Trip Report:
ANA National Money Show, Dallas, Texas, 04 March 2016
(1799 Bust Dollar Love Token, Trench Art & Double Mint Sets)
I do apologize up front for not having many images to share, my hands are pretty shaky with my "smart phone" and I left my camera at the house.
I arrived just early enough to get a lay of the land, being that it was my first time in the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center. Signs were placed in the appropriate areas, except the one that I saw from the rear, directing me to the other direction when I entered the facility. (50-50 (left or right turn) gets it wrong 80% of the time). I seem to start paying attention to my surroundings once I get lost. I had some small talk with a couple who were tickled to death about their gold collection, outside the floor area and I showed them some of mine that I brought along as well, although they did not seem to appreciate the varieties, just the toning colors, varieties are not for everyone.
The first (unfortunately, only) briefing was that I attended was "The History of the Double Mint Set: 1942-1958" (Leo Frese). It was very informative on the origin and importance of originality of the sets as far as values go and which years produced some of the more vibrant colors (1958) and why other years did not.
I found an article which covers this subject at
http://www.leofresecoins.com/numism...ts-1947-1958 and another article in coinweek (Aug 2014);
http://www.coinweek.com/featured-ne...e-mint-sets/ which gives a few images of the "bag" mint sets of 1942-1946.
The bourse floor was bustling with activity in my opinion. Most if not all of the dealers that I made contact with, indicated that traffic was slow, then again most folks were at work or school in the morning and early afternoon hours on a weekday. I brought along my 7070 Type Variety collection to see if there was any interest on buying to take a dent out of my student loan. Most of the dealers were receptive to give a look and I did manage to sell nine. There was lots of interest, but mostly we were too far apart on prices, or they were "keepers" for my next collection set.
I feel that my collecting style has changed from building a Variety Type Set to the Everyman Set, AU58 and below, instead of dishing out larger amounts on MS and variety coins. There is really no comparison to "eye appeal" over varieties. It has been said that if someone needs to break out a magnifier to discern the "irregularity", then it's not worth it. I still differ on that opinion; I just will not focus on varieties.
There were the usual displays of museum quality coins,
1804 Dollar (Class III, Idler, BeBee Specimen), and
1913 Liberty Nickel (McDermott/BeBee Specimen), Uncut sheets of Notes (Education Series, Black Eagle ($1), Buffalo ($10), etc.) and a display of
Trench Art war artifacts dating back to the early 1800's, some may like to refer these as "Love Tokens" under different circumstances.
Speaking of "love tokens", I saw the rather large Love Token in Jonathan K. Kern display case. There have been some pretty nice, smaller love tokens on the CU Forum, but this was the first
(1799) Bust Dollar love token that I have seen.
Later on I stopped by Leo Frese's table to get another look at his Double Mint Set display and I got to take a good, close look at the
1919 10C DDO Discovery Coin . It is still amazing how it took almost a century to realize this variety.
There was color (toned) abound in dealers cases, mostly
Morgan dollars which makes me appreciate my Morgan that much more.
Some of those prices were just before the exosphere. I may be color-blind, but I am not that blind!
There is too much to take in for one day, even at a show of this size (small compared to FUN, Baltimore, Chicago, Long Beach, Anaheim, Denver, etc.), but it was an out & back day trip from OKC, and I hope to be more prepared for my next show. Most of the dealers that I made contact with, recommended FUN as the best overall show. Maybe next year.
Posted 03/08/2016 07:17 am
