Show Report: Long Beach Expo, September 2024
Hello, World! Thus begins the blogging, show reporting, and numismatic minutiae from the trenches of Rarity7.
Perhaps I could have chosen a more national-level show than Long Beach for our premier report, but it lined up as such that this was the show where I actually took detailed notes, photos, and tuned my brain for reporting. I suppose it’s also fitting in some mildly poetic way that Long Beach was the first major show I did back in 2021 after my short 30-year break from numismatics.
Long Beach of Late
Ask any major dealer their thoughts on the Long Beach show in general and you’ll likely hear a similar refrain: Long Beach is a show in decline.
The reasons vary - too expensive, too frequent, California taxes, show ownership neglect. And they all have some degree of merit, though I’m not yet convinced it’s ready to be completely pulled from our roster. It’s a good show in general - a full-scale professional event in a proper convention center venue with long history and a large following.
I do strongly agree with one complaint -- it’s too frequent. The show runs 3x a year, and not evenly spaced. The gap between the June and September shows was at one point only 9 weeks (though they stretched it to 12 weeks this year). With the proliferation of national-level shows including at least two new entrants in 2023 and 2024, collectors (and yes even dealers) can simply get exhausted with big shows.
That all being said, Long Beach is one of my favorite shows to attend. It’s a “major” show and draws (some) serious collectors and (some) national-level dealers, but it’s also a solidly California show and gets all the local dealers from around the state. So from a purely selfish social standpoint, it’s a great chance for me to hang out with my dealer friends from both the local CA circuit and the national show circuit all at the same time.
Wednesday September 4, 2024 - Pre-Show & Dealer Setup
We begin our adventure as many such do begin - with a sunrise trip to SFO for a long day of coining ahead:
I fly to most shows more than ~an hour away nowadays as the slight added cost of a round-trip flight outweighs the loss of a full driving day on each end of the show. Time is money and all that.
Smooth travels into Long Beach and off to the convention center I went. At most of the national shows these days there’s a buzz of “pre show” buying and selling, often in hotel rooms or various nooks of the convention centers, often 24-48 hours before the show starts, and often in designated “trading rooms” organized (loosely or otherwise) by affiliates of the show. The trading room experience is a whole thing - a place where dealers can gather and efficiently do B2B trades. I’ll write more about that in future reports.
On this trip, I only had time to visit one of my regular wholesalers about an hour before setup began. I do love this aspect of the business, because it’s just simply fun to hunt through boxes of slabs. Wholesalers don’t make a big show of their inventory the way one might in a retail setting. There’s no fancy velvet or two-coins-in-their-own-display-case-for-dramatic-effect - just boxes of stuff. And sometimes it’s $100 stuff, and sometimes it’s $150,000 stuff, all crammed into double-row boxes.
I found a handful of nice coins including a particularly lovely crusty XF CAC piece of Charlotte gold (coming soon!), paid the fine gentleman, and away we went.
12pm rolled around and it was time for the main event to begin -- we packed into the convention hall and began booth setup.
It really is quite amazing/hilarious/sad/insane that at coin shows we dealers construct a fully operational mobile office over the span of a few hours, run our collective businesses there for ~3 days, then tear them down, pack it all up, and do it again a few weeks later. (What’s that about the definition of insanity again...?)
Dealer setup at a major show is another whole thing that’s fascinating: It’s a split-personality period of time -- there’s generally (at least) 3 things going on simultaneously:
(1) Wholesalers are walking the floor looking for dealers who they didn’t get a chance to meet with during pre-show;
(2) Buyers are walking the floor looking for first shot as dealers setup and lay out their wares;
and
(3) Dealers are actually (attempting to) setup, while being either partially or completely distracted by (1) and (2).
I fall into category (3), and I am usually completely distracted by (1) and (2).
But this is a good thing! Don’t confuse this for a complaint - I love the hustle and bustle of the bourse floor, even in its early minutes. So I’ll take a good opportunity to sit down and enjoy some distraction by looking through more boxes, as I did this fine day with my friend Tom Novy (a most excellent wholesale agent who represents several dealers who don’t actually walk the floor themselves.)
I did find one absolutely outstanding coin in the mix of Tom’s boxes - this jaw-dropping Draped Bust dollar:
And it was priced so high (even for a dealer-centric wholesale box) that I couldn’t fathom how to make it work...so I reluctantly passed...
...Only to find out that my friends at Coin Rarities Online purchased it for themselves...
...and then sold it for 15% more than they paid within an hour of listing it...
...proving that I know absolutely nothing about the rare coin business. Sigh.
Ok back to reality. My friends from Liberty Coin Service stopped by next (I will actually get set up by Saturday, I promise) and I found a few nice things from them, including our intrepid associate Ashley’s first coin purchase! (A lovely MS66 1943 Steel Cent)
Then oh then did we actually get to focus a bit on actually setting up the booth, and lo and behold a few hours later we were actually done:
Then came the most important part of the day and arguably the most important part of any major coin show:
Dinner.
There’s a reason so many coin dealers who’ve been in the business for decades have taken on a particularly ... Rubenesque ... shape ... and that’s because going to big fun dinners with other coin dealers at the end of a long day of being a nerd is one of the main ways we all socialize.
Because the show circuit is relatively static in terms of locations, everyone tends to fall into their own routines and favorite restaurants (some dealers I know have visited certain restaurants in far-away show cities more than 100 times.) I’ve only been to Long Beach a handful of times, but I too have a nice routine of restaurants I love to visit.
On this first day, we broke the routine! At the suggestion of Shaun Bobb of Mike’s Coin Chest we took a long ride to the outskirts of town to dine at Captain Jack’s and wow was it awesome. Put me in a salty seafood joint serving fresh crab and warm dinner rolls and you have me at hello.
