Sixty editions of the Caveman Coin Show have carried Grants Pass collectors from an era when silver coins still circulated in American pockets to a modern marketplace of certified rarities, online auctions and precious-metal investing. The Southern Oregon tradition returns Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 19 and 20, at the Josephine County Fairgrounds.
Coins, currency, tokens and stamps will cover dealer tables throughout the two-day show, including collectible U.S. and foreign money, historic paper currency, mint errors, specialty pieces and collections assembled over decades. Collectors will buy, sell and trade while visitors can bring coins of their own for examination.
The Caveman Coin Club was drawing collectors to Grants Pass long before the internet transformed the hobby.
A February 1967 newspaper account advertised the club’s Coin-O-Rama at Larry’s Restaurant Banquet Room on Southeast Rogue River Highway. The three-day show included eight competitive exhibit classifications and approximately 25 dealers traveling from locations stretching from Massachusetts to British Columbia. They came to Grants Pass to appraise collections and buy, sell and trade coins.
Records from 1973 again placed the Caveman Coin Club on the Pacific Northwest numismatic calendar. By 2002, the Coin, Currency and Stamp Show had moved to the Josephine County Fairgrounds, where approximately 35 tables were advertised for collectors and dealers.
Much of what crossed those early tables would look familiar this weekend, although the business surrounding the hobby has changed dramatically. Printed price guides once served as an essential reference for collectors. Today’s market operates alongside online auctions, digital catalogs, professional grading services and continuously updated gold and silver prices. Coins that once traveled between collectors primarily through shops, clubs and shows can now change hands between buyers thousands of miles apart within minutes.
The traditional coin show has remained part of that marketplace, giving collectors the opportunity to examine pieces directly rather than through photographs and computer screens.
The 2026 Caveman show will also include specialists from the Combined Organizations of Numismatic Error Collectors of America. The national organization focuses on mint errors and coin varieties and is scheduled to operate an educational table where visitors can bring suspected error and variety coins for examination.
Those pieces can include off-center strikes, clipped planchets and abnormalities created during production, along with less obvious varieties involving dies, dates, lettering and mintmarks. A coin that appears unusual in an old collection can sometimes require experienced examination before its characteristics are identified.
The Caveman name itself predates the coin show. Grants Pass businessmen organized the Oregon Caves Cavemen in 1922 as part of an effort to promote the Oregon Caves and Southern Oregon. The name eventually became one of the community’s most recognizable historical identities, followed decades later by the Caveman monument erected in Grants Pass in 1971.
The 60th Annual Caveman Coin Show opens Saturday at the Josephine County Fairgrounds from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and continues Sunday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., adding another weekend to a Grants Pass collecting history documented across nearly six decades.