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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

Because I’m slowly going blind?

So one of my stocking stuffers on Christmas morning was a small pocket magnifier that has a light built-in. I saw this and asked my wife, jokingly, “So is this because I’m slowly going blind?” She said, “No! It’s for your coins!” “… and the fact that I’m slowly going blind?” In early 2016, right around the time Ben was born, I got a 5 mm corneal abrasion right in the middle of my right cornea – it almost split the cornea in half. I was lucky enough that it didn’t cost me use of the eye, but
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Do we give USPS the benefit of the doubt? I think... No.

So a package ships out from Queens, NY late on a Friday night on 12/13. Tracking says it's due to arrive on 12/16... Every day, it updates to say, at midnight that day, that the package is "In Transit to the Destination." It doesn't say where it is. This makes it rather useless as "tracking" information... It's been 5 days of basically getting updates saying "it's coming. We promise." No measure of progress. Part of me wants to give them the benefit of the doubt - it is mid-Decemb
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My new $20.95, TOP POP coin… Patience Pays Off?

Well, I just ordered what will be a companion piece to my Zimbabwe note set / the first coin in a related project – I haven’t decided yet. The coin is a 1980 Zimbabwe 10 Cent piece, graded MS65 by NGC. The coin happens to be TOP POP. I say “happens to be” because it also happens to be the only one of its kind graded by NGC – hard NOT to be top pop at that point. Anyway… MS65 is a decent, Gem BU, grade. I saw this coin come up months ago on eBay and seriously considered buying it, but I
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You probably shouldn’t…

So over the weekend my wife met a friend for reasons we won’t go into because they’re unpleasant and my wife was there to be a friend but… Let’s just say this was someone we met back in March in the NICU… Anyway… After a while my wife sends me a message asking me if she can get away with going a little over-budget on my Christmas. I’ve been "pounding the table" so-to-speak on watching the budget. I just told her to do what she wanted but she probably shouldn’t. (Hey, I’m arguing agains
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Happy Thanksgiving! Time to keep some powder dry I think.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Have fun eating yourselves into a stupor tomorrow. It's a little funny seeing everyone and their dog putting on a Black Friday sale this week - with many of them extending into next week - even the coin and currency dealers!. In the next several days I'll probably place an order with one of my favorite merchants that will probably be one of the last purchases I make for the Zimbabwe set for a while. The notes will be part of my Christmas present this year,
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Some coin fun at Renfest today.

My wife and I went to Renfest today, childfree, while her parents had our sons. While there I found a "penny" on the ground only to find that it was some weird, penny-like token with a Jolly-roger on it. I'll see if I can get pictures of it to share later. Later on in the day I was given a 1974 half dollar in change - and I couldn't even tell you the last time that happened. No one ever has half dollars these days. I didn't keep it though. I tossed it into a tip jar later in the day.
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This time I totally bought the label

I know the first rule of collecting in registry-ville is “buy the coin, not the label,” but the coin I got in the mail at the end of this week was all about the label. A 2019, 1/4th oz American Gold Eagle, Early Release, Blue label, graded MS70. In 2007, I bought a MS70 1/4th oz AGE for my 21st birthday. It was my first ever gold purchase, 2 years before I started the 10G set. When Ben was born, I bought a 1/4th oz 2016 AGE in MS70 to celebrate and one day give it to hi
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A coin collector's birthday

I got my big surprise that my wife and her mother have been sitting on for about a month and a half yesterday. It would seem that, while in Pennsylvania for work, her mother stopped at the Philadelphia mint, too the tour and these things. The Silver Eagle and the birthday set were for me, the coin explorer book was for Ben and the birth year set was for Sam. She also got a bag from the mint that’s also pretty cool. The book for Ben is pretty neat to look at. I hop
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A nice "birthday present" from PMG.

I got a nice "birthday present" from PMG today: They featured one of my Zimbabwe note sets! https://www.pmgnotes.com/news/article/7791/PMG-Registry-News/ Granted, it's not actually my birthday, but it's close, and I don't think my birthday had anything to do with the timing of this, but it's fun none-the-less. My actual birthday present also arrived in the mail today, ordered just a few days before I found out this article was coming out - it's a group of new notes for my 2nd doll
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Update on the personal front

Well, after 18 long months of him hitting 20% of his sales target, my former boss, the regional sales manager for North America, was canned about a month ago. In the month that has followed some things have come to light that have left me looking very good. This culminated on Friday in me being informed that I'm finally getting the raise I'd been hoping for in March, and it's actually better than what I'd been hoping for - it's more than a 20% increase over my current rate. I suspect, in some wa
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Finally Moving on the Falcons (and the Queen's Beasts)

I finally convinced myself to pick up some more air-tite capsules for the British Queen's Beasts coins, since I've been out of them since I picked up the last of the Black Bulls I needed, and now I've ordered three of the Falcon coins. It'll be a while before they arrive because I ordered them with an echeck to keep the costs as low as possible. I've been thinking I needed to do this for a while because Christmas will be here before long and I've been giving these to my Step-father as
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So, do we actually want the value of these things to rise?

A few months ago I talked to another collector who recalled a conversation where-in he and someone else agreed that, if they had tried to build their collections today, buying graded coins and not ones they “discovered” themselves, they never could have afforded to build their collections because prices have gone up so much. I can’t help but think of that statement periodically and ask myself, “So do we really want the value / price of these things to go up?” Or, stated more usefully, “Do
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Collecting while married...

