coinsbygary

Mike, I didn't get the political spin in your post so I agree with longstrider that there doesn't seem to be any. That said, I do have strong opinions on this topic. I personally like Lady Liberty on our coins as a national personification. However, I know there is not enough public support or political will to go back to that. In its place the mint has tried to extend an olive branch to collectors by giving them the gold liberty, the platinum themed Liberty, classic designs on bullion coins, and the retro St. Gaudens Double Eagle, Mercury Dime, Standing Liberty Quarter, and walking Liberty Half. As for change, nothing can stop it, be it in the work place or the treasury department. What we must do is learn to adapt to change and roll with it. The work force of 2019 is much different than 1976 when I turned 18. Even in the cellular phone industry in which I worked for close to 23 years I went through four generations of cell phones, each generation radically different than the previous generation. Without the ability for me to adapt and learn I would not have made it. We are working with technologies today that were not even dreamed about when I was a kid. The days of my father working at the same job in a factory for 25 years are gone. We're never going back to that. Change is the only constant, we must accept that to move forward. For now I'll take whatever the mint has to offer in terms of Lady Liberty on collector coins. If I like what they offer, I'll buy it, if not, I won't. Life with contentment is good...Gary

My prayers of comfort go out to you and your family during this difficult time. Yesterday, upon hearing the news I perused your 1932 mint set in honor of your step-father's father. In a strange way I had a connection with that set in that I notified you that it won the best presented award. That has always been a fond memory of mine that I immediately thought of when I heard the news.

I have no doubt that if coins is something Ben does with his dad that it will go a long way towards him collecting coins on his own some day! Showers of silver rounds sounds like a lot of fun for both father and son!  

I am glad to hear things are going much better for your family. Tokens are very collectible for kids. Kids love to collect different tokens with a variety of colors, shapes, and sizes. What's nice for the adults is that they are very inexpensive to get for your kids. Funny thing about 3-year old's is they have no concept of value and could care less what their tokens are worth. With kids as long as the tokens are numerous, colorful, and different, life is good!

I think the mint does this because collectors generally want it. This kind of thing goes back to at least the 70's when the silver 1970 Kennedy Half was only available in mint sets. I think collectors really want coins that at least aren't run of the mill and a little scarce. They want coins with lower mintages over the coins that are produced in the hundreds of millions. That said, the argument of too much of a good thing can be made concerning the frequency of manufactured rarities.

Welcome back to the fold! I remember when you moved to California and announced that your collecting activities would be seriously curtailed. I felt kind of sad for you that day. Today you are more than just coming back into the NGC fold so let me warmly welcome you back to numismatics! You're good people and I look forward to conversing with you on both the NGC and ANA blog pages!

Gary

Oh, one more thing, I just had to chuckle to myself when I saw the picture of you holding Sam on your chest. The look on your face is priceless! The look of pride in your face as you hold your son speaks volumes! This is good and the way it should be. Congratulations! You have a fine son!

I am so glad to hear Sam is doing better. As each day passes his chances improve and that is really good news! Is there anything new on the bleeding in Sam's brain? You're all in my heart and my prayers. Your pictures are very heart-warming.

I explore the halberd for my Wilhelmina I 10 Gulden set in my write-up of the 1913 coin. https://coins.www.collectors-society.com/WCM/CoinView.aspx?PeopleSetCoinID=1641694 Additionally, I also name the mintmaster represented by the seahorse privy. The way I understand a mintmaster is that it is the approximate equivalent to our chief engraver. The mintmaster may or may not be the coins designer as is the case of the 1898 10 Gulden coin designed by P. Pander (P. Pander signature located directly below the truncated neck on the obverse). In fact all 4 Wilhelmina I obverse bust designers are different from the mintmaster represented by the privys. Something else of interest on the 10 gulden reverses is the shield on the coat of arms has horizontal lines with dotted rectangles peppered throughout the shield. These markings are equivalent to heraldic tincture that represent colors. The following Wikipedia link explains the correlation between markings on metallic coins and colors.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tincture_(heraldry)  As you can see the horizontal lines are equivalent to the color blue and the rectangles to yellow or gold. These are the exact colors of the Royal Dutch coat of arms.

