By Laura Sperber – Legend Numismatics

The coin market seems to be doing just fine-and maybe even gaining a little strength.

Last week we were knocked down pretty much by illness in the office. It was a bigger deal for us to lift our heads than any coins. So we did not do much in sales, nor did we attend any shows. Can’t even say we did much on the phone either. However, we did have numerous sales off our web site (click and buy) and we did send our coins with a stealth selling team to the Silver Dollar Show in Saint Louis. Unfortunately we’re still a bit under the weather and this week we will be at half strength at best.

Off the web we sold coins ranging from a McClaren coin for $295.00 to a $9,000.00 coin. An FYI about the McClaren deal: in the three months we have been working on it, we have SOLD coins to SEVERAL HUNDRED different collectors. The actual number astonished us. Our guess is we will sell about 11,000 coins direct to collectors. Two weeks ago, we did sell 25,100 BU Morgans to a dealer in a substantial transaction. We are saving only the BEST coins for offering to our customers!

A lot of people ask why we need stealthy sales people at shows. Dealers are a wacky bunch. If you look at some the wrong way they get spooked. There is one bigger dealer who once said to us, “if you can’t sell it how can I”. Well he has since bought many coins from us via our sellers. Plus, the team can canvas the floor with more time and energy then we could since our main object is to buy. It surprises many people when they find out Legend actually one of the bigger WHOLESALERS around. We feel WHOLESALE is a critical function for our business-but retail is ALWAYS our #1 operation. Legend has also stopped consigning its coins to auctions as we have seen little in terms of good results. Old fashioned face to face selling is much cleaner and better. Do note, that we do NOT give out consignors coins to our team without disclosing so.

Each one of our sellers sold a single coin for at least $10,000.00. ALL reported VERY good shows-which is important information to us and our customers. We don’t know much else until Tuesday when we get the checks and paperwork! They said some generic gold was being bought (a week before the big gold houses weren’t even buying because their inventories were so bloated). We did not hear of any big Type selling-it sounds like that are is still a little weak. Morgans had some life and we know Walkers are still selling strong!
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By Laura Sperber – Legend Numismatics

First, we’d like to congratulate and thank Jon Lerner (Scarsdale Coins) putting on one of the BEST shows there is! Jon fought a nasty cold and made sure everything was “just right” for everyone. We also would like to offer a huge thank you to John Albanese and his team over at CAC for donating their time and effort to offer free submissions for the collectors who attended. The Q+A session that John held was heavily attended with many good questions being answered. Legends principle, Laura Sperber is a partner with Jon Lerner (in the show) and is  shareholder in CAC.  It is our goal to make Coinfest into a premier specialty show that is a ‘must attend” for collectors. We are not looking to fill a convention center. We want dealers and collectors to be able to transact in a smaller, beautiful, safe, secure, and intimate setting. Also, we have a huge preference of offering tables at our show to dealers who will attend and want to deal with the public. The big wholesalers who do nothing but “crackouts”, they can stay at the bigger shows.

Things started off very strong when all day Thursday dealers arrived and seemed eager to do business. Wholesale activity in the rooms was moderate to strong (it really depended on what you had). We came in early to see only one dealer. Biz was good, and back home we went.

Friday was true test. The dealers were allowed in at 10. Wholesale in the room again was decent to strong. The real test came at 2:00 when the public was allowed in. Collector traffic in the room was low to moderate. However, the make up of who was there certainly rivaled any major auction with a special collection! A common comment from several dealers was that the show brought in much better educated collectors then a Baltimore or a Long Beach. Of course many collectors were just mulling around until the big event-when CAC starts accepting coins at 10AM on Saturday. We saw several collectors we knew who had flown in just to attend the show. All of these collectors did shop, and many even bought coins. Many new collectors to dealer contacts were made at the show. Our sales to collectors on Friday were very good. In fact on Friday alone, we sold more McClaren coins than we did in Philadelphia (yes, we sold only 4 in Philly-but Coinfest blew that number away in the first hour)! Of course we sold a few coins from our regular inventory as well.
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By Laura Sperber – Legend Numismatics

THE FIRST SHOW IS NOW HISTORY!

Yet again we congratulate all of the hard work and fantastic jobs the entire Whitman staff does to make their shows clearly some of the BEST presented in the business. David Chrenshaw, Mary Counts, and Lori Hammrick are people who you can always count on to get the job done. It will take a lot of work, but this new show does indeed have strong potential.

WAS THE SHOW A SUCCESS?

Again, before we give our answer, remember; ANYTHING WE SAY IS FROM OUR VIEWPOINT.

Legend is probably one of the few dealers who did not like going to downtown Philadelphia. Sure, there is that incredible Reading Food Market across the street, but access to the convention center is not easy, we were concerned about crime in the area (sure enough we witnessed 3 people handcuffed and taken out of the show), and there are too many shows around it (either physically or date wise) to make collectors come out.

We DID end up having an exceptional show-however our ONLY activity happened at dealer set up and then mid day Saturday. In between we were VERY disappointed in the public attendance and overall activity. Thursday probably had the heaviest attendance-but that was still “light” in regards to a major show. Even dealer attendance was marginal. Many generic dealers (especially the larger ones) pretty much had STOPPED buying GOLD generics prior to the shows start-which hurt the show for sure (we’ll explain later). We were stumped that out of the 1000+ McClaren coins we brought, we only sold 4 to the public. You certainly can’t say price or the quality were factors (most McClaren coins are PCGS/NGC+CAC’d and priced BELOW $1,000.00).

Our biggest sale to a collector was for a coin in excess of $100,000.00. We generally only do sales like that at FUN or ANA. But that sale came on Saturday via email-the collector had seen the coin Friday at the show. At the same time that sale was being confirmed, we sold a PCGS MS65 High Relief WHOLESALE. We did no other business Saturday. When we added up, our table and agent sales, we did some serious business. However we will not claim this was a great show or a rousing success-it needs a lot of fine tuning. The middle days were very boring and lifeless for us. In all fairness, it was the first show. (more…)