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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

Family

Got the award / plaque, now to the Post Office?

A couple of weeks ago now I received the award I'd referenced previously. In true 2020 fashion I got to receive a professional award in a Punisher tshirt and sweatpants. Because the organization wanted good pictures with the newsletter we had to re-do this in a suit and I got the whole family in on it. As the corresponding (and surviving) author, both plaques were sent to me and its my task to mail the other plaque(s) to the other author(s), or, in my case, to his family.
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Family

What I would be doing if I still didn’t have kids…

There are days when I really wish this was still the summer of 2006 and I could spend an entire week searching rolls of pennies looking for things to put in my Whitman folders or looking through rolls of dimes and quarters looking to see if there might be any old silver ones in there like I see other people talking about on Facebook and Reddit. There are times lately when I wish I had the chance to try to beat the personal record I set for myself when I made a 19.5 inch tall column of pennies th
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Family

My Wife Just Used the ANA Money Museum to Tempt Me...

She loves to travel and she desperately wants to get out and take a trip somewhere and is brainstorming all of these ideas about where to go and what to do when this is over. She's looking at taking a vacation for a long weekend to Colorado. In the middle of her research she figured out that the ANA Money Museum is in Colorado and she's trying to use a day there to tempt me into getting excited and agreeing to the idea. Does she know me too well or think I sell too cheap? That is the q
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Family

“I need it for my collection”

For about the last week or so Ben keeps saying that he needs things for his “collection.” He has a robot “collection.” His Legos are a “collection” now. His toys are a “collection.” He needs all my old dice for his “collection.” I’m not sure where this came from, but I really don’t think it was from me. I don’t think I use the word “collection” around him very often. I’m thinking he must have gotten this from one of his little shows he watches on Netflix – maybe even power rangers sinc
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Family

I have a coin for that...

My wife somewhat randomly brought up about a week ago that she and I are both "Tigers" - We were both born in the year of the Tiger for the Chinese Zodiac - 1986 specifically. She teaches English to Chinese kids and what brought this up was some parents had been asking other teachers if their young child was a "pig," meaning born in 2019, which was the year of the pig, which Samuel is, as it happens. So this got her curious and she looked up what we were and what Ben and Sam were and what t
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Family

Happy Father's Day

I know quite a few of us that frequent this place are also fathers. Shandy let me sleep in this morning and, when I got up, she had the boys in Star Wars shirts saying "I am your Son" and one for me that says "I am your Father." I mentioned elsewhere that I had an ebay auction ending late last night. I followed my practice of putting in my best number and going to bed. It so happened that, when I put in my best bid, i was winning it but my bid was maxed out and if anyone else had bid
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Family

Parents 20 years ago didn't have to deal with this nonsense...

Off-topic but... Some days it begins to feel like a game of "What has my 4 year old managed to get me charged for this time?" A couple of months ago he managed to get us signed up to Amazon Music for a month. Last month he managed to upgrade my Netflix account to "Premium" - so now we can have 3 screens going at once instead of 2 - and it costs me $3 more a month. I was just looking at one of the credit card bills, seeing a 5 dollar charge and thinking, "Oh no... What did he
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Family

It's that time of year again...

My birthday is coming up. I never would have thought we'd still be isolating and limiting our contact with people for 6 months and I'd be looking forward to a birthday in isolation but... here we are. This also means it's another one of those moments where my wife starts trying to figure out how she can give me a nice surprise without me knowing what it is or outright picking it myself. So I've been updating my Amazon wishlist for her and others in my family because I know they check it.
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Family

Not just marking time...

I posted on 1/12/2019 about winning the 2018 Journal award and mentioned that, pretty much at the same time as I found out about that, that I'd gotten a paper accepted for publication. I didn't really go into this at the time but it was a paper co-authored with my graduate advisor - who passed away on September 11, 2018. He's the person I decided to name Sam after. I didn't know it at the time but I posted that entry exactly 1 month before Sam's surprise early birth - the "first published" date
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Family

So that was definitely for him.

Yesterday was the Bday. I finally found out what Ben's present for me was and it was swords... a set of 6 foam swords. Which he has had great fun running around with and playing with, including with his mother while I'm working. I'm so glad that those are mine. Clearly. They don't hurt when you get hit with them though so I guess that is a form of gift. A form of one... My in-laws gifted me an Uncirc 2020 SAE, which is nice - after some recent discussions here though and current silver pri
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Family

Starting work on PawPaw's coins

Some of the 2x2s I ordered came in today and Ben wanted to play with them not really understanding what they were so I agreed to work with him with them when Sam was napping. We sat down with the bag of coins from PawPaw and the staplers and tried to put some in the 2x2s. He lost interest quickly. He still struggles with the stapler. He's young. He doesn't get it fully. I'm easily more interested in these than he is, but maybe that'll change with time. He's four. I still need to remember th
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Family

"Ga" is for Goldfish, "P" is for "Poins"

Sam is obsessed with Goldfish, and shoving them in his mouth all day. He's started saying "Ga" for for Goldfish when he wants them. This means he's working on learning to say "gold," which is a lovely word if you like coins IMO. Meanwhile Ben has recently cropped up with "poins" and telling me he took my "poins." I had thought we'd gotten past this and he'd figured out "coins," but it has made a comeback recently. My wife doesn't want me correcting him too much because she thinks its adorab
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Family

Survived that weekend...

Well, we got the negative Covid test from my Nephew late Friday, but by then my wife and Sam were already at the ER because Sam gave us the scare of our lives when he stopped talking and we were worried he might be having seizures or some other issue and might have shunt failure. Two nights at the hospital later, short on a lot of sleep, we came back home on Sunday after a day of observation saying, "we'll watch for now, move up some of his other tests and appointments and see if we see any more
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Family

5 Years

So yesterday was our 5th anniversary - we are over 6 years into the relationship. The 5th anniversary is supposed to be “Wood” so my wife had considered getting me a challenge coin / coin holder make of wood with the idea of putting a coin that relates to us / our relationship in it, but I don’t really have a coin that fits that bill - the closest I had was that Standing Liberty half she got me as an anniversary present last year, and, since it is in a slab, it wouldn’t have worked for this
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Family

As it happens... (cheap) plastic ages! Just like I do apparently.

So I have a bunch of these old collectable miniatures that I used to play with in Junior High and High School. My sons get to slowly play with (and destroy) some of dad's ol "Robot toys" but I hold back some old special ones that were my favorites. A guy in a Facebook group was looking to buy some that I had some spares of - even unopened from back in the day - So I offered to sell and maybe get a few bucks towards a coin or note purchase. I have an open one too and he asked if i
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Family

The first shunt revision

Well, when I was posting last time Sam was napping and we were getting ready to take him to Urgent Care hoping all the grabbing of his head and crankiness was an ear ache. It wasn't an ear ache. We had a shunt revision today and it looks like his shunt catheter, which we already knew had shifted, had nearly completely failed and it wasn't draining fluid and pressure effectively. He should hopefully be discharged tomorrow for a 1-2 week light recovery. We're told he "beat the odds"
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