While I am currently concentrating on Morgan Dollars, I have not lost sight of my other goals.

Greetings all, three of six of my last posts highlighted my latest rage, primarily New Orleans minted Morgan Dollars. With my enthusiasm focused singularly on one registry set, it seems that my other sets were overshadowed. However, it would be wrong to confuse overshadowing with inactivity. With an eye towards all my sets, whenever I have had the opportunity to add to my collection in accordance with my goals, I will more often than not buy those coins.

One of those other registry sets on my radar screen, but in the background, is a two-pound Silver Britannia set. The British Britannia is the one-ounce silver equivalent of the Silver American Eagle with a few exceptions. One of those exceptions is that typically the Britannia?s mintage is held at 100,000 coins annually. The low mintage coupled with poor handling and packaging at the Royal Mint means that there is only a handful of high-grade certified Britannia?s.

My goal for this set has been to collect the entire 13 coin series in MS-69 condition. I started the year having six of twelve coins certified at MS-69. Shortly thereafter, I added both the 1998 and 2010 in MS-69 condition and in June, I added the 2004. Suddenly, I moved from six coins in MS-69 to nine coins. Since there are not a lot of certified coins let alone high-grade coins in this series, I consider three coins out of seven in six months good progress.

Just this past week a MS-68 2007 Britannia came up for auction on E-bay. Normally, with a goal of MS-69, I would not consider buying an MS-68 on the way to MS-69. However, since the 2007 Britannia was the last MS-67 in my set, I placed a bid on the coin. My rational for this decision apart from it being the last MS-67 was that I may not see an MS-69 for a long time and the sale of the 67 partially subsidizes the 68. I ended up winning the auction and while the coin is short of my goal and adds only 28 points to my set, it represents a milestone in my set that no coin grades below MS-68.

MS-70 coins in this series are almost unheard of and up until now, I knew of only one coin certified at that level between both NGC and PCGS. Then the impossible happened, a dealer in Great Britain had six 2010 PCGS MS-70 Britannia?s listed on E-Bay as a ?Buy It Now? for sale! With less than 10 coins in the entire 13-coin series graded that high, I snapped one up last month.

Now my set has 1 MS-70, 8 MS-69?s, and 4 MS-68?s, and if I never see another MS-69 with which to upgrade my set, I will be happy to have a top-notch registry set that I am proud to own. This year I have made remarkable progress towards my goal. However, taking nothing for granted, I?ll continue to be on the lookout for the ever-elusive final four MS-69?s to accomplish my goal. May you all achieve your collecting goals.

Gary