For once I held back.

I've been writing for some time now that I really need to slow down with the coin buying. (Last year, we made some major renovations to the exterior of our house, and I want to pay off the new debt by the end of 2014.) But up to and including the latest Baltimore show, I've been spending quite a bit on the half dime set.

The current Heritage auction included (in a Thursday session) about a dozen nice half dimes that I would normally consider pursuing. I put in low bids just for 'my bids' tracking purposes. I could delay debt pay-off in order to get one or two, but I restrained myself and let them all go.

In the end, all of them sold for more than I would have been willing to pay (though a couple were close...), so I would have come up empty anyway. But now I'm faced with the prospect that similar coins won't be getting any cheaper.

Although I have nothing new and exciting to show, I have a few that are almost new, and are exciting, to me anyway. Here's one I got earlier this year. At first glance, it looks like a bit of a mess, with die polish lines, multiple sets of clash marks, and die cracks. But it is actually quite nice in hand. It is NGC graded MS 66 star, with combined NGC/PCGS population 15/1. Enjoy.

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