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NGC Journals

A Great Set for US Gold Collectors

I think that a great set for US gold collectors is US $1 Gold coins that were minted in San Francisco, see https://www.ngccoin.com/registry/competitive-sets/119601/  US $1 gold coins were minted at the main Philadelphia, Pennsylvania mint (no mint mark) and the branch mints, i.e., the Charlotte, North Carolina mint (C), the Dahlonega, Georgia mint (D), the New Orleans, Louisiana mint (O), and the San Francisco, California mint (S).  Below I list the number of dates for each mint for ea

Joao V 400 Reis Gold Coins from Brazil and Portugal

Happy Valentine’s Day!  I hope you enjoy the eye candy. It’s calorie free.  Introduction My main goal for this post is to explain why I chose to collect coins from Brazil and Portugal together.  I will use gold 400 Reis coins that were minted in Portugal and Brazil during the reign of Joao V for illustrative purposes. I have created a custom registry set that is titled “Joao V 400 Reis Gold Coins from Brazil and Portugal” to provide additional information about these coins, i.e.,

Desert Gold

Desert Gold in General

Resources I Used on my Collecting Journey

Many of the things I discuss in this post are “no brainers”, but I’m hoping that some people may find this information to be useful.  I discuss some of the mistakes I made and hope that it may keep other people from doing the same things.  I also briefly discuss some resources that I found useful. My Early Collecting Years When I started collecting coins in the 1970’s as a teenager, I really didn’t have many coin collecting resources available to me.  Since I was only collecting US coi

Desert Gold

Desert Gold in General

Following through on the Koalas and maybe going for a bucket list coin....

After my mother-in-law got me an MS70 2013 Koala, that got me looking at the set again. My wife got me the 2014 and 2016 in MS70 coins as part of my anniversary present a couple of weeks ago. Around the same time I scored pretty good deals on the 2019 and 2022 coins... As a funny aside, entered in the 2022 coin this morning, and I saw the pictures entered in the data base for the coin... that... doesn't quite look right...   So that leaves me just needing to get the 2015, 2018, 2

Revenant

Revenant in NCLT

Collecting Pintos – The Jewels of Portugal

In the last post I showed the obverses of two incredible Portuguese gold coins that are called Pintos. Pintos are the smallest gold coins from Portugal.  They weigh between 1.07 g and 1.1 g, and are between 14 mm and 15 mm in diameter for different rulers. They all have a fineness of 0.9166, which leads to between 0.98 g and 1.0 g of pure gold in every Pinto. In order to provide a better feeling for the size of the Pintos I compare them with US $1 gold pieces.  The Portuguese Pintos are sma

Desert Gold

Desert Gold in General

Collecting Portuguese Coins

Shortly after I started collecting Brazilian coins I learned more about the history of Brazil. This led me to also learn about its mother country, Portugal. Brazil was discovered by a Portuguese expedition that was led by Pedro Álvares Cabral on April 22, 1500. Since Brazil was a Portuguese colony between 1500 and September 7, 1822, when it declared its independence, the rulers of Portugal were also de facto rulers of Brazil during this period.  Portugal was a global trading and maritime po

Desert Gold

Desert Gold in General

Collecting Brazilian Coins

As I mentioned in my last post, when I started collecting US gold coins I kind of overdid it in the first year. That year I purchased 32 coins, but three of them were a big mistake. I’ll tell you more about these coins some other time.  In the following years, I purchased 10, 12, 14, and 5 coins in years 2, 3, 4, and 5, respectively.  Some of the reasons why my enthusiasm for collecting US gold coins tapered off are listed below: •    I didn’t see myself being able to complete the sets I ha

Desert Gold

Desert Gold in General

Collecting US Coins

I stopped collecting coins once I entered college because of a lack of time and money.  Then, after graduating from college, my hobby turned to stock investing.  However, in the spring of 2006 I started reading more and more about the upcoming housing crisis.  The price increases in homes since 2000 were enormous and unsustainable.  This led me to sell off a large percentage of my stocks and I decided that gold and gold stocks would be a good place to put some of my money.  However, instead of j

Desert Gold

Desert Gold in General

My Early Collecting Years

I first started collecting coins in the 1970’s when I was a teenager.  There are two things that sparked my interest in coins.  First, my father kept a few old coins in a steel Lincoln-head bank, and he used to occasionally take out these coins and show them to me. The second reason was a 1925D $2.5 gold coin that my grandparents received as a wedding gift. My father used to show me this coin during our yearly visits to my grandparents’ farm when I was very young. I had always wanted to buy a go

Desert Gold

Desert Gold in General

The type of coins that I collect

The pictures of the coins in the header above illustrate the types of coins that I collect.  From left to right they include: US 1872-S $10 Gold piece Brazil 1732-R 12,800 Reis Gold piece Brazil 1821 Cuiaba 960 Reis counterstamp on a Charles IV 8 Reales from Bolivia  Portugal 1833 Gold Peca Azores - Terceira Islands 1829 bronze 80 Reis  

Desert Gold

Desert Gold in General

Well, That didn't quite pan out...

