wary of coin conserving

It is going to be a bit lengthy journal entry because I have had a lot of activity in my collecting recently--for those who read these please bear with me..........

First of all, I have been so busy, not because of any uncontrolled spending or any financial windfall--but mainly by trying to get some things in order and several coins that I have been waiting for became available simultaneously.

I have decided to try out NCS mainly because of a wonderful ship coin that I bought--a So-Called Dollar--celebrating the 300th anniversary of Jamestown, minted in 1907. I thought this coin would make a great companion for the recent 2007 400th anniversary coin I bought. I saw this coin at a Stacks sale, from the John J Ford Collection auction and put in what I thought would be a reasonable AND winning bid---I lost. As fortune would have it, I randomly looked at a Teletrade auction one day and saw another one!! I bid a bit higher and won--for about half of what my Stacks bid was !! woohoo...I love when that happens, and now with the money I saved I will send it off to NCS {with a few others to make it worth the expense of shipping, time etc}. I only hope that the black areas on it can be removed off of a brass alloy coin--grunge seems to penetrate the surface of certain metals. If all goes ideally the coin will be conserved great, and re-holdered in a new, higher grade NGC slab afterwards..crossing my fingers here.

I also recently did 2 more submissions to NGC, one with 8 coins and one with 2 multi coin set holder requests. The multi-holders are a 3-coin set of the 1977 Bahamas Silver Jubilee { I couldn't believe when the coins arrived at my house after purchase that they were the rare "no mintmark" variety--and I bought them at the mintmark price-a nice $600+ bit of luck} the coins have a $100 gold coin, $50 gold and an oversized silver $25 { which is why I went for the multi-holder}. The second multi-coin slab will have 5 coins-the "Sail '95" set from the Netherlands. This is a pristine set {I mailed it with the original unopened cases} and hope I might finally get my first 70 on a submission with one of these...the other 8 coins I sent in also all have ship themes on them, including a really cool but tiny 1/20th oz. gold coin from Mongolia with a commem to Marco Polo's travels to the far east.

I was surprised today when an NGC rep called me to clarify a small detail concerning my submissions. This is the second time I have gotten phone calls from NGC--just for the purpose of my satisfaction and making sure they get my order right. This kind of service is why I continue to use them { my recent submissions were my 6th and 7th of the year}. Although I do not always agree with the grades I get {who does?} I feel assured that they are spending their best efforts to be correct and if there are any glitches in labeling etc etc..they are quick to rectify the problem..........these phone calls could also mean that I might need a course in how to fill out submission forms and quit holding up the grading for every one else...sorry.

I have much more but I'm gonna cut it short for now and probably add another in a day or two {breaking my rule of no more than 1 journal entry per week}....a quick thanks to 2 friends from tradingslabs..J3Eleven for the tip to a website that has 7 pages of ship coins-and where I found that Poland zlotych commem silver coin, and also to Ronday for trading me the Sail '95 set........here's the obverse of my So-Called Dollar 300th anniversary coin..Pocohantas on the front, and of course ships on the reverse {pictured in my High Seas set-which has several new additions--including a new pirate coin which is a must see coin-with ship}

[attachment=:name]