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Torex Show continued ... "It depends on the time spent doing it," she said. "It's the finicky little things you have to do." (She recently saw an origami gun on eBay for $7.) The show, a 'high-energy event, returns to the Hyatt Regency June 29 and 30 and this autumn on October 26 and 27. For more information, contact Brian Smith at [email protected].

The show's 40 dealers occupied tables in a second-floor hall carpeted appropriately with large, red and black, coin-like rings swirling dizzyingly across the surface, with real coins, paper money, and jewellery housed in display cases lying flat on dealers' tables. A security guard regularly patrolled the aisles. As at the Toronto Postcard Club Show, dealers also provided chairs for clients, mostly men - one father brought along his two bored-looking teenage sons - to flip comfortably through paper money. In the opening hour, the hall rattled with raucous exchange of comments and new money for old money. One collector gladly counted out Sroo-dollar bills to one lucky dealer. A Newmarket, Ontario woman named Karen (surname understandably withheld), who collects coins from treasure ships because her inspiring father was a treasure hunter for years, sought Spanish gold and silver doubloons. She shopped separately from her husband Don, who collects Chinese panda coins. Also in the room was collector Derek (surname also withheld), a Chinese Canadian, Toronto, who collects only Canadian and Newfoundland coins. 'Tm patriotic," he explained. After ten years, he has amassed 100 coins. But quantity should never usurp quality. "Paper money is priced on condition," said Georgetown, Ontario dealer Gary Fedora. "The better the condition, the higher the value." For example, Fedora offered a 1935 Bank of Toronto $20 bill with train image in fair-good condition for $600. ''The book lists it as $3,000. In mint condition it could fetch $6,000." Fedora also offered a 1929 Bank of Toronto note for $450 and a rarer 1909 Dominion Bank note for $3,500. Also popular with collectors to his booth are 1935 $20 bills with portraits of the young Queen Elizabeth IT when she was only nine years old and just a Princess. "They want to see her picture," Fedora said. He asks up to $2,500 for such a bill. "They sell really well." Calgary, Alberta dealer Robert Kokotailo also offered high-end coins and numismatic antiquities like the classic owl-image coin, circa 600 BC, ''when coins came into being somewhere around there." It was $3,500. But his horse-head coin, smaller even than a shirt button and costing $1,295, came with a cautionary tale for numismatists: recently acquired, the coin fell to the floor and was buried within the pile of Kokotailo's brown carpet. He took two hours to find it next to his carpet sweeper. Whew! Kokotailo also offered paper money. One client flipped quickly through a roll of his bills like they were postcards. Bella Chang Fong, wife of Toronto dealer Ian Marshall, would have found a use for them. Trained in bookbinding and origami (the Japanese art of folding paper into recognizable shapes), Fong spent time before the show opened creating, from mostly old American bills, meticulously detailed shirts with ties of various sizes and priced accordingly. Her larger ones were $30 each.

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THE UPPER CANADIAN

ANTIQUE

SHOWCASE

The show's inaugural poster from 1962, showing an admission price of fifty cents, with both a show and auction of coins and stamps.

Bookseller Richard Stockley, LaSalle, Quebec, asked $400 for his Catalogue of the Medals of Scotland, 1884.

Ron Osaduke, Mississauga, Ontario, caters to collectors seeking coins and paper money in the lower price range. His Canadian trade token, 1813, which served as coinage, was $300, and his American silver dollar, 1879, with CC mintmark, $150.

Bella Chang Fong's large origami shirts, mostly from old American dollar bills, sell for $30 each.

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