Completing a set of Texas Commemoratives

I think it was about 9 months ago that my step father and I were both glancing over auctions on eBay while talking on the cell phones together. We were still very much involved with working on the birthyear mint sets that are now largely complete. We had just arranged to purchase the 1932-S quarter that now resides in the 1932 set. We needed something else though because the 1932-S was less than $1000 and we needed more than $1000 to avoid a sales tax charge.

Well my step father noticed a really interesting half dollar. It was one of the 1934 Texas Centennial commemoratives. My step-father is a 5th generation Texan and he loves things related to the history of the state. I knew what the coin was and explained it to him. He decided he wanted it and we got it.

When I showed him later that it was part of a larger set of 13 coins issued from 1934 to 1938, there was a certain interest in building a complete set of them. So over time we continued to snap up coins for the set when they appeared at pretty good prices.

By the end of last year we had approximately half the set with all of the coins for 1934, 1935, and 1936. Then the other week he sent me an email about a 1937-S at a nice price. We got that coin, and then I noticed that some other sellers had listed 4 of the other coins that we needed. I talked to him about it and he was surprised. They must have just been listed because he hadn't seen them when he'd looked just one or two days prior. The coins were listed at fair prices and getting them would bring us just 1 coin away from a complete set. We ended up getting all of them and were left only needing the 1938 "P" (which is one of the set's key dates).

I'll admit, this hadn't been a particularly exciting set up to this point. Almost all of the coins have been won by "Buy it Now" or auctions where no one else bid. There were no real "heart pounding," white-knuckle bidding wars. This isn't to say that building the set hadn't been fun. I love the look of the Texas commems and I enjoyed helping my step-father with the set... It just wasn't very thrilling... Oh yay! I clicked the button! *queue eye-roll*

Then I found a 1938 coin selling in an auction just last week. This seemed kind of crazy to me. The idea of getting half the set in a 3 week period was just wacky, but my step-father said "Let's go for it." This coin did go for a pretty strong price and there were some tense moments towards the end where we didn't know if our bids would hold up, but they did and we won the coin on Wednesday night.

It's now April 12. We're waiting on the coin to arrive in the mail. April 21 is the 173rd anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto. I didn't realize it at the time but my step-father considered it significant to complete the set near this date. I can't say I blame him. I think it's pretty cool too. I'm hoping we'll have the coin in hand so it can be added to the set on or before April 21st.

I've really enjoyed these shared projects with my step-father. We've gone to coin shows together, spent hours looking at coins together before submissions, searched for coins together and share in each other's interests. Our hobbies have largely been the foundation on which we formed a relationship. We're still working on a couple of the mint sets that he wants and he's refering to another project or two. I'm not entirely sure what's going to come next now that this set is complete.