I did manage this last week to print the label and mail off that large, mixed submission to NGC for grading. I decided just to use Priority Mail and let the carrier pick it up from my front door - hopefully they don't give me cause to regret that, but it seems unlikely.

In the interim things have gotten a little more interesting and there's slightly more riding on that submission now.

I noticed a week or so ago that a new set had knocked my Venezuelan type set down to #2 in the category. That person didn't have a complete set at the time and they were barely ahead of me but now they've brought their set up to 100% complete. 

There are 6 holes that I need to fill in that set. All 6 will be filled by this submission I've just sent in. But, looking at the point spread, I need to pull mostly MS66s and MS67s on the new coins to pass the new guy up again - some MS68s or another MS69 would be welcome.

If they're out there I might also consider buying a couple pre-graded coins if they'd help bump me up just a little - I have some spending money set aside and I am willing to maybe deploy a little of that to retain the top spot for that set this year. Unless all the grades on those coins come back horrible and low it's going to be a tight race with a narrow gap between us once I add those new coins in.

Though there will definitely be a limit on how far I'm going to be willing to go on it. I'm not going to continue buying up more of these same coins and submitting them in hopes of high grades when I find a really good one, for example. Part of the problem there is, I've built this set, I've had my fun building it, and I know I'll have more fun in the long-term building and researching something new than fighting over this category. But I will try to defend the title on a category - especially for a set I put so much time into and which won a major award. And on that note, no matter who takes #1 this year, I'm pretty sure my set still wins on presentation.  This reminds me of something Mike said a few years ago now about the Zimbabwe set and my thoughts at the time about it possibly being unseated.

The Zimbabwe set and it the 500 Lire set I'm building for my wife (and about to bring to 100%, I think, with this submission), remain effectively unchallenged. I guess we'll see if that changes. I DID go ahead and include a new $10 coin for the Zimbabwe set in this new submission. I don't think the new coin is going to get a great grade, but I do think it would be very nice if it could take some low MS grade (even an MS61) and bump out the current AU58 in the set. That and that $25 coin remain some of the few really weak points in that set. But finding nice examples of those coins has proven oddly difficult - and I've tried. I'm also not thinking the grades on the 1995, 2000, 2001 500 Lire coins will be great either, but there weren't many of those made in the first place, and they're a pain in the butt to get, so I'll consider it a win just to fill in those gaps for now.

We'll see how it all comes out. World Modern turnaround times are still sitting at about 9 weeks so I may not know grades on those coins until Mid-September.

I've been busy at work lately, which is good in some ways - paid work is job security. But I'm going to have to try to start shifting some focus and time soon into building out the structure of the Argentinian Sets I want to build. I'm not terribly concerned about the 500L coins or the Venezuelan coins in the submission. Those will be easy for me to build out and incorporate into the structure I've already built for those sets.

The turtle coins are probably just going to sit for now. I think that thematic set is going to have to reach a certain critical mass in terms of coin count before it makes sets to build something out in the registry for it.