You don’t always have to buy another coin to upgrade your set.
Every year around this time, I review my sets and pick one to focus on for documentation. This year, the choice was pretty easy.
I completed my U.S/Philippines Ten Centavos set in 2016 with a very low grade 1915S that I had purchased as a raw coin ten years earlier. At the time, a total of just ten 1915S 10 centavos had been graded by NGC, with only two of those grading above AU58. The odds of obtaining an NGC graded 1915S were virtually zero, and raw coins didn't come up for auction very often, so I just decided to grade the only one I had. Just ten days after it received a VG-8, a better looking raw coin came up for auction. I won it and had it graded in August 2016. That same month, yet another raw 1915S popped up on eBay. This one was much better looking than the one I had just sent for grading, so I bid aggressively and won it. This third coin now resides in my set with a grade of AU55. The current total population is now 13, so these three coins have been the only additions in the past 3 years. I have acquired one more raw example since then, but have yet to have it graded.
I’ve been able to upgrade seven other coins since then, one in 2018, and all of the rest in the past 6 months. Six were upgraded to MS65 and one to MS66. I acquired a very nice looking raw 1904 in August for a good price on eBay and it far exceeded my expectations when NGC graded it MS66. Getting back to the title of this post, I had added an NGC MS64 1907S to my set in 2013. That grade always seemed very conservative to me, but it wasn’t until this year that I finally decided to have it reviewed. Sometimes your best upgrade is already in your set. (Before and after photos are below)
There is now a full description for the set and all 30 coins have two photos and date/mint/coin specific information. More upgrades are possible, but I expect they’ll be coming a lot less frequently.
Thanks, for reading.
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