About 4 years ago my Mother-in-Law went to New York and, while she was there, she stopped by the Mint in Philadelphia and bought me a proof SAE and a 2019 Birth Year set for our then new baby, Sam. I hadn't really been aware that these were a thing, so I hadn't gotten one when Ben was born, and, of course, in 2019, they were sold out of 2016. I've kept an eye out on eBay for the last few years but 2016 seems to be a harder-than-most year for these sets and if one ever comes up th

Revenant

Revenant in Family

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

I hope everyone on here had a Good Christmas a few days ago and is looking forward to a good New Year's Eve and New Years Day. We'll be hosting a New Year's Eve party this year because Ben really liked it that one year and he wants one. From a coin collecting standpoint this year was a little more muted than last year - Shandy got me a 2023 MS70 Panda, surprising me after head-faking with the Koalas. I also got Choya a 1982-D Half dollar to fill in a hole in one of the year

Revenant

Revenant in Family

Ten Tips for Anxious Beginners

Most veteran numismatists won’t hesitate to help new collectors learn about our hobby and I’m no exception. I frequent a lot of coin discussion boards on the Internet and have witnessed the struggles and frustrations of the so-called “newbies” as they begin their journeys into this complex and intimidating past time.  From my observations, one of the biggest hurdles that a lot of new collectors face is that age old narcissistic dilemma of “How do I make myself look like an expert when

Captainrich

Captainrich in Beginner Tips

Happy Belated Thanksgiving

Posting this a little late, but I thought I'd say "Happy Thanksgiving" to everyone. I found myself remembering a recent conversation with Ben, where he was wondering when he'd get his own cell phone (recall: he is 7), and we thought he'd probably get one in a few years, maybe as he's getting into middle school and starting to do things for school and such without us around or with him more, but we also pointed out that this would be subject to us having the money / funds available at the ti

Revenant

Revenant in Family

Moldovan (Transnistrian?) Turtles

One of the predictable outcomes of me starting to work more seriously on a collection / set of coins with a turtle theme is that its going to have me branching out into some more things and giving me extra opportunities to digress into, "Hey! Look at this thing I just found!" I recently found a seller offering 4 of these coins from that feature a sea turtle. I ordered all 4 of the ones they had listed. When those came in and looked great, and I saw the seller had listed 3 more, I ordered th

Revenant

Revenant in Turtle Coins

Suggestion for future U.S. Mint Silver Presidential Medals

Although I have a complete set of silver Presidential Medals in NGC/PCGS holders that state Coin and Chronicles on the labels, I still think the U.S. Mint should distinguish these medals when they're issued again as part of the current Presidential Silver Medals program. Below is the text of a letter that I sent to U.S. Mint Director Gibson concerning the matter: 11/19/23   Mint Director Ventris C. Gibson United States Mint Headquarters 801 9th Street, NW Washington, DC 

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

Revenant

Revenant in Random Nonsense

A Bouquet of Flame Lilies

I had mentioned recently that I’d ordered a Rhodesian 3 Pence (1 1957 in MS66) to go with the Rhodesian Federation 6 pence my wife gave me for my Birthday. Shortly thereafter I saw that I seller I’ve used for a lot of my Rhodesian Federation coinage had a 1955 and a 1964 in MS66, so I put in some offers, which they accepted. After the coins spent a week in the Post Office, after the substitute carrier once again just put a slip of paper in the mailbox and didn’t come to the door, ring

Belated Presents and getting the bug again.

I got some belated birthday presents from my wife’s family this weekend and I finally got to find out what my wife said when she said she’d given her mother her “other idea.” My MIL gave me an NGC MS70 2013 Koala. I had not been looking at these in a while and they weren’t on my wish list on eBay. She went into my registry sets and found a coin I didn’t have for a set and went on eBay and found it, in the right grade. The rest of the set up to this point has been all MS70s and they got an M

Revenant

Revenant in Family

A bit of family history emerges.

A couple of weeks ago I reached out to my Mom to ask her about the date ranges for the time when they were in Argentina, where they were, etc. I wanted to have a little more information so I could incorporate this into the set description for my Austral set: The coins I had gotten came mostly from my grandmother, giving me coins my grandfather had kept. However, apparently, not long after I reached out to my mother, my sister found this in a bunch of papers and other things

Revenant

Revenant in Argentinian Coin Sets

I guess that's all over except the crying.

So, I've always thought the expression "It's all over but the crying" was a funny one, in part because when something is over people can be crying because they're happy or because they're sad. You see it on awards shows all the time with the happy cry, but, given that televised award shows are often for TV and movie stars who are, after all, professional pretenders, it does make you wonder sometimes how much of the happy crying is genuine.   What I never knew, however, but what a little bit

Revenant

Revenant in Registry