Charmy's 2012 DENVER ANA SHOW REPORT w/lots of pics!!!

[The Penny Lady]

Happy Mother’s Day to all the other mother’s on the forum! I hope you all get to spend some quality time with your family. I arrived home from the show last night, was exhausted, and went to bed early so Then my sweet hubby took me to Mimi’s for a wonderful breakfast this morning, so I’m getting a little late start on putting my show report together. But here goes….

 

Wednesday – I arrived in Denver early in the afternoon, with beautiful clear skies and wonderfully warm weather. I took some pictures from the plane as we flew over the majestic Rocky Mountains.

 

 

 

 

 

I took a cab to the convention center which was about 45 minutes away – I hadn’t realized how far outside of Denver the airport actually was! Luckily the cab had a flat rate of $55.

 

Set up was at 3:00pm so I had a few minutes to visit with other dealers in the lobby before we were let in. Here’s a typical group of motley dealers I found lurking in the lobby!

 

Roger/MustangGT, DennisH, Lee Bellisario, Todd/Blu62Vette/BluCCPhotos, Tony/Northern Nevada Coin

 

The ANA created different dealer badges so we all had to get new badges. But for some reason, the lighting was off (or it could have been something weird with the printer) because my new badge shows me with RED hair!

 

 

After I was set up, I took a tour of the ANA and U.S. Mint exhibits (the collector exhibits weren’t set up yet)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are all replica bills

 

 

 

 

 

Money burnt in a house fire

 

 

 

A couple very hard-working ANA guys – Rod Gillis and Walter Ostromecki

 

Oh, and now that I have "The Penny Lady" trademark, I had a few hats made, but for some reason, I can't get any of my guy friends to wear them?!?!

 

 

 

After set up day was over, we decided to head to the casinos up in the old mining towns of Central City and Blackhawk, which were about 45 minutes away. The towns are very quaint with most of the buildings looking like they were built in the 1800’s, with a few exceptions. There were probably at least 20 casinos between the two towns which were only a mile apart.

 

 

 

 

 

We went to the poker room at the Lady Luck casino, which ended up not being quite so lucky for us!

 

 

We had (not so great) bratwurst for dinner courtesy of the poker room, and this was my drink of choice all night!

 

 

They had some very unique names for some of their casinos…

 

Thursday – The ANA had their usual opening ceremony prior to letting the public in. Tom Hallenbeck presented an award to Chuck D'ambra.

 

 

 

 

As you can see, there was quite a crowd of people waiting for the show to open, but even so, Thursday seemed a little light compared to other large show opening days.

 

 

 

 

 

However, it didn’t take long for the room to start filling up and having the usual buzz and the forum members to start dropping by. Here are a few forum members and others….

 

Buck/Hobo and Mark/ColoradoCoinGuy

 

JMW/Joe

 

USArok/Terry

 

Mark Feld trying to earn extra money as a Pepsi salesman!

 

Julian/Julian Liedman

 

My next door neighbors (Todd and his dad Roger) - I didn’t even need rubberbands to keep them them in line, I could just reach over with my empty water bottle and bop them anytime I felt like it!

 

Don Berry/TEC Elongated Club

 

I also bought this very nice 1901 PanAm Expo elongated Indian cent from Don

 

 

I was helping with the kids’ Treasure Trivia game again – here are some of the little cutey pies who came by my table for the question (and Penny Lady coin card!)

 

 

 

The U.S. Mint's Buffalo mascot

 

 

I had submitted several of my Conder tokens for grading at NGC and was very excited to pick them up at the show. I was very pleased with the grades, most being MS65! Todd took photos of them for me, but here is a group shot.

 

The Denton’s 298 (NGC MS64 BN) is quite rare (the obverse is a connoisseur smoking a pipe, at a table spread with medals, an old man behind him putting on his head a fool’s cap and the reverse is an and a mule saluting “BE ASSURED FRIEND MULE YOU NEVER SHALL WANT MY PROTECTION”).

 

Also one of my favorites is the Yorkshire/Beverly 13 (NGC MS65 RB) is also rare and depicts the universal Pawnbroker symbol.

 

One other that I really like is the Suffolk 38 (NGC MS65 BN) – it’s is one of the most beautifully toned Conder tokens I’ve seen: The obverse is a Shield of arms of Sudbury and says “MAY THE TRADE OP SUD-BURY FLOURISH.” The reverse says “PRO BONO | PUBLICO | 1798”

 

 

After the show ended on Thursday, we went to dinner at the Palace Arms in the Brown Palace hotel. The hotel was built by a wealthy cattle baron in 1892 because, the story goes, that he went to another upper class hotel and restaurant in town and was not allowed in because he was wearing his blue jeans and boots, so he built his own high class hotel and restaurant. And I have to say that the restaurant was one of the nicest I’ve ever been to, and the food probably the best dinner I’ve had. The Palace Arms, though pricey, is well worth the experience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I ordered basically a fancy tomato soup. They served me this bowl with a little cheese and watermelon covered crouton along with a creamer of the soup that I poured over the crouton. It was really pretty as well as amazingly tasty!

