Baltimore Show a Resounding Success

Even though Baltimore is geographically in our back yard, we still tempered our expectations for the June Whitman Coin and Collectibles Expo. Coming only one week after Long Beach, which essentially is the west coast version of  the Baltimore show, several national coin firms were absent. Despite smaller dealer attendance, Baltimore still proved to be a very successful show for us. We saw a number of our regular local customers and transacted quite a bit of two-way business. The first two days were primarily spent selling down some of our older coins, as we remain committed to cycling our inventory. Larger national venues such as Baltimore serve as a good opportunity for that purpose. Given the hot and cold nature of the recent wholesale coin market, we were surprised at just how aggressively some of our regular trading partners were buying coins. Once the public was admitted to the show mid-day Thursday, they too were eager to acquire coins. More importantly, with the general public, also came fresh coins for us to purchase that simply were not available through our traditional wholesale channels. Although buying is sometimes hard to evaluate at inception, it is the number one reason that we attend major coin shows.  From this standpoint, we think that Baltimore was prosperous. Time will definitely tell!

The Reeded Edge will be home for several weeks, working on overdue office business, online sales, print advertising and our increasingly popular hard-copy mail list. All of these things take some time, a luxury that we didn’t have available during our coin show travel season. Look for many new coins on the web store, Collector’s Corner and eBay over the next several weeks, as well.  Our next Market Report News will have more details of what’s to come.