already.
  6. The snack bar was well above average for the coin show circuit, with a creditable Sloppy Joe on the menu which at least 6 different people recommended that I order.
  7. The Conder tokens in the ANR sale were pretty cool. I give those guys a lot of credit for putting together a catalog which contains things that are just different than your usual fare.

So, yes, we are in a good mood – sales were excellent buoyed by our Wednesday activities, we found significantly more to buy than we expected and we met some nice people along the way.

We’ll be out at the ANA Summer Seminar next week and look forward to the Baltimore show after that –

JA