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On the NGC Coin Registry I have 8 Competitive Sets.  The main set is Puzzle Box Gold, and the 7 other sets are subsets of the main set, apportioned by US Mints.

August 11, 2021, I began keeping track of Views of my sets, storing the data on an Apple Notes page.  Whenever I'd notice an uptick on any of the sets I'd add a new line to the ledger, update the Views counts, date, and even time of day.

Here is the way things stand at the moment.

It should be pointed out that if someone views my Competitive Sets overview page, the Default Sort is what they'll see, and Carson City Gold is at the top of the sort, apparently by means of alphabetical sorting.  For some reason my Gold Type Set 1834-1933 (Puzzle Box Gold) is listed last in the Default Sort.

It is interesting that — of late — Puzzle Box Gold has stopped its upward march and has flatlined.  Meanwhile, the Carson City Gold subset has broken out from the rest of the individual Mints.  Carson City Gold has received at least one view per day since March 9th, 2023, and if things keep going the way they seem to be trending, it will overtake the Puzzle Box Gold main set sometime in May 2023.

…u don't seriously believe

… What? Uh uh, what was that word?
Uh, what word?
…what?
WHAT?
Did you say …u?
Yeah, …u.
What is a …u?
Oh, excuse me your Honor  …you.

The Ides of March were kind to me… my Saint Gaudens 1908-D rose 55% on NGC's Price Guide.  Up $2,750.

Currently 12 pages of this stuff… and not one example of the famous…

WALDO C. MOORE/A.N.A. 637/LEWISBURG, O./BANKER/NUMISMATIST/PHILATELIST/FOWL FANCIER/1911.

Anyone know what the token would be worth, today?

Back in 2015, I sent my AU58 1849-D G$1 to NCS to remove a fiber on the coin and clean up grime in the D mintmark, and lettering of UNITED STATES on the reverse.

The coin came back and only the fiber had been removed.  I sent it back to NCS yet again and when it came back the 2nd time the grime had been removed and the coin had upgraded to AU58+.  It's a small coin and looks beautiful in its new Scratch-Resistant EdgeView holder.

Crossing over several coins over the years, PCGS to NGC, on a few occasions the coins came back with "+" upgrades from NGC.  This inspired me to submit any "+" coins I had to CAC and my batting average stands at 67%.

Of the 3 coins that were submitted for CAC, only the NCS conserved coin did not get the "bean."

I was looking at the coin with my jeweler's loop yesterday, direct sunlight from a window, and on the reverse side I noticed slight orangey discoloration where the grime had used to be.  Doesn't bother me in the least.  Please realize that this coin is the smallest coin in the collection, with a mere 13mm diameter, and whereas the grime used to stand out, now nothing is noticed… unless you want to disparage microscopic "hues."

Having the mintmark conserved of the grime within it, leaving nothing to be seen, made the coin really come into its own, and I'm very proud to own this beautiful coin.

Done with uploading my pics of the two coins I rotated back. (to how they were when first received)

I've tried everything to improve on them but my iPhone only has f1.8, and unless I blow the photos up, and do not try to include the colorful Holders in their entirety, the photos just do not have the detail I'd like to see.  When I first took photos of them, it was with an iPhone5 which used f2.4, and gave me just enough detail when taking whole Holder photos.

The other thing I struggle with is the reflection of the Otterbox iPhone protector which discolors the photos a little… portions of the Holders.

Time to move on.

The use of "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" to inquire.

Genius.

Got my coin photos uploaded.

I'm only happy with 1 of the 4 images, so working further on the remaining 3 by taking new photos, and still have to edit them.

Realized that for the reverse sides, I should have photographed them upside down and then click-rotated them when editing.

There are many tricks to all of this… part of the learning curve and fun.

After many painstaking hours today, finally managed to take iPhone pics that match photos of pics I took two years ago.

These pics will be for the two coins I "rotated" back to how they were when I first received them.

Have to put in one more day on this, to get everything "exactly perfect," as Bob Weir used to say.

My photography luck is even worse.

Trying to take new Registry Photos for the coins I've rotated, and wanting to match the lighting of the old photos, in so doing — tilting my paper pad that was raised up upon books to work with the pendant light — watched the slab scurry off the pad, slip-slide off the kitchen island, and kerplunc onto the slate floor 36 inches below.

That made me feel good.

No damage to the slab, but did have to clean off the dust, hair, and lint that the slab's static-electricity attracted while moseying around down there.

