Coin Shows

What you say about today's coin shows is generally correct. Coin shows today are about buying, and not so much about reselling. Rarely do you see collectors in attendance selling to other attendees, or trading. In fact, selling to other attendees on the show floor can get you kicked out of many of today's coin shows, because the dealers claim some sort of unspoken selling privilege.

For me, the main advantages of coin shows over coin shops is the wide selection of merchandise, and not having to pay sales tax.

Coin shows are events where many dealers from a wide area convene to have access to collectors and other dealers who would not normally travel to their B&M shop. It allows them to also fill wants lists by buying from the other dealers. There is a lot of dealer to dealer transactions on dealer set up day. Coin clubs often sponsor coin shows as a method of raising funds for the club.


That has never been true for collectors attending the show. Coins shows if advertised well will bring in people who have old coins for appraisal or they do not know where to take them to sell and they can shop them around to get the best price for them from the dealers with paid tables at the show. Do not get caught buying such a collection as an attendee.


That is basically true. If your intent is to try and get coins so cheap to resell you need to make the right connections with one or more dealers to buy at a discount the stuff the want to blow off in the collections they buy.


Not exactly true. For coin dealers, yes. Coin shows can be a place for dealers to acquire new inventory to resell. For someone just walking in off the street, generally no. You would not be able to buy from the public. Buying from a dealer to resell at a coin show is possible if you really knew what you were doing and your customers would be other dealers, not the public.


That unspoken privilege is that the dealers with tables paid for those tables and how would you feel if someone just walked in and started selling coins to their potential customers thereby taking sales away from them which pays for their expenses to be there. Violating that "unspoken rule" is taken very seriously and will not only get you kicked out but could also get you banned from ever attending that show again.

It costs a lot for dealers to attend these coin shows for the convenience of collectors so you should patronize them. Be thankful they are there for you to interact with by answering questions you may have and to view hand many different types coins that shopping online will never allow you to do.

Well said, Gyrene7483!

Our coin club sponsors coin shows. The local dealers are there, other members looking to sell coins that have been upgraded, and some of us who have an ebay presence but refer to sell without the fees. Tables cost, so the sellers are having to make up an overhead, but that is not so high as to cause a problem. What it does is allow collectors to see what many sellers have without driving from one to the other, and what those without physical stores have to offer. Prices should be about what you would expect. I try to stay in line, since I am friends with the dalers there and do not wish to undercut a fair price. So, it is about being fair to the customers and to the other dealers. I do know one dealer who overcharges for everything. So, be careful.

What others have stated, but perhaps not so succinctly, is that this is true... if you are one of those dealers who has purchased table space. Before the doors open to the public, there's a lot of horse trading going on between the dealers at wholesale rates, as specialists in one area offload coins they're not specialists in to dealers who have wantlists to fill. I've heard tales that there are some dealers out there who go to coin shows primarily to buy and sell from other dealers, rather than the public.

Likewise, if you're one of the registered dealers there, you can buy stuff cheaply off of the members of the public, for later resale. Of course, how willing a dealer is to do this depends to a large extent on how willing they are to haul those coins they buy all the way back to wherever it is they came from. Some dealers travel to coin shows by air, so they only have enough stock to fill a couple of suitcases and aren't going to be wanting to haul much stuff back the other way. Locally-based dealers are probably going to offer the best prices for buying, as they have the lowest transport costs.

"Vest-pocket dealers" are tolerated, so long as all their "dealing" is between themselves and the registered dealers - that is, so long as they don't mind acting as middlemen or runners between dealers. As others have stated, if they get caught trying to buy from or sell to other show attendees, they're likely to be ejected.

We've only just last weekend had the biggest coin show of the year in my home city; I was co-ordinator of the coin club volunteers who would be helping out. I had to make sure all the volunteers knew that they were there to promote the coin clubs, not to buy and sell coins from the club booth. The clubs were given those tables for free, and we were expected not to abuse that privilege by undercutting the dealers who were paying money to be there.

I understand that coin shows as far as a retail customer may be concerned, are strictly retail events.

Even so, good coins can be found by retail buyers for their collections. Helps if your numismatic interests extend across the whole of numisamtics. With such wide ranging interests, bargains for the cherry picking are much easier to find.

Like most collectors, I always look for best bang for my buck, but there have been a few occasions where I have not bought a single item at a coin show.
Not to worry. I always find at least a few people there who I can catch up with, and have a good numismatic yarn over a cup of coffee.

Helps if you don't have to worry about parking or gasolene costs with any coin show you may go to. I am very fortunate in this respect.
That makes for a leading coin show to be a very enjoyable day.

While a show IS a retail event, the prices tend towards the lower end. Many dealers sell only at shows and may have no physical location and so MAY have lower rent and insurance expenses and can sell cheaper because of it. Or not - travelling 1000 miles and paying 450-500$ for a table at a major regional show may end up costing as much.

Personally, I stopped trying to sell coins to dealers at coinshows. The experience was always a negative one for me.

I sell them on ebay or at my coin club meetings, but I never take anything to shows anymore.