The big week finally arrived - the American Numismatic Association summer convention, a.k.a the World's Fair of Money®. A little game I play is to see who's the first old numismatic friend I encounter at the show. Often this happens when checking into my hotel, or even before leaving the airport. This year it took until I entered the bourse floor where my good old friend Pat McBride from Pittsburgh was set up in costume as Ben Franklin. I was in costume as a Taylor Swift concertgoer.

A close second was Brett Irick, and Pat and I chatted with him.

The bourse floor was huge, packed, busy and loud. Lots of business taking place.

I made a beeline to the Numismatic Bibliomania Society table, where I found Jeff Dickerson hard at work creating book boxes, accompanied by President Len Augsburger and past President Tom Harrison. I gave Len a package containing a couple new numismatic ephemera acquisitions for digitization at the Newman Portal.

Charlie Davis
Nearby were the tables of literature dealer Charlie Davis and Kolbe & Fanning. Here are some photos of Charlie's table.

At my request Charlie kindly gave me a closer look at two books with embossed and colored plates.

John Dannreuther
I ran into JD and he showed me and Fred Holabird bound page proofs of his upcoming volume on proof silver coinage.

JD explained that Mint records show that three different obverse dies were used for this date. Proving that and writing up this entry took a full two days. This is why numismatic books are worth every penny one pays.

Fred Holabird
Fred Holabird was sharing a table with Jeff Shevlin, where I also found my good friend Dave Schenkman. On display were selected lots from Fred's upcoming sale. More on these next week - some great long-off-the-market material.

I'll need to stop there for this week, but stay tuned for more in the next issue.