FUN, sun and coins

After my comment yesterday about moving to Florida to avoid the Wisconsin snow, I had an email from former American Numismatic Association President Gary Lewis this morning.

“Why wait?” he asked.

“The weather is great (it is 60 at 6 a.m.). The coin collector base is strong. None of my coins have frost bite. We would love to have you as a member of the Ft. Myers Coin Club.”

These comments have great appeal as Iola, Wis., sees day two of snow.

The bulk of the snow went north of us, but we are getting just enough to render the roads rather greasy feeling as a snow/slush mix keeps drivers alert.

I hope to get a taste of the Florida life early next year. I plan to attend the Florida United Numismatists convention Jan. 8-11, 2015.

Weather this week is the best advertisement for the FUN show that I can think of.

But I will need better luck than I had for the 2014 show. It was so cold in Wisconsin that when it was time for me to fly down to Florida early this year the plane would not start and my flight was canceled.

There was so much travel disruption at the time in the whole country that I had to cancel the trip altogether.

I will keep my fingers crossed for better luck next time.

If you have never been to a FUN convention, you should plan to go.

The organization will be celebrating its 60th anniversary at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando.

Its many officers and board members wear orange sport coats so that you can see them at quite a distance when you are on the bourse floor or in the lobby area.

They are welcoming. They are helpful. And most importantly, they are numerous.

They have a lot of ground to cover as the convention is a large one of over 600 bourse tables.

But large is to your benefit. If you cannot find what you are looking for on the bourse it is only because exhaustion has set in. The right dealer with the right coin is probably just in the next aisle.

Heritage Auctions will call another blockbuster sale.

Even if you do not travel to Orlando, you can bid online even from frozen Wisconsin. So if you cannot experience the physical environment of FUN, you can still gain numismatic advantage for yourself from the event by enlarging your collection from a distance.

And if family might not be thrilled by another coin show, Walt Disney World is close by, so they will probably be just as excited to go to Orlando as you are.

Check out the FUN details at: http://www.funtopics.com/

I hope to see you there.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper is winner of the 2014 Numismatic Literary Guild Award for Best Blog and is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."