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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

So... There's a 2 Lire coin, you say?

Some of you may recall that, when I started buying graded Modern Italian coins in late-2021 to build sets for / to celebrate / in honor of my wife, one of my initial wants / goals was as 1986 Mint set for Italian coins.  I haven't talked about it much recently because... it just came together quickly and I completed it easily and... it was built but doomed to rot in the purgatory that is the custom set feature in the old registry.   Seriously though, how do you even brag up a cus

Revenant

Revenant in Italian Coins

So... 6 next year?

So, the awards deadline has come and gone, and I made the joke to Shandy along the lines of, "Well, I lost the 50 Lire this year, but I managed to win in 4 Italian categories instead of 2 this year, so that's cool, right?" Her response was, "So, you're going to get me 6 next year, right?" "You planning to up my budget? " More seriously, my quip back to her would be that I'll feel pretty good about it if I manage the defend the title on 2 or 3 of these 4 next year. I seem to be decently good at c

Revenant

Revenant in Italian Coins

Sometimes you wonder if they're watching... but they're probably not! lol

So I made my post a few weeks ago about picking up that 1981 200 Lire and I talked about wanting to get a 1980 because of the design of that coin and how fitting I thought it was for a tribute set to my wife. At the time I was hitting up eBay to see if I could find any of the 1981 graded by NGC - most likely from this same seller because this seller seems to be about the only one offering modern Italian issues graded by NGC. But I didn't find any. So that had me looking for raw e

Revenant

Revenant in Italian Coins

The Italian Grade Results.

So here we discuss the Italian coins – 6 coins that come in 2 sets of three: 3 coins to fill out the 1986 Italian Circulation Strike Birth Year Set and 3 coins to fill some of the remaining gaps in the 500L set she wanted. Though the 1986 500L actually fits in with both groups even though it was acquired primarily for the 500 Lire set / as part of that effort. Here are the grades: On the 1986 set front… With the 5 Lire and the 10 Lire, with MS66 and MS65 grades respectively,

Revenant

Revenant in Italian Coins

Picking up more competition

In some new, interesting developments, it looks like the 50 Lire category picked up 2 new sets in a day and I'm bumped to #3 for now. I think this happened just yesterday. I kinda had a feeling this would happen and that that would be a 1-year win when I made the set but had no plans to heavily develop it thus year - opting instead to focus on the 500 Lire set. I'm not ruling out building that 50 L set some more and giving the newcomers a bit of a fight. But the 500 Lire has always bee

Revenant

Revenant in Italian Coins

The 1986 Italian Mint Set is going up...

Thursday of last week, when everything was going down with Sam, that MS68 1986 100L arrived in the mail and over the weekend I won an auction for an MS67 1986 20 Lire. That, with the MS68 1986 50L I got last year, gives me (or will soon give me) 3 of the 7 coins for an Italian 1986 Mint Set, so I've gone ahead and made a custom set for that and popped in what I have so far. 1986 Italian Circulation Strike Set - Custom Set (collectors-society.com) The MS67 20 Lire is the highest graded

Revenant

Revenant in Italian Coins

It is possible they did me a favor on this one.

Earlier in the week I'd been watching a 1983 Italian 500L graded Ms65 by NGC. The staring bid was $10 + $5 shipping and it had no bids. When it was about 12 hours out from ending I bid $20 hoping to win it for roughly the cost of grading and keep it until and unless something better came along - maybe one I graded myself. Then, about 15 minutes before bidding ended, someone bid $15, then $16, then $17, then $20, then something over $20... I don't know if this was a shill or someone tha

Revenant

Revenant in Italian Coins

So... She actually wants input on this?

So here's kind of a funny thing from the other day. I sent Shandy a message saying, "Hey, you care if I just go ahead and order these Italian sets?" and for me it's more, "do you care if I spend the money on this?" She's okay with it but she wants to know if she can look at the pictures first to see if she thinks it's a good one - generic pictures though so we aren't going to be able to make a quality judgement on individual coins like that, so just go ahead and we'll see. But aft

Revenant

Revenant in Italian Coins

The 500 Lire Grade Results

So here is the 2nd post about 1 submission, splitting off the 500L coins to give them their due, befitting a group of 7 coins (decent sized group in their own right by my submission standards) and a group of coins that represent their own, very important project. And here are the results - Shandy and I picked the ones to send together when we had more than one of a certain date, but we didn't play “guess the grade” on these because we didn't have a big selection of graded coins in different

Revenant

Revenant in Italian Coins

A 1985 500 Lire - "Finest Known Worldwide"

I thought I'd take a minute and belatedly share some progress on the 500 Lire set. A few weeks ago I won (unopposed) an auction for an MS68 1985. It is the only one in the grade currently with none finer. The seller chose to highlight and play this up in a somewhat over-the-top way that gave Mike and I a laugh. This is the same seller that I got the 1982 MS68 from, but there is an MS69 1982, and 1982s are far more heavily graded and in high grade than the later years. Just someth

Revenant

Revenant in Italian Coins

The 500 Lire Redux - Ti amerò per sempre

Last time I talked about seeing that post about the old, early 20th Century 20 Centesimi Italian coins and going shopping for some raw Italian coins. While doing this I got the idea to look to see if there were any nice, pretty, NGC-graded Italian coins that I could get for good prices. I thought she might like that – some cool MS coin if they were out there to be had. I did a bit of eBaying and found a couple of sellers with MS66 to MS68 Italian coins from the 1980s and 1990s – mostly

Revenant

Revenant in Italian Coins

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