February 2024 Torex

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Hi,

I went to TOREX yesterday.  Did anybody else go?

I was saddened to see how dead it was, especially on a Saturday.  There were few visitors and lots of empty tables.  I even witnessed a couple of dealers pack up and leave early.

TOREX feels like it is on life support.  This is sad because I have been attending the show for decades—since it was located at the Primrose Hotel in downtown Toronto.

TOREX is located too far out of the way for a growing number of collectors who do not (or can no longer) drive a car.  In its current location by the airport, TOREX is not close to the TTC subway line and many people are not willing to spend hours travelling by bus to get to the venue.

With the lack of dealers and merchandise at this latest edition of TOREX, it is in my opinion not worth the price of admission.  Hopefully, the organizers of TOREX are seeing the writing on the wall and will try to reinvigorate the show by at least moving to a venue that is on one of Toronto’s subway lines.  I would happily pay a higher admission fee if the show was more conveniently located.

Just my 2 cents…feel free to chime in.

Dean

TOREX is located too far out of the way for a growing number of collectors who do not (or can no longer) drive a car.  In its current location by the airport, TOREX is not close to the TTC subway line and many people are not willing to spend hours travelling by bus to get to the venue.

That's me: I wouldn't drive out there to pay for parking & then to pay to go into see dealers wanting to sell you overpriced coins (& if you're lucky) banknotes.  When I attended TO shows 20 years ago you could take the GO train into TO downtown (& walk) but that's no longer an option. There were only a few dealers who carried banknotes.

I can't imagine what the bus route would involve so I haven't even considered attending. Back then I could haggle re: the sales tax (but not any more).  When I attend a show its usually to meet some fellow collectors (&/or buy supplies) since buying notes online is so much cheaper. I think that's essentially killing shows b/c they're mostly just about the bourse (& selling collectors coins/notes) which can be done so much cheaper online. They lack an education element like the RCNA workshops.

When I went to Torex 20 years ago there were the odd legendary paper dealer like Don Olmstead. These guys were friendly & would talk shop & teach us a few things (or 2).   These days there's just coin dealers (& all the non-circulating coins, junk tokens, etc) who don't know how to grade a banknote if their life depended on it & have zero interest in what I'm interested in. Fortunately, there are more women involved but I think the old guard still dominate things (at their peril).

Hi,
It's the same thing at MTL.they bring a few notes and when you ask for bird series notes they never had only older notes.What I do at every show at Mtl,one week before I call all dealears I know they came at the show and ask them if they want to bring notes I'm looking for.Not all but few of them accept to bring more notes.Today at the show I looked over 3000x1$ 1973 to take a look on the small ''B'' variety and 2000x2$ 1986 for the variety of large ''B''.In the 1$ I found nothing but in 2$ I found many things and I'll show my discovery next days on this website.I also found thing for Dean.
Claude

That's interesting Claude. Thanks for your input.  It reminded me of another problem I had with our shows in the GTA.

Only Don Olmstead had Scenes of Canada, Birds & Journey notes for sale. A few other had a few Scenes of Canada but rarely any Birds or Journey series notes (esp the missing prefixes that we were all interested in).  Me (& my buddies) who went to these shows kept asking the other dealers (the few who dealt banknotes) to add more of the recent series & they all looked at us like we were morons. 

Finally, I asked Don "why do the other dealers ignore the more recent series?"
He told me, "they cater to US collectors who are only interested in the Sweetheart series."
"The Sweetheart series?" I asked.
"Yeah, the first three Bank of Canada series: 1935, 37 & 54". (He elaborated that they were interested in the Modified but far more interested in the Devil Face series too).
He then told me that the book values (we saw in Charlton) were more driven by US collectors (World demand) rather than a few Canadian collectors. It all made sense but was infuriating at the time.