If this week was a Presidential administration, it would be William Henry Harrison’s. If it was a point guard, it would be Muggsy Bogues. If it was a wheelbase, it would belong to an Isetta. It was too damn short.
Following the nifty Whitman Expo in Baltimore (on that subject, more below), social obligations kept me in the nation’s capital until Monday, and Congressional underfunding of Amtrak and their aging fleet kept me on a track south of Wilmington until we limped into Biden Station, where the train’s contents, like gas under pressure, was released in every direction to try to find another way northbound.
Of course, the world being as small as it is, and public transit being the chosen route of the patriotic among us, I ran into another coin pal on the platform, taking his own sweet-old-time home from Baltimore too.
The last two days blew by with the surprising speed of a Cliff Lee fastball, but I managed to get some new inventory up, including newps from Boston and Baltimore. Cheery subjects like child labor and Indian massacres may now be found among the pages of my inventory; I can only imagine the headscratching this will someday provoke among online researchers into these subjects, when they find themselves on a wind-swept, online dead end full of weird round things for sale.
Then again, who knew a monument to child labor and the pre-nanny state power of the American corporation could be so pretty?
It has been said that those who study history do so out of curiosity about the future. With that in mind … why am I going to Phoenix? Easy answer: because USAir told me to. When the phone rang at 6:20 AM, I assumed my sister (now 11 ½ months pregnant, judging from her Hitchcockian profile) had suddenly ended up with a case of wet feet. Nope. It was pals at Orbitz, relating that my 2 PM flight (yes, eight hours later) had been canceled due to maintenance issues. If TV execs had been as forward looking as the mechanics at USAir, we might never have had to endure Alf.
By 6:30, I was back to bed with a new booking to the PNNA show outside Seattle this weekend, via Phoenix, which is right on the way if you pull both sides of your map until it’s really taut. While the mechanics knew my 2 PM flight wouldn’t go by 6 AM, their epaulet-wearing coworkers who steer these things didn’t know they were supposed to pilot my flight with as much notice. I tend to run late, but I made the gate on time. They arrived at the gate at 5:30 … for a 4:20 flight. So here I am, besides a girl who is tearing so many pages out of her fashion magazines that I can only imagine her apartment is more paper-strewn than my own, wondering if there is a flight to Seattle after the one I’m going to miss and preparing my story for those inquisitors on the bourse tomorrow who will presume my late arrival will have to do with a late night debaucherous celebration of my Phillies swift filleting of the Mets or an accidental meeting with a smoky voiced redhead that left me unhelpfully detained.
Truth is, I’ll probably just end up on the floor of the Phoenix airport until the wee hours, with my legs wrapped around my inventory in a Figure Four that Ric Flair would be proud of. We’ll cover what happens in the next Kraljeblog.
Now, a rewind: what of Baltimore? Everyone else on the planet has already posted their show reports online, breathlessly describing the volcanic commerce that took place in Charm City last week. So here’s my lily-gilding addition to that ink heap.
It began like most shows, with an auction. One auction. Just one. Like Voltron or Wu-Tang Clan, the two firms who once conducted auctions in Baltimore have joined into a powerful unity: Bowers and Merena (the very firm that lured me into this business full time, back in the Clinton administration) and Stack’s (the very firm from whose brain this smaller firm sprung, like Athena from the head of Zeus, if only Athena carried around a briefcase full of old medals and Zeus looked like Larry Stack. Wait, Zeus did look like Larry Stack.) So instead of arriving early for a Stack’s auction at some posh nearby hotel, then heel-cooling until lot viewing opened for B+M, there was but one event. Noted changes: no food, a negative for a numismatic ruminant such as your author; a new venue, squeezed into a third floor room at the Baltimore Convention Center more appropriate for a Saturday meeting of collectors of elongated cents than a major auction; new faces, including the one who asked for my ID when I got a bidder number – sorely tempting me to make a comment along the lines of “don’t you know who I am” or “I was working at this firm when your grandfather was in diapers!,” which, while totally untrue, might have been fun to proclaim.
There was little in the auction for me, so I spent most of the Americana and colonial coin session watching how the proceedings were going. My old team at Stack’s continues to be on-point (and nattily attired, like the fussy New Yorkers they are), and I have every reason to believe the new California types will also acquit themselves nicely. A brief delay at the beginning due to the imposition of technology upon our decidedly old-school profession allowed me to jaw with friends like Joe Levine, the dean of the American medal market, and others, whose names I won’t drop because then they might think I actually like them.
The show started in full swing on Thursday, when dealers and collectors who pretend to be dealers are allowed to set-up and/or bother people who are setting up. Kind of like a family vacation, setup day is both a lot of fun and very stressful – if I could just throw three or four slab boxes full of stuff for sale in a case, garnish it with a feather, and call it Macaroni, it would be a piece of cake. Further, it would give me a chance to go scour the floor in an effort to
Thursday afternoon brought in the general public for their first viewing. As I’ve related to others not in this business, the general public at coin shows is best divided into two groups: coin enthusiasts and the folks that might be termed the am haaretz (the “people of the earth” in Hebrew, i.e. the locals who heard there was someplace dry that didn’t charge admission). The Thursday crowd is more of the former, the Saturday crowd is definitely more of the latter.
