So I made my post a few weeks ago about picking up that 1981 200 Lire and I talked about wanting to get a 1980 because of the design of that coin and how fitting I thought it was for a tribute set to my wife.

At the time I was hitting up eBay to see if I could find any of the 1981 graded by NGC - most likely from this same seller because this seller seems to be about the only one offering modern Italian issues graded by NGC. But I didn't find any.

So that had me looking for raw examples to maybe grade myself for this set because, I really liked that design, my wife liked it, and I wanted to get it.

Sadly... no luck! These things do not seem to age well if they get handled at all. I don't think they do that well wit oxidation and oils from hands and handling. Anyway....

I'd about given up for the time and I was feeling a bit bummed about it, thinking this might just be something that'd require time and patience... and then...!

I found this:

I've joked with others that this is one of those moments that gets the paranoid part of your brain going, wondering if the dealers watch the registry and what you post and what the holes in your set are and then the coins you need magically appear! 

But, then you take a closer look, see the cert#, realize this coin is from the same invoice as the 1981 I bought before, realize that this coin was graded before I ever talked about it.

My fantasies and delusions of my own influence aside, this had nothing to do with me. The seller is just submitting and grading things and offering them for sale, as always. They just happen to be coins I want.

So then, why did these magically appear after my post? Well, they probably didn't. They were probably listed and for sale the entire time.

Why then, did I not see them?

Well... likely through a copy and paste issue, the seller had them listed as 1000 Lire coins. And this is totally on the seller - NGC correctly labeled them as 200 Lire, and Italy didn't introduce 500 Lire coins until 1982 and 1000 Lire coins until about 1995. There are no 1980 dated 1000 Lire coins that I'm aware of.

I just got lucky finding these because I did a broad look for "NGC Italy," just to see if anything interesting popped up.

Since it was around Black Friday, everyone was marking things down, and the seller takes offers, I put in an offer for about 80% of their ask and they accepted.

I'm going to cross my fingers and hope these folks keep making my life easy for me on this set:

I gotta say though, the pictures the seller takes of these coins are so unflattering. They look so much shinier and more lustrous and pretty in hand than they do in the seller's images.

As often seems to be the case with me, I'm finding these type sets with different designs more fun to build than long-run date sets that all have the same design. So, while I had thought that I might try making a play to retake the top in the 50 Lire set, this 200 Lire type set seems to be becoming my secondary Italian focus, having mostly built a solid 500 Lire date set. Although I'm very much also interested in a 500 Lire type set that includes the circulating commemorative years. 

While I was shopping for these, I was surprised to find that there are 1980-dated coins that use the more "standard," non-circulating commemorative design. So they issued two different 200 Lire designs in 1980. And this has me wondering waht other years this is true for.

In other slightly funny news... You know how, back in May, I talked about how someone came along 15 minutes before an auction ended and sniped a 1983 500 Lire out from under me... 

Well, today, I looked at the one other 500 Lire type set in the registry...  and it has one coin... a 1983... in MS65... that was added in May... right around when I lost that auction to the sniper ...

But... I guess that means it probably wasn't a shill...

There will be no mercy.