BE CAREFUL: That light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train!

Hello my friends, I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and you are looking forward to an awesome Christmas. It seems like forever since I put a journal entry but life has a funny way of getting in the way. I am doing well, however, despite the last 18 months or so. It has been a particularly rough ride and we lost my father, father-in-law, and just recently my mother-in-law. However, this journal is not about the twists and turns life throws at you but rather the coins. Fortunately, I have been able to find peace in my passion for collecting, grow my collection, slowly, and get a few more kids interested in our beloved hobby.

My raw Lincoln Cent Album is getting close to complete. I started on this journey with my Lincoln Pennies some 40 years ago. I managed to pick up a few of the semi-key coins along the way and have left myself with the biggies in the set, 1909-S, 1909-S VDB, 1914-D, 1922 No D, 1931-S and 1955 DDO. Unbelievably and despite my very limited budget, I am seriously contemplating coming up with the necessary funds in an attempt to fill those holes. I hate holes! My registry set of Lincoln Memorial Proof Cents, "Making Cents if My Life", has grown slowly but now stands at two-thirds complete and boasts 15 PF 70 UC coins.

It seems my Roosevelt $5.00 dime set has run into a bit of a headwind, a.k.a. the economy. I just cannot seem to find graded business strike Roosie's for $5.00 or less anymore. It seems that a more realistic tact might be to jump the target price to $7.50 or $10.00. I am still deciding whether to continue on that road. I did just recently rename the set though. The set is now the Todd Peters Memorial Set. For those of us that knew Todd, we knew his love for the coins and the Roosevelt dime. My conversations with Todd and his encouragement are the reasons I started a registry business strike dime set and why I became so enamored with the "Full Torch" classification.

My overall collection has moved into the top 1000 and I am closing in on 100,000 points. The state quarter set that got me started with the registry sets now stands at 50% complete. The fervor over State Quarters has cooled considerably since 2009 when I started this journey and the prices for many of the early year quarters, 1999 to 2005, have contracted considerably. I know this is not a good thing for those of you that bought the quarters at a premium during the feeding frenzy but I just could not afford those prices. Now, I am picking up a quarter here and there at prices that are much more palatable to my wallet. I am still hoping that the 1999 Silver Delaware Quarter gets to be a little more in my price range or that I find some additional funding to acquire one of them. I really would like to complete that set at some point.

I just realized that I had not put an entry in my journal since last February. Oh, that is not good. I cannot even remember the last time I looked at my collection goals or took a picture to post with my collection. Well, I think it is time to refocus and get back in the groove. My pictures need improving and coin descriptions could use a good bit more detail. Having said all of that and not wanting to be too terribly long winded, I will leave you today with a picture of the coin that started this whole journey. The picture is not very good. The picture is one of the first I took and it serves as a reminder of how far I have come on this journey and how far I still have to go.