Road Report

May 1st: Day 1

Remember last year’s CSNS Show, Day 1? Where we had to annoyingly camp out in the chairless convention center lobby in between the poorly planned 3 PM closure of the security room and the 4 PM opening of the show? Well we do, vividly, which is why we vowed that 2024 would be different.

Namely by us signing up for PNG day, thus allowing Team CRO to enter the bourse at 9 AM on Wednesday in sort of an extreeeeemely extended set up period where we would then roll directly into the “regular” set up period at 5 PM without ever having to leave the room.

We figured that convenience alone would be worth the cost to set up on this day, and that maybe we could do a little buying and selling as an extra bonus.

And that seemed to be coming to fruition when we sold a coin within about 3 minutes, then 4 more to two different dealers before the real action started.

Which eventually totaled 17 coins sold, and 14 cool NEWPs acquired on this day, which may sound like a lot of business because it actually was.

But never at a chaotic, frenzied pace, just nice and steady all day with dealers coming by throughout. Which also allowed your author to find time to properly scour the sparsely populated bourse floor (since only about 10% of the table were actually occupied during this session) and find some cool stuff in unexpected places.

Including a coin we snagged here after narrowly missing it online a couple years ago, and something we saw recently on Instagram and did not realize was actually for sale. Spoiler alert: It was.

In all, I’d say it was an almost perfect day on the bourse floor save for a few minor glitches:

• It was only about 45 degrees in the room.
• Our next door neighbor has a safe behind the table so large that there is no room for any coin dealers, and if you swing the door all the way open it will actually hit your author.
• We narrowly missed a cool medal that we probably should have bought.
• In a scene which would have made Abott and Costello proud, a dealer showed us a coin which he had just purchased based on our advice that it was worth $10,000 causing him to pay $7,000 which would have been really great except that we had actually told him it was worth only $1,000. A situation which numismatists refer to as “an extremely bad situation”.  I guess it could have been worse, like, for example, if my estimate was not entirely in writing which it actually was.

But despite that we had a great day overall before heading out to meet relatives in Evanston for dinner, getting back real late and immediately collapsing in a heap.

So of course we will be well rested for Thursday on the bourse floor during which all the remaining tables will be filled, the public will pour in and there will be, we hope, a lot more business to be done.

And if it is, or even if it isn’t, we will blog all about all of it right here on Friday AM.

Until then, then –

Prologue:

Team CRO is excited, no, make that de-lighted to be heading off to Chicagoland for another installment of the CSNS show. How come?

Well, aside from the obvious enjoyment we get from attending any show, this one has always been kinda special in several ways:

1. We really like this hotel and its esoteric collection of sitting devices.

1A. We like being in a self-contained hotel AND convention center such that your author can tumble out of the sack and be on the bourse floor minutes later.

2. We’ve historically done extremely well here both buying and selling.

3. Speaking of selling, we’ve had a number of crazy shows here through the years where some specific and unexpected area of numismatics is suddenly on fire. Which for us last year was weird world medals. A few years earlier it was French coins. But my personal favorite (for obvious reasons) was the time that everyone bought coins priced at $5,000 or higher.

No idea what will happen this time, but we’ll be ready for anything with a lot of cool, new, artfully arranged inventory, a ready and willing checkbook and the desire to do as much business as is humanly possible at our deluxe table #703.

And then blog all about all of it each and every morning of this show –