After my mother-in-law got me an MS70 2013 Koala, that got me looking at the set again. My wife got me the 2014 and 2016 in MS70 coins as part of my anniversary present a couple of weeks ago. Around the same time I scored pretty good deals on the 2019 and 2022 coins...

As a funny aside, entered in the 2022 coin this morning, and I saw the pictures entered in the data base for the coin... that... doesn't quite look right...  

So that leaves me just needing to get the 2015, 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, and (soon) 2024 to bring that set back up to being 100% complete for the first time in years.

I started the set back in 2008 and 2009 and won "Best in Category" in it for those years (along with a bunch of other people), but I haven't had the set caught up and complete in... 15 years. Wow. Time has flown... 

But I'm having fun just making some low-effort pick-ups when I find one at a reasonable deal. I think I'll keep looking and slowly trying to get the remaining coins over the next 9 months or so as I find them at attractive prices. 

"Low-effort" might seem kind of blah / harsh but... when you compare buying large lots of raw coins, searching through them, and submitting yourself to just picking up pre-graded MS70s for barely more than the price of the silver + grading... it's a different process.  No dig to those that do this most of the time or exclusively in their collecting, but it's a different process and... it's just easier.

On another front, because my collecting efforts haven't been very cost-heavy the last year or so - in part because past major award wins have subsidized the grading and building of some of my last few project sets - I'm sitting on more hobby money than I've had in a while - pushing $2,000 - and I'm seriously considering continuing to hoard some cash until I have the ~$2500 I'd need to buy an MS65 1924 Double Eagle. It'd be a large gold coin - the largest I'd own by a wide margin - and it's a Double Eagle, which I think is one of those "must haves" if you collect US coins. And 1924 would be for my grandmother's birth year. If I ever went for a 2nd one, I'd go for a 1920 - grandpa's birth year, my namesake.

At the same time, not winning a major award this year and not having a $500 use-it-or-lose-it credit takes off the pressure to find / have things to submit and also frees me up to change my effort or where I spend my energy. I've been somewhat avoiding spending my time and budget on pre-graded stuff the last couple of years specifically because it doesn't help me with the goal of using / burning that credit.

But I will probably be submitting something, because I'll get the $150 credit when my membership renews, and that will probably go towards some turtle coins.

My step-father has discussed in the past the possibility of getting a non-1932 double eagle just to have one, just because neither of us see that 1932 double eagle in the cards.

As part of this I'm realizing that a gift card that my brother-in-law gave me for my birthday has a slightly higher balance than I'd anticipated, and I'm discussing / considering with my wife spending that on more household expenses and rolling the equivalent cash into my budget fun / hobby money to get closer to that $2,500.

Another one of the big ticket items that's kind of a soft-entry in my list of wants would be buying a new camera body - a mirrorless one this time - to replace my D600/D610. I've discussed / joked in the past that a double eagle could be my wife's 10th anniversary present to me. Maybe if I buy the coin, she could do that herself in 10 years.  I guess we'll see how it all works out.