Be honest – how many of you remember that line from the start of Star Wars: Episode 3?

I have bemoaned several times over the last few months that it is hard to get excited or get motivated about building a registry set when you… don’t… have coins… But! I find that it is much easier to get excited about researching and writing about coins for a registry set when you… have coins… and have pictures to go with "da wordy bits."

I also gotta say - even feeling slightly disappointed at some of the grades - there’s a special joy and magic to an unboxing and it’s fun to have coins come home. In spite of that initial disappointment, I was very happy and noticed myself smiling when I opened that box Monday night.

My wife also snuck this gem while I was in bed Tuesday night, working on getting the first images edited and posted to sets.

I decided to start with the low-hanging fruit, hitting the 500L coins and the other coins where I just needed to do images for 1-6 coins to “complete” existing sets, before launching into the Argentinian coins and turtle coins, which are 7-8 coin groups for completely new sets. The part that does make these slightly more complicated though is trying to make sure that the images for the new coins match reasonably well with the old images of the coins that have been in the set a year or two, because I want consistency, but I don’t want to rei-image the entire Zimbabwe set (23 coins) because I’m replacing 1 coin. I don’t want to re-image the 11 older coins in the 500L set, just because I’m filling the last 3 holes.

I will also admit to just wanting to be able to show off a completed 500L set to my wife. 

The images are up now. I’d encourage anyone that follows these sets to look at the Zimbabwe type set, the Venezuelan type set, and the Italian 500L set. The new descriptions are up to, and all three sets are now 100% complete (not that that’s new for Zimbabwe anyway).

A fun image I’ll call out is the Reverse shot for the 50 Bolivars, which shows a reverse struck with a die with a shocking degree of wear that I’m just not used to seeing in modern US coins. Yeah – the coin graded MS66, and it has some scratches, clearly, but look at all those signs of die deterioration around the 5 and 0 in 50, around the outer rim of the legend and around the inner ring around the core design. Personally, I just find that very interesting and cool to look at.

Side note: But the image she snuck of me on the computer is what it looks like when I’m just working on the laptop in bed at night. When I’m up in my office and taking the coins, the set-up is a little nicer. When I replaced my old laptop about a year ago I got a new one that is the same brand as my work laptop, so it can dock into the same docking cube as my work laptop and I can use the same monitor and speaker set-up without multiple docking stations or monitor switching. It makes the home office situation more enjoyable and fun.

The images aren’t ready to go yet but I’ve taken images of the Argentinian coins today, again, finding myself just very excited and happy to get to snap those shots. I’ve gone ahead and gotten the images shot for Austral coins and Peso Convertible coins in 1 go. I’ll just be starting the editing with the Austral coins.

There will probably be another one of these posts soon as the Austral and then Peso Convertible images go up. I do have a feeling that the Peso Convertible images will be edited before I hit the historical write-ups for the Austral set, just because 1) it's easier to cross that one off and 2) Again... pictures are fun. It's shocking - You would never expect a photographer to hold this opinion. I know.

So, where does this leave me? … Since I also keep finding new things that need to be done or that I want to get done before November 1^st, and some of these are smaller (images on 1-2 coins) than others (making new banner images for sets that I’ve apparently been neglecting).

1) Getting the coins programmed in and in the slots, (Except for the Austral coins)

2) Getting my pre-written descriptions posted on the coins (for the new $10 Zimbabwe coin, 500L set, Argentinian Set, and Venezuelan coins)

3) Getting pictures taken of the 500 Lire coins and getting those posted

3b) Getting pictures of the new 2003 $10 coin for the Zimbabwe set.

3c) Getting pictures of the new 1983 5L and 1984 10L coins for those Italian sets..

3d) Getting pictures of our 1977 5L and 1984 5L coins for the 5L set since I apparently never did that… 

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

5) Getting the Austral coins imaged and

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

7) Making a banner / set image for the Austral set – which I haven’t made a banner image for this one yet as I usually use images of the graded coins, which

8) Making a banner / set image for the Italian 10L set since I apparently never did that… 

9) Getting the Peso Convertible Coins imaged and posted

10 Getting the turtle coins imaged and..

11) Starting to build some kind of signature set around that???? – More on this later but this is going to be mostly a pure signature set play... but I'm also finding some glimmers of where there might be potential for competitive set off-shoots.