Glad the slabs are well made, so as to withstand this sort of pathetic tomfoolery.                           

At least the coin didn't rotate.   

That's rough to make out.  Maybe update your camera from…

On 2/9/2023 at 6:34 PM, Hoghead515 said:

Ive seen a few while browsing on Ebay that had been rotated quite a bit. Must be a pretty loose fit on some of them. Ive also got a half cent that has fell forward and is almost touching the slab. 

Give us a pic.

I'm having a really good day.

I moved on to trying to rotate my 1839 $2.5 Classic Head.

Here it is, before.

Before

I wanted to rotate the coin in the same direction that I rotated the 1914-D $5 Indian.  This meant tapping the upper right edge-corner of the Holder on the pad of paper, and also possible spinning the Holder 180º around its Z-axis and tapping that (now) upper right edge-corner, too.

Remember, this $2.5 Classic Head coin has less mass than the $5 Indian, the holder is different in that it has 4 cushioning prongs, not 3, and the coin fits fairly flush against all of the upper and bottom prong "ledges" that secure its placement in the Holder.

I began tapping and it wasn't rotating at all.  I then increased my taps between rotation-inspections to around 20 taps.  Also, I brought the Holder near the space-heater I use in the kitchen, and warmed it a little to help loosen the coin, maybe.  It was rotating a little bit, but not enough to know with certainty if it was rotating in the correct direction.

In the confusion of the moment, when I finally looked at the coin after really doing a lot of successive taps to gain direction-certainty… I realized I was rotating the coin in the wrong direction.  The "1" of 1839 was now right in the middle of the bottom left prong.

I became panicky.  It was rotating in the intuitive direction I had thought the $5 Indian should have rotated, but didn't, and I was now doubting my competency.

Ok, calm down.  Tap the Holder on the "left" corners and it should move back.

Well, it did move back.

Finally, I got it to where I wanted it… and then I decided to go a little past where I wanted it to rotate to.

After

So why did I go past where I had thought I wanted to rotate the coin to?

Here is the way the coin's reverse used to look.

Before

See that glaring rim ding?  Here is the rim ding, now.

After

You'd never even know it exists!

Damn, Roger… you've got me jumping through hoops today.

When I first considered placing gold — any kind of gold — in a puzzle box, I wondered how to safeguard the gold from the hazards that might exist from the wood of the puzzle box.  Before even buying my first rare gold coin, I had considered little gold bars.  Learning about gold, I became aware that much more value could be placed in a small volume with rare gold coins.  I considered a US gold type set — knew nothing about slabbed coins, not even their existence — and when my first rare gold coin came in, I couldn't find a way to open the PCGS slab.  I contacted the dealer, and he told me DO NOT TRY TO OPEN THE SLAB!  I asked, "Is this the way it is done?" He answered back, "Yes."

Still, I liked the idea of gold coins in a small space, and I pursued the notion of cracking the coins out of their slabs, and I even ordered one gold coin in a 2 X 2, from one dealer, which I later sold back when buying something else.

I pursued a parallel path on how to store the gold coins, ordered various sizes of polyethylene bags and AIR-TITES.

Look at the grain of those balsa wood double eagles!  Have you ever seen more beautiful balsa wood double eagles coins in your life!!!

While doing these "fit" and "sizing" experiments, I recalled that I had ordered one large 6 SUN YAMANAKA HIMITSU-BAKU puzzle box the year before, I tested the fit of the PCGS holder in it, and decided I would keep my gold coins holdered, after all.

With all these polyethylene plastic bags that I had, 100 of them, and seeing how coin holders would get nesting chatter marks, I decided to make interleaves to go between each holder.

These plastic bag interleaves do not have PVC as their polymer chains are derived from petroleum, and I know that all of my interleaves are from this one 100 BAGS 3x4 2MIL quantity because there are only 20 new ones remaining in the bag they came in.  So, when I did the X-Acto cutting of the interleaves, they all have dimensions less than the 3x4 bags.

I was mistaken when I cited sandwich baggies, earlier.

Coin Armour Corrosion Intercepts are also polyethylene, by the way.

Actually, the $2.5 Classic Head needs to be rotated in the same direction that my $5 Indian needed rotation.

This rotation stuff can be so confusing.

What is funny, too, is that if someone asked me ahead of time which corner to tap, based on intuition, I would have guessed the top left corner, and not the top right corner.

Oftentimes, Trial and Error gets the job done a lot faster than "pondering" over best ways to get a job done.

