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 trip I didn't go on would.

My wife and I talked about it and there just comes a point in your life when you just have enough random nick-knacks in your house.

I just told her that, if we're going to spend money on something fun for me, I'd rather her just let me have some money I can put towards coins and currency or one of my other current projects. I'd just get more enjoyment out of that than some random thing from New York.

If she'd been going to a different country my response would have been different to a degree but pretty easy. I like getting the left-over pocket change / coins from a trip like that. Even if the coins aren't rare I like to keep them and look at them and have stashes of coins from many countries because of things like this. But she's not going to come back with any fun coins from a trip to New York.

Mentally I'm in the process of "switching gears" a bit. I spent the first 7 months or so of this year focusing on building up my Zimbabwe note set. I've reached a point where I'm kind of done with that for now and will probably be taking a break from it unless a really nice deal becomes available. Around Sam's birth the set was nice to work on - I could get notes very cheap and being able to constantly get new notes, take pictures, add descriptions, and such formed a nice stress relief for me. Things are getting a little more settled now and that role of the project is a little less important in the short term. Now I'm thinking I want to horde my cash a little and see if I can do something similar to last year around the end of the year and pick up a coin for the 10G set or another 19th century European gold coin - a British Sovereign and an Italian 20 Lira would both be high on my list now that I have the French Angel and Rooster.