This is how I did it for the medals I bought with a provenance to the Fraser studio. First it didn't hurt to have an article in the ANA's June 2018 edition of "The Numismatist" entitled, "Fraser Studio Finds". In that edition was an interview by name with the curator of the Fraser Studio artifacts. A friend with a common interest in the Fraser artifacts called me to tell me he had an appointment to visit the studio and asked me if I was interested. Seeing as fate would have it, he lived about an hour away and I finally ended up with two medals. The first thing I did before I sent anything to NGC was to send an e-mail to customer service. In the e-mail I gave them my phone number and the person in charge of grading medals called me. I told her that I had a signed receipt and a cancelled check of which I sent both with my medals to NGC. Afterwards NGC called me back and we agreed on the wording of the provenance. We finally settled on "Fraser Studio Achieves". Now I have a provenance traced back to Laura Gardin Fraser as the owner and designer of the two medals I now own. NGC was very willing and helpful to work this out with me.

Gary

My heart and my prayers are with your family.

Mike

Glad to see you posting over here! I have followed you for much of this journey on the ANA's blog and you have assembled quite a collection of Conders! Congratulations, and good job on the perseverance it took to complete your collection!

Gary (Coinsbygary)

Revenant

At your son's age I think that the chances he will continue with collecting are much better than it was with my kids. My daughter had no interest in coins and collecting whatsoever and my son only had a passing interest. When my son was in his pre-teen years I got him a state quarter board that he enthusiastically started but quickly lost interest. As he grew older he worked at a Wendys restaurant and brought home $2 bills and Buffalo Nickels exchanged from the till. Seeing at least a little interest, I bought him a sheet of $2 bills and had them framed for Christmas. As a young adult he bought a set of colorized Star Wars coins from Niue housed in a Millennium Falcon model that when you opened the Falcon to view the coins it went into hyperspace with the hyperspace sound effect. However, when push came to shove and he needed money he wanted to sell them. Thinking that it would be a shame to sell them I told him I would buy them from him and hold them if he ever wanted to buy them back. Now that he is getting settled into a professional career he has not asked to buy them back yet. I also bought him a gold Mercury Dime one year for his birthday but I'm afraid to ask him if he sold that also. Still all those little sparks along the way failed to ignite any lasting interest. With limited or no interest in coins from my kids, I'll probably sell my collection at some point and make it a part of my estate for their inheritance.

Gary

26 minutes ago, thisistheshow said:

I didn't know about the ANA member blogs. I am going to check those out and maybe post too. 

 

Thanks!

Here's the link https://www.money.org/blog

BTW, I go by the handle coinsbygary over there. 

9 hours ago, jgenn said:

That's a wonderful collage, Gary.  At first glance it looks to be accurate to the scale of the individual coins.  That must have been difficult to assemble.

Jack

It's not as difficult as you imagine. When I edit a picture I resize all my pictures to 800x800 pixels. This works pretty good for any application I want to use my pictures. As is the case with all my cropped pictures they all start bigger than 800x800 pixels so I am never taking a lower sized picture and making it larger. Now I happened to use the Peace Dollar at 38.1mm in my collage as a reference. Not many of the pieces in the collage are much bigger than the Peace Dollar except the 1876 centennial medal at 55mm. Therefore, knowing the diameter of all the other coins and using the Peace Dollar as a reference I resized them as a percentage of the Peace Dollar. Using Photoshop Elements as my editor each of the coins were their own layer on a larger matte. I then moved each layer independent of the rest into the collage you see. Merging the layers and resizing the collage to a manageable size finished the picture. 

