coinsandmedals

I'm sorry for your loss and it sounds as if Bill is a lot like an elder numismatic-statesman friend that has helped me in the hobby. In my case my friend has helped me with my Laura Gardin Fraser coin and medal collection. People like Bill and my friend are perhaps the biggest reason I love this hobby. They are selfless and freely pass on their knowledge to another generation of budding numismatists to carry on. Last year my friend sent me all his research on LGF. I am still scanning that information and I hope to upload it to a shared drive for any collector that can use it. He has freely passed information on to me and my hope is to expand on it and freely pass it on to the next generation of collectors coming after me. Gary 

It is also one of the most graded and most collected series and popular in the Registry. How many categories can claim registered sets in the THOUSANDS?

Honestly, the sheer number that they had to give away - and the unstated expectation that everyone would be getting the same / mostly the same thing - is the main reason I was REALLY expecting the coin to be 2020 NCLT, just because those would fit because of the year and would be easy to get in an arbitrarily large number in the same basic grade / condition (69/70).
They really surprised me with this one, managing to give 50+ people MS64 Morgans from San Francisco from just a couple of years, but, as Gary said, they are more common dates. Even then, I really wonder if it was at all "interesting" to round them up and how they went about it - Did they go into the market for RAW coins until they had enough MS64s? Did they buy some of their previously graded MS64's on the market? A little of both?

Well deserved indeed 

Congrats to you again. I'm sure you'll have more coming your way in the future.:)
I am a little curious as to why you say that. Is it appreciation for the set that its linked to, do you like PMG / notes collecting more these days?
Interestingly, I think the PMG plaque (PMG plaques in general and the PMG Best Presented more so) are rarer / fewer in absolute number than most NGC awards just because PMG gives so many fewer, but I think there are more of them per registered user on the PMG side because the PMG user base is so much smaller.
Thanks and congrats to you. It'll be great to see your Ukrainian note set recognized with a "Best Presented" or similar honor - and I see that as being inevitable unless they just stop giving them out in the next couple of years. You're on track to build that into one of the great sets on the PMG side.

That's right, now I remember, mine was also an Argus! However, it had a brown body as opposed to your black body. I can't tell you how much fun I had with that camera and the darkroom that I used at my high school to process the pictures. All I did then was shoot black & white but I didn't care, I had a blast! When I was a youth I asked my parents for a 35mm camera, and that Argus was my first. Today I have a Nikon Z-5 mirrorless, full frame camera, and now I'm finally back to shooting 35mm pictures. Yes I know that I need the right lenses to take full advantage of the larger CMOS sensor. They're coming. Until then I'm adapting my new camera to the macro lens I currently own. This camera is a huge improvement over my last one, it's like night and day. I will be posting a blog about this soon with macro shots of my NGC award coin. (Hint: My coin has a few VAM diagnostics). With the nice spring weather around here, I tried my hand at macro shooting in the yard. The following are just a few of those pictures. Gary
P.S. Don't let the spider scare you, compare him to the shot with the twin daffodils to get a perspective of his true size!
  
 

Once again, congratulations! You have a rather impressive set of plaques there. For the record, the Morgan I received was number -036, but it would be interesting to see who received the first and last number. 

Great set and a nice award, congrats.

Well done my friend. Congratulations:)
 

Did you know that you said you were going to "display it along with the plague"?  I assume you meant plaque, but I found it funny.  Congrats on your very prestigious award.

I find that sticking to agreed budgets goes a long way in securing and keeping support and goodwill.  
Give it time. As they increase in number she'll probably roll her eyes more. It's even better when they tease you for how you win awards for how you write about how much of a nerd you are.
I pick up my stands at Michael's. They have a nice, simple clear plastic one that's a really good size for these plaques and I've been able to have them all on the same exact stands over the years even though I've needed to add more stands over a span of years now. Where do you go for yours?
Congrats on two awards in two years - quite an accomplishment there!

