For the first time in about 2 years, I’ve received a grading credit from NGC, and I’m actually faced with thinking about how I wanted to use it.
A couple of years ago I knew I wanted to reholder the 10G set and I immediately saw that credit as a chance to build a graded set of Zimbabwe coins for a registry set.
Last year I knew before I even finished the Zimbabwe set that the next thing I wanted to do was Venezuela – and I even went out-of-pocket on most of that because I’d already used the credit finishing Zimbabwe.
This year, though, I was thinking it’d probably be a smaller, lower-key year, of just using the $150 credit from the membership to try to fill out most of the rest of the Venezuela 2007-Date set and the last three coins of the 500 Lire set. $150 - $10 for an invoice fee leaves you with $140 which will pay for about 7.5 coins, which then just leaves you paying like $12 + Shipping for 8 coins, and 8 coins would have finished the 500 Lire set and left me with only 1 hole (a coin I still don’t have even in a raw state) for the Venezuela set.
1) VEN 2010 25 CENTIMOS - INDEPENDENCE ANNIVERSARY
2) VEN 2010 50 CENTIMOS - BANCO CENTRAL - 70TH ANNIVERSARY
3) VEN 2016 10 BOLIVARES
4) VEN 2016 50 BOLIVARES
5) VEN 2016 100 BOLIVARES
6) ITALY 1995 500 Lire
7) ITALY 2000 500 Lire
8) ITALY 2001 500 Lire
But when you add in the $500 credit it starts to look more like this…
1) VEN 2010 25 CENTIMOS - INDEPENDENCE ANNIVERSARY
2) VEN 2010 50 CENTIMOS - BANCO CENTRAL - 70TH ANNIVERSARY
3) VEN 2016 10 BOLIVARES
4) VEN 2016 50 BOLIVARES
5) VEN 2016 100 BOLIVARES
6) ITALY 1995 500 Lire
7) ITALY 2000 500 Lire
8) ITALY 2001 500 Lire
9) ZIM 2003 $10 (If I can find one that seems worth sending in…)
10) ZIM 2003 $25 (If I can find one that seems worth sending in…)
11) VEN 2011 25 CENTIMOS - INDEPENDENCE ANNIVERSARY (If I can find a good one, which I think I can)
12)
…
25)
And with the $150 credit…
26)
…
33)
There was this Raw / ungraded 1955 Rhodesian Half Penny that looked good for $6 on eBay and I’d been considering buying it and sending it in to get to 4/5 (80%) on that Half Penny Set. If it graded well, it could even put me in the running fort the top spot in the category. I’d been looking at that and when I found out about winning the award I just went online and got it. I hadn’t considered at the time but because it is from the mid-1950s and not mid-1960s it would have to go in under economy ($23) and incur its own $10 invoice fee, so the incremental cost of that coin would be $33 and not $19, but it could still be worth it if the coin looks like it would grade well when it comes in. So that could eliminate basically 2 of the blank spots above – if it looks good enough – but that doesn’t really solve “the problem” of those potentially 22-25 blank spots in that list.
Now, don’t get me wrong – this is a fantastic “problem” to have, but for the first time in 2 years, I’m going to have to think about how I want to use this.
Before the announcement was made and the question became “real,” I’d toyed with the idea of looking through some of the Italian coins I have in my binder and see if there are some 5 Lire, 10 Lire, 50 Lire, 100 Lire and / or 200 Lire coins I could send in and possibly add those two and strengthen those Lire sets. But the more I think about it the more I’m not sure that idea appeals to me.
The reason being that I don’t think I’ll get much of the normal “fun” I get out of these sets by doing this. The best part of these sets for me usually is researching them, researching the design elements and the history of the different coins and designs and the historical context and building the presentation of what have now become 2 “Best Presented” sets.
As you might imagine, I think the reason why those sets “work” is that I have really enjoyed making them and building them out on the registry and that part is usually what I get the most personal “value” from in spending my hobby money.
And I think that’s an area where the 5, 10, 50 and 100 lire sets fail – because they’re 50 year runs of the same design. So, there’s not nearly as much there to look into and a lot of that work is ready done and built into those sets. So, I don’t think there’s enough meat on those bones for me to sink my teeth into. Those side sets work as fun side projects to buy some new coins for here and there where they come up but I’m not convinced they’d hold my interest and keep me happy as a main focus for a year or two like the Zimbabwe and Venezuelan Sets have.
The 500 Lire and 200 Lire circulating commemorative sets hold a little more promise in this regard with some fun designs to research and comment on, but these things do not hold up well and trying to find them in high grade, looking good, for not much money, can be a bit of a difficult thing. But… the other thing about those sets is, if I’m being honest, I’m hoping that certain dealers will continue to enable my laziness on those.
The other thing about that is that we’re talking about 22-25 coins. The first Zimbabwe submission – the one that won the award – was only 14 coins. The Venezuelan submission – that didn’t even fully feed into the 2007-date set – was only about 26 coins. A submission of that size just calls out to me to use it to build “the next set” - the next big research project, the next great adventure of buying hundreds of raw coins and filling another binder with pages and flips…
But… what set is that going to be?
An obvious standout for me has been Turkey – they’ve been going through a pretty major long term inflationary crisis that has gotten much worse in the last few years and it could be a great new project, continuing my theme from the last two.
Another one that could be a great continuation of my recent theme is Argentina… There could be some fun here with just snickering about the gap between the official inflation rate and what the apparent actual inflation rate is.
Of course, building either of those sets in the way that I want would depend on finding large quantities of their coins in good conditions at reasonable prices so I could do what I’ve done with the last 2 sets. So far, with Turkey, it has not been looking good / promising.
But then, the other question becomes, do I want to stick to theme or go with something else? Is now the time that I decide to build elephant or turtle thematic custom sets for one or both of my boys?
But if I do that I wonder if I’d be better going for turtles over elephants as a focus.
The Zimbabwe set (Notes and Coins, making it collectively HUGE) is so strongly linked to Samuel. The Rhodesian Pennies with the association to Zimbabwe and the elephant theme also have a strong link to Sam. If I keep pounding projects like that, I might risk a day in the future when Ben is going to look at me a bit sideways… Even though he is my namesake “William” and therefore the 10G set is something I mentally have going to him one day.
So maybe it’s time to build a Turtle set?
The main problem there is I’d be starting from Zero pretty much, and I’m time-limited on getting a group of coins together and ready while the credit is still good.
In the meantime, I think I'm going to see if I can get some more raw examples of the 1995, 2000, and 2001 500 Lire coins. I have examples of each, but I know they're not going to get super-high grades. So I think I'm going to try to find some better alternatives while I have some time to shop.
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