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Battled Through the Storm and Landed a Big Fish

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jackson64

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Power held out long enough to get in an auction bid.

Our power at my house goes out for hours with a thunderstorm and has been out for a week or more 3 or 4 times in the past 3 or 4 years. We've had the 5 to 6 feet of snow 2 winters ago. A tornado hit Chesapeake beach 2 summers ago, hurricane Irene was pooh-poohed by many as a fizzle but we had no power for a week and many fallen trees here in Chesapeake country. We were down for 3 days during the "derecho" and have had numerous one or two day outages from particularly strong winded t-storms. ( At least last year's earthquake did not kill our juice !!) So needless to say I am well practiced and prepared.

I have a smaller generator that keeps the food in the freezer from thawing and leaves enough juice for a few lights and to run the TV and DVD for a "storm party/movie night". We are on well water and I have mastered storing water bladders in the tub for potable water and clean, empty trash-cans for pouring in the toilets to flush. No showers and no tap water but it's livable. Coleman stoves, plenty of charcoal, board games, books and family--like I said, I'm old hat and living a week without power is now only an inconvenience.

One thing though that I lose and can't prep for are on-line auctions and coin transactions. One of the power outages happened while I had a few dozen ebay listings and couldn't answer questions from prospective buyers. This time I had my eye on an elusive piece of eye-candy with a low mintage and nearly 100 years old.

Usually my strategy is a low opening bid to get an item on my watch list and then readying to bump or snipe at the whistle if need be. This time the strategy had to change. Sure that by 7 or 8 oclock last night that I'd be without power, I had to go "all in" on my first bid.

I actually saw the bidding stay at $200 under my max bid until the darkness came. This morning I went to work itching to find if I had won my elusive coin to fill the 2nd most challenging slot of my Barber "short set" ( 1900-1915). I immediately logged into my account and checked--huzzah--I'd won the coin although at the max bid I'd made ( I always end up winning on Teletrade at my max bid??). Either way, I felt it was a fair price for a challenging date. The coin is an attractive color, problem-free 1914 with good strike details left. It's very close to an XF40 in details, maybe just lacking the required hints of original luster around the devices--fortunately the price is significantly less in VF35 than XF40 I suspect. Either way, I feel it's a good deal for a really quality Barber- a series that has far more dogs, cleaned and altered coins than solid circulated examples.

To top it off, I actually got home to find my power is already back on. It's still raining and the weekend will be just a big clean-up with the chainsaw and rakes, but overall I feel like I dodged a bullet here. My prayers to everyone else who got hit hard and for those getting buried under the feet and feet of snow in Western Maryland, Virginia, W Virginia etc. And also my prayers to the dozens of families who lost loved ones from this freakish storm...keep safe all and happy hunting...

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