WARNING- VERY LONG POST BELOW
I spent parts of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at the Whitman Expo in Atlanta. I was at a disadvantage compared to other collectors who were there on Thursday morning, since I could only go after school on Thursday and Friday.
Well, I got there on Thursday and walked the bourse a little, but ended up getting drawn to Dick Osburn's table. Man that guy has lots of bust halves! Well, I sat down and looked through his 7 BOOKS of bust halves, and picked out a couple of nice ones. The 1820/19 and 1811/10 overdates below. Both of these are extremely hard to find in the mid-circulated grades, and I paid quite a bit for the pair.
After Dick's table, the rest of the bourse paled in comparison and it was closing time anyways, so I headed home to replenish my funds and find some coins to sell on Friday.
I got to the bourse at 3ish on Friday, and headed of the Jade Rare Coin's table, where I chatted with Andy (the owner) while flipping through his bust halves. Suddenly, he asked me if I was interested in a cheap 1815/2 half that he bought earlier. Well, of course I was, and while he was looking for it he mentioned that it was probably the cheapest one he had ever handled (cheap being taken in context for an 1815/2). I expected an ugly, scratched, holed, cleaned coin, but instead got this little beauty.
Once I saw the coin at the price, I knew I had to have it. The problem was how I was going to pay for it. Andy was pretty nice about it, and offered to let me make payments on it. However, I NEEDED to have it in my hands at the very instant, and quickly racked my brains for how I was going to afford the coin (I had about half of the cash for the coin in the bank after blowing a bunch at Dick's table Thursday). Thankfully, I had bought some coins to sell and my mom came to the rescue, offering to pay for it then while I tried to sell off some coins.
Well, I had my mom drive me home (I just turned 15 a couple of months ago, so no driving alone yet for me) to grab the disposable part of my collection, and we quickly drove back (thankfully, we live a few minutes from the bourse). The rest of the day was spent with me selling off my jefferson, franklin, and roosevelt collections as well as part of my 7070 to help pay for the 1815/2 half. I also went around the bourse and cherried a couple of cameo coins in SMS sets, which let to a quick tidy little profit. By closing time, I had managed to pay for the half AND I had a little cash left for me to spend on Saturday.
Saturday morning, I told myself that I was going to take it easy that day. After all, I'd managed to spend over $2000 in two afternoons. Alas, this was not to be the case. I did bring along some coins that needed upgrading in my set and a couple of dupes, just in case I needed to trade them in.
My first mistake on Saturday was stopping by Dick Osburn's table first. I decided to look through his bust half books again, and didn't find anything. Then, Dick mentioned to me that he had a whole double wide box full of "overflow" coins that he couldn't fit into the books. Well, I decided to look through the box (my second mistake) and found a really nice 1814/3 half. The 1814/3 is one of the toughest overdates in the series, and the coin was the rarer O-102 die variety to boot. It was priced at around $200 more than what I had in cash, so I asked Dick if we could do a trade/cash deal. I ended up trading my PCGS F15 1822/1 half and $100 for the 1814/3 half below.
After this, I told myself no more, and decided to look through dealer junk boxes in hopes of finding some nice cheap toners or a nice cherrypick. Well, I did find a few toners like the one below that were rather refreshing on my wallet after my heavy spending.
There weren't any cherrypicks to be had (I assume that all the junk boxes were completely cherried after 2 and 1/2 days). I ultimately ended up gravitating back to looking at bust halves (mistake #3) and found yet another coin that I just had to have. It was a choice VF 1808 O-105, which I had a lower grade example of. I had brought the coin with me that morning, and asked the dealer if he would do a cash/trade deal. He agreed, and I ended up trading my VG10 example and adding in $100.
The only good thing that happened after that purchase was that I was almost completely broke, in the sense that I had $10 left. Most of the dealers were packing up anyways, so I decided to call it a show.
Overall, I am very pleased with how the show turned out (except for me wiping out my spendable income). I didn't really expect to be able to find an 1815/2, and probably wouldn't have been offered the coin if I wasn't on good terms with Andy. That really goes to show just how important it is to have good relationships with your dealers. He knew that I was on a tight YN budget, and also knew which coins I was interested in.
I actually came to the show with the goal of finding and 1807 small stars. I found a couple, but they were all either way over the price range I was looking to spend or were just plain ugly. I guess now I've gotta start saving up for that coin.
I hope that this will show just what kinds of coins ANYBODY can afford. Most of the money I had to spend for this show came from my existing collection, some cherrypicks, silver halves from the bank, and painstakingly saving my $8 a week allowance for quite some time. I didn't have to dip into my savings account or anything like that to afford these coins. It really just takes time, patience, and knowledge.
Eh, that ended up being much longer and more philosophical than I meant for it to be. I'd better go add a warning at the top of this post.
Posted 10/15/2007 09:02 am
(well, close)
