Charmy's March 2017 BALTIMORE SHOW REPORT w/Tons of Pics!

[The Penny Lady]

Well, here we are again, another show and another show report. I appreciate everyone who came up to me during the show to thank me and tell me how much they enjoy my show reports (and to ignore the naysayers). This one will have a lot of photos of some amazing coins but also a bunch of photos from the sites in and around Baltimore and D.C.

I left OC on Tuesday. This is me very happy to be heading to the Baltimore show!

It was a very beautiful day and I always enjoy flying over the sunny Southern California coastline. This first picture is of the popular Fashion Island in Newport Beach

This is a neat picture showing Newport Harbor.

The gorgeous SoCal coast: Newport Beach, Corona del Mar, Laguna Beach, Dana Point, San Clemente, etc.

I changed planes in warm sunny Phoenix

Shortly after I settled in my window seat on the plane, a guy sat down in the aisle seat next to mine. The flight attendants (who were based in Baltimore) began fawning over this guy, then I heard a couple male passengers calling him coach, asking for his autograph, etc. Obviously he was someone famous, but I had no idea who he was. So once we were underway, I turned to him and said, "You must be someone pretty special, but I apologize, I have no idea who you are." He chuckled and said he was John Harbaugh, the head coach of the Baltimore Ravens. I said "aw, at least I know who the Ravens are!"

Coach Harbaugh was extremely nice, kind, and patient, especially with all the fans that kept coming by his seat, shaking his hand, asking for his autograph, etc. During the flight, he mentioned that his brother, Jim, is also a coach in Michigan and at one time was the head coach of the 49ers. He then told me the story about a few years ago when his team played his brother Jim's team in the Super Bowl (the Ravens won). I actually remembered watching that game and hearing the story of brother coach vs. brother coach. I asked him how his parents handled it, and he said it was really tough on them, but he said they handled it really well. He said his mom said it best, that at the end of the day, it was still about family and feelings for one another.

5 hours later, we landed in Baltimore

At the baggage claim area, several people recognized Coach Harbaugh and asked for photo selfies, and he graciously complied with every request. I finally thought it would be nice to have a photo with this handsome famous coach. When I asked him, he laughed and said "Of course especially since we were seat mates."

I arrived at my hotel pretty late. This time I stayed at the Days Inn, but I'm not sure I will stay there again.

Although it was a lot less expensive than the other host hotels, they ran out of kind and queen bed rooms, so I was stuck with a full sized bed. They also "accidentally" ran my card for double the amount they were supposed and couldn't correct it until I checked out. I may give them one more try since they are right across the street from the convention center, but we'll see. Anyway, once I was checked in, it was a long day so I went right to sleep.

The next day, I headed over to the convention center to view the auctions, including the Pogue coins.

Wow, I felt honored just to be holding some of those amazing pieces of copper!

This is the 1909 vdb Matte Proof Lincoln cent that was recently discovered by Chris Simpson in the circulation strike spot in an old coin album.

And of course the super amazing 1804 dollar!

In the lobby on my way out I ran into one of my most favorite coin dealers, Dino Koromvokis. Note the light lipstick kiss on his cheek from yours truly!

Since we had the rest of the day to kill and it was a gorgeous day, Rick and I decided to rent a car and drive to D.C. to see the cherry blossoms. I had never seen them before, and wow, they were so beautiful!

We also took a driving tour around the city and saw several other famous Washington sites. This of course is the Washington Monument

The Capitol

The Jefferson Memorial

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing

The Executive Building

The Watergate Hotel

For lunch we stopped in Georgetown and dined along the Potomac

Then it was time to head back to Baltimore. Due to the heavy traffic along the highway, we took a more scenic route back to Maryland.

We then spent a few hours at the Horseshoe Casino, then it was time to call it a day!

Set up the next day was at 8am! Boy was that early!!

But Thursday turned out to be very active, both buying and selling.

These are some of the coins I bought (I was pleased that several pieces I bought at the show were sold pretty quickly).

I bought two beautifully toned cents, one was a rainbow toned 1936 Proof in NGC PF66 RB but that sold right away. The other was this violet magenta 1886 PF66 RB Indian cent

Then several people stopped by to say hi! This is Louis Tibor who brought me a deliciouss bottle of Biltmore Merlot!

My dealer friend, Mark Simon, brought this wonderful bottle of Chateau St. Michelle to share! Yes, that's another Charmy kiss on Mark's cheek!

Emily who now works for Americana Rare Coins/Glenn Holsonbake

Don Hosier, the east coast rep of Goldberg Auctions, came by to say hi

This is a very cool scarce Triumphal Arch encased 1901 Indian cent that I recently acquired for my penny exonumia collection and brought for Todd to photograph

After the show was over on Thursday, we went to one of our favorite Baltimore restaurants, Di Mimmo's in Little Italy

My usual posse, Neal, Rick and Ron

These are some of the meals we had, we all enjoyed each of our dishes!

And the wine was also amazing

After dinner, we went around the corner to Vaccaro's where we met some more friends for dessert. These are the desserts our group shared. You can see how huge they are!

Back at my hotel, I ran into another great dealer buddy, James Sego!

Friday morning I got to sleep in until 8:00am since I didn't have to be at the show until 9:00am, yay! This is right inside the convention center facing the doors to the bourse floor

When I got inside, I took the opportunity to walk the floor looking for coins on my customer want list. I also took a few photos around the floor.

This rare 1943 copper cent was on sale at Northeast Numismatic's table right across from my table.

David Lange at NGC

PCGS folks

The Honorable David Bowers!

My dealer buddy, Ron Mirr, from Liberty Coins in Virginia

Back at my table, Steve/TheCharlotteDude, stopped by my table to say hi

Late Friday afternoon, the bourse floor was still quite busy

After the show on Friday, I headed out with my foreign coin friends to The Black Olive where we get to dine at the one table in the wine cellar of the restaurant.

Each time we go to the Black Olive, we make reservations for the next Baltimore show. It's a whole experience and usually lasts from about 7-11pm. We start my having chilled white wine at the small bar while we wait for everyone else to arrive.

One of the more entertaining foreign coin dealers is Charles Adams of Artifacts in the Cayman Islands. He has an entire trunk full of carefully crafted up to the line jokes that artfully delivers throughout the night. He is such a hoot and I adore him so I gave Charlie one of my lipstick kisses as well!

This humongous bottle of wine sits up on a shelf on the wall above the bar. I've never seen a wine bottle as huge!

After everyone has arrived, we all head down to the cellar where our table awaits.

There were 8 of us this time.

Several of the people in this group have been coming to this restaurant for at least the past 10 years, so the waitress pretty much knows which wines to set aside for us. And she's usually right on the money as we enjoy each of the wines she has chose for us.

The most popular appetizer dish among everyone in the group is the octopus

I actually forgot to take photos of the some of the main dishes, but here are photos of a few of the different desserts they offer, including honey and nut covered donut holes, an apple tart, and everyone's favorite baklava ice cream.

Back at the hotel, I again ran into James Sego who was having drinks with with some friends, so they allowed me to "crash" their party.

These are my new young friends, Danny Pfeiffer and Matthew King who graciously bought me a Jägermeister

Since I couldn't make the Pogue auction, I asked Rick to take some photographs for me.

Since the auction was held at another location, this is the bus that was shuttling everyone to and from the auction

The auction was held at the Evergreen House estate which is the home of T. Harrison Garrett and John W. Garrett (of Garrett collection fame). The room the auction was held in was the Carriage House, where the carriage and horses were kept.

The grave stone is of one of the horses and it was right by the front door to the Carriage House.

This is D. Brent Pouge with (his wife?) next to Q. David Bowers

The catalog and auction paddle (photo courtesy of Luis Ramos)

Various shots during the auction. Rick said the young man in the photo below was very enthusiastic throughout the auction.

Saturday is usually a slow selling day, but busy with kids and families looking around. However, for a change, I had great sales on Saturday and was very pleased with the show overall. Thursday as I mentioned I was very busy buying and selling, Friday was rather slow, then Saturday was very good. So overall, my show was probably a B+ and I am hopeful that the market is turning around.

Soon it was time once again to pack up and head to the airport. Bye-bye Baltimore....

As usual, I was very happy to be back at home to see my hubby and my little chubby Penny!

Next up: Westgate Las Vegas show (April 7-9), Santa Clara Show (April 20-23), and Central States (April 27-29)

[joeyuk]

I enjoyed your show report.  Looks like you had a great time.  I was at the show Saturday around noon and enjoyed it.  First show for me in a while.

 

[LINCOLNMAN]

Thank you once again for an entertaining and informative report.

[synoptic12]

Great, great post, highly intriguing. Some very fine cuisine, especially the seafood and octopus. One of my favorites is Linguine pescatore. Very nice photo with John accompanied by the many photos during your travels. Looks very interesting. I personally like the penny lady and everyone pictured. Thank you very much for the very nice commentary and photos.

[USAuPzlBxBob]

Charmy, what an incredible report.

Having flown out of John Wayne many times in the prime of my career, I always enjoy pics of the Newport Beach area.  But then you also had the stopover in Sky Harbor, and seeing the views to the south of the mountains there (your flight takeoff since the airport would be behind you) reminded me of my many years living in the Phoenix area, attending ASU.

That's so funny sitting next to Coach John Harbaugh.  I wouldn't have known him either, since his brother was much more famous, Jim Harbaugh.  But I would have recognized the name Harbaugh instantly, from watching so many 49er games.

So you were off to a great start, day one.

But then all of the elite numismatic stuff that you got to experience, and could share, of the Baltimore show and Pogue auction, just topped off the report, sort of like those heaping-helping deserts from Vaccaro's!

I bet when you first got into the "penny" numismatic business you never knew how far and wide it would take you, allowing you to meet so many interesting people, and also to experience, time and again, "cream-of-the-crop" restaurants (with great friends that you share so much in common!) such that you would become a reigning expert on what to order, and how to dine in style.

That was one of the things I always liked so much in my business travels, that the local plant managers would use my team's visits as excuses to take us all out to the best places to eat, both lunches and dinners, every day, to the point where we'd be exhausted from living it up too much.

Very entertaining thread!  One of your best.

[The Penny Lady]

Thanks everyone.  Again, knowing that you folks appreciate these reports makes the time and effort putting them together well worth it. 

USA, you're definitely right that I never thought I'd be where I am now and loving it!  I am grateful that I get to do what I enjoy for a living, and the people are what make it so fun, both dealers and customers.  But the evenings out wining and dining are definitely an added "perk."

[PerryHall]

Great show report as always.  Thanks for taking the time to share with us.