8 minutes ago, Revenant said:

I remember thinking at the time I saw your original comment that it could have been and probably should have been it's own journal entry. I'm glad to see you flushed out the concept and let it stand alone.

The more I thought about it, the more I didn't want my post to get buried in another post and as such not have the broadest possible exposure. The intention of the stand alone post is to use my lifetime experience in such a way so as to prevent other collectors from falling into the same trap. If just one collector could avoid my mistakes it is worth it. I also post my blogs on the ANA member blog page.

There you have it! I will settle for a picture of your high-relief 1907 St Gaudens Double Eagle to make up for the empty slot in my gold type set. Thanks Capt. Brian!

15 hours ago, Revenant said:

Personally I find that some hobbies require a pretty big upfront investment, but then don't necessarily require much to keep them going. I've spent over $10,000 on my cameras and lenses, but that was spent years ago. I haven't made a lens or other major purchase for photo gear in 3 years. I just keep using what I have because it works.

When I put together my macro set-up years ago I bought a Nikon D3100. A year or so back I perused the cameras at Best Buy to see if it was in my best interest to upgrade my camera. What I discovered was that there were not all that many features in the new cameras to make the upgrade plausible. Of course there is no upgrade for the lens I use. I use an f4 enlarger lens at the end of a bellows mount with a couple of adapter rings to take my pictures . All I need for the camera is an SLR with a manual setting to take my pictures. At 18.6 megapixels I really have all that I will ever need for this application.   

Elongated cents are a cool way to introduce your son to numismatics! I like your wife's idea of getting your son a new cent if you go to the zoo on a regular or semi-regular basis. Like your son I think that the elongated cent with the Komodo dragon is really neat. I usually end up picking one of these cents up for free at coins shows. I really enjoy the family aspects of your posts and the wonderful pictures of your family. Every week of your wife's pregnancy is better than the last. With my son my wife had exactly what your wife had. As she moved into the third trimester on bed rest the bleeding stopped and my son was born at full term naturally. My son even at 30 years old still loves to hear the story of how his life was saved before he was born. Every Mothers Day we think of the sacrifice my wife made to be on bed rest so that he could be born healthy. I always say that this is the essence of motherhood, that the mother would willingly and gladly give all to ensure the welfare of her children.  

The same can be said for the Danish gold 20 Kroner mermaid coin. This coin has that name because of Hans Christian Anderson's, "The Little Mermaid" and the fascination of the Danish people with maritime folklore. The obverse of the coin has a dolphin at the feet of Dania, Denmark's national personification. Because the tail of the dolphin is at Dania's feet the coin is referred to as the mermaid coin.

check out the following links and my sets for ideas.

https://coins.www.collectors-society.com/wcm/CoinCustomSetListing.aspx

https://coins.www.collectors-society.com/WCM/CoinCustomSetView.aspx?s=940

https://coins.www.collectors-society.com/WCM/CoinCustomSetView.aspx?s=13319

https://coins.www.collectors-society.com/WCM/CoinCustomSetView.aspx?s=19449

11 minutes ago, thisistheshow said:

Gary, thank you for these thoughts. It sounds like you travelled far, literally and numismatically, to find your way. I like how much room there is in the idea of these thematic sets. I find this idea interesting and will consider it as I look to build my own collection. 

 

Thanks for sharing!

There is variety in thematic collecting. In my thematic sets I have combined worldwide coins, tokens, and medals into sets. No two pieces in any of my sets are the same. NGC encourages this type of registry collecting in their custom sets. Like type sets every one of these coins are different, maybe therein lies the key to my collecting passion, variety!

