New coins, new Club, new friends

Last week I attended the Baltimore Whitman Show on Thursday and Friday. As usual, I departed my home in Northern New Jersey mid morning and arrived in Baltimore around 3PM. This works well, as I avoid the morning commuter traffic and still gets me to the show for a few hours on day 1.

So after checking in to the Holiday Inn, I promptly walked over to the show and checked out the bourse for about 2 hours. The show had only opened to the public at 12PM and there seemed to be a good "buzz" on the floor..

Most dealers keep their same booth location year after year and there about 8 or so that I always like to stop and say hello. When I do this, I always make sure that they are not too busy and I'm not interrupting any sales.

The show yielded two nice Buffalos, one of which I had a dealer hold for me after I had spotted it in his inventory a few days earlier. The two Buffalos now put my set ranking at number 77 which I think pretty good, having only begun the set earlier this year. There are now 10 Buffs in my herd, with a newly purchased, beautifully toned NGC 1938D/D in MS67 leading the points stampede. This puts me right about where I thought I would end the year, and if I can add another 5-10 coins to this set in 2014 I will be very happy.

The other purchase that I will mention is a raw 1881 GSA CC that I submitted at the show for grading. I'm hoping it comes back MS63*, as it has the lovely crescent obverse toning that I covet. Today I received an email from NGC that the coin was received for submission, not bad service as NGC sure does receive lots of coins at the show.

Another show highlight was attending my 1st Liberty Seated Collectors Club (LSCC) meeting.

The club meeting started Friday at 9AM which is when the show also opened to the public. I was amazed at the club turnout as there were about 40+ members in attendance, this apparently being the largest attended Baltimore meeting to date. The club has a great balance between dealer and collector, so this should be a good forum to gain in-depth knowledge on Gobrecht's masterpiece. The level of expertise this club possesses is quite impressive and I look forward to this new journey as to date I have only focused on Liberty Seated Half dimes, but will surely take the next step to Dimes next year as my 19th Century Type set progresses.

Finally, staying at the Holiday Inn was great, especially mingling in the lounge in the evenings where I made new collector friends. It always amazes me what series my fellow collectors choose to work on. For example, one collector was pursuing 16th century Martin Luther related coinage, wow !

As always, thanks for reading and happy collecting !

Rich

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