Road Report

April 23rd: Day 1

Team CRO got to the airport early on Wednesday and immediately remembered that it was school vacation week in Massachusetts, which thus explained why there was an enormous crowd of young people and their parents / chaperones gumming up nearly every single aisle, ticket counter, security screening, restaurant and gate.

But we fought our way through, eventually found a place to eat breakfast, scurried onto our plane and arrived in Chicagoland unscathed and on time.

Then zipped over to the Renaissance Hotel & Convention Center here in Schaumburg, where we were delighted to find out that our room was ready, ditched our bags there and headed straight to the already-opened bourse floor for what was left of PNG Day.

PNG Day? Yes, the pre-show event held by the PNG where we could set up our table early, get situated, do some wholesaling and generally iron out any glitches in the matrix.

And we were glad we did, since we discovered that the table lamp clamps provided by the show were the shoe equivalent of child’s size 4, and the edge of the tables were a men’s 13 EEEE. So we needed to find a solution which we did in the form of the last few giant replacement clamps available, which of course every later-arriving dealer here will need and not be able to get.

So we were well illuminated when we were told right off the bat that the expensive coin we split with another dealer at the very end of the New Hampshire show Saturday was already sold here this AM.

A good start to a day during which we sold a bunch of coins, bought some extremely cool ones, delivered some coins purchased off the website by some local collectors, schmoozed excellently and fielded one curious question when a collector came to the table and asked if our company was owned by Rare Coin Wholesalers. I have no idea where one would get that notion based on anything we have ever done, said, listed, etc., but I assured him that CRO is 100% owned by MaryAnn and me.

That aside, we were generally very productive until 4 PM when the limited entrance PNG day ended, and full scale dealer set up began.

Affording us a whole new group of tables to pore through and more cool coins to find in a room that rivals the January FUN show for grand scale and dealer variety. So your author raced around and found some more nice coins among the tables that were mostly in the process of setting up.

And then all of a sudden it was 6:15 PM, so we headed out for an excellent dinner with a group of dealer and industry friends who all get together at this show every year. Returning to the hotel late and collapsing after what had been by then a 20 hour, 18,363 step day.

But do not worry, we will be rested and ready for a full day on the bourse floor on Thursday, and then blog all about all of it right here first thing on Friday AM.

Until then, then.