The first of the packages of Venezuelan Coins from the Ukrainian dealer arrived. The box that came was the 2nd one shipped, containing the 2021 Digital Bolivar Coins. The first package is still showing it was last seen in Kiev. I guess we'll see on that one – but I’m mostly considering that one a lost cause after over a week with no updates. I’ll just be pleasantly surprised if I’m wrong. But at least I already had some of those from a prior order and dollarwise what I got this weekend was the bulk of the order.

For a package that started its journey by leaving a war zone, the “last mile” to my house seems to have been almost more dramatic, at least with regard to the tracking history. It was supposed to be delivered a week ago on Saturday, then USPS didn’t actually attempt and said it would be delivered on Monday. Then they scanned it as being at the post office and didn’t try to deliver on Monday. When the NGC box came on Tuesday I was expecting that knock to be about the Ukrainian package, but, nope. Then, finally, on Wednesday, when I was about to just file a missing package report, it finally got delivered – but by then it had kind of had its thunder thoroughly stolen for the moment by the certificates and the graded coins coming back.

I had also ordered some more 7-coin sets of the Bolivar Fuertes coins from a dealer in Utah I got Zimbabwe coins from. I'd bought 5 sets of these from a dealer in Turkey before I saw that this Utah dealer also had them - and at a lower price if buying several sets. I decided to order more just to have some from another dealer / source.

The coins from the Utah dealer are very nice and may well be better than the others from Turkey. I have all the coins labeled with what dealer they came from. It will be interesting if all the "Best" ones we pick are from the new sets when we finally go through these.

I've been holding off on going through these with Shandy in part because I wanted to have them all together first - or as close to it as possible. But I've felt the desire and need to start moving on these growing as the Zimbabwe submission moved closer to being done and home - time to fire off the next round, right? And that this point I really have almost every thing I wanted and needed and I don’t feel like holding things up for that 2nd Ukranian package that may never come. So if it ever does I’ll just do what I did with the many, many waves of Zimbabwe coins – pick the best of each group and compare the best of each group against each other until I arrive at 1 coin to submit.

I’m yet to find someone offering either just the 50 Bolivar Fuertes coins or sets that include the 50 Bolivar Fuertes coin at a price I consider reasonable for these. The jury is still out on what to do about that and I may just proceed without them for now, just like I initially proceeded without the $2 and $5 coins with Zimbabwe, and proceeded the 2nd time with Zimbabwe without a new / better $10 and $25 coin. Sometimes you just have to make progress where you can and wait for better opportunities on other things.

This may be one of the more egregious cases of “scope explosion” I’ve ever pulled on myself. What started as getting 1 of the new 2021 Digital Bolivar coins has turned into:

-          5 Denominations of the Original Bolivar from the 1980s.

-          5 higher denominations of the original bolivar from the early 2000s.

-          7 denominations of the Bolivar Fuertes coins from ~2007

-          3 later denominations of the Bolivar Fuertes added ~2016

-          2 denominations of the Bolivar Soberano

-          3 denominations of the “Digital” Bolivar

25 denominations spanning 3 redenominations and 4 currencies over about 40 years… Yeah… So much for one little coin… I’m a lunatic, but you knew that already.

I'm thinking I’ll try to get these out with some 500L coins in May - if I can convince Shandy to let me get away with it. We cracked open a couple of Italian Franklin Mint sets the other day for a 1983 and 1987 500L for that set. The 1987 looked great once I got it out but the 1983 looked a little disappointing once we got to see it bare. So now I’m looking into a couple of options on trying to get another, hopefully better, 1983.

I also found a seller offering what they described as “Gem Uncirc” $10 Zimbabwe coins for the first time. So, I ordered a few of those, which should be arriving any day now and I’m hoping for good things. If those look good I’ll probably add that to the Italian coins and the Venezuela coins if and when those go out to resolve one of the last major weaknesses of the Zimbabwe set.