 

The wine list was over an inch thick.

 

I even broke my wine fast for this meal!!

 

 

 

After dinner we went over to 16th street and sat in the patio of a bar that opened up to the street. 16th Street is lined with shops, pubs and restaurants (no cars allowed). There were horse-drawn carriages, bicycle rickshaws, and lots of people just walking around.

 

 

 

 

The weather was so beautiful, probably 70-75 degrees at 9:00pm – then, all of a sudden this huge wind came up and large drops of rain began to fall. Just like that, the temperature dropped probably 10 degrees! We moved inside, saw some other dealers, chatted with them for a little while, then I called it a night!

 

 

Friday – I woke to a very different Denver – it was cloudy, cold, and dreary! The forecast called for heavy rains all the way through Saturday. Wow, I had been so impressed by Denver’s wonderful bright blue skies, warm sunny weather – and then, just like that, the temperature dropped by 30 degrees and I had to put away the capri pants and sandals and break out the jacket!

 

 

At the show, things seemed to pick up on Friday. Typically Friday is the slowest day because the “die hards” come on Thursday, and the people who couldn’t get off work come on Saturday. But perhaps the rain brought more people into the show because it looked like Friday was better attended than Thursday! I know I was busier on Friday and was pleased with the sales. I also made some great purchases, including a beautiful 1914-D Lincoln PCGS MS64 BN (CAC) and a very cool triple saddle struck Lincoln!!!

 

 

 

The ANA had a raffle and if they called your name, you could spin a wheel and possibly win a few seconds inside a money booth and crab as much money as you could.

 

 

Walter Ostromecki got a chance to catch as much money as he could which was then donated to the ANA’s YN program.

 

Notice the $100 bill on the top left of the booth – it’s actually on the outside! Rick Snow put it there to tease Walter

 

 

 

Friday we went to dinner at the Berlin Café off 16th Street. They had some absolutely wonderful German food - not the best choice for my diet.

 

And although others had the customary mug of German beer, I simply stuck with my boring glass of water.

 

Then we decided to head back up to the casinos in Central City/Black Hawk. Even though it was raining on and off and was quite cold, we did not anticipate the amount of snow we encountered as we drove up to the mountains. It was like Christmas in May!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This time we decided to go to the largest casino – Ameristar in Black Hawk – because we were told they had many more poker tables than any other casino, and they did have quite a few. Even with all the snow and ice, the casino was packed! While waiting for a table, I played some 3-card poker for a while, and then got on a 4-8 limit table with a half kill. I should have stayed at the 3 card table, because I did better there!

 

 

As we were leaving Black Hawk, we ended up being behind a car that had no back hatch, just plastic with tape around the edges. I don’t think the driver thought it was going to be very cold and snowy – he must have been freezing inside!

 

Saturday: I was very pleasantly surprised at how busy Saturday was and good sales were. Due to there not being an auction and PCGS not doing any onsite grading, and the fact that there was another coin show in Denver just the week before, I didn’t have very high expectations for this show being very good overall. But I ended keeping pretty busy and having good sales. I even sold my 1877 PCGS MS62 BN on Saturday afternoon, which was a nice surprise! So considering the obstacles that helped prevent this show from being as successful as it could have been, and in spite of what I’ve heard from a few other dealers, I think this show was better than expected. Even with some of the limitations it has, the ANA really does work very hard to put on a successful show. They always have fantastic exhibits and educational programs, and the work hard to please both the collectors and the dealers, so I for one, will continue to be an avid ANA supporter.

 

Soon it was time to pack up and head to the airport. As I mentioned, the Denver airport is quite a bit outside of the city limits, sort of out in the boonies all by itself. But it looks like one of the busiest airports I’ve seen. And it has some interesting architectural tents covering the departure terminals.

 

My flight was a pretty easy 2 hours, and I was once again very glad to be home. Frontier Airlines is in the new terminal at the John Wayne Airport, and it has a lot more restaurants and shops, and also some pretty designs inside the terminal. This was just over the baggage claim area.

 

 

So that’s about it for this report. I very much enjoyed the show and seeing all my friends and forum members, and meeting new friends and new forum members. Next stop – the Long Beach show in a few weeks (table 848). Hope to see you there!!

 

 

[RWB]

Nice report. We could use some snow back here in DC!

 

The sales room looked kind of sparse. Were there any programs that kept collectors away from the sale floor?

[dimefreak]

So....... whens the new stuff going up?

 

[CMCART]

Great report!!!

[johnny9434]

nice report charmy

[Coagman]

Thanks for the great report!

[bartlesvilleok]

Great report as always

[The Penny Lady]

So....... whens the new stuff going up?

 

As soon as Todd gets me the pics! (My photos take a little longer because I like Todd to edit the label, obv and rev into one picture to make it easier/faster to upload.)

 

Thank you everyone, I really like Denver and even enjoyed the snow since living in SoCal, I don't get to see it or be in it very often!

 

Hope to see some of you in Long Beach in a couple weeks....

[delta]

Better than the time, effort and expense of going to the show, thanks much!