The quest for the ultimate Birth year Mint Set. And so it begins....

Since I completed my Franklin Half Dollar collection, I have been "treading water" with my collecting pursuits. There are many different series of coins that I have thought about collecting, although I'm afraid that my eyes and my wants are much bigger than my wallet! I was fortunate enough to put together a nice Franklin set in a relatively short period of time and I am always working on upgrading or acquiring new coins for my Morgan Dollar set. But due to a recent submission of coins that I sent in for grading, I think I have found my new path.

1984 brought many new events and changes in United States history. From the name change of the Mint(it went from The Bureau of the Mint to United States Mint on January 9 1984) to the landslide re-election of Ronald Reagan, 1984 had many great events which highlighted that year. Those highlights include: The break-up of The Bell System(which held a near complete monopoly over all telephone services in most areas of the country), the 10th launch of the Challenger Space Shuttle, the longest game of Major League Baseball history(which lasted over 2 days with 25 innings of play), the Louisiana's World Fair in New Orleans, the 1984 Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles and the maiden voyage of the Discovery Space Shuttle.

1984 also brought some new changes to our family as well. My parents bought their first new home, Mom started her new career as an elementary school teacher, Dad started his new career at the Federal Bureau of Prisons as a guard, and on October 10th I was born into this world. After spending a few weeks in the NICU, I went home and my new life began. It wasn't until 26 years later that I would become truly interested in coins, collecting, numismatics and the history that surrounds it all.

Due to my work life and unbending schedules I very rarely have time to make it to the grocery store, much less any of the major coin shows throughout the country. So I did the next best thing I could think of. I joined the NGC Chat Boards! Before I found the chat boards, and the vast wealth of knowledge it contains, I was uneducated in the ways of grading, recognizing cleaned coins, and had an all around general lack of knowledge of numismatics. But since I joined in on the fun, I have met a lot of wonderful people and have learned so much more in the past 10 months than I had in previous years.

Since I am unable to attend shows during the year, which also means that I am unable to attend the educational seminars(grading coins mostly), I have devoted the majority of my time and resources to studying, reading and re-reading my ANA Grading Standards guide and learning what I could from the fellow members here. I have also engaged in the "trial and error" process through my submissions to NGC and have had some pretty decent success. And I hope that success continues as my grading abilities improve.

My ultimate goal for this new set is to cherry-pick the best of the best, submit each coin for grading, and hope that I come out on top with the #1 set once it is complete.

For my newest submission, I have the P&D Lincoln Cents going in. My minimum assigned grade for both of these coins are MS67RD. We should know in the next 12-13 business days how accurate my grades are. Here's hoping for the best! Thanks for reading and happy collecting!

Justin

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