and other tidbits

I realize it has been a while since I've written. I must admit, I thought I'd be more down in the dump after deciding to focus my collection because of monetary constraints. To my surprise, I've been having fun, plus finding some Mexican coins that I'll be sending in for grading.

I guess this would be a good time to give kudos and thanks to Amy and the rest of the staff at NGC for adding new & updating the world registry sets. I do appreciate all the Mexican sets that have been added (even though it means a lot of work now to update my signature sets for the coins I had there that are now in registry sets).

I didn't realize what all I had (at least concerning Mexican coinage) until I started going through them as I've been updating my collecting software. I have found at least 3 coins for sure that I'm going to submit for grading, one may come back body bagged, but still, I'm enjoying myself immensely, and hopefully I'm learning as I go.

For those of you who have been following my efforts, I'm keeping my Franklin Halves, Buffalo Nickels, wild west items etc. What has been focused out are mint sets, the trade dollars, and other sets that, while I like them, I can't afford to build a good registry set at this time (and probably not for 2 or 3 years). What I can do, for those sets that I like but don't maybe truly love them (Liberty Head nickels are a prime example), will be to build a nice circulated set (ungraded for now, sorry NGC) and then update and upgrade when my finances improve. It will be a long haul, but I"m hoping to improve my grading skills, do some research that needs to be done (especially on my Mexican Specimen Notes and Mexican coinage). Plus, doing an ungraded circulated set can be just as much of a challenge as a top grade registry set (at least to me it can be) because a collector still has to find the best coin for the grade (whether the grade is VF30 or MS67).

I hope I can be encouraged in this, and as always, I'm always open to suggestions, constructive criticism, support etc.

As an example of what I'm doing, I'm attaching the obverse of a VF30 1860 Indian Head Cent. There is wear on the coin, but I'm liking it as a nice example of the grade.