That much discussed and debated 1875 came in the mail Tuesday. I over-spent my coin budget a little bit to get it with the agreement that I wouldn’t buy anything for a month or so while my budget caught up with the spending. It’s a deal I’ve made in the past and one I made again because I’ve been worried that the current run-up in the gold price could continue and that could make the coins more expensive to buy in another month or so. Even so, it was a modest over-reach of my budget, just $
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Bringing them all out.

My mother and step-father paid me a visit today to see me and Ben. My step-father decided to bring out all of the birth year sets we've built and the Texas Commemorative set with them. This was prompted in part by the fact that I'd been getting the coins one or two boxes at a time to try to re-image some of the sets and get pictures of some of the coins I didn't have pictures of. In the process of this I found that it seemed like a few of the upgraded coins hadn't been inserted with their g
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An NGC MS66 Netherlands 1875 10G

I took Shandy and the baby to the airport yesterday for that trip to New York that did end up happening. She was stuck at the airport for 3.5 hours of flight delays with the baby but fortunately the baby slept through most of it and it wasn't too stressful for her. She's in New York with her mom and having a blast. Before I drove her to the airport though I finally decided to pull the trigger on an 1875 Netherlands 10G coin that I'd been looking at. There is no exciting tale of finding
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Final call on the 1875

I think I've been debating whether or not to cross this coin to NGC about as long as I've been married and it's gotten to the point that when I talk about it my wife smiles a little and laughs silently under her breath. But I think I've finally made up my mind on how to deal with it - I'm not going to cross that PCGS MS67. No matter how hard I try, I don't think I'll ever be able to convince myself that it's a good move to spend $30+ shipping both ways to have a coin that is already graded and s
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I think I'm over the cliche souvenirs

My wife's mother is offering to take her on a trip with her to New York City in a couple of weeks. This would mean she'd be taking the baby an leaving me at home with the 3 year old for three days. She was asking me if there was anything I'd like her to bring back and the answer was, honestly, no. I went to New York myself when I was 11 and I got a few things from that trip, one or two of which I still have to this day. Those mean more to me than anything that she'd bring back from a t
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The price swings sneak up on you...

… when you deal with things that are priced close to melt anyway. When I was shopping for an 1877 10G late last year the common dates in the series in MS65 and lower were going for about $275. That's not that much given that the coins had a melt value of about $242 with gold around $1200/oz. I have an eBay saved search for these things that I keep active even at times like now when I'm not really actively hunting. The other day a couple of auctions popped up for an MS61 1875 and M
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Looks like I’ve won this one: It’s a family thing now

My wife’s parents recently went on a trip to Europe - the Netherlands and parts of Italy / Rome. They asked about ideas of things to bring back for us / Ben. I linked them to the Penny Collector website and brought up the idea of bringing back some elongated cents for Ben’s penny book. They got him a couple of pennies for his book. I’m guessing they used Euro Cent coins for the press because they’re slightly larger than the ones we’ve been getting / making here and they just BARE
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A Slightly Amusing Coincidence:

It’s almost always a little funny when my wife takes notice of something in my collection that she’s never seen, noticed or paid attention to before. She’s never been especially aware of some of the things in my collection because I don’t talk about them much. Other things I talk about all the time and she probably wishes she could stop hearing about. But sometimes she’ll notice something and ask me if it’s new and I’ll just be like, “Nope. I’ve owned that longer than I’ve known you.” Anyway...
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Funko Pops: The Plastic Scourge

I was looking around at pop-culture news on the internet recently as I sometimes like to do, as nerds like me sometimes like to do, and I found an article saying that there’s going to be a Funko Pops movie - it’s going to try to piggy-back on the success of the Lego movies. This has me in the mood to rant a bit. So this is me being my best “super-judger,” as my wife would put it – anyone reading this is forewarned now. It has been interesting to me that Lego sets have become collectable in
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Something I love about the people here.

Some praises need to be sung for the people that hang out here. A few weeks (maybe months at this point) Sheik Sheck offered to send me something for Sam and I got this a short time later: This is a ZImbabwean P-9, 100 ZWD note. It's one of the few first dollar notes I didn't have a PMG graded example of. It also happens to be the series 2 note that has an image of elephants in the lower corner that is mirrored on the front and back of the note (elephants being the theme we chose
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An interesting chance to learn about errors?

Ben went to the museum with my wife today and operated the penny press himself. Expert press operator that he is, apparently something went slightly wrong.  Even so, I think it's fair to say that he was happy with the results. Making pre-schoolers happy and making a collector can be quite cheap and easy - $5 for the album and $0.51 every time he gets a coin to put in it. He wants to take that album with him whenever he goes to the zoo or the museum now. Some
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I don't suppose they still send / give these out.

I still have this from the first time I became a paid member some 10-11 years ago. Part of me wonders if they still give these to new paid members and just how bad I date myself and how long I've been here based on the fact that I have this. I noticed it collecting dust in a corner of my desk. Maybe I'll give it a perch next to the plaques.
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Elongated Cent Albums

We've been to the zoo a couple more times and gotten Ben a couple of new pennies. This almost immediately brought forward the idea of how do we help him not lose them and keep track of all of them? So I decided to see what I could get on Amazon. I was able to find some "Penny Passport" books for a good price. A seller was offering 1 for about $7.80 and a set of 3 for $15 so I just bought a group of three. I figured, one for him, one for me, and one for Sam and we'll all do it together over time.
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