Okay, so, after several rounds of going back and forth between “Grading/Quality Control,” “Grading/Encapsulation/Imaging,” and “Quality Control/Finalized,” the submission is finally finalized and shipped, and I have grades.

On a few of them, all I can say is… Woof…

For Italy…

While these mostly are not great I can’t call most of these disappointments. Yeah… the 1995 is lower than I’d hoped for, but the 2000 and 2001 are better than I’d worried they might be. At the end of the day those were a play to at least get the set finished. All three coins are having to go through NGCs review process to add to the registry because none of those three have ever been added to the set before. The 5L was a disappointment – I thought that would do better. But I’m happy with the 10L.

Most importantly - I have made the 500L set I built for my wife 100% complete, including coins her family brought back with them from Italy 30 years ago. I like it.

The Venezuelan coins are where this hurts – Pretty much all MS66s, and so these fall short of what I needed to take back the #1 set with that Best Presented Set… So… maybe next year we’ll try to reclaim the title:

The Argentinian Coins… Again… Overall not what I’d hoped for… but… They’re still going to let me fill out a set with a fun narrative. For the Austral Anyway… I’m taking another look at the Peso Convertible and realizing how many slots that set has for circulating commemoratives I have zero interest in hunting down. Lol

The 63s and the 64s hurt… but the Zimbabwe set also started with some less than stellar and humble grades and such… and I’ve improved from there where I could. 

Once again... we'll call this a foundation to grow from... maybe... We'll see how much I feel like torturing myself and my wallet.

Speaking of the Zimbabwe set, the $10 coin scored! Kind of! – It got an MS62. Which beats the AU58 that I had before and it is now the TOP POP, highest graded example graded by NGC. I had been hoping this would grade MS and not AU like the last one, and it did. So, this is kind of a win… but I had hoped it might MS63.  

Seriously though, finding examples.of these that do not look rough has been hard. I've been trying... for a few years now.

And finally, we have the turtle coins… Mostly 66s. I can’t really complain too much here. I didn’t really expect too many super high grades here and I mostly just wanted these to maybe form the basis for a future signature set. Yes, high grades are nice, but they’re not essential for a non-competitive set…. that I’m not even officially building yet… and they’re still Gem Uncirc grades.

But... Hey! That Tokelau Cent! MS67RD!

Next goals will be..

1) getting the coins programmed in and in the slots,

2) getting my pre-written descriptions posted on the coins,

3) getting pictures taken of the 500 Lire coins to polish the presentation on that set,

4) pictures on the new Venezuelan coins to maintain the quality of the presentation on that set,

5) getting the Austral coins (and maybe the Pesos) imaged and

6) getting my historical write-ups for the Austral Set ready.

These may not all happen in this order.