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About this journal

This journal was originally to record my thoughts on collecting and building my Netherlands Wilhelm III Gold 10 Gulden Set and other projects like  my modern silver bullion NCLT sets. When it got started in the summer of 2007 I was single, in my early 20's, and working on my B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering. Starting in 2016, with my marriage and the birth of my first son, Benjamin, much of my writing has focused on raising my sons to have a love of collecting coins and exonumia and discussing how my collecting occurs in the context of my marriage and life overall.

Entries in this journal

Random Nonsense

To the Moon!

On January 18th 2021 I got the blessing from Shandy to pick up a 1 kilo silver bar. The spot price had recently come down from about $27 / oz to $25 / oz and I was able to find a Perth bar from a good dealer for $875. Relatively shortly there after the "Reddit Raiders" temporarily spiked the price to $30 / oz and you couldn't get anything physical hardly unless you were paying $35 / oz or more. Those kilo bars started going for over $1050... I guess I should have sold then... I was pretty c
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This is where the fun begins…

Be honest – how many of you remember that line from the start of Star Wars: Episode 3? I have bemoaned several times over the last few months that it is hard to get excited or get motivated about building a registry set when you… don’t… have coins… But! I find that it is much easier to get excited about researching and writing about coins for a registry set when you… have coins… and have pictures to go with "da wordy bits." I also gotta say - even feeling slightly disappointed at some
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The problem with collecting modern coins in type sets with many countries...

The problem with collecting modern coins in type sets with many countries is that the coins look rather the same across the board. South Africa for example: Russia (I think this is Russian coinage anyway... if I remember right) Uruguay: Mexico: Others: Interestingly, when I've posted images in the past of the Zimbabwean Bond Coins and had people point out that they look like arcade tokens or make similar disparaging remarks,
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The Old Man…

Yesterday Sam was finally feeling better – he is back at daycare today and we’re enjoying our 1 child-free work from home day of the week – so we got to go out with my in-laws so we could have a birthday celebration with them, and they could give me their present for me… and I finally got to find out what the big mystery was that my wife has been keeping. I laughed so hard and this and got a real kick out of it. I’m normally not very effusive when getting gifts but they said they think
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The New Journal Features

Having joined the Collector's Society and started this Journal in mid-2007 I definitely feel like I've witnessed the site and the journal feature of the site "evolve" over time but I've been enjoying 1 new feature lately now that I'm gaining an understanding of how it works... the new Category feature. When I first rejoined / became active again around 2016/2017 I had to get used to the new system but I very much remember being disappointed by the fact that the new system only let me have 1
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Random Nonsense

The heat is on...

I managed to make a little progress on my goals this weekend, which is pretty solid in light of the fact that the coins hadn’t been physically delivered yet and 3 of my remaining 4 points relate to imaging and editing shots of the new coins… 1) Getting the coins programmed in and in the slots, (Except for the Austral coins) 2) Getting my pre-written descriptions posted on the coins (for the new $10 Zimbabwe coin, 500L set, Argentinian Set, and Venezuelan coins) 3) Getting pictures
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The Canadian Quarter…

I find myself trying to take a minute to focus on something positive as its looking like Laura is coming for us - as if the year of the ‘Rona wasn’t bad enough without a Cat 3 or 4 Hurricane to spice things up. I always hate the lead-up to a storm. The stress and worry tie your stomach up in knots. Anyway… In early November of last year, I went to Canada for a few days on a job. These trips are not usually all that fun - I usually plan them so I get in, do the job, and get back home without
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Random Nonsense

The Australs set coming together...

I am now happy to say that pictures are up for both the Austral coins and the Peso Convertible coins.  I'm very happy with how these came out... But I'm thrilled to say I have a banner image now:   I always try to be mindful of how these look on the PC and my phone... One thing that was important to me was having a prominent placement for the obverse of the 10C coin, which features the national Coat of Arms. I've even gotten my historical write-ups done
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Some additional random bits of Nonsense

Thought I’d throw some notes out about some other nonsense that probably doesn’t rate having a stand-alone post: I recently found myself wanting/ needing to get more boxes again for the first time since 2020, and I decided to do something a little different. I remembered that NGC had sold red boxes with gold lettering instead of the standard grey / silver ones with blue lettering. NGC is sold out of those but there are sellers on Amazon that have them for re-sale at reasonable-ish prices. J
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So.... WHY are they slammed?

It seems like one of our favorite things to do lately is complain about turnaround times at NGC. The popular narrative amongst the unhappy is that this is clearly NGC slipping but NGC says the problem is they're just slammed. They aren't blaming the problems on logistics - like not being able to get enough slab parts or inserts. They're just getting 800+ packages a day and that working 6 days a week, 12 hours a day isn't keeping up. That suggests that they're dealing with double or more the
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Random Nonsense

One day, I will have a full set... maybe.

Recent discussions on the forums had me looking at and thinking about getting some of the new American Innovation series dollars to show Ben and Sam as they get older. I'd initially dismissed the idea of doing this in 2018/2019 because I didn't really have the budget for it, and I was sure it turn into another series I'd never finish - like the presidential dollars. This got me looking at the presidential dollars on eBay. The last time I did this I picked up the 2009 and 2010 sets but
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Oh no… I’m becoming what I collect. Not Fair! I miss my hair…

Around the start of our self-isolation my hair had been getting really long and my wife convinced me to just let her and Ben use the trimmer on me and make it short - finally lean into the hair loss that has been eating into my temples for 10 years. At the time I’d shaved my beard. Recently they did another pass to keep it short and I saw a picture of myself… Then I looked at the coins I collect, and I thought a little… Then I went to Google and Bing for photos…
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New Pictures are finally up for Zimbabwe and the 500L set.

I finally took some time and got new pictures taken and uploaded for the Zimbabwe and 500L sets that are at least consistent across the board even if I don't necessarily think these are in every case the best images I've gotten of each coin: Set Details | NGC Registry | NGC (ngccoin.com) Set Details | NGC Registry | NGC (ngccoin.com) Now that I have nice photos of the Zimbabwe bird in the yellow of the $2 coins I decided to use that to fill the gap in my banner image. I'
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My latest $20 tangent into “Oh, Neat!”

I opted not to go to the coin show this weekend. It wasn’t a week where I had Friday off and we have a crazy week coming up and I just mentally opted for a quieter weekend of getting chores done and hitting up a birthday party with the kids instead. But I thought I’d sit down and share a bit about my latest ~$20 tangent into the realm of, “well, that looks nifty!” One of the same dealers that I bought several raw Italian coins from also had some circa 1980 Chinese coins going as indivi
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I wonder...

So, the Zcoins still haven't been finalized... but the Census did go up by about 9 coins today, all mint state, and 8 of those line up with the 8 pre-hyperinflation coins in my submission… So I may have just gotten a sneak peek at some of my grades… and the grades are pretty consistent with what I would have expected from those coins… but no way to know for sure. But, while I can’t talk grades officially yet, I have little better or more interesting to do with my socially-isolated, work-fro
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I like learning... not homework...

When I was growing up my mother started (but failed to finish) a 2nd Master's degree. She would often make the joke that she "could have been a professional student" - meaning she loved being in classes and learning things like that - mostly about history. Having reached my mid-30s, having earned my PhD, my 3rd and terminal degree, and gone on to hobbies that involve a lot of reading and writing, I can honestly say that I like learning - but I do not like homework, and so I don't like being
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Do you ever wonder about your dealers?

So, I thought about tacking this onto the other post, or about delaying the other post to another day and talking about this, but this is something I've been thinking about a lot lately... and I felt like it deserved its own post and not being tacked onto the other. One of the dealers I've been using a lot, a dealer Mike and I have both liked using and discussed in the past, a dealer that has supplied several of the coins in my Zimbabwe coin set and has sold me many raw Venezuelan coins for
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Curious, Jealous, and Annoyed

I think it's getting up to 2 years since I've added a coin / filled a hole in the 10G set and the set is still sitting at 72% with 3 slots open. But the low hanging fruit is all gone and all that's left are 3 coins that don't always show up. The last couple of years I’ve been adding other types of world gold coins to my collection and not finished this set largely just because I haven’t seen any attractive opportunities come up. Mine is one of the oldest sets in that category. It was one of
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Birthdays and Battles in the Registry Backwater

The family and I celebrate my birthday this week / this weekend, and, this year, unlike last year, neither kid is in the hospital, currently - and I'll take the win. However, we do now know that Sam's in-patient time is going to start on November the 13th. So there's that to "look forward" to. I now have my historical blurb sections on 4 of my 8 Austral coins written or at least mostly written - these things tend to go through revisions over time and I'm still very much working on them.
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Artsy Coin Photos

Well, I'd really thought that after my Z coins hit grading on Tuesday of last week I'd get grades this week almost for sure and I'd be getting to post about the results. Sadly, this was not the case - I'm still waiting. But hopefully they'll finish soon. But I won't see grades before Tuesday now with Labor Day coming up. Gosh... I'm really wanting to know the results and hoping to not be massively disappointed. This is dragging on and turning into a nail-biter! In the mean time, I thou
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An interesting thought on the concept of "insurance."

When I shipped my box of 10G coins (and a few others) last week I was pretty happy/ content to fork over an extra $26 for Registered mail. The box in question was worth about $5,000-6,000 dollars and contained 12 years of a collecting journey. I would have a hard time finding another 1880, 1887 and 1888 in Gem or near gem grades. I do not want to lose those. However, I'm hoping to queue up 2 more submissions soon - one to NGC and one to PMG, both related to my Zimbabwe collection, that are
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A Random Thought on the Awards Announcement...

So, two weeks later I find myself looking at the text of the awards announcement again - in part because I've also been swapping emails with NGC/PMG about mailing addresses and in part because I just really like what they said about my note set - and I notice the video they have and decide to watch it. So... a bit of context but... 2 weeks ago I was tasked at work with recording demo / how-to videos on how to use our software. These are supposed to go on YouTube as a Marketing tool (to sho
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“Mega Ultimate Grand Supreme Uncirculated”

For a bit of relevant context, years ago when Ben was young, we used to watch some episodes of “Toddlers and Tiaras” on Hulu for stupid, white trash, entertainment while we were stuck at home being broke parents to a young kid. We used to make fun of the titles the girls would win like "Grand Supreme" and "Ultimate Grand Supreme," and "Mega Ultimate Grand Supreme." Years later we still joke about those titles and joke about "Mega Ultimate Grand Supreme [whatever]." In the course of loo
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"Bad Luck Pennies" / "Hard Times Pennies"

I had to run an errand today and I found a penny in the parking lot on the way to my car. I stopped and picked it up like I have always tended to do ever since I was a small child, as I was encouraged to do. I remember always being taught the rhyme, "Find a penny? Pick it up! And all the day you'll have good luck!" Some years ago now I had a supervisor at work whose husband took this rather seriously and got upset when he found out that their child had found a penny on the ground and l
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