Coin Show 🪙

April 8th I took the day off work to attend the Pacific Northwest Numismatic Association 71st Annual Spring Convention!

^{Image credit: pnna.org}

To translate… that’s a coin show. 😄

The event took place over three days in Tukwila, Washington. Tukwila, one of Seattle’s southern suburbs, is just 30 minutes away from home (with no traffic…). Having recently attended my first ever coin show in Las Vegas, I was excited to discover another show nearby.

I messaged ALL of my close proximity Hive silver stacking friends to see if anyone else could attend!

They could not… 😭

So instead, I convinced one of my best high school friends and his wife to join me on my coin adventure. 😃

^{One coin collector and TWO tag-alongs. Beforehand we stopped for pizza lunch.}

The show had approximately 85 vendors.

^{Looking left from the main entrance.}

^{Looking right from the main entrance.}

It was interesting to compare this coin show to the one in Vegas. The Tukwila show only had three tables with my kind of coins. Which means other stackers I know probably would have loved the place. 🤣😂 Many of the coins for sale were slabbed. If they weren’t slabbed they seemed to be circulated foreign coins. There were a couple of tables of ancient coins, which was interesting. Most of the displays though were slabbed Morgans (@silverd510’s fave), various US bullion, older circulated US coins, and bank notes from around the world.

There were ZERO weird and random bars or rounds.

^{Sorry @fat-elvis. 🥲}

However, there was an ENTIRE TABLE of Disney Dollars! 😍

I was really interested in these for two reasons:

I LOVE Disney.
I have TWO first issue 1987 Disney dollars.

^{Mine are like this one.}

Despite slim pickings for silver matching my taste, I did come home with a few items. 😃

1 - New Hampshire Goldback

^{1/1000th oz of .9999 pure gold. “Produced with thin layers of 24-karat gold, Goldbacks are more than just gold notes, but also enjoy status as a voluntary form of local currency. In the case of the New Hampshire Goldbacks, the notes are acceptable voluntary currency within the Granite State.” Source}

2. 2022 Perth Mint Koala

^{Each year Australia’s Perth Mint releases a coin to celebrate the country’s iconic Koala. This release is the 16th in the series. The koala coins are the first I began collecting, so despite not being a huge fan of this year’s design (he looks hung over), I still wanted to add this piece to my growing collection. The coin is 1 Troy oz of .9999 pure silver.}

The next three coins are from the Solomon Islands Pirate Queen series!

^{All three seem very @kerrislravenhill style! 😉 🏴‍☠️ 👑}

Each of the following coins was minted at Canberra’s Royal Australian Mint and is legal tender in the Solomon Islands. The coins are 1 Troy oz of .999 pure silver and have a mintage of just 10,000 pieces. The series itself is limited to just the three coins shown here.

3. Pirate Queen Anne Bonny (First in the series.)

^{“Anne Bonny emigrated to the United States in the early 1700’s. Here she met and married the sailor John Bonny. Through him she gained her first insights into piracy and was deeply fascinated by the new world that revealed itself to her. Eventually she met the pirate John Rackham and left John Bonny to make the seas unsafe together with Rackham. In 1720, their pirate crew was ambushed and overpowered. Rackham was executed, whereas Anne Bonny was imprisoned due to an alleged pregnancy. Anne Bonny’s final date remains uncertain to this day.” Paraphrased from:Source}

4. Pirate Queen Ching Shih (Second in the series.)

^{“Ching Shih was born in 1775 in a poverty-ridden society in Guangdong Province, China. To supplement her family's income, she worked as a prostitute from an early age before marrying the pirate Zheng Yi and building a strong fleet of some 1,200 ships to sail the world's oceans. A considerable 80,000 men were under her command.” Paraphrased from: Source}

5. Pirate Queen Mary Read (Third/Final in the series.)

^{“Mary Read was born illegitimate in the late 1600’s. Her widowed mother dressed Mary as a boy to replace her deceased firstborn. Since the benefits of living as a man did not escape Mary, she continued to dress up and call herself "Mark." In this way, she first served in the British military and then signed on with a merchant ship that was captured by pirates en route to the Caribbean, whom she voluntarily followed. In 1720 she met Anne Bonny and John Rackham. Numerous myths have grown up around the adventurous love story between the two women that resulted from this encounter. In 1720, the pirate crew was ambushed and overpowered. Rackham was executed. Like Anne Bonny, Mary Read was imprisoned due to an alleged pregnancy, and shortly thereafter died of a fever.” Paraphrased from: Source}

I feel good about the price I paid on all five purchases. So, the trip to Tukwila was worth the drive and the day off work! Plus, it was fun to include long time friends in my newer hobby.