October 2010

Long Beach, Calif---I went to the Long Beach show and had a relative good time as usual. However as I walked the bourse floor I did notice a lot of empty booths, mostly on the coin side. It seems that the cost of attending shows has come full circle. A lot of those dealers who normally had booths in the past were walking the floor talking and meeting with other dealers. I was one of them. I do have a lot of inventory to show to new potential clients and in the past setting up booths at shows was the best way to do this. But with the cost of flying, hotels, food and booth fees this is becoming an increasingly expensive avenue to pursue. Especially if there are two or more employees who attend shows. I’ve spoke to a lot of coin and currency dealers and they stipulated one way to get around the expenses is to share hotels and booth costs. This makes sense in today’s economy. I noticed a lot of shared booths had coins and currency in the same booth. This was not prevalent three years ago but it does make a lot of sense as they actually don’t compete with each other on product offerings and they now offer a one-stop shop for clients. On the other hand with our large website presence, I find walking the floors at most shows and meeting one on one with dealers and clients make a lot more sense for some dealers and us at this time. I have a lot of pre set meetings with clients and in a lot of cases deliver their products to them at shows. Also walking the floors allows me a way of really seeing all of the products that are available that I would normally miss by standing behind a booth. It also allows me a lot more time to view the auction lots for me and other clients. We anticipate setting up at some of the major national shows such as the FUN show held annually in Florida in early January. I anticipate we will setup at the Fall Long Beach and Fall Baltimore shows in 2011 and possibly one of the ANA shows. With the economy still smarting from the 2007 fallout and the cost of doing business going up I anticipate a lot more dealers will move in this direction in the near future.

TRIVIA NOW ONLINEYes, finally. On the homepage to the right you will see the newly added trivia game. We have over 60 questions already to go for you and plan to add hundreds more. Check your rankings against the overall answers by users in the following categories: American History, Sports, US Coins, US Currency, Pop Culture, Science/Nature, and Miscellaneous. Log-in to play all the questions on a single page and track your progress against other players.

NEW FEATUREADDED: Full Screen view of currency listed! Just click on the little box on the lower right of the zoomify viewer to zoom in to full screen. We want you to know the quality you are buying and the type of material we handle. Zoom all the way in to see the individual security fibers in full sharp color.