With a lot of spare time, the Boards being down today, I got back to work on seeing what I could do with this coin and Holder.

I looked for info on PCGS.  Nothing of value.  Then I clicked on a CoinTalk article and found the best advice of all.

First, I dropped the Holder, reverse side facing down, on my kitchen island, but onto an Engineer Calculation Pad (Roaring Spring, buff color) so as not to damage the Holder.

This was to zero out the coin so that it would be flush against all three of the cushioning-prong bottom ledges.

Then I stood the Holder upright on the pad and did a few rotation slams from the bottom edge so that only the upper-most prong might be affected.  In other words, I hoped that the two lower prong bottom edges would still be touching the coin but the upper-prong might have the coin touching its top obverse inside ledge.  Didn't really accomplish much, but it was worth a shot, and probably helped loosen the coin somewhat.

Then, with my left hand, coin obverse facing me slightly, and with the holder a few inches above the pad, I slammed the Holder's top-right-side-edge onto the pad so that it would rotate clockwise with the most force occurring on that corner.  This was repeated a few times.  The goal here was to see if the coin would rotate, and would it rotate in the direction I wanted.  Well, sure enough, the coin did rotate a little, and in the direction I wanted.  I tried that a few more times, but had diminishing returns, so I decided to rotate the Holder 180º and see if that opposite corner might give me some benefit.  It did.

I kept going like this, and after 10 Holder rotating-corner slams, the coin was rotated completely to where I wanted it to be.

Before

After

NGC Verify Photo

Finally, to finish up, I again dropped the Holder on the pad, obverse side facing up, to seat the coin again on all three of the bottom inside-ledges of the prongs.

This result was so good that I intend to follow up with my $2.5 Classic Head, which is slightly rotated too, but in the opposite direction.

Still working on this coin rotation "puzzle."

Consider, if you will, that the coin/holder can fluctuate between 60ºF and 100ºF, the 1914-D $2.5 Indian has a known reeded-edge diameter of 21.6 mm, and let's assume that NGC's inner-core slab is polytetrafluoroethylene. (PTFE)  The Coefficients of Thermal Expansion for Gold - copper and PTFE are 8.6 (10^-6 in/(in ºF)) and 68.6 (10^-6 in/(in ºF)), respectively.  This means that if the temperature rises for the "slab" the coin will loosen slightly within the three cushioning prongs.

How large a circular gap would be created, assuming ideality?

𝚫L = ⍺ L₀ 𝚫T

Circular Gap = 𝚫L/2 = 1/2 ⍺ L₀ 𝚫T
 

    1   |   (68.6  -  8.6)  10^-6 in   |   21.6 mm   |     cm       |        in        |   (100  -  60)  ºF    
    2   |                in ºF               |                    |   10 mm   |   2.54 cm   |

Circular Gap = 0.001 inch

To give some scale on this circular gap, here is my old STAEDTLER-MARS tri-rule showing the 50 scale.  Each one of those tiny divisions is 0.02 inch, and so the circular gap would be 20 times more narrow than one of those tiny divisions.

Nonetheless, a temperature rise of the coin/holder would loosen the holder's grasp on the coin… albeit infinitesimally.

Let's look at the coin… how securely it is held in place:

Clearly there is some room for movement up and down.  Notice, too, that the coin is not held by 4 cushioning prongs.  Less "holding" real estate with a tri-prong holder.

I did a quick experiment, raising the slab about five inches above two sheets of heavy-stock paper, and dropped it a few times.

Here is the movement noticed on one of the reverse prongs:

Before

After

This is as far as I've gotten, for now.

I thought I had a déjà vu feeling last night, on the 'Another Reason To Photograph Your Coins — Toning, Spotting, & Other Changes' thread.

I guess my short term memory isn't as bad as I thought it was.

He's too "green," and I don't know Dr. Robert Bruce Banner personally.

It was so cold yesterday, so decided to look at my Puzzle Box Gold collection in person, which involves hours for me to even gain access to the coins.

Got to my 1914-D coin and played around with it, tapping the holder this way and that.  It's not a "rattler" so nothing budged or rotated.

Now I'm wondering if a gold coin in an NGC holder is more likely to be loose in the holder when the holder/coin is warmer or colder.
 

Have even gotten out my old Tipler Physics book (Fifth Printing, August 1980), page 434, problem 9, which involves an interesting problem:

Temperature:  20º C start

steel tube OD:  3.000 cm
brass tube ID:  2.997 cