coming home to a full PO Box and 3 coin packages takes some sting out of a relaxing vacation ending

Due to some various circumstances my wife and I did not take our usual February vacation to break up the winter. We both have been at our current professions and companies long enough that we qualify for several weeks vacation per year. Our usual practice is a vacation in mid-winter to break up the doldrums and get away alone together, and then we also take a late summer trip which will include the daughters-and now the granddaughter.

I must admit to getting pretty close to burning out since we skipped our winter trip and had not had any time off since the prior summer. I usually don't like to purchase coins before I leave for a trip and have them sitting around at the post office for 10-12 days until I return.

Even though I live in a community where a person knows the postal workers by name, the checkout clerks at the grocery went to school with your kids or go to your church, etc etc..I still don't like filling out the Hold Mail slip and having a bin of my mail -with boxes and USPS envelopes sitting around at the post office. All of my paranoia and mistrust of my fellow humans aside, I have NEVER had a single package or coin order misplaced or disappeared by the USPS--knock on wood.

So I get back from a really relaxing and much needed vacation with the wife, daughter and granddaughter Jade at around 2AM on Monday morning--and I'm up at 8 AM the following morning after a 12 hour drive and off to the post office!!

Nothing except for 3 coin packages in waiting could have gotten me up at 8 AM after a 12 hour drive from the panhandle. I was not disappointed. I had won a Seated Liberty Half for my "distraction set" at the early stacks auction that occured just before the big weekend....I had gotten sniped for a 1935-S Walker by a floor bidder..and then on the final day of bidding on Stacks auctions I won a second Seated Half and another Maryland Commem ( don't ask me why I now have 3 Maryland Commems in my collection--maybe because I live here in Calvert County and am just a homer.) The Stacks auctions charged me shipping for each package and mailed them each seperately-seems like a waste--but the invoices would not let me combine the orders.

The final purchase I had among my pile of bills and junk mail at the post office was the 2-piece 2012 San Fran proof set. I have the 20th anniversary set with the reverse proof, the 2011 set with the rev pf and my OCD, which requires completion and/or symmetry to the things I do, required me to purchase the new set with the Rev Pf ( plus at $180 shipped for both slabbed by NGC PF69's I thought the price was good.)

So if vacations have to end, and the daily grind must return, there is no better way to finish some time off than a full day of relaxing after travel and jumping back into my numismatic hobby.

Here's the obverse of my 1847 Seated Half...nice almost PL devices but not very mirrored fields. I enjoy the way the forest green and gold toning isolates the date--Happy Hunting e1

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