Charmy’s 2019 CHICAGO ANA WORLD’S FAIR OF MONEY SHOW REPORT w/Tons of Pics!

August 20, 2019January 24, 2020 Charmy Harker

I always look forward to the ANA’s World’s Fair of Money show as there are a lot of events and activities in addiiton to the buying and selling of coins. I had several business and club meetings, a presentation, and some cocktail receptions to attend, so I was doing preparation for this show a few weeks before I left. As is typical for the WFM show, I knew it was going to be a very busy week!

I was very pleased to see that the popular CBS Sunday Morning show even had the WFM show on their upcoming week’s calendar!

I left OC on Sunday afternoon, with lots of enthusiasm for the week ahead and, about four hours later we were landing in Chicago.

I stayed at the Hyatt which has a beautiful lobby and interior, however, the rooms are a bit dated and the bathrooms are very small. It does have a walkway from the hotel to the convention center, but boy oh boy is it long and sort of like a mouse maze! However, it is covered and air conditioned!

The Hyatt happened to be having a Beatles festival that weekend and Sunday night was their last event. Since Rick Snow is a big Beatles fan, he and Kenny met me at the hotel for the tribute concert being held that evening by a band called Liverpool. They were very good and played songs from the Abbey Road album.

Monday morning I headed over to the convention center for the PNG preshow where I found quite a few Pretty Pennies for my inventory. This is a pic of most of the coins I bought throughout the show, though several pieces sold before I took the pic.

I even found a couple of very unusual and cool pieces, particularly this 1942 plastic pattern cent!

And this neat Large Cent blank planchet

I also found some very cool errors for my personal collection!

(Scratch is on the holder, not the coin)

And I brought these new pocket mirrors that I recently bought for Todd to photograph

The convention center is pretty lit up at night

Monday night was the PNG banquet held at Gibson’s. It’s always a very nice enjoyable event, especially since it starts out with a hosted cocktail reception. It provides a great opportunity for me to catch up with many of my dealer friends.

Me and Liz Coggan

Neil Ulrich and Rick Snow

Me and Jennifer Ackerman/ANA

New ANA President Steve Ellsworth

New ANA Governor Lynn Garrett and her husband past ANA President Jeff Garrett

Foreign coin dealers Dan and Conner of Daniel Frank Sedwick auctions

Me and Neil

Others at the reception

During the banquet, the PNG honored Paul Nugget with the PNG 2019 Abe Kosoff Founders Award “for his steadfast dedication to the entire numismatic community and significant contributions to the Guild and the numismatic fraternity in general.”

Q. David Bowers, a former PNG President, received the PNG 2019 Significant Contribution Award

The PNG’s ACTF Alan Kreuzer Memorial Award “for combatting numismatic-related fraud and thievery” was presented to Jack Young by Beth Deisher of the Anti-Counterfeiting Educational Foundation and PNG Executive Director Robert Brueggeman.

Our table included past ANA President Gary Adkins and his wife, as well as past ANA President Jeff Garrett and new ANA President Steve Ellsworth

Tuesday morning at 8am was set up for the dealers. I arrived a little after 8 so most of the dealers had already entered the bourse floor and the lobby was sparse. But as I was coming down the escalator you could see the ANA was busy setting up the lobby for the opening ceremony later that day.

The bourse floor was huge and sort of L shaped. This was taken from near the furthest back corner of the room during set up.

After I set up my booth, I went over to the ANA Money Museum to check out their displays, in particular, I wanted to see what the Louis Werner’s Capped Cents display looked like since I lent them some of my pieces for the display. As I mentioned before, I also was giving a talk on the Capped Cents later that week at our Fly-In Club meeting.

The ANA Money Museum always has some fantastic displays, and this time didn’t disappoint! The 1942 pattern cent is amazing, and I always love seeing the 1943 copper cent display!

Once the public was let in, I can tell you that I got slammed – and it was great! I had one of the busiest days at a show that I’ve ever had, and it lasted most of the afternoon.

Here are some of the folks who stopped by to say hi

Dennis Forgue brought me several pieces of penny exonumia for my collection!

Michael Maretta

Rod Gillis, ANA Education Director

Finally about 4pm things started to slow down, so I finally opened up the bottle of Rumbauer that I had brought.

My neighbor, Greg Krill, who has his own winery, Pellet Estate, surprisingly needed to borrow my wine opener and graciously gave me a cup of his delicious wine as well.

As I mentioned, Tuesday was super busy and I was thrilled with the amount of collectors who were actively seeking pieces for their collections. After the show was over, we stopped at the Five Roses Pub for dinner and drinks before we headed over to the Rivers Casino.

That’s my nice little stack of chips to the right! Between this Texas Hold-Um Bonus game and the 2 cent Buffalo Stampede slots, I ended up $600 ahead for the night!

Wednesday morning was the only morning I could sleep in a little as I had 7:30 am meetings the rest of the week. So I took my time, ordered breakfast in my room, then headed over to the show around 9 am. I took that long walkway which, with all its turns back and forth, I estimate to be almost a mile to the convention center – or at least it felt that way! I later learned that if I just went outside and walked to the convention center down the street and around the corner, it was at least half the distance!

Inside the door of the bourse was this handy sign directing collectors to the specific areas on the bourse

And here I am all ready for another busy day at the show!

My table happened to be right across from David Hall’s table. So we took a photo together, along with this rare, fantastic, and gorgeous 1886 $20 gold proof coin he just happened to have!

My dear friend Ron Guth stopped by!

More folks stopped by too – this is Mark/DollarAfterDollar

And this is Josh

These are a couple beautiful encasements that I was asked to examine because the owner thought the 1911 might be a Matte Proof Lincoln. The 1911 was not only beautifully toned, it was very sharp and looked like it could be a Matte Proof. However, after careful examination and showing it to a couple other copper experts, it didn’t have the proper diagnostics and we determined it was just a very well struck business strike. I was still very interested in purchasing both pieces since they were in pristine condition and would fit nicely in my encasement collection. However, the seller wanted quite a bit of money for the pair and even though I would have loved to haved them, the price was just too high for what I thought they were worth, even taking into consideration the premium for their condition and eye appeal. I later found out that the delaer did get his asking price but I suspect the new owner bought them thinking the 1911 was a Matte Proof or I doubt he would have paid that much. You win some, you lose some!

I was very pleased that Wednesday was again very busy with lots of traffic and sales. After the show ended on Wednesday, a large group of us (mostly Copper Weenies including Greg Hannigan, Chris McCawley, Rick Snow and Dino Koromvokis!) went to Carlucci’s for dinner. They weren’t too far away, and the food was fantastic!