Great coins, as my username is based on my interest in British Colonial issues the history of the EIC is fascinating.
Quality British colonial prices have been going up for a while and are now silly, banknotes are even worse. Top grade Napoleonic coinage is the same - I missed out on a coin recently that I was prepared to break the bank for at £3K which was a bit above current catalogue prices (even put some lots into auction to help cover it) and it went for over £10K I wonder who bought it and why?
I am currently looking at some of my low grade sets to see if it is possible to put a series of good examples together for less then £500 per coin - probably means no gold and no crowns and needs to be a short set. It may have to be a 'on paper' set

That was a great lot and the provenance amazing!
Everything seems to be up 2x - 3x across the board for me as well. Currently selling off items of little interest, I would classify it as low end material (modern NCLT under $500 a piece). Have only purchased 1 coin this year, waiting/saving now until the right coin/note comes around and/or prices drop in my areas. Rising spot, bullion craze, elections, people at home "shopping", rejuvenation of hobbies, moving money/investing in general the pandemic seems to be the main factor, I'm anticipating a decrease (at least hoping) in the coming year/s. 

Thanks for sharing this. I don’t collect foreign coins but anything with a direct connection to James Watt would definately catch my interest (I’m a retired Mechanical Engineer).  

Part of what I'm seeing is that the gold coins I've been wanting to buy lately are usually treated and sold as bullion with somewhat higher premiums - usually spot +20-30% - and they float up or down with spot. However, when the pandemic hit spot prices dropped and premiums exploded. Even when spot came back up the premiums never fully went back down, and a year plus later you still get much higher premiums on even new NCLT and that has also jacked up the premiums on the older gold coins.

I use Photoshop creative cloud for editing all my photos - my portraiture of family and my wife, my mini / macro shooting and my coins. It has more power for general use than elements but it costs me $10.81/month after tax and I don't know that I'd give up elements if I could have it without a monthly fee.
I can sometimes save a photo with photoshop but it's usually better and easier to just take a good photo in the first place. With coin photography,  it seems that either the detail and the luster is there or it isn't. Very little in between.

Though it's not free, I use Photoshop Elements with exceptional results. Elements can be had for less than $100. Of recently, I have been dabbling with axial photography with great results. One of the pieces taken using axial photography is this half-dime with unusual die clash marks. The other coin is one of my non-round coins.
 

@coinsandmedalsIf you can learn to work in layers you will know a lot of the power of this software. 2019 is the version I have. I don't upgrade it every year but use it for as long as Adobe supports it. I am doing an editing demo by ZOOM for my coin club on March 10. After that, if you want, I can do a ZOOM demo for you. Send me a message through NGC if you are interested. The most important tip is this, Elements can't make a poorly taken picture look good, it can only make a good picture look spectacular! Gary 

@coinsandmedals I live in a town where there are several dealers within a short drive. In an imperfect world we are largely influenced by our local experiences. We adapt as we must to enjoy the hobby we love. Older people are less likely to embrace new technology because they don't understand it and therefore don't trust it. Now retired, I worked in technology my entire life. I have embraced the electronic marketplace. I have embraced the registry here at NGC and have won 5 major NGC awards for my registry sets and 7 for my journal posts. I have also bought and sold coins on E-Bay. E-bay has done more in my estimation to make the world a marketplace for collectors than any other forum. This has been good for the hobby and me in particular, because my collection literally exploded. Heritage Auctions has also done a lot to open things up to dealer and collector alike. Often I have bought coins from dealers, only to find they bought them through Heritage. I also enjoy the dealer from Old Pueblo Coin in Tucson, Arizona that does You Tube videos. I have been watching his videos every day. To date I've managed to adapt very well. 
Because I was burned, I have a huge mistrust of social media. In fact as I get older, I am cherish my privacy all the more. I don't need social media and I don't want it. I tried Instagram not long ago but had trouble trying to figure it out and quickly lost interest. Fortunately, I am largely able to access the technology I currently use and remain somewhat anonymous. Another reason for my feeling comfortable is the high level of character I see displayed by most coin collectors.
Over the last year in the era of COVID, I have worked very hard in my church to modernize how we do church. Working with a congregation that has mostly older congregants, I've had a very challenging time trying to get them used to using ZOOM to conduct our services. Others have very old computers or none at all. Thankfully, one of our older congregants doesn't mind connecting to ZOOM over their phone. All this to say that my coin club is comprised of a significant number of retirees. They are more likely to get in their cars and drive to regional coin shows. We even charter a bus to the Central States show in Schaumberg, Illinois!
We have a 100+ person membership in our club and currently have our club meetings via ZOOM. Sadly, only about half the people that attended our in-person meetings before COVID now attend our ZOOM meetings. I wish more people would avail themselves to ZOOM as it has opened the door to a lot of things we would have never done before. For instance, we watched an ANA video on grading coins over ZOOM at our last meeting via screen sharing. In fact, I may ask if I can do a presentation on photography at a future meeting.
It is the younger people that both like and use social media, and I in no way want to discourage them. I just don't want to be a part of it. I frequent the ANA's member blog where there are a number YN's that are all in. One of them is starting a weekly newsletter that they want me to critique. However, as I get more into helping them get established in the hobby, the risk of losing my privacy increases. Because they are enthusiastic about social media and all in, they tend not be as wise about privacy and identity theft issues. Hopefully, over time, I will be able to be a positive influence on them. In fact, truth be known, we all need each other to grow the hobby!
I totally get that you live in a rural area and that electronic media has opened up the world to you. Though more difficult, I also understand how to develop trust over electronic media. I have met both dealer and collector alike on the internet who I eventually met in person that I trust. My only caution over social media is that some people might get left behind. This is the main reason why I fear my club will eventually shut down the webpage in favor of Facebook. Since I am a member, I will most certainly vote against that. That said, because of my mistrust of Facebook, I am unable to access my club's Facebook page. However, for me, that is a price I am willing to pay to preserve my privacy. In fact there is a person in my church that puts tape over her computer camera because of a huge mistrust of Zuckerberg and the internet! In the end, I am not against change, but I am for people using technology at a level that they both trust and understand. I am however, concerned about sacrificing the older collectors on the alter of change because they either don't understand or want to change.
To put things in perspective, when I graduated high school there was no internet or for that matter, cell phones. (Funny how most of my life I worked for a cell phone company with technology that didn't exist when I graduated high school. No 5G, in fact no "G"). There were however, numismatic magazines. These magazines had dealer advertisements and mail-order coins for sale. Mail-order is how I developed my collection when I was in high school. Now hardly anyone uses mail order through magazines. Fifty years from now, coin collecting will continue to evolve and I won't mind! Gary 

