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NGC Journals

Irish Crown

A Silver Crown of Ireland

There may not be a true silver crown of an independent Ireland. The closest that I have uncovered would be the silver crown, presumably issued by the Catholic Confederacy of Kilkenny, in 1642-43, although the few examples that appear in auction sales appear to be less than 25g in weight.  These coins are also quite rare.  The next closest example of an Irish silver crown, which I was able to acquire, might just be the "Ormond" crown of the same time (1643-1644), issued by the Earl of Ormond, Jam
jgenn

jgenn in Irish Crown

8
Coinbufs journal

The third of twelve coins that I had imaged by Mark Goodman in late 2021

Ok instalment 3 of 12, I have already posted this coin once or twice but just for the sake of completeness I'll add a journal entry for this one too.   I am a long time dedicated Lincoln collector and love the coin/series partly as I like the original wheatie design, but mostly for the historical significance of President Lincoln.    I own many books written about him and enjoy learning about him, visiting the Ford theater the first time I went to DC was a real thrill for me. While most of
Coinbuf

Coinbuf in Coinbufs journal

5
Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

Mikes saves the day... and USPS ruins it a little.

So... continuing from the last journal posted about this… When I opened the box from the seller, I had 3 of the 8-coin sets that included later-date steel coins from mostly 2002 and only 1 of the 7-coin sets that had 1997 dated coins, including that 1997 $2 coin. To make things one step worse, the $2 coin in that set had a bad, deep scratch/ ding. Reached out to the seller, who quickly said I could keep the extra 8-coin set and they'd look for and send me another 1997 d
Collecting World Coins

216 Years ago this week

Another Napoleonic medal added to the collection. This one was produced following the Treaty of Pressburg which was signed by Napoleon on the 26th December 1805 following the major victory by the French over the Austrian's at Austerlitz earlier in that month. In 1813, as Napoleon's control in Europe weakened, the Austrians regained the Illyrian provinces so French influence was short-lived but did result in some positive changes in region. As part of this important Treaty Austria ceded its
Family

The Collecting Outcomes of Christmas

This year I decided to put some Lighthouse cases on my Christmas list just to try. My interests and wants are pretty narrow these days. And, while I don’t really want a lot of stuff that is just going to collect dust and not mean much to me on a practical level, I don't like others buying me Coins for reasons we all know. I thought it was worth a shot to put some supplies on my list with easy links to what I want. I also put some things like miniature props - mini trees and grass mats for mini p
Revenant

Revenant in Family

7
Award Medals

The Awards & Honors for My LGF Collection Keep Piling Up

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all! Nothing I collect has drawn more attention from outside interests than my Laura Gardin Fraser collection of coins and medals. For instance, my set entitled “The Coins and Medals of Laura Gardin Fraser” won NGC’s “2016 Most Creative Custom Set” award. Additionally, I’ve had numerous requests relating to this set, from permission to publish my pictures to a request to repatriate an awarded medal back to the recipient’s family. I’ve also had solicitation
coinsbygary

coinsbygary in Award Medals

3
Random Nonsense

“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
Revenant

Revenant in Random Nonsense

0
Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

I’m going to have to rethink this… find a better way… Or Maybe Just MORE…

I found a seller offering some old, Franklin Mint, “Coin Sets of the World” cards for Zimbabwe that had the coins from 1C to $1. Some of them were made in the 1990s and some of them had less-appealing coins with some spotting, but they had a couple – at a slightly higher price, but still only about $11 for a coin set - that had only coins from 1980-1983, that were clean, pretty, and spot-free per the listing and “nearly perfect.” I saw these and decided to snap them up, initially thin
Random Nonsense

