Coin Show Report - White Plains, NY

[DaveG]

Today I went to the WESPNEX show in White Plains, NY. This show is usually a three-day show, held four times a year. It's held at the Westchester County Center and is usually held on the main floor (160 dealers) in Nov. and Jan. and downstairs in Oct. and April (100 dealers).

 

This time, however, the show was held downstairs and it won't be held on Sunday. I asked one of the dealers why and he told me that the venue had told the promoter that he would have to move downstairs this time, to make room for a baseball card show. This dealer said he had been told a couple of weeks ago, but that he believed that the promoter had told other dealers at FUN. He also said that the promoter had complained to Westchester County (the venue's owner) and it was investigating how this schedule change happened.

 

I asked how the show was and was told that it had been very busy on Friday morning. I got to the show at opening time today (10:00 a.m.) and I thought that floor traffic was pretty good. It was a bit difficult to get down the aisles. I stayed until about 3:00 p.m. and the floor was still pretty crowded when I left.

 

I thought there was a lot of interesting material on the floor. Tom Hyland had a PCGS-6 Chain Cent! (I could see two or three digits in the date.) He also had a Carolina Elephant token, a New England Elephant token (see the colonial section of the Red Book) and an 1843 proof half cent (1840-1848 are proof-only). These coins were all raw and all handsome. What's the catch, you ask? Well, all three are electrotype counterfeits! Very nice 'coins' and much less expensive than the real things!

 

I was particularly interested in looking for 1889-CC dollars. Key date Morgans have been moving up in price for the past few years. Bid on the VF '89-CC has just about quadrupled in the five years I've owned one and lately Bid on that coin has been increasing about $100 per month! When I bought my coin in Feb '99 they were hard to find, but today there were more than you could shake a stick at! Tom Hyland had 3 or 4 raw ones, the dealer across the aisle from him had 3 ANACS-slabbed, Gus Tiso must have had a DOZEN slabbed '89-CCs in his case! I saw everything from Fine to AU-55! (Maybe it's time to sell mine?)

 

As usual, nice Seated material was in short supply, although not as short as usual. Although Jim O'Donnell wasn't there, I still saw 8 slabbed (ANACS, NGC and PCGS, in that order, as you might expect) no-motto dollars, plus several raw ones. I don't recall seeing very many with-motto Seated dollars, though. I also saw three ANACS-slabbed O-mint dimes (two 1859-Os and one 1842-O) which is very uncommon.

 

I saw more "uncommon" date gold than I'm used to seeing at White Plains: three C-mint half eagles ('47-C in NGC-58, '58-C in NGC-45 and '60-C in NGC-58); a '61-S eagle in PCGS-53, a '63-S eagle in NGC-50 and a '64 eagle in NGC-45. I also saw two or three late-60s and early-70s S-mint eagles, but didn't write down the dates. As usual, O-mint gold was thin on the ground: only the '57-O half-eagle in NGC-45 that I saw in November and a '51-O eagle in NGC-50.

 

I thought that prices were pretty strong. One dealer said that he's already sold most of the coins that he bought at FUN (most of which he thought he had paid too much for); he said he had offered them to dealers thinking "he'll never pay that much" and the dealers would pay without complaint!

 

As for me, I kept most of my powder dry today and bought only the 1842-O dime I saw, in ANACS-35. Yes, I paid very strong money for it, but at least it was half the price of the raw XF-45 1842-O dime I had been looking at!

[toneddollars]

Dave, Great report. Thanks for posting, I love these

[EVillageProwler]

Nice report, Dave.

 

It seems like buying up all the key date material is a good idea because you can sell them a few months later and make a nice profit -- their prices have been going up so quickly!

 

As for O'Donnell, he's probably in LA right now.

 

EVP

 

[michael]

dave

 

a fantastic report

 

please keep them coming after you get home from a show

 

never knew about those 89 cc morgans

 

 

michael