Thank you for taking the time to write out this journal. It benefits all of us to see the thought processes of our fellow numismatists. This topic is an interesting one indeed. 
 
I just turned forty five. As a freshman in college, we were required to take a seminar on how to use the internet. I did not use the internet at all in HS for anything school or research related. I am saying these things to put my frame of reference into perspective for anyone reading this. If you had asked me ten years ago to discuss the ways in which the internet has impacted the world, I would be hard pressed to list anything positive. And I still feel much the same. But......over the last some years, as I went through changes in my life for the better, I have found ways to use the internet for a lot of good. One of them is by finding communities of like minded people. I could write a lot about this and maybe  will use this as a journal idea.
 
Anyway, I digress...

That is a really good picture! Good job! I think that silver is much easier to photograph than a lot of copper coins, especially when they have dark brown toning. I think red-brown coins make for the best copper coin pictures. Good job on nailing down how to edit coins that are not round. It took me a lone time to figure that out also. I find raw coins much easier to photograph than certified coins because of the plastic. Gary 

You did a good job with the photography.
Can't beat the provenance, either.

I converted to the non-PVC flip way of life a few years ago, and I have not looked back. I have found that the Saflip brand does the job well, and they also have 2 ½ flips for my larger pieces. Good quality flips can be expensive, but I enjoy seeing the entire coin and the far more generous space for note-taking on the inserts. Speaking of which, I have some work I need to do for a few of my newest additions! 

I converted to the non-PVC flip way of life a few years ago, and I have not looked back. I have found that the Saflip brand does the job well, and they also have 2 ½ flips for my larger pieces. Good quality flips can be expensive, but I enjoy seeing the entire coin and the far more generous space for note-taking on the inserts. Speaking of which, I have some work I need to do for a few of my newest additions! 

To me this is a troubling trend. To gain the newbe's you risk losing the collecting veterans. Older collectors have been asked to adapt to the changing market place, and for the most part they have. However, my coin club maintains a webpage and a Facebook account. I wonder, in an effort to keep their costs down, when my coin club will ditch the website for Facebook? I used to have a Facebook account until somebody hacked it and used it to extort money from me. Fortunately, it turned out to be a hoax I never paid off on, but still, Facebook is done for me. These new social media platforms have a big red target on their backs for every would be hacker to take their shot at. Identity theft and the like are real for anyone who uses electronic media. I spend money to protect myself from identity theft that I would rather spend on buying coins. Yet it is the world we live in, and the price for doing business. Sadly, it is the brick and mortar shops where you develop a trusting relationship that makes this hobby much more personable and in my estimation, enjoyable. This is the direction we need to steer our newbe's, rather than simply accommodating them