MARCH 27TH – 29TH  2018 – GAITHERSBURG COIN EXCHANGE – MD

A month after visiting coin Heaven in Tucson after finishing up my day job of selling lights to hotels, I was in a familiar part of the country – Gaithersburg, MD home to Gaithersburg Coin Exchange and longtime owner proprietor Mark Watts. As my partner and I are still in the gathering stage of myth busting experiment, it was time to continue our search for undisturbed groups of Rattler Morgan dollars – and who better to possibly have them than a dealer who has been in the business for over 45 years. We have decided that we would like to gather a group of 100 coins to launch us into the next phase. Now Mark is a busy man and my partner had schooled me to be patient and direct. So visit number 1 happened on a Tuesday, I stopped by late morning, only to have missed Mark by 10 minutes and was told that he would be out for a half hour to an hour. So off to lunch I went and conducted more lighting business. I returned to the shop around 3:30 – 3:45 pm and Mark was there – hooray, hurdle number 1 accomplished – had a great conversation with Mark during which He thought that he may have more than 100 rattler Morgan’s but told me that I would have to come back tomorrow morning to give him time to pull them out.

Jackpot I thought, now the excitement, anxiety, and money conversations with Armen. Needless to say, it was very hard to get to sleep that night. But the next day a little past the arranged call time, I dialed up the shop and they told me that Mark had pulled some coins and that I could come by in an hour or so. Now my local rep and I had a 2:00 meeting North of the shop, so we stopped by a little after noon. Mark and his team were able to find approximately 26 coins, mostly rattlers, with our first small batch of first generation NGC graded Morgan’s. So a let down from 100 or more that we  thought he might have, but a good haul none-the-less. Hooray indeed, another huge group. He gave some basic pricing directions to his team. Again, since the truest way to go about our scientific experiment is not to cherry pick, but to just purchase the coins and move on. When they arrived at a number, we quickly agreed that I would buy them all, and His team wrote up the invoice.

Since Mark could not remember Armen and we could not come up with acceptable common industry references we agreed to write him a check and that He could hold the coins until the check cleared and then mail the coins back out to us in California – No Rush and we wanted to build up the trust to be able to call them and order more coins later, even sight unseen if we had too. So off I went with no coins in hand. One more night in the DC area selling lights. Next morning before lunch east coast time,I received a text from my partner that the check had already cleared.  So I made another call to the shop (Thursday) asking them to check to see if the check had cleared on their end, which they confirmed and I asked if I could just come by and pick the coins up by the end of the day.

I can’t stress enough how important and fun it is to visit your local coin dealers as often as you can to encourage and support them to be on the look-out for items that you are most interested in. Anyone can scour the internet, but these folks have coins and collectibles brought to them all throughout the year, as well as trading with other dealers. Each visit is like a treasure hunt. I always learn from each visit and Mark is a true treasure trove of coin stories including a recent visit from the higher ups at Heritage whom he gave a rare visit through the vault too that culminated in many Numismatic rarities being consigned to an upcoming auction. Very cool, so half hour before closing time, I made it back their way and picked up all 26 coins – a very nice Easter gift to carry home to my partner.

Now the reason Gaithersburg is a familiar part of the world for me is not just because Marriott, Hilton and Choice hotels all have their headquarters here – but I actually have family here on both my side and my wife’s side – so time to celebrate with my in-laws. What better place to take a five year old nephew too than Benihana in Bethesda.

After all, when you have an opportunity to enjoy a flaming onion volcano and flying shrimp with a first time visitor – You Do It! Never- Ever – let life pass you by!