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
Revenant

Revenant in Random Nonsense

5
Coinbuf's Photos taken by Mark Goodman

New photos to share

I continue to work and getting better at taking my own coin photos and slowly am getting better.   But when I want some really good photos, like the kind I want for the coins in my three first place registry sets; I go to the professional Mark Goodman.   I have used three or four pro photographers in the past and a couple others were very good, but I have always felt that Mark was the very best of all those I have tried.   Anyway here are a couple of compilation photos of some of my registry coi
Fantasy Coin Pieces

The Patina Collection - what, where and how many

The Patina collection of 'fantasy' coins was auctioned by Spink, London in July 2001. Not sure as to what to designate these pieces however they do look most lovey.  Not much is written or recorded in depth of these fantasy coins and obtaining a copy of the Spink catalog is almost near impossible.  Discussions on several numismatic web forums reveal only a small amount of information pertaining to the Patina collection.  If you do not own a catalog it is somehow hard to verify inf
My 2021 numismatic journey

If only I found this a bit earlier!

When typing out the write-ups for the Soho medals, I always do my best to include images of supporting items I own; however, that is not always possible. For instance, when writing up the Boydell Shakespeare medal (you can read about it here), I used the frontispiece to Boydell's 1797 edition of Shakespeare's Works, but this was an open-source image from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Despite searching for a genuine period example for my collection of antique paper, I could not locate an exampl
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

4
Coinbufs journal

I received my invite

Yesterday I received my invitation from NGC to attend the members only event at the upcoming Jan FUN show.   I wish it was economically feasible to attend that show and this event but sadly it is not given the costs to fly across country, lodging, and food.   Hope that some of you are able to attend the show and this event.
Coinbuf

Coinbuf in Coinbufs journal

1
European Pocket Change

Liberty in Flight

In early November I caught a post on reddit about the "Flying Nude" 20C Italian coins that were made until about 1924, that are more accurately called "Liberty in Flight." Also apparently called “Liberta Librata” (“Hovering Freedom”) according to Numista. The original post was joking about the fact that the type 1 SLQ wasn't the only "scandalous" coin from the era / “The US didn’t have a monopoly on ‘scandalous’ designs.’ I find this a little funny as a claim when you actually look at the c
Revenant

Revenant in European Pocket Change

6
U.S Coins

Another year has come and gone

Greetings all: My 1940-1944 mint sets are all #1 in the NGC-only registry; while the 1940 and 1943 sets are #2 in the combined registry behind my worthy competitors Coinbuf and ChancyMS60+, respectively. It's been a good year.     My lead for the 1943 set in the NGC-only registry increased after the judging for 2021 was over; it so happened that I just purchased a 1943-S steelie in the grade of NGC MS67+ CAC...  
Legionary1

Legionary1 in U.S Coins

2
My 2021 numismatic journey

Yet another positive NGC experience!

With submission turnaround times increasing by the day, it is often easy to focus on the bad while taking the good for granted. That said, I would like to share a recent positive experience with NGC customer service. I submitted a proof 1775 Irish Halfpenny in February of last year, but I did not find the time to inspect the coins until early last month. I know it is ridiculous that it took me that long to enjoy my coins, but I have very little time to kill. Now that things are starting to slow
1684 ducato of Naples

Like a Box of Chocolates

To paraphrase Forest Gump, coin collecting is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna find.  I find this especially true of the Heritage weekly world coin auctions.  Sorting out all of the consignments that Heritage gets into their various auction formats must take quite a bit of time and when it comes to world coins, I doubt if all the people involved are experts in all coins across all of coin minting history.  Still, I am surprised to find the occasional scarce variety pop
jgenn

jgenn in 1684 ducato of Naples

3
Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

And, I think we’ve picked the winners. Together. :)

Shandy and I have picked (from amongst the coins I have so far) the ones we think are the best and these will be among the ones I send in a few months from now. I am looking to make a couple more purchases of raw Zimbabwean coins between now and when these go out to NGC to try to get examples of the last few types I will need and maybe get better examples of some of these, so some of these may get bumped out of the submission if I find better – more on that in a couple of weeks probably.