My Notes from the Opening Day of the 2024 Florida United Numismatists Convention Coin Show in Florida

The Florida United Numismatists (FUN) Convention in Florida is a big deal for the numismatic hobby and certainly for me. My role as a journalist and editor mostly keeps me at my computer, so I don’t get to too many coin shows. But most FUN Shows are held within two or three hours of my homebase, so I make sure I get to those events when they’re held in close-enough proximity to where I am. Most times I’ve attended the FUN Convention in recent years, it’s been on a Friday or Saturday – rarely have I been to a FUN Convention on a Thursday, which is the opening day for the event and the first day I went.

I arrived a little after 1 p.m., a few hours after the doors formally opened to the public. Two members of the convention board told me the opening saw one of the largest, if not the largest, turnouts in the show’s 69-year history. The steady action on the floor was proof in the pudding. It’s not too often I have to slope sideways while walking along a coin show bourse floor aisle between booths. But the floor was hopping during the early afternoon.

I wouldn’t know exactly how many convention goers there were, but just by the looks of it I’d say there were easily a couple thousand attendees there, not even counting the dealers – and there were well more than 600 booths, each mostly staffed by two, three, or more dealers and others.

The PCGS booth was certainly one of the largest presences on the bourse floor, taking up a long stretch of wall along one side of the hall. Everyone there was busy taking submissions, handling onsite grading, and managing other business. There was onsite grading going on, too. Droves were lined up at the PCGS booth earlier in the afternoon, presumably many of them being dealers and attendees getting their coins graded at the show to take advantage of the expedient service while saving on shipping costs to boot.

I wasn’t there to buy or sell. I was there to take in the action and interview dealers. And the overwhelming majority of folks I spoke with said they had seen many transactions and were pleased with how opening day of the 2024 FUN Convention was unfolding.

As I write this the day after my attendance, the show continues. There are no final numbers to give yet on attendance or other convention metrics. But my anecdotal summation of the show based on what I witnessed on opening day is that the year is kicking off on a positive note. I’m sure we’ll be hearing more in the coming days about how the show turned out both for individual dealers and the market as a whole. But opening day at this bellwether event seems to portend good things for the coin market in 2024.