Friday brought more coin weenies out, including lots of familiar faces. Baltimore is close enough to where I grew up that I always see plenty of members of my old coin clubs back in Pennsylvania and a goodly number of other locals that have known me since before my voice broke.
To answer the most commonly asked question: yes, my mom is doing well and she’s enjoying retirement.
On Friday, coins and medals were bought, and coins and medals were sold. It was well attended enough that at one point I had enough winter coats behind my table, left by friends who were in for the day, that I could have opened a Goodwill. Though there were plenty of people there, it wasn’t so slammed that I couldn’t keep up (some Baltimores are like that). A new collector came by with an interest in early American medals, and the modest crowd kept at bay long enough that we could spend a half hour or more talking and visiting, conversing about the medals he was interested in and finding a few items he could take home. There is honestly no greater fun than this at a coin show, with all the joy of teaching combined with the pecuniary promise of selling some items to a new, good home.
That night, Old Bay took a sadistic pleasure in plaguing my chapped lips, made dry by climate and endless conversation. I, in turn, took out my frustrations on a dessert that had never met a man like me before. Footage exists, but will never be made public.
Saturday morning was the same old good Baltimore show as Friday: plenty of people, a good amount of business, and some newbies. By noon, numismatic cognoscenti had given way to the folks who bring in corroded zinc pennies clutched in old hankies that are more valuable than their contents. By two, there were more empty cases than dealers. By four, I could have comfortably lounged in my pajamas behind my table while reading comic books and no one would have cared. Maybe I’ll try that next show.
Most commonly heard exclamation when a non-collector sees the medals in my exhibit case: “look how big they are!” Someday I will catalogue all of the responses that have crossed my mind that social grace will not permit me to deliver to someone with whom I am previously unacquainted.
Highlight: a collection of Lifesaving medals that had been off the market for decades coming my way unexpectedly. The amiable owner of the treasures circled back to my table several times waiting for me to be somewhat less busy than the legendary one-armed wallpaper hanger; boy am I glad he persisted. Some of the medals may be offered on this website, should they not be snapped up with immediacy. One, awarded to a sailor for heroism during the Boxer Rebellion, will be auctioned in an upcoming Bowers and Merena Hong Kong sale, where properties of Chinese cultural interest find a ready clientele.
Another highlight: visiting with both authors of my favorite new book, The Secret History of the US Mint, Len Augsburger and Joel Orosz.
My review will be forthcoming here when every word has been digested, but in a word, it’s awesome. I’ve known both of these gents for a long time, but my previous high esteem of them as writers and humans has been surpassed by their newest work. I also had fun making Len blush, as I described a particularly nicely adulterated Seated half that I sold the day before to a well known dealer for his personal collection. I’ll let Len tell you the story.
The crux of most of the show post-mortems I read tends to be a statement on the health of the market, as encapsulated by a single show. So here’s mine: the market is fine. Are the aisles full of millionaires who liberally reach into fat sacks to satisfy their every numismatic desire? No. People are buying more carefully now than they were a few years ago. There is a little more circumspection that attends a major purchase – and, depending on who you are, major might be $100 or $20,000. (If $20,000 is something less than a major purchase to you, dear reader, I invite you to call me personally so that we might discuss your collecting goals and so you can buy me dinner.) But collectors are collecting. They crave new material, especially nice stuff – the same story in every market since Lewis Roper signed his consignment agreement but for those brief market tops that end as quickly as they start.
My customers who buy expensive things have itchy trigger fingers – they have money and want to spend it on nice things, but nice things are tough to come by. It seems that, in my specialties, collectors are starting to realize the embarrassment of riches they enjoyed in the last decade. The Ford stuff is all dispersed now. There is not a sale on the horizon with duplicates of rare medals, pedigreed colonials, and other tasty morsels. When you find such things, they are one at a time, dislodged by force rather than accident. Is there enough to keep collector interest high? Everyone knows that collectors who find nothing to buy quickly become ex-collectors. I hope I can keep enough of the good stuff in stock to keep y’all interested. I see more collectors, for lack of the stuff they know they want, finding stuff they learn to want: colonial collectors are finding more to like among the West Indian issues of the 18th and early 19th centuries or among 19th century struck copies, Betts medal collectors are discovering the allure of War of 1812 and later Mint medals, and everyone loves the truly unique – indeed, I think I sold every engraved coin I took with me to the show.
The sun has set over middle America, having turned the smoke over our heads an imperial violet. (Anyone who gets the literary reference can take 10% off their next purchase, if you can honestly tell me you knew the answer without Googling it.) My plane continues to trundle, seemingly silently, towards my doomed connection and a desert city that really wants to be LA in the worst way. Seattle and another coin show await. And the Kraljeblogger now rests, with the promise of another report when I catch this bus going the other way.
