I said in a recent post that I’d be looking to buy some Zimbabwe coins from a dealer in the US that I’ve used a lot and get those submitted. Then, to my surprise, when I went to order, I found that they’d upped their prices and upped their minimum order from $50 to $100. Yeah, they offer free shipping, but, sheesh. Let me have the option to pay the shipping for a smaller order. I wanted to order 2 sets of coins and some notes for about $55. I had not wanted to or planned to spend $100 and buy 3-4 sets… So, I just didn’t.

Having looked into this more, I’m finding that I may not be able to get those 10-coin sets in uncirc. condition anywhere else for less than about $25/set, where with that dealer I can get them for about $20/set - $18 if I wait for one of their frequent sales. Also, I increasingly like the idea of getting 3 sets, getting one graded and keep 2 raw – one for each boy.

So, I might just hold my nose and put in a larger order soon. And now I feel a bit silly for getting such a stick up my butt about it, but it didn’t feel right at the time and so I’ll stand by that choice.

While I’m changing up my plans and waiting on a sale – probably a few weeks, Mother’s day and Father’s day will probably shake out something – I decided to grab a bunch of the 2014 bond coins. I’m going to try to submit these all together and have a bunch of them labeled -001 to -015 on the same invoice – an idea I’m stealing from Fenntucky Mike’s comment on my Traveler Check plans. I found a seller offering 5 sets of 5 Bond Coins for $28 so I ordered that and used my eBay bucks – 25 coins for about $23.50 after my bucks. Not bad. I’ll keep 4 sets Raw probably and organize 1 10-coin set and 2 5-coin Bond coin sets into a 20-coin album page and one day Ben and Sam will each get one, I think.

Even if I pull that off though I don’t think they’ll be listed from -001 to -015 in the set just because of the… slightly odd? way NGC lists / orders the slots and includes the bond coins and the fact that there’s a couple of varieties / designs of some denominations… It would make more sense to me to have the Bond Coins listed together at the end. This may be worth chasing up with NGC to see if they’d re-order the slots.

Maybe I need to try to just get them all together first… but I need to get moving on placing that order and getting these soon, I think. Getting lower tier things through seems to be taking a while lately and I’d ideally like to have more than one coin in my Zimbabwe coin set for 2021. That dime did the heavy lifting for 2020 but that’s an awfully lonely looking coin.

I think that would help make for a cool set. My working title for the coin set is going to be “The Early Victims of Hyperinflation,” or “Extinct Due to Hyperinflation” a reference to the fact that Zimbabwean coins went the way of the Dodo a lot sooner / faster than their notes did, as coins always do.

I’ve gone ahead and done the paperwork to submit the Zimbabwe traveler’s checks (P-15 to P-20) – without waiting on P-40 and P-45 – because I just don’t want to keep holding these up. I’m going to ship them in large BCW top loaders for protection and I’ve requested / ordered some small flat rate USPS boxes, which I think should be pretty much the perfect size for this job and the small coin submissions I’m hoping to do soon. I’m submitting all 12 checks but doing each set of P-15 to P-20 on separate forms so they’ll be two sets numbered -001 to -006 and I’ll get to fill two competitive sets with them. The best of each will go in the “Gradually, Then Suddenly” and I might make a signature set will all ~13 I’ll have at that point.

Between getting some orders placed, having flips to put coins in already and having shipping supplies coming it feels good to be rapidly making several material steps towards getting these things done and actually using the 2020 grading credits, unlike the 2019 one. But… 2020 was just rough. But I do also feel it was a personal failure to let that drag on for months while my anxiety over putting those coins in the mail quietly got the better of me.

The box with the 10G coins was delivered to NGC on 4/5 and their latest update says they’re opening the mail from 4/1 and 4/2 presently. So I’m hoping they’ll show in the system soon.