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Doug Winter Market Report - Spring Long Beach
By Doug Winter
My short (but
productive) stay at Long Beach means that my
Long Beach report is going to be short (but
productive).
I didn’t arrive at Long Beach until Thursday
afternoon and I was severely jet-lagged after
having just returned from Japan. I had
originally intended to totally skip Long Beach
but a lack of coins meant that I had to try my
best to quickly and efficiently restock.
After I landed and cabbed down to Long Beach, I
called a few Trusted Suppliers and asked about
the show. Their replies were nearly unanimous:
it was a bear finding anything of interest and I
was certain to be frustrated. My mood, as I
headed down the freeway, was not good.
One thing that is good about being at a major
show for just over a day is that you don’t have
a lot of time to mess around. So as I hit the
floor at Long Beach and began to scour, I was
very focused.
My day at Long Beach turned out to be amazingly
productive. I was able to buy over thirty
interesting coins; which is about triple the
amount that I expected. I sold a few older,
expensive coins that I was happy to move out and
in the eight seconds that I was actually at my
table, I had productive retail sales with new
clients.
I spoke with a number of dealers about their
Long Beach Experience and got fairly mixed
reviews. One dealer told me he had an excellent
show and the dealer that I share a table with
had one of his more productive shows in some
time. Other dealers I talked to told me that
they had shows that ranged from fair to poor and
most complained about a lack of interesting
material (surprise, surprise). I’m not sure why
I was lucky and found so many good coins other
than the fact that I worked my little fanny off
searching for them.
My take on the coin market is that it has
clearly slowed down in the last month or so with
the exception of very high end items. But there
are some areas that remain strong across the
board. Decent to nice early gold is in strong
demand and choice, interesting Seated Liberty
coinage (which I’ve been begging people to buy
for about ten years…) is blazing hot.
In the realm of dated gold, I’ve noticed that
nice quality Dahlonega gold is virtually
impossible to find right now; my current
inventory is virtually non-existent. Charlotte
seems to be perking up a bit (in anticipation of
my new book?) and I noticed a few mid-five
figure Charlotte coins selling at Long Beach.
Carson City half eagles and eagles are very
strong, especially Registry Set quality issues.
New Orleans gold continues to be hard to find
and with the exception of the odd coin here or
there, I have noticed a real shortage of high
quality, interesting material since the
beginning of the year.
What’s not selling right now? Anything that
isn’t regarded as being, at the very least,
medium to high quality for the grade. And
generic gold….well let’s just say generic gold
isn’t exactly a big seller right now.
My guess is that the Baltimore show will be
decent but not great. This is the one Baltimore
show that many West Coast dealers traditionally
miss but the caliber of this show is now such
that even the least interesting of the three
Baltimore shows is still better than the most
typical conventions.
Doug Winter
www.raregoldcoins.com |