Maryland deserves our thanks

I take my hat off to the State of Maryland. It is not everyday a story comes to my attention where a state legislature rallies to the needs of the coin dealer community, but just such a story came to my attention yesterday.

There is a trader licensing law that kicks in if dealers attend more than three shows each year in the state. Ordinarily, nobody in numismatics would pay attention to its provisions, but because the Baltimore show is now three times each year and the American Numismatic Association World’s Fair of Money is slated for Baltimore in July, provisions of this law could have kicked in and created headaches for the nation’s coin dealers.

Well, what happened was the owners of the Baltimore show, Whitman, teamed up with the ANA and the Industry Council for Tangible Assets to lobby the Maryland legislature about the issue.

And in a legislative wink of an eye (not four or five years) Maryland modified the law to allow coin dealers the freedom to attend the four shows without triggering the provisions of the licensing law and without Maryland seeming to massively rewrite the law at the behest of a special interest.

It is a win-win situation all the way around. This outcome gives us all another reason to love to go to Baltimore for a numismatic convention.

Thanks, Maryland.

Whitman, ANA and ICTA deserve our praise as well.