California is the place I oughtta be

This is my last day in the office as I prepare to go to the American Numismatic Association World’s Fair of Money in Anaheim, Calif.

As you might expect, I expect the day to get hectic as I need to tie up loose ends.

If you are planning on attending, you are probably in the same boat I am.

If you are going to the Professional Numismatists Guild-ANA pre-show event, you are probably already in motion to be ready for tomorrow’s opening.

This is the one week of the year where one event seems to exert its gravitational pull on just about every active person or firm in organized numismatics.

The convention is the place to be.

To be sure, there are other important shows, but this one is just a little bit more so.

Professionals will look to results as their signal, positive or negative, for business in the coming weeks.

Collectors will be looking toward having a pure hobby experience that offers chances to see old friends, listen to educational presentations and see their favorite dealers face to face.

If their families are along, they will make a run to Disneyland as well.

As I wrote earlier this week, the Professional Coin Grading Service is celebrating 30 years in business. It has added further publicity inducing promotional activity.

It now offers $10,000 to anyone who will give the firm the chance to view and grade some super rarities, both unknown and known, in collector hands. For the unknown, the list of coins that will earn this bounty is four pieces, the 1964-D silver dollar, an 1873-S Seated Liberty dollar, an 1849 Templeton Reid gold $25 and an 1841-O gold $5.

The bounty also applies to a well-known rarity, the 1894-S dime, where 13 are known of the 24 minted, leaving a possible 11 more to surface someday.

Will this offer flush a rarity into the public eye? There is no telling.

Such an offer worked in 2003 when the missing fifth 1913 Liberty Head nickel was brought to the ANA convention in Baltimore. I was there. What an experience that was.

Such an outcome in Anaheim related to these other rarities is unlikely but not impossible.

Think of the headlines. I do.

But in my race to get my tasks finished today, I think more of all of the people I hope to meet in both planned and unplanned encounters that this national show makes possible.

I hope you will be one of the people I see there.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper has twice won the Numismatic Literary Guild Award for Best Blog and is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."

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