jgenn

"Want" coins are visible to others that look at your custom set including pictures and comments. It can be used as a way to show coins that you have but have not sent in for certification (especially if you have a rare or scarce coin that you know would not get a straight grade)..

It is so important to track the financial details of all coin purchases. The US Internal Revenue Service has a category to handle the capital gains or losses of collectibles, such as coins. You must be able to establish the cost basis for your collectible in order to calculate the gain or loss when you or your heirs sell. You are always required to declare gains, even from "hobby" profits. You do need to understand the regulations in order to claim losses, and with all the buyer and seller fees involved that you can claim in your cost basis you may need to claim a loss.

This is not a genuine issue from the Mexico City mint -- the historical record shows that the assayers (identified by their initials) were not employed for that function during that date. Forgers make dies from copies of obverses and reverses and will sometimes use mismatched pairs to generate their fake coins. Do not be fooled if you can determine that the coin is a silver alloy. Unless you can determine that it is 90% silver, you can be certain that it is a forgery, likely made for trade with Asia for its bullion value. If you are interested in more details I suggest you buy the book by Robert Gurney "Counterfeit Portrait Eight-Reales: The Un-real Reales (Counterfeit Eight-Reales)"

Your gold coin prize was wonderful but your wife's prize was way more interesting, in my opinion. Congrats to you both!

Thank you for adding those details! I only collect crown size coins so I tend to focus on those but of course all issues are of interest

One aspect of monetary reform taken by almost all nations was to change the subdivision of a currency into units of 10 and 100. The main benefit was to simplify calculations for accounting purposes and was often undertaken to align with trading partners. Nations often changed the size and weight of their coins as part of monetary reforms and sometimes changed the name of their currency. Typically, these changes allowed the issuing authorities to reduce the amount of precious metal without the commensurate change in official value. For world crowns in the 19th Century, many nations settled on 25 grams and 37 mm for their largest silver coins. An important standard was set in 1865 when France, Belgium, Italy and Switzerland formed the Latin Monetary Union. Decimalization occurred in many of the former Spanish colonies in the Americas in the middle of the 19th century as these new nations moved away from the 27 gram 8 reales standard to 25 grams and several of these nations joined the Latin Monetary Union to facilitate trade with Europe. In Venezuela, decimalization started with the peso in 1843 although no silver coins of that denomination were struck. In 1872 the currency was renamed to the venezolano with the subdivision of 100 centavos. The silver venezolano was issued for just one year in 1876. Venezuela joined the Latin Monetary Union in 1879 and changed the currency to the bolivar, with the crown sized silver coin issued as 5 bolivares. Here is my example of the short lived venezolano, the first silver crown of Venezuela. 25 grams, 37 mm and 90% silver. Mintage of only 35,000 and struck at the Paris mint. ~jack

Well your photos are as tiny as the actual coins, which helps explain why setting aside the proper space for full legends is difficult to do.

Yes, please continue to use the journal to post your valuable information on the coinage of Iceland. Although you may not think there are many people that view the journals section of this site, your posts will be indexed by Google so anyone searching on keywords in your post should be able find it.

LOL that 2 is wearing a tiara from a leftover serif. Great catch!

Thank you Gary! It is a rather humble set, compared to my Mexico City type set, for example. However, I did make some effort to take decent photos and tried to write something of interest about each coin and where I acquired it from. This is perhaps my one set where all of the coins were purchased and submitted as raw coins. I appreciate that the NGC award selection team has broad criteria in their choices.

Congratulations, Chris! I think the custom set awards are some of the most prestigious awards that NGC gives out. Well done!

Another excellent post, Gary. I have been toying with the idea of posting my ideas about why we don't have any great, new art on our current coins. As you mentioned in your entry, the great artists taught the next generation. Did Laura Gardin Fraser have any notable apprentices/students?

I like that photo! You look relaxed and happy and the coin display in the background is an awesome touch. And you are so right that active collecting spurs my journal posting, too.

Good hunting with rebuilding your East German collection, Tom.

At F12 it's certainly no gem but the nice thing about this design is that there are no fine details that get lost with heavy circulation.