DESERT MOON NEWSLETTER, ISSUE 5, January 4, 2025

The FUN begins………

Hi Folks,

As you have heard many times by now, next week is the FUN Show. The Winter FUN Show rivals the Summer ANA Show to lay claim to the biggest of them all. If you have never been to either of these, well, they are truly endless in coin ecstasy. Every type of numismatic item you can imagine makes it to these shows, and over the past decade, more World items have been increasingly present. Many of the national mints have appearances. All kinds of peripheral activity, talks, meetings, lot viewing for auctions, and of course, a bourse that seems as big as a football field. The FUN Show stands out because it happens right at the beginning of the New Year, with optimism through the roof. When I was a collector, if I did one show a year, it would be FUN.

Preparation for such an event needs to be done with meticulous care. When I was primarily collecting, I would make sure I had my list of current coins with me and what I was interested in obtaining. I would also in most years have a few to sell. I would get price guides into my laptop, and have auction prices recorded for coins I was going to look for on the floor. I would bring my list of specific coins I wanted to study during auction lot viewing. I would make sure I knew exactly where on the bourse my favorite dealers were in advance so that when the doors opened, I would head right to them in case they had something I wanted, or had a surprise I wasn’t expecting. Many times I would do my biggest spending in the first 30 minutes of show opening.

Now that I am going to FUN for the first time primarily as a dealer, there are a few additional tasks. I spent a few days going through my inventory one by one. For each one, I have to price it based on price guides and auction results. Some of these will take 30 minutes to get all of the relevant information into my speadsheet. So for a 100 coins it takes some time. But I want to be prepared with all relevant information. One wants to sell the coins, and give the buyers the best prices possible, and still make enough to justify having a table. For the kinds of coins I primarily sell, price guides only go so far and both the seller (me) and the potential buyer, have to be able to assess the value of the coin as they see it. But by the time I get to my table, I know about as much as I can about each coin I will be have in my cases so that interested buyers and I can have an informed conversation on any of them. I also come with the price guides, and the Coinfacts and CAC Price Guide web addresses loaded into my phone. Complete knowledge on the value of my offerings is crucial.

I also still need to research out where other dealer tables are. For the first 2 hours of dealer day, I will be walking the floor before I set up. I will first go to the tables of dealers that have coins I might want to buy for my cases. And in between, peruse other dealer cases as they setup. In general, based on my 2 previous shows so far with a table, once I start setting up, at least for the first couple days, action can be non-stop so no chance again to go out searching.

Finally, I need to bring the coins and a list of their data that I want to submit for grading. For FUN I have about a dozen I will submit to CAC for stickering, and about the same for grading at CACG. So as soon as the CAC booth is active, I will rush over there to get the forms I need. And when I have time, get them filled out. Normally I can do that prior to arrival, but both of these lists are still evolving and will be to the end of the show depending on both selling and buying. So we will see.

I look forward to seeing y’all if you are coming to FUN. My table # is 339, I share the back partition between our booths with Sheridan Downey on the next row which is pretty cool, and a few other prominent dealers in early US coins are within my area on the bourse. So it should be a very FUN time and very active.

Thanks for reading!

Best, DM

Here are some selections of the dozen or so newps I just listed on the website: