Ep.46 - What's Going on at the Coin Show with Greg Allen #numismatics #rarecoins #coincollecting
Folks. Welcome back to the Cabbage Coins Podcast. My name is Tony Grecovich, and I'm the owner operator of Cabbage Coins. And we are talking today to Greg Allen. Greg Allen is the the owner and the operator of Greg Allen Coins LLC.
Tony Gryckiewicz:He's out of Minnesota. He's been doing this business for about twenty years, setting up shows that is. He's a former corporate attorney for three ms and he recently retired and now he does basically coins full time, does 35 coin shows per year. He's the secretary for the PNG, the Professional Numismatism Guild, which is a really high level organization for elite dealers of coins. And Greg today is gonna talk to us about how to approach the coin show, like what's going on at the coin show.
Tony Gryckiewicz:We have a little bit of like presentation kind of deck to kind of talk about, but it's really pretty interesting how Greg has broken down all these kind of various aspects between dealer strategies and what exactly is happening on the floor of the show. Everything from when to arrive at the show if you're a collector to what to expect on the last day of a show, etcetera. Really pretty interesting conversation. Hopefully we'll have a good dialogue. Greg, welcome to the Cabbage Coins Podcast.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Why don't you tell us a little bit about what got you into coins initially?
Greg Allen:Well, Tony, I started collecting coins seriously in about 1971. Dabbled a little before that. My dad said I was spending too much money on sports cards, and he focused me on coins. And I really got into the coins then, And probably the biggest memory I had early on was when this 1972 Doubleday came out. And I remember seeing that at one of the local show, of the local club meetings we'd have every third Monday of the month and one dealer put just that coin in the case and had quite an impression back when I was was young.
Greg Allen:And then I always wanted to be a dealer someday and then I had the opt about twenty years ago to start my company. Most of my business is dealing with people at shows. We do a website or anything. We basically go to shows.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Yeah. The show scene is exciting. It's my favorite part of this business for sure. I just noticed that you have some animals running around behind you.
Greg Allen:We're out here in the woods of Minnesota.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. In an undisclosed location. Alright. Sounds good. So I'll bring up this presentation here and we will start getting into it.
Tony Gryckiewicz:This is a presentation I know that you recently gave at a convention or something along with Jeff Garrett, right? Recently presented Correct.
Greg Allen:We did this, Jeff and I have done this a couple times, the last time was at Central States in April and kind of the overall point of this is so that when you go to a show you have a better experience at the show because you get a little bit of insight about what's really going on and it answers questions about dealers. Why didn't leave early? Why won't this dealer talk to me? Why are some people constantly piled around certain dealers tables and I could never get in there? And I'm gonna kind of reveal why that is not saying whether what they're doing is right or wrong.
Greg Allen:I'm just explaining why and one of the yeah and so one of the big things that answers many of these questions is not every dealer is there for the same reason. And I'll get into that a little bit more, but let me start out first by those are a variety of different shows that's shown on the screen. There's local monthly shows, there's regional shows like Tony and I would sort of see a pan show in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, and then there's national shows, and I have a number of them listed there. The regional national shows typically are in, you know, three, four days, something like that. There's also international shows.
Greg Allen:I recently went to one in Berlin. That's a whole different topic, completely different than any US going shows. Then there's also some private events. Some of the grading services do on-site grading in a small setting away from their office and it's sort of an invitational only thing. So I'm mostly gonna focus on the national shows about what happens.
Greg Allen:Although some of this happens to some degree at at the smaller shows and the regional shows as well.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Well, one thing I didn't realize is Central States and FUN are nonprofit as well as the ANA show. It's a nonprofit event.
Greg Allen:Correct. Yeah. They're the ANA, Central States and FUN, those are nonprofit organizations, whereas Baltimore, is the Whitman Expo, the Great American Coins and Collectibles show in Long Beach. Those are run by private entities, and those are for profit events. Hopefully for the organizers.
Greg Allen:It does cost a lot to run a show.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. So then talking about kind of these aspects to is this kind of a breakdown of like coin dealing basically?
Greg Allen:Well, kind of you'll see some of the smaller shows you don't see often see a major dealer. Tend to go to the national shows and the regional regional shows. And so if you are a collector going to a show, if you're looking for rare coins or really expensive coins, you're typically not gonna see those at the monthly shows. You'll see them at some of the regional shows. Most dealers won't have them, but if you're, that's really what you're going after, you go to a national show, those have most of the major dealers with those types of coins, and you'll have a much, much bigger selection at those types of shows.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Yeah. Well, I know that when I was starting off, I mean, I would go to as many coin shows as I possibly could go to, but there was always the bigger shows, the the important kind of calendar shows that even as a as a dealer, I wanna make sure that I was always gonna be at Central States. I wanna be at Baltimore. I wanna be at the fun show.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I wanted to be at something like Dalton, you know, the Dalton, Georgia show in in the in the spring. And then I have been noticing also that very serious collectors travel out to some of those major events. They are kind of must attend sort of thing if you're very, very serious about hunting for the right item for your collection. So it's, it's a but at the same time, those, those local shows, I will say, you never know what you're going to find sometimes
Greg Allen:You at never know. Those Yeah.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Makes, it makes a lot of sense. So I see something here about vest pocket as well as people who do things like eBay live or whatnot. Can you talk a little bit about what that is for people who don't know, for example, what a vest pocket dealer is?
Greg Allen:Yeah, so what's listed there, in this gets to the question, not every dealer is there for the same same reason. So a vest pocket dealer, those are people that typically don't have a shop. They just go from show to show and they have they, know in the olden days they probably had a vested. Pull some coins out of their vest. Now they have their briefcase in there and they'll they'll pull them out there.
Greg Allen:They could they could have a shop but they don't get a table at the show. Just go from table to table dealing with the dealers that have tables. It is a big no no at a show that if you do not have a table, you're not supposed to be trading coins with other dealers that don't have a table. So that's one tip. That's a big no no.
Greg Allen:So that's what a vest pocket, again they could be a full time dealer or part time but they don't have a table at this show. Some dealers are full time like I myself even though I don't have a shop. Some full time dealers have a shop, some dealers are part time. You'll see that at the smaller shows, many of the dealers that go are part time but those are few full time. As you get to the major shows, regional major, you'll begin to have more and more full time dealers be it they have a shop or not.
Greg Allen:And if they don't have a shop like I do, have like a virtual office. As you mentioned, I have a secret undisclosed location. I don't have anybody come to my office. I basically do my business at shows or I ship. We do a lot of shipping to dealers.
Greg Allen:We pretty much only deal with the public at shows and then we don't have a website or eBay or whatnot. Supply people that have that type of thing.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Just a couple of note more notes about things like vest pocket dealers. I think they're very essential to the whole ecosystem of the coin market and the Wizmanics and these larger shows, essentially the vest pocket dealers come into a show, they usually have a briefcase or a couple boxes of coins and their market, so to speak, are other dealers. So they are doing the yeoman's work of bringing coins from sometimes those local regional shows up to national shows and then offering those coins to larger national dealers or dealers who have tables there. I know that, I mean, I love interacting with vest pocket dealers.
Tony Gryckiewicz:They often have incredible coins that they bring and allows me to get some really choice nice items for my website or whatever. Speaking of, I personally don't have a brick and mortar either, just do a virtual office here. And I am curious though, what is, when you say mass marketing, what exactly, what type of dealer is that?
Greg Allen:So those are the people that sell on television and, or do they have call centers, people like that. They kind of, you know, just mass market things and they often are looking for quantities, large quantities of coins. So if you're showing a coin on a like a television type sales, you have to have multiples of the same same thing because yeah and also those those people it's an entertainment. You're not just in those types of things necessarily buying coin. You're also buying the entertainment.
Greg Allen:Some provide education and so that. It's a it's it's different than than buying on a website or going to a show again because you know, part because of that entertainment factor.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Sure, sure, sure.
Greg Allen:And as you mentioned, you know, the whole ecosystem is very important. Yes, that you have a full range of dealers at shows because they, you know, they all provide something that, you know, feeds into the whole ecosystem as you point
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah, I'm assuming this is a breakdown here of the different types of dealers you could find at a show.
Greg Allen:So yeah, so what this is, this is kind of a breakdown of what the purpose of what the dealers are for. Again, I remember I said not everybody there for the same reason. So there are some dealers that are there to do retail, and I think a lot of people that come to shows think that's why everybody's there. They're there to sell coins from their booth to whoever comes by and that is not the case. Some are there to do just retail.
Greg Allen:Some are there just to do wholesale sold. If you're the general public or even some dealers, you can't interact with those people. They're just there to deal with dealers and sometimes just certain dealers and there's a whole hierarchy of when you get your turn in line, if any, to see their material. Are, they're doing wholesale. It's high, high volume, high speed.
Greg Allen:And that's one of the reasons they don't interact so much with the public is they need speed and they need large quantity of sales for that. And then some are there to do a little bit of both. I'll talk a little bit later about how some of the wholesale happens before public hours begin. There are some dealers that just pretty much deal in bullion. There's some dealers that are specialists and the specialists could be a certain series.
Greg Allen:It could be they deal a lot in just high end coins. They might just deal in world coins versus US coins. You know, they may have some specialty. I think number of dealers, if we have special we have a specialty, and then we do everything else too. So at one point, I was doing high end mid state Franklins that were basically either white or very nicely toned, and we were doing like MS 64 to 67 full bell line.
Greg Allen:We had a whole range of every date available. And now I do a lot of proof coins in the thirties, forties, through about 1964. There's large quantities of those at the show. Then some people deal just in, you know, like raw coins or some are just slab coins. You know, not everybody does the same thing.
Greg Allen:Yes. There are some go ahead.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Well, I was just going to ask before we move on to that next section here. So I think one of the questions that people have is the difference between retail and wholesale, just because there's kind of maybe a perception that there's kind of this thin veil between the retail wholesale side and the people who are in the retail are looking over at the those getting wholesale prices and they're wondering how do I get into into that? How do I how do I buy a coin for, you know, for a wholesale price? So that's probably a question a lot of people have out there. Do you wanna tackle that?
Tony Gryckiewicz:Because I think it's a pretty interesting and it's pretty eye opening about that division between wholesale and retail. There are really two segments to the market at a show between those two and it's pretty clear what the difference is, but I'll let you take it away.
Greg Allen:Right. So with the wholesale, a lot of the wholesale happens before the show even starts and I'll get a little bit into that a little bit later, but even at the show, most wholesale, it's a very quick transaction. Generally, public and even seasoned collectors, they take time to go and buy a coin. The whole transaction just takes quite quite a while. I mean, I've had people I was doing like a $40,000 deal with a thousand slabs, literally a thousand actually, it was 1,100 slabs with this dealer and somebody came and he was spending like, you know, fifteen minutes to buy $100 coin.
Greg Allen:Ain't. I'm happy to do that when we have time, but you know, it just you just can't do these small transactions. Sometimes it's a matter of time and then sometimes there actually can be implications. Some states have sales tax and some dealers just don't wanna deal with the sale sales tax. So they will only deal with people that have a tax ID because they just don't want to have you know they'll file the report point zero but they just don't want to you know be collecting sales tax and everything.
Greg Allen:That's one reason that happens and even with wholesale there's a hierarchy of dealers you know. So just because you're a dealer, you've been a big dealer that doesn't mean you're getting to be the number one spot to go to a dealer. They say you got first shot, got second shot, and then anything else you got third and fourth and so either you have to earn that spot and I think many people would be shocked by how fast some of the dealers go through and do large transactions and how large those numbers are. You know yet people say well, you know, I'm here I got you know, 5,010 thousand dollars to spend and per serious about the coin. Know this series but they really often can't compare in speed and volume and how much they spend compared to a dealer Cause they wanna do a whole bunch of transactions in an hour, not just a handful.
Greg Allen:Yeah. So it really is hard to break into that wholesale area. Again, even for some dealers, it's hard, you know, to get your spot for the wholesale.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. A 100%. I mean, I've been on the show scene for a while. I think starting as kind of a collector, then moving a little bit to a vest pocket dealer, kind of having a box of coins I carry around and develop some relationships with dealers who got to know me, familiar with my face and they would buy some coins from me here and there. Eventually I started the setting, setting up at shows and today I've been setting up a show at least one or two shows per month for the last year and even still when I walk in there are a lot of faces that I have never really done any business with and there's a lot of wholesale tables where I'm not necessarily invited to take a seat.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Maybe I should ask sometime, I don't know, But there's a lot of transactions that are going through there. And it it does take I think it does take a while. It does take a while to get your face up there, get a reputation, become kind of a familiar face, so to speak, become one of the knowns, I guess you could you could say at at a coin show and to have more opportunities to do business and to be offered to take a look at a large quantity of coins. I think the better breakdown, better point of delineation for me is how you described it to me, which is the difference between a retail transaction and a wholesale transaction. The typical retail customer is trying to find and select the coin for their collection, or they're trying to select a couple of coins that are going be ideal for their collection.
Tony Gryckiewicz:There's so many important things they should be considering. Know, the IPO of the coin and the strike of it, and they're looking really closely at the coin to see if there's any potential hidden issues of the coin. You know, they're going to realize that, you know, I would like to pick this as part of my set and do a negotiation with the dealer, you know, with that in mind. The wholesale transaction is such where there's, let's say a box of coins and the dealer comes up and says, hey, can I take a look at, you know, what coins you have? They pull out eight to 10 coins, they say, can you put prices on these?
Tony Gryckiewicz:You, you know, marked kind of like a good wholesale number and they buy the whole thing or they buy eight out of the 10 of the coins, you know, and it's so, the volume is so large and it's so quick and they're, they're kind of buying in bulk that they are able to purchase at a wholesale price that they then can use and plug into their business. So it's just very, very different. And in terms of the dealer psychology, my own psychology about whether or not I try to wholesale this coin or I try to retail this coin, it really becomes a matter of function of liquidity and how quickly I need liquidity. I mean, somebody that I, is a major national dealer that has much larger business model than me, comes up to my table and they want to buy eight to 10 coins, I'm going to think, all right, well, I mean, I can just get access to all of this cash right now if I put a reasonable number on all of these coins for this individual and they're just going go ahead and take those. But every once in a while they select a coin that I say, you know, I really like to hold onto it and kind of put on my website and put it on eBay potentially or take it to other shows and meet that collector who, you know, values this thing.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Cause I want to also, it's one of the things that, you know, I know I'm kind of rambling here, but it's one of the things that you got to think about from a dealer perspective is before you wholesale out everything, think about also the relationships you forego potentially the people you get to meet potentially by, you know, by, by holding onto, I don't know that, that, that 77 Indian, you know, 60 three brown cack that you want to try to meet that collector out there and establish that relationship. You kind of forego that when you kind of, you know, sell things quickly into the into the wholesale side. I know a lot of different thoughts there. Hopefully that was interesting, helpful, but
Greg Allen:I go ahead have another play one on the wholesale is also once you've got your spot that you have that opportunity even their dealers to save that spot to develop that relationship to be asked you know again to you know see their wholesale box. Some dealers they just don't buy everything that they think they can make a profit on. They'll buy some things even if they think they're just gonna break even just to build up that volume and that relationship with the dealers, which is not something a typical collector is gonna do. Because as you point out, they might just want one or two coins and that's something you know, people often just don't even know is why would you buy a coin? You're not gonna make any money on again.
Greg Allen:It's to get that relationship and to move yourself up in the line from number eight to number seven, you know, and eventually move up and you get first shot.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. So Yeah. There was a very important, I would call him an important best pocket dealer that I met at the Savannah ANA show. We'd never done business before. He had a he has a very strong reputation of having very, very nice coins.
Tony Gryckiewicz:He he brings around in in a case, introduced myself to him and say, hey, let's let's take a look at your coins. He brought them by. I looked through three or four double row boxes and I just couldn't make anything work. And in retrospect, and so I didn't buy anything. I mean, over the course of thirty minutes looking through his boxes, I did not buy anything and I kind of regret that a little bit because I want I really wish that I had opened that door and started that relationship with this individual, even if I was going to break even.
Tony Gryckiewicz:But that was just They didn't make it happen. Hopefully, maybe do another one in the future.
Greg Allen:I was going to hit a couple other things on that. So also streamers have, you know, like whatnot and eBay live. Some of them will stream. Some dealers will do that live at their tables at the shows and then auction bidder reps. Lot of people sometimes if they see somebody like walking around with their own light, you know, sometimes pit lightning is very important to evaluate the coin.
Greg Allen:Sometimes it's because they want to use their own light to go to auction lot viewing because they will look at the coin say for a collector and then charge them a fee for looking at the coin and then ultimately bidding on it. It can be very helpful to find somebody that really knows what they're doing to look at the coin for you and then bid because that's a whole other topic bidding strategies and
Tony Gryckiewicz:everything. Folks out there, I'm going put a link or show, I have a new collector services page on my website that actually offers this exact service. Basically our auction representation going to auctions and auction lot viewing and getting in hand analysis of a coin that you might be interested in purchasing. And you know, the funny thing is you mentioned that about bringing your own light. Everybody knows if you grade coins, the type of lighting you need is incandescent bulbs to grade coins properly.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And so many of the auction lots are still on the auction lot viewing. So many of that is still under led bulbs. So something to keep in mind. I mean, led bulbs make coins look very, very nice. The, what you really want is incandescent bulbs.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So something to, to, to, I guess, keep in mind. But, okay. So talking about the dealer, dealer strategy. So you're saying that there are dealers out there who sell only or buy only or they're working lot less. Go ahead.
Greg Allen:Yeah. Primarily at shows. There's some dealers that are there primarily to sell and sometimes these are people with shops because they have all this material come into their shop and you can't always sell it there. So they'll come to the shows just just to sell and they could have a booth or I'll talk about a little bit later. Do a tremendous amount of wholesale before the show actually starts.
Greg Allen:So public comes in for some people there to buy only and this this is why some dealers are never at their table because they're running around the show trying to buy and the only reason they have a table is a place to store things, you know, that they bought and or to rest. This is also so that's one of the characteristics that you'll see their cases and they might not have any cases. Everything might be behind the table or they might have coins just randomly strewn in their case. I mean not just out of order. Mean just any direction upside down.
Greg Allen:They're just storing coins. Now there are some dealers that they use what I call the chaos theory to attract you to the table. It's like well now you got to look at everything but often it's just because they're storing. If you see points is randomly strewn in a case and the dealers never there. They're probably there mostly just to buy Some will do a variation of the buying.
Greg Allen:They may have a want list issues. They supplements one of the other strategies. They have a want list for their collectors. The specialists will go around if you steal an Indian head sense Lincoln cents. They might walk around the floor particularly before they show up this to the public and find things in their specialty and you know, they'll gravitate to their cases and they'll either buy them or sometimes just consign them because people know they're going to go to so and so to get this type of coin because they're the expert.
Greg Allen:There's some people that will run around the show trying to find slabs coins that they're going to upgrade or just raw coins to grade ones that are looking to upgrade the upgraders and they'll go to shows where they're doing primarily show grading. It is because some of the shows a PCGS NGC for example will show grade and that's sometimes the big reason they'll come. If they're grading, they'll come. If they're not grading, they'll skip it and go to another show.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Yeah. I think the upgraders are a interesting bunch and they take a lot of risk, but they have this eye of this ability to upgrade potential coins and to take a lot of risks. Buy a lot of coins, they crack them out, already try to do reconsiderations or regrades, But typically, most of time they crack coins out and they resubmit them and they try to get a, you know, potential upgrade on the coin. It's always fascinating to me also dealers that look for mostly raw coins.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I'm actually going to try to get into more of this myself, getting into kind of looking, hunting the floor a little bit for some some some raw coins to potentially slab because it's one of the ways that you end up, you know, making money in this business is by creating some value and what is the value that you're creating is you are taking this kind of raw coin item. You are bringing it to the grading service, you're getting it graded and potentially on its grade, you know, there's now you have this product that you can, you know, put back into the marketplace. It's a slapped coin at the, you know, MS62 grade or something like that, that was previously just kind of this raw coin that nobody wanted to take a risk on. So anyway, that's pretty interesting. And so now you talk about the different types of material that are at a show.
Greg Allen:Yeah. So they, some people primarily are only dealing US, some deal in the world. Some do a combination, although a lot of it it's, you know, there are a number of people pick a large show only us and that's most of the people. And then some pretty much only world coins, some primarily deal in raw, some deal in slabs, most deal in both. And then there's some air specialists.
Greg Allen:That's pretty much all they deal in at the, you know, the shows. Some people deal more problem coins. They know that market just because a coin has a problem doesn't mean it's not collectible and and then some deal what they call licensed product and so that would be some of them are coins. Some aren't, but you know, like Superman or Batman Again, some are coins, but those are, you know, that's licensed and then some just aren't a coin. This is some metal with some really cool thing and often it's, you know, they have to license it from whoever created, you know, that particular comic or whatever.
Greg Allen:So again, people, you know, if you if they said early on, not everybody there is for the same reasons. Know, some are there only to sell, some are to buy, some do both, some deal in, you know, certain types of material raw or slabbed. And again, like it's on this list of, you know, world or or US. So there's a variety of reasons that people are at at the show. Not not every booth is the same.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. And you know, it's kind of a side note here, for folks out there who are ever coming to a coin show to sell something, one of the best approaches, I mean, it's really simple if you think about it, take your coin or whatever it is you have to a table that of a dealer who looks, appears to specialize in the particular area. So, you know, licensed product, if you, if you have, I don't know, some bullying with Batman on it or Superman on it, it would make sense to find the dealer on the floor who, who deals in that stuff and offer it to them. They have a business around it. They understand exactly what the market value is of it.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And they also have customers who come to them to make those selections. They are trying to replenish their own stock, so to speak. And so if you bring it presented to them, they should, I think make you the strongest offer. If you offer me a piece of bullying with Batman on it, the first thing I'm thinking is who can I sell this to? How can I get rid of this thing?
Tony Gryckiewicz:Because I don't deal in that stuff. I deal in kind of higher end US numismatics. So that's what I'm thinking. So therefore the offer is not going to be as strong if you really want to sell it to me, if that makes sense. So find that person out there who deals in it, specializes that they're going to make you a strong offer on the item.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So what is splitting about?
Greg Allen:So splitting is typically two dealers, although it's not limited to dealers, and they have a business relationship where wanna go out and find a coin and then you know, maybe the upgrade this often happens with an upgrade. Sometimes it's just well, I want to have this cool coin in my inventory, but they don't want to put all the money out for it and they don't want to make a mistake. So they have a second set of eyes look at the coin and this particularly this happens with the upgrading. So one will find it and then the other one will look at it and if they both agree, yeah, we'll buy it and then we'll try to upgrade it. That way they sort of split the risk.
Greg Allen:It doesn't have to be fiftyfifty on the financing but it often is. So it just it limits your upside, right? Because you got to split the profit but it limits your downside because it is harder to grade a coin in the holder than raw. You mentioned earlier cracking a coin out and sending it back in. Well, chances are better if it's a good coin.
Greg Allen:There's not some problem with it. You didn't see in the slab because it's easier to grade the coin raw. So when I send things in, typically crack them out and send coins in raw as opposed to keeping them in the holder.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Interesting. Gotcha. I thought this was gonna be about like splitting a table, but this is actually about dealers who split the the cost basis for coin.
Greg Allen:The cost and the risk. Yeah.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Makes makes a lot of sense. So then we have the types of the types of buyers.
Greg Allen:So the type of, yeah, the types of buyers. So you have retail people that is made up of collectors, investors, those, you know, they're really looking for bullion typically, and then the public and that the public, you know, some don't know anything about coins and you know, some have some degree of knowledge. So that's generally what makes up the retail. I will say, know, I do collect certain coins. Don't have a lot of them, I've been around long enough to know certain things how rare they are.
Greg Allen:Don't need to look at the pop reports for some of the I just know and if and this is I think a good tip for a collector. If you know a series and you see a coin that truly is special, I mean it's not like it started collecting a year ago, but you have a lot of knowledge, so you're really sure this is a very special coin. Price within reason, and it can be still a crazy number, to me doesn't really factor into it. I bought coins way more than maybe a typical person would because I know how rare that coin is. I'm buying it for myself.
Greg Allen:It's very special and price is secondary. And the funny thing is some of those coins I've shown to people, including dealers, and they will, I wanna buy that. They say it's not for sale. I didn't give you a price, and they say it doesn't matter. So, you know, that's the approach I take if I buy a coin for myself that's very special for my collection.
Greg Allen:Again, price is secondary within reason. The stuff I had, if you saw it, some of it's not necessarily super expensive, but it is pretty rare. And you'd look at it and go, wow, I didn't know that existed, or wow, that's really, really cool. A lot of it's spectacularly toned, but anyway.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Interesting. Okay.
Greg Allen:So then the types of the specialists, and that could be either a dealer or a collector, maybe a registry person looking for something. You do have the people always looking, hunting for bargains. And the funny thing is, our pricing, so I sent in last year like 15,000 coins for Grady. We do a lot of volume transactions. We do deal with the public at shows, and if you see me at a show, if you're dealing with mid state Franklin's, know, the high end, mid coins, I don't have many in stock, but I can tell you which ones to look for and how rare certain ones are so I can help with that.
Greg Allen:And then the proof coins, again, the 30s, 40s, 50s, up to 64, and then the SMS, I deal in those. So if you ever see me at a show, can help you with those things. Just basically, and I know the markets and certain things. So we basically net things out. So I have people come to my table sometimes and it doesn't matter what price I put on there.
Greg Allen:I mean, I could put a 50ยข piece and put a quarter on it and they want me to come down at price.
Tony Gryckiewicz:And
Greg Allen:they're just looking for a bargain. To me, when they do that, it's like, you don't know anything about this coin and they just want something something cheaper. So some there are some bargain people like And then you have people just looking for for bullion and then, you know, the wholesale buyers. I'll talk a little bit more about that in a few slides where that really fits in and then the streamers, these people that do whatnot, eBay live, and I think there's some other platforms coming on with that. They buy high volume of coins at shows from dealers because they go through so much material in all their streams.
Greg Allen:I mean, they have multiple streams a day. It's the volume is just incredible how much these people go through.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. So talking about a little bit before the show, prearranged deals, private meetings, trading room, pre show.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Mean Yeah. People kind of be surprised how early a lot of dealers do show up at the show. Right?
Greg Allen:Yeah. So it's not unusual. I mean, a lot of dealers show up a day before. There's some that they they've already been trading. Some show up two, three days early.
Greg Allen:And so there's some of their prearranged deals. I do that often at shows. I know what certain people dealers want, so we'll arrange and I'll just deliver the deal at the show, which is sometimes you never really know how much volume any dealer's doing because a lot of their volume may have nothing to do with what you ever see in their case at a show. And then there's private meetings that happen before the trading floor. Some of these are private trading rooms, some are just private one on one meetings, Large, large volumes of transactions happen before the show even starts.
Greg Allen:And then there's trading rooms. Now some have a trading room like P and G Day. It's not even a trading room, they have a pre show. ANA has their dealer day. Some are physically in a room like Baltimore has a trading room at the Great American Coins and Collectible collector.
Greg Allen:GACC, we have this show where we have a specific dealer trading room and then
Tony Gryckiewicz:have to a dealer enter that room, right? You could enter that.
Greg Allen:You don't. It depends on the show. Some you don't have to have anything. Some you have to have it some type of a early bird pass get in, and then some it's just a separate fee. Really varies with that.
Greg Allen:And then some you have to be invited to. It's invitation only. Some will have a trading room and it's semi public. They're kind of off to the side somewhere, but you really have to be invited to go to that. So if you just stumble upon it, you may not be welcome.
Greg Allen:Yeah. And then they don't really have it much anymore, but they used to be physically pre show. So there would be a show a week before a major show somewhere, but that really has fallen more toward these private meetings and then some of the trading rooms that are associated or semi associated with with the show.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Mhmm. So then you have, like, setup day. Yeah. So what's going on there?
Greg Allen:So it's set up. This is before the public comes in and this is actually the, you know, they're setting up on the board's floor. So there's people that get first shot, but remember a lot of transactions already happened with the setup. So, but then some dealers didn't participate in that. So people are often trying to get the first shot and and many of that it's an arranged thing.
Greg Allen:So somebody you get first shot, you get second shot, you get third shot and some of that may have been arranged a week or so before the show. And then there's the the early birds and these are dealers that don't have tables or advanced collectors or collectors really anybody can get an early bird. Some some may require you have a tax ID to sort of weed out people that aren't real, really into the dealing. But they will come to the board's floors. People are setting up, as I mentioned earlier, of specialty dealers, and they'll go around the floor and buy up their specialty, the nice coins in their area and or take consignments and then you know some that came to sell again particularly people that had shops they will try to move a large amount of inventory at the setup day or they would have done it at the pre show.
Greg Allen:So for some dealers, most of their business and most of the reason that they came to the show concludes at the end of setup, is one of the reasons why some people leave early because there's no point for their purpose to be there and then maybe to justify the extra cost.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. I mean, something to note, I've kind of been of a mixed opinion about staying to the very end of a show. I do run a retail business. On a couple of occasions, the very final day of a show has been fruitful. And this last occasion, for example, at the pan show, we did absolutely no business that last day.
Tony Gryckiewicz:We had a very good setup day, very good first two days. Fantastic show overall, very strong show, strong numbers in both buying and selling. And then that final day, they're just not absolutely nothing happened. And, you know, the people that were there didn't seem to be really a ton of coin collectors to be just to be completely honest. It was just kind of a it was a Saturday date thing to do, hang out, walk through the coin show and, you know, and then so there was just no point in retrospect and I kinda wish maybe we we cut out late Friday, but you never know.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I mean, there are those people that do come by and they ask how long are you gonna be here to do? And they're thinking and debating about a coin and sometimes it has happened where those folks come back and they they they pull the trigger on that that, you know, vintage ingot or that coin, rare coin that they were eyeing, it's still there. They come back with a counteroffer or something like that in the last day and and we, you know, get a deal done. But those last days of shows, yeah, it can be a little bit demoralizing if you show up like, you know, on a Saturday and you're like, all right, I hear, I'm here for the coin show. Let me let me get out, get out there and get, know, start building my collection.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Because I think in Baltimore, I wanna say something like half the room is probably empty. Right?
Greg Allen:And that's often at at at many, many shows. Yeah. The people leave. I typically stick around. I try to because it's a way to support the show.
Greg Allen:No leaving early doesn't support it. And I know as a, you know, helping organize the Great American Coins and Collectibles show, you know, it's very important to support shows. So I try to stay and support the shows even in most cases I'm losing money. I mean, yeah, you can have that big deal come in on the last day or sale, but having done this for over twenty years, it usually doesn't happen. And there's been many, many, many shows where I'm there and nothing happens that that day.
Greg Allen:But again, I I do it in part to help support the shows.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. I mean, yeah, the number of the people that that come out to shows specifically, you know, a lot of people that come out to the to move inventory as you labeled here.
Tony Gryckiewicz:In my experience, what I've noticed is a lot of them have brick and mortar locations. They've done a ton of buying through the course of the month or maybe a couple months leading up to that larger show from those brick and mortar locations. And they bring all of that to the show basically to wholesale out a large volume of it to other dealers just to basically get some liquidity and to to to cash out of of a lot of that stuff. I I don't know. That's that seems to be one of the the the kind of approaches or strategies there.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So during the actual show, wow, you have a real huge breakdown here. Think
Greg Allen:you've talked
Tony Gryckiewicz:about some of this already.
Greg Allen:We yeah. We did. I it it's sort of a list there. There's a lot going on when the show opens to the public. All these things, retail, wholesale, the general public, bullying specialists, part time.
Greg Allen:I mean, everybody's running around doing things, you know, at the show. And with some of the times with the show, when show grading, some of the graders, you know, they'll take a break or they're done and, you know, they'll go around and talk to some of the dealers at shows. Most of them I don't really see, but occasionally, I'll see some of the graders stop by the show and some even though I do show grading, I've run-in dealers, I mean graders, just come to a show. And then you also have some media, some of the publications, have the reporters there and they'll come around and talk to the dealers, How's your show going? And they'll write an article and some people see their names in print.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Gotcha. Or there's people that show up to try to fence a a stolen coin.
Greg Allen:Oh, yeah. Tony had that. Yeah. There's a lot that a lot of things that go on at the shows.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, you can check out there's articles everywhere from the from some of the newspapers out in Chicago to even the gray sheet, I think, website had a whole article about what we're talking about on the 1709 Avis Kudos. But anyway, moving on from there.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So show grades. So yeah, what'd you want to mention here?
Greg Allen:Yeah. So as I mentioned earlier, there are some people, this is a very important part of why they come to the shows and a lot of are the upgraders and it's actually pretty sophisticated all their different techniques whether they're real or perceived of why they get good better grades. I will say having you again do a lot of grading. I don't get better grades. Some of these people get better grades of who they are, but there are a myriad of little things, some big things, but mostly tiny, tiny things that if you do or don't do them, can statistically increase your chances of getting the better grades because there's certain, and this is a whole other And different topic of some of it I've learned, some of it I've heard, some of it I've learned from graders, verified it with multiple graders.
Greg Allen:Some say some things aren't really the case, but I will say, one thing is that it helps if you want to grade stuff to deal with somebody that knows this process and knows a lot these things and even if you pay them to help you because it's statistically can help. There's just certain things you do. So one of the things that I don't think is a good idea to do, if you have some problem coins, know our problem coins, I would not put that in the same order with some good coins. I would separate those things out. In fact, sometimes when I put in problem coins, just want to authenticate it.
Greg Allen:There's not a box that say I know this is a problem just authenticate it. I want to write that on the form because it's so obvious. I don't want them to think, gee, why they send this in? Small packages is something so a lot of the the upgraders they may have 50 coins. They don't send in one package of 50 coins.
Greg Allen:They will split that up in one coin, two coins, five coins, when they're doing the show grades. There's all kinds of reasons why they do that, but generally putting them all in together is generally not such a great idea is from what I've heard. Now if you were to, I know people that have a registry set, if you were looking to do your registry set at once, that would be something you might submit because it's all the same kind of coin but the different dates, submit that all at once. If you're doing bulk grading, generally they like about, you know, if you said 500 coins to bulk grade, you break that up in multiple orders. I mean, 500, sometimes internally, some of them, they'll break that up themselves.
Greg Allen:Is too many coins one order. Person said, yeah, they wanna feel a sense of satisfaction not work like two hours or whatever it is on one little package. They wanna move on. So generally when I send things in, don't send in more about 120, 100 to 50 coins per bulk order.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Wow.
Greg Allen:Because there's a whole host of things that people can talk about with the grading.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Gotcha. I usually submit like 10 points at a time or less than that because that's all I have to submit. Moving on to the auction, so what was this kind of a breakdown here of what's going on at the auction?
Greg Allen:Yeah, so things have sort of changed with the whole auction thing, particularly after COVID. So it's been lot viewing is something that's been going on at shows for decades and it still goes The auction house will bring everything in the auction and they'll have a special room and you can go look at your coins. Some people as we talked about earlier will hire somebody to go look at those coins for them and then also maybe use them to bid because there are techniques for bidding that some people think gives you an advantage or disadvantage. You know, you don't have to do certain things or not do certain things. So they use a specialist.
Greg Allen:And then special lighting as we talked about for the lot viewing. Now this bidding, you know, they used to do live auctions at night at the shows, but pretty pretty much after COVID that all ended. So you don't really have live auctions at the shows so much anymore. So this bitter representation in, it doesn't really happen all that much anymore. And it was funny decades ago, I remember going to some of the auctions in the '90s, remember going to the Boys Town sale that Superior had, and that was where I got to hold the King of Siam set.
Greg Allen:It was a very rare set, including the $18.00 $4 sold for almost 4,000,000 the next day. There's all these people at the Beverly Hills, I believe it a hotel there at the auction. Typically you have a lot of people in the auctions. As time went on, before the auction sort of again, don't have much. So there would be very few people in the room because so many people went to internet type bidding.
Greg Allen:In fact, I would be with some people who'd be doing reps for people and they'd say, oh, I got to go because this one isn't, know, this particular coin, this one I got to go do in person, but the other ones they would just do on the internet with their strategies because there really wasn't very many people in the room anymore. And then I think they still, I don't, they still do the phone. Used to do, if they did the live auction, they'd have people actually at the phones, they'd call things in. In addition to people pre sending, mailing their bids in. But again, now at the shows, it's pretty much just the lot viewing.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. I remember, I mean, of my favorite memories was when I first getting into this whole thing and attending an auction in Las Vegas. This was like a legend auction, think it was. And this was basically right during COVID. I was living in Phoenix, Arizona.
Tony Gryckiewicz:We drove up to the Las Vegas to the PCGS show or whatever the show was that was happening up there, but there was a live auction with with Legend Auction. And I remember bidding on a coin and and it was the 78 cc toner that I monster toner that I ended up winning in that auction and the feeling of being in the auction room and holding up my paddle and no one else, know, ends up bidding and you know, gavel and all of that and I win the coin. It was such a cool feeling. I mean, I kind of, you know, wish that we still kind of did that. I understand that of course online auctions and the video auctions are a lot more efficient, especially for the auction houses.
Tony Gryckiewicz:I will I will say when you don't have all these folks kind of in the bowling in a room together, I think sometimes I think some of these video auctions can run through coins a little bit too quickly in my estimation. I don't know, it's a whole separate topic, but okay. Alright. So moving on to then the public show hours.
Greg Allen:Yeah.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. Yep.
Greg Allen:Well, we sort of covered this already there. You know, it's really a collectors investors in the general public, and it really as the show goes on, this is really what you have because a lot, you know, many of the dealers that would just be walking around at the left. So few that still walk around, but, you know, as the show goes further and further, it dwindles down to just the general public. The last day.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. So we got we're talking about the dinners now. The dinners. I know that the dinners at with these shows is one of my favorite things. We typically go to very nice restaurants.
Tony Gryckiewicz:It's pretty famous or well known that a lot of dealers go out to large steak houses and so forth. What you want to mention here about the dinners at the shows?
Greg Allen:So before I started setting up as a dealer, I went to some of the major shows as a collector and would go out to dinner with other collectors and then be invited by certain dealers to go to dinner. That was a lot of it. Really added the enjoyment of the show. Then as I started setting up at these shows, go to dinner often with more dealers and some collectors and meet, you know, just beat all these people in some cases people had read about for decades and here I'm out, you know, to dinner with them and you know, that just really added to the excitement in front of the show and then sometimes wasn't planned but we'd end up doing deals at the show because I'd meet new dealer. It's on where we start talking and you know find out one of us has something the other one wants.
Greg Allen:That's one type of dinner just sort of get a group and go out. Some organizations have planned dinners. Example, the pan show that Tony and I were just at they have a dinner that you sign up for at a wonderful place and I usually go to the pan show dinner. The ANA has a dinner for their annual World Fair money which is in August this year it's in Pittsburgh and they have a dinner Friday night you can sign up for. So these are formal ones that organizations set up.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. So talking about leaving early, leaving early for the show, a lot of dealers leave early. We talked to we touched on this earlier, We talked a little bit about why why that is. Right?
Greg Allen:Yeah. It gets back to, again, not everybody there is for the same reason and for some dealers, the whole reason that they were there is concluded. And so there's really no reason to stick around. Now, in some cases, people that come at the end think, Oh, I missed that person. Well, yes, some cases they were dealing with the public also but in other cases you may never really have had a realistic chance to deal with them because they were just there to deal with dealers.
Greg Allen:So not everybody that leaves early is somebody that you ever would have been dealing with anyway. Yeah. But it is kind of a bad look when a lot of tables are empty and that's as I pointed out earlier, one of the reasons if I can, I try to stick around to support the shows? But some of these people, I mean, the show might start on Wednesday, well they've got in on Sunday or Monday and so they've already been working multiple days before the show starts. Some have to get back to their shops, some have to get back to their family for the weekends.
Greg Allen:Sometimes there's flight issues of when you can get in and out of certain cities. There's a whole host of reasons why people aren't there, and it's unfortunate. But what happens is somebody says, well, then just don't have the Saturday show. Well, you go back in history, some of these shows, they ended on Sunday and Sunday everybody, you know, everybody left on Saturday. And then, we'll get rid of Sunday.
Greg Allen:Well, now Saturday becomes a new Sunday.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Sure. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. And you know, I mean, you just gotta think about it realistically folks, especially if dealers are flying in, if they stay to the very end of the show, which most of the time is between 03:00, 04:00, some of them are sleeping 05:00 in the last day, you know, they're gonna get to the airport. I mean, when are they gonna get back to where they're where they're from?
Tony Gryckiewicz:So, I mean, realistically, you know, they're they're they're trying to plan around plan around that. So, but at the same time, you know, there can be a benefit to hanging around towards the end of a show or whatnot. So the perception of bargains near the end, what was your thoughts about this?
Greg Allen:Yeah. So that can vary. So if you come to my table, it's the same price when it started generally and that's the case with some dealers because I have another show next week or the week after or so on. But there's certain people, you know, if they had a bad show and they're trying to, you know, make get some or they just cash strapped, they will sell things cheaper at the end of the show. So not everybody will do that, but it can happen.
Greg Allen:But there are some people that come think everybody's got everything cheaper because this big show just ended. But as I said, the circus packs up and and moves on to the next town in a week or two. So
Tony Gryckiewicz:Yeah. It's true. Yeah. I think that it behooves you to make offers at that point. At the last day of the show, you will see a lot of other dealers that employ the strategy.
Tony Gryckiewicz:They do walk around, they do look at tables in the very last day and they try to get deals done and they make some offers for Coins because exactly that thing that you just mentioned. I mean, there's a lot of dealers who don't want to carry this up back home. At same the time, there's a lot of dealers who are simply packing up in order to move on to the next town over just one week later. So makes a lot of sense, but hey, I mean, has been a very interesting conversation. I do think a lot of folks are going to find it a number of our thoughts kind of interesting on this.
Tony Gryckiewicz:If people wanna get in touch with you, if they got questions for you, what's the best way to reach out?
Greg Allen:So the email is gregallencoinsaol dot com, GREGALLENCOINS@aol.com. That's the best way. And also I have a link in my emails and it lists the shows that we'll be at there. So that's the best way or just see me. You'll look for my name in a program and see me at a show.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Nice. Okay. All right, man. Sounds good. I think that by the time this thing comes out, we will just be getting started at Baltimore.
Tony Gryckiewicz:So you are you playing are you gonna be at the summer Baltimore show?
Greg Allen:I will not. I typically go to Baltimore. I have a I have a conflict, so I won't be there. I will be there in November.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Okay. Alright. Well, we'll see you at the when at I'm I'm assuming you're gonna be at the fun show.
Greg Allen:I will be at the Fun Show. I'll be yeah. There's a number of shows before that. But, for me, this yeah. The Fun Show and I'll be at the ANA Show.
Greg Allen:Those are the larger ones I'll be at. Cool. And then September, the Great American Coin and Collectibles show at Rosemont, Illinois. Be Awesome.
Tony Gryckiewicz:Alright. Well, thanks a lot, Greg. Appreciate you doing this. I'll talk to you talk to you soon.
