I parted with 4 figures, but brought nothing home.

Wow, it's already been two weeks since the Baltimore show. My wife (especially) and I have been sick, and I didn't do much at the show, so the motivation to write about it has been low. I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving.

First up, I had just gotten another pricey coin from the Heritage Beverly Hills auction, and really had to resolve to buy nothing at the Baltimore show and auction. It helped that I had no significant interest in anything in the Stack's-Bowers auction. I didn't even go to lot viewing.

On Friday (Nov 18), I went to the show in the afternoon. My first stop was at Chris McCawley's table. He wasn't there, so I just started looking at all the nice coins he had there. In a few minutes Chris returned. I handed him a check to pay off the 1821 cent I got from him in Pittsburgh. He was busy with another dealer, though, so I began a quick pass through the bourse. Fortunately, nothing struck my fancy.

After about an hour, I got to the Liberty Seated Collectors Club tables. Having had to drive my wife around in the morning, I had missed the club meeting at 9AM. But it was good to see the stuff they had on display. There were complete (or nearly so) date and mint collections of all the seated series. If I remember correctly, only the dollars were sparse. In any case, Gerry Fortin's dimes were terrific.

After checking out those dimes, I spent the rest of the time I had on the parking meter at the table with the half dimes. Their owner, Stephen Crain, was there and happy to talk with me for quite awhile. He has specialized in half dimes and has gathered a wealth of information about them. As others have done, I encouraged him to publish a seated half dime guide book. The existing references really are not very useful. If I didn't know that he already had the information and was thinking about publishing, I might start down that path myself as a way to learn as much as I can about the coins I'll be collecting for some time to come.

On Saturday, I went to the Early American Coppers club meeting. This time there was no special presentation. (In the previous few Region 3 meetings at Baltimore shows, Craig Sholley had given interesting talks.) After some cool show and tell, much of the rest of the time was spent discussing club finances. In particular, the club's journal, Penny-Wise, is costly to print and mail. We talked about options like preparing it in PDF format and distributing it electronically. There's another place where I might be willing to put in some time.

After the meeting, there was a little time left on the meter, so I looked around the bourse a little more. In the end, I left with nothing new for the collection. But that was probably for the best.

Here's the half dime from the Heritage auction.