Earlier in the week I'd been watching a 1983 Italian 500L graded Ms65 by NGC. The staring bid was $10 + $5 shipping and it had no bids.

When it was about 12 hours out from ending I bid $20 hoping to win it for roughly the cost of grading and keep it until and unless something better came along - maybe one I graded myself.

Then, about 15 minutes before bidding ended, someone bid $15, then $16, then $17, then $20, then something over $20... I don't know if this was a shill or someone that actually wanted the coin but nonsense like this is why i increasingly hate bidding before the last minute.

I was going to bid $22 at the last minute to try to take it back. But the eBay glitches, doesn't let me bid, and it ends with me losing the coin for $20.50.

I was not happy at the time but I can't help but wonder if eBay saved me from myself and did me a favor. For $26-27 or more I think I'm better off submitting one on my own with an '86 and '87 soon. It was attractive at $15-20 just to fill the whole for now but it's a lot less attractive at $25+.

As it is I do have a 1983 that I think could grade out pretty well - maybe beating that MS65.

Anyway...

I've been a little more successful with a few other coins lately. I got an MS67 1997 500L and an MS68 100L from 1986. Neither fits into the 500L set I'm currently building in the registry because the 1997 was one of the circulating commemorative years. But both are nice coins, the 1997 is closely related to the main 500L set and Shandy liked it, and the 100L is one step closer to making an Italian birth year set for us, which I think could be cool.

My in-laws were over at the house recently and I used the opportunity to pull out the graded 500L, show them to both of them and point out the coins they'd brought back that are now incorporated into it. I think my father-in-law liked seeing that I'd made a little something of / with that bag of coins and that I'd pulled that bag of foreign coins into something like that. I'm not entirely sure he understands my practice of "spending money on money" but I do think he thought that was nice.

I still have not gotten to take pictures of all the new Zimbabwe coins and I want to take some pictures of some Venezuelan Coins I've been looking at lately to share but my weekends and days off keep going to other tasks lately - including cleaning out the garage. Something I've made solid progress on recently.

Ben seems to have lost interest in Pokemon go for now so it's just us adults that continue to be addicted to catching them all / collecting them all and completing our pokedexes. 🤣 From talking to others this seems common. The kids get into it, the adults do it with the kids and then the kids abandon it while the adults still work obsessively to complete the game. 🤣