The Carter Numismatics team is back from a week in Milwaukee where we attended the Central States Numismatic Societies’ annual megashow. Overall the show had a great “buzz” and wholesale trading felt stronger compared to activity at the last month’s Midwinter ANA show in Ft Worth. Both buying and selling were brisk; similar to previous shows “interesting” coins are still in demand while marginal or common material seems to languish in dealer inventories. At major shows we typically sell the majority of the inventory we bring but there seemed to be an abnormally high demand for our coins at this show. We were happy to oblige and sold a ton of great coins at strong prices while simultaneously purchasing new coins that we thought were exceptional for the grade.
When talking to dealers over the course of the week there seemed to be two hot-button issues on the bourse. The first issue was CSNS’s decision to not allow the general public into the show until Friday morning. Without a dealer badge, PNG invitation, or $75 earlybird pass one was not able to get into the show until Friday morning. This rubbed a lot of dealers with a heavy retail focus the wrong way as it limited the number of show hours available to sell coins to the public. At CNI we were rather indifferent by this change as we usually conduct a healthy mix of both wholesale and retail transactions at shows and found ample time to do both.
The other hot issue at the show stemmed from PCGS’s new SECURE PLUS service line. A detailed explanation of this new service can be found at the PCGS website (http://www.pcgs.com/secureplus.html). In short, this new service line purports to use a proprietary technology that scans a coin with a laser in a manner similar to a retinal scanner. The effort is an attempt to combat gradeflation and coin doctoring. This service was unveiled last month at the Ft. Worth show but it appears that a good amount of confusion still remains in the marketplace surrounding this service line. Many dealers including ourselves are curious to see how this new service line affects the coin market as a whole, as well as existing PCGS certified coins. At the moment, however, it appears that there is little demand from either collector or dealer for this new optional PCGS service line. While the new SECURE PLUS service technology sounds impressive it will be interesting to see if PCGS’s new product will be able to gain substantial market share.
During our week in Milwaukee we also managed to find some time to take in the local sights and sounds of the “Brew City.” We attended a Brewers game, a Bucks playoff basketball game AND even found time to sample some delicious fare at world famous Kopp’s Frozen Custard. It can safely be said that you haven’t really lived until you’ve had a turtle fudge sundae at Kopp’s!
Carter Numismatics will be attending the PCGS invitational in Las Vegas from May 12th to the 14th and also the upcoming Whitman Nashville show from May 21st to 23nd. We have a lot of catching up to do in the office but hopefully we’ll get some new show purchases posted on the website for sale this week! In the meantime feel free to contact Lance Hipps at lance@carternumismatics.com to help fill your numismatic want lists.
