I had my first published article on CoinWeek! Below is a short recap of a road trip I took in late 2023, during which I visited various coin shops across the southwest United States.

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In late December 2023, I found myself presented with a rare opportunity.

I was in California to pick up a car I needed to drive back home to Colorado. Initially, I was planning to drive straight back, but then it hit me: I could drop by a few coin shops on the way back…

I could sense my wife rolling her eyes as she saw me Googling all the coin shops on the way. What was initially a handful of shops was the road trip of a lifetime.

As a collector specializing in researching and collecting Dansco coin albums, I aimed to find as many excellent Dansco products as possible. Along the way, I wanted to meet other coin collectors and share my Dansco preservation project with them.

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Four states, 1,500 miles, 23 coin shops, a disastrous hotel stay, and 10 days later, I arrived back home with dozens of albums and pages, 15 pounds of world coins, 200 world currency notes, and many more stories.

In addition to all that, I also made some observations after visiting 23 coin shops across California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado:

• 15% of shops were extremely welcoming. I was able to chat with the owners about my Dansco preservation project and they wanted to help out. They often suggested nearby shops to visit.
• 25% of shops were generally friendly and welcoming, but I was seen more as a customer rather than a fellow collector.
• 40% of shops were ambivalent.
• 20% were outright hostile.

Some shops were extremely hostile when I said I was looking for rare Dansco albums. One shop owner looked at the Danscos I was trying to purchase, took them out back to look up sold listings on eBay, then refused to sell half and overcharged the other half.

The best shop owner experience were when I shared my preservation project with the owner and talked about the current state of Dansco and coin collecting. The best interactions happened when shop owners were curious about my knowledge of Dansco products rather than assuming I was just a reseller trying to make a quick buck.

For fun, I ran an experiment. Some days, I dress in casual clothes and others, I dress up a little more. When I was in casual, baggy attire, I received worse service and experienced more hostility. When I was better dressed, I received significantly better service and respect.

As a young person of color, I always wonder if my age/race plays into how shop owners treat me. After this trip, my experience was that age and race didn’t impact me as much – but class and perceived social status played a significant part in how I was treated.

The smallest coin shops tended to have the most personable owners.

Regarding my disastrous hotel stay, let’s just say that it wasn’t fun waking up to teenagers trying to break into cars in a hotel parking lot in Albuquerque when you have a few thousand dollars worth of coin supplies in your vehicle. We ended up checking out of the hotel at 2 am and sleeping on the road.

On our road trip, I saw all types of coin shops, from holes in the walls to boutique jewelry stores. It didn’t matter how fancy the shops were; the key thing was how the owner saw and treated customers.

Some other observations:

• Every shop has complaints about how hard it was to purchase and attain supplies from Dansco.

• Around 90% of shop owners and employees were men; 10% were women.

• Around 30% of shop owners and employees were under the age of 45, and 70% were 45 or older.

• Some shops have old coin supplies like Whitman albums in a free giveaway box!

• Negotiating deals is both an art and critical for coin collectors. Almost every shop was willing to negotiate the final price.

Overall, my coin road trip was a great experience. I got to meet a bunch of collectors and build out my collection. Seeing the range of coin shops around the southwest United States was attractive. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do it again, but this time across the country.

–Justin Hinh, aka Dansco Dude