Thursday September 5, 2024 - Public Day 1
Thursday started out unexpectedly.
I got a call from a coin friend early in the morning as I was getting ready ... “You must check out this auction RIGHT NOW.”
Across the country there are hundreds (thousands?) of tiny little no-name auction companies that do their thing on a weekly basis. Most are estate sales and offer a mishmash of, well, junk - an old armoire here, a box of broken electronics there, maybe some posters, and mayyyyyyybe if the deceased was a semi passive coin collector like so many people are, a few boxes of old proof sets or telemarketing junk (golden state quarters, anyone?).
But occasionally - very very very occasionally - the deceased was a real coin collector, had good taste, expensive coins, and had a family that had no idea what grandpa amassed and therefore didn’t know to contact a real auction company (like Heritage or GreatCollections or Stack’s Bowers). So a choice collection ends up at an auction house that has no idea how to properly market or promote. I call this the perfect storm of auctions -- and I’ve found that I stumble across one about once year. And when I do, I go ALL in.
This was that storm. The auction started 30 minutes after I got the call, and I quickly set up my battle station at the Westin Long Beach:
The auction went exceedingly well. I spent a touch over $60,000 (!) and you can expect to see some fire coins on upcoming R7 new release emails (ps - ahem ahem sign up for our email list in the footer ahem).
With that excellent start to the day behind me, at 10:30am it was time to head over to the convention center and actually work the show that I was in town for :)
Thursday was busy but not hectic. We bought some fun coins, looked through more boxes, met with lots of collectors, sold some great coins, and overall had a nice day. Pictures tell a better story than I do here:
One particularly fun little deal that walked up was this group of raw errors still in their 1980s-era flips:
And this random guy stopped by to say hello. We’re thinking of offering him a job - not sure if he’s any good at coins though (spoiler alert: It’s Steve Feltner. He’s very very very very good at coins.)
PCGS was running its annual crossover special at this show (one of the best things about Fall Long Beach - it’s a great deal whereby you only pay $15 for coins that fail to cross vs. the full show grading fee.) We sent a bunch of coins for crossover but also couldn’t resist sending some raw coins in as well.
And then as quickly as the day started, it was over. And you know what that means: Time for another healthy dinner out!
False. Not a healthy dinner out. But a GREAT dinner out.
One of the places I do routinely visit at Long Beach is 555 Steakhouse - a real, legit, proper steakhouse with real, legit, proper steaks. Our group grows every time we go so these days we need a big outside table for everyone.
In addition to great steaks, we couldn’t resist drinking some event-appropriate wine:
And with that delicious meal, we closed the books on Thursday.
Friday September 6, 2024 - Public Day 2
In retrospect, Thursday was a bit slow. We felt busy the entire time, but the numbers showed that we didn’t actually do a ton of business, at least as compared to past Long Beach shows. At times you could hear and feel the volume level in the room -- it was quieter than shows past.
Dealers have a knack for wishful thinking during slow bouts. At this show, the line we klept hearing was “Friday should be better.” Well here was Friday, and we all entered the day with high hopes.
I sat down with my currency friends Robert Calderman (a superb guy and excellent currency dealer w/ Paper Money Depot) and Aaron Rapaport (aka Supreme Currency) to look at some notes...
...and by Friday afternoon, those high hopes had not been met. The verdict was in: The show was slow.
At the very least, I finally had some time to walk the floor a bit on Friday afternoon and say hello to some more friends. Of course I stopped by to say hi to Charmy “The Penny Lady” Harker and have a sip of wine.
And then, at the end of that...wait...what’s that you say? Dinner time again? Don’t mind if I do!
Friday night’s venue was L’Opera, a truly wonderful Italian restaurant a few steps from the convention center. A tip if you ever make it there -- the Butternut Squash ravioli is one of the best dishes I’ve ever had anywhere. I don’t make that statement lightly.
Saturday September 7, 2024 - The Final Countdown
Saturdays at Long Beach are a very different kind of day. The major wholesale dealers and auction houses mostly pack up on Friday afternoon, having spent a better part of a full week (including pre-show) doing business. This leaves a partially empty room filled with the folks (like us) who cater to the retail public. And even among those who stay for Saturday, many start packing up early in the day to catch those afternoon flights home. It can end up being a frustrating and disappointing experience for the show going public who assume, rightfully but incorrectly, that a nice Saturday afternoon family day at the coin show will be filled with dealers excited to do business with them.
I like Saturdays though. First, less competition! Second, I think a lot of dealers, even retail dealers, underestimate the Saturday crowd.
Sure, there are plenty of families strolling through the bourse saying things like “Oooo wow that coin is $1000. I could never imagine spending that much for a penny!” or “That gold coin says $20 on the front - is that the price?”
(I am dead serious I once had a kid look at a slab, eyes wide, and with body language that screamed “I cannot believe this idiot dealer is pricing gold this cheap” hand me a $20 bill and said “I’ll take that one please - that’s the price right?” while pointing to a double eagle in a slab.)
But the reality is that almost without fail, I sell some real coins on Saturdays. This Saturday was no different -- lots of lookers, but one customer after walking laps of the room 3 times ended up at my table and said “I’m not sure why everyone left, but I really want some Draped Bust dollars and you have some nice ones” then plopped down $6000 in cash for two of mine.
We did a few other sales here and there, but overall, a pretty satisfying Saturday. After that, the Great Breakdown began. We tore down our mobile Rarity7 office, packed it all up, and, like crazy people, got ready to do it again next week.