While the points thisistheshow and Revenant made are relevant, my experience has yet another twist. I liken my experience to the parable of the prodigal son. I started my numismatic journey some 45-50 years ago as a youth with type collecting. At the time I was interested in odd denomination coinage. I soon bought a Red Book and it didn't take too long for me to become fascinated with the coins in the back of the book. No they weren't the classic commem's but all the gold coins and coins minted at obsolete mints like Charlotte, Dahlonega, New Orleans, and Carson City. Here again, I was interested in another type of type set, that of mintmarks. Still as a youth growing up in Wisconsin, I was glad to see a Wisconsin coin in the back of the Red Book!

Enter my time in the US Navy and my collecting took a different direction. From every foreign port I had visited I collected that country's circulating coinage. The same happened after I got married and lived in Europe for a year. Following this my prodigal journey into the numismatic far land had accelerated in earnest. I began years of hit and miss but mostly miss. At that time I was collecting things like Silver American Eagles and modern commemoratives. In fact I had so many interests I couldn't keep up them all. It's kind of like the jack-of-all-trades but master of none.

At the peak of my numismatic prodigal journey I started a collection of Morgan Dollars beginning with the New Orleans Mint and toners. For two years I was buying Morgan Dollars at a phenomenal rate. I even bought the granddaddy 1893-S in VG-10 condition. Following this I hit burn-out before completing the Morgan collection. This led a temporary hiatus from buying Morgan Dollars. I thought that the Morgan Dollar hiatus would help but I actually found that I had lost interest in collecting them. I ended up selling most of my Morgan's including the 93-S.

I did end up keeping the Morgan's grading MS-65 to 66 and all my CC mintmarked coins including several GSA CC's. Keeping the CC's was the first indication that I was heading home, to my childhood fascination with obsolete mint facilities. Interestingly, this did not extend to New Orleans. Keeping the 65 and 66's grew from a love of numismatic beauty. This did not include the heavily abraded ugliness of lower graded MS Morgan's. Ultimately this may have been the main reason for my loss of interest.

Concurrently with the Morgan's, I thought to collect Eisenhower Dollars. With those I completed the set in short order. Then I sat back and thought how boring and sold most of those. Still I found what I had learned by assembling the Ike's to be a worthwhile experience.

Serious numismatic soul searching brought me back home to my roots and type collecting. I just love the variety of our nations coinage. Now my focus is upgrading the coins in my type sets with coins that have higher eye-appeal. With these coins I am engaging my love of numismatic beauty. Regardless, while in the numismatic far country I discovered that I liked thematic and topical sets. I started sets entitled, "Inspirational Ladies, The Use of Seated Imagery in Numismatics, and The Coins and Medals of Laura Gardin Fraser". In all these sets I continue to add coins as I discover good candidates.

In the end though, you still have to try different avenues of collecting if for nothing else to see if you like it. Now that I know what I like, I won't be taking any unnecessary journeys away from home and what got me interested in collecting coins as a young lad living under my parents roof. I have come full circle back to my numismatic roots.

Gary 

Yes the golden parachute was very nice. Unfortunately, taxes ate up more than 30% of my parachute (I wonder if I jumped out of a plane with 30% less parachute if I would have a soft landing)? With the rush of cash to my checking account, I was tempted for a couple of micro seconds to spend it on a dream coin. Fortunately, I came to my senses and paid the house off! Anyway a dream coin would have been a hard sell to my wife. For a few micro seconds I didn't see a need to confess a momentary lapse of judgement to my wife! I will be writing a post soon about where do I go from here, new purchases are definitely in my future, just not as many. BTW, I logged into my mortgage account this morning and showed my wife the page that said, "ACCOUNT CLOSED". I wouldn't trade her reaction to that for ANY dream coin!

I also own a Newman coin with a missing envelope. At least mine wasn't lost by Heritage, mine was lost by me. It's in my house somewhere and since I am retired as of 12/31/18 I'll have plenty of time to find it. That said, given the choice of the two I'd rather have it lost in my house. At least that way its under my control. Jack, I hope that somehow Heritage will come up with your envelope soon. The envelope and NGC's label go together very nicely to show the Newman provenance.

Gary