I attended the summer Florida Union of Numismatists (FUN) show in Orlando, Florida yesterday. I thought I’d share a few observations.
Keep in mind that the vast majority of dealers and collectors at this show are focused on US coins, which has been an area of active collecting for decades.
The internet continues to hurt the coin shows in the US. Others on this forum have noted that as coins become increasingly available on the internet, the coin show events become less significant. This show was consistent with that. As coin shows go, FUN events are typically large, drawing coin dealers from all over the nation. Although it is true that the summer FUN shows are typically smaller than the winter shows (people want to visit warm Florida when it is cold in the rest of the country), this year’s summer FUN show was noticeably smaller than summer FUN shows of the last few years. It was held in a convention hall space that seemed to be about 30% smaller than the space of previous years.
Demographic and Economic challenges are affecting the market for the collecting of US coins. Overheard among dealers: One dealer of US coins mentioned that he might not attend the show next year, owing to reduced size and activity of the show. His colleague replied, “you can’t really fault this show, the whole market {for US coins} has been a bit slow.” Later, a different dealer presented his hypothesis, paraphrased roughly as: “The large “baby boomer” generation is retiring and dying. The coin collections that they assembled over decades gets passed on to their kids, but the young generation isn’t as interested in coin collecting and many have big college debts and/or are underemployed, so they don’t have the money to expand on the collections. Money challenges lead some who inherit the coin collections to sell the collection. The net effect of this demographic and economic trend is that there is less demand for US coins and more supply available on the market, which puts downward pressure on prices.”
There was a lot of gray hair among attendees. Although the mix of people at the show might be younger during the weekend, the average age of people on the first day of the show (Thursday) was fairly old. I contrast this to photos I’ve seen of some of the Asian shows where young people are present in large numbers. I admittedly don’t follow the market of US coins very closely, but my observations at this show bias me into thinking that the numismatic premium for common US coins will not be going up any time soon. Having said that, buying “junk silver” US dimes, quarters, etc. for their bullion value, at low premiums, might be just fine (and I’ve done that). On that note, I observed quite a lot of business done for gold and silver bullion at the show. One guy was looking to buy 15 ounces of gold for his father-in-law! He was going from dealer to dealer looking for the best price.
There were 7 dealers present who had significant offerings of Chinese coins. All of them seemed to be buying, and from the comments made, it seemed that much of the material they bought would be heading to China. I would definitely characterize it as selective buying. A few dealers mentioned the turmoil associated with the Chinese stock market over the past several weeks and their uncertainty of how that would affect the coin market (would it increase demand, would it decrease demand?). My sense was that some of the dealers were focusing their buying on key date pieces that they knew that they could immediately resell, and they were not being as aggressive with their offer prices for some of the less rare coins. Perhaps they are waiting until they see some stability in the Chinese stock market and economy.
Quality Chinese coins are increasingly tough to find in the USA! Although I was ready to buy coins at this show, I didn’t see much of what I was looking for in the glass cases of the dealers (in contrast to two or three years ago). Indeed, I only saw two coins that I was looking for, and the dealers were asking quite strong prices for them. So I left without buying, but I immediately got on the internet when I got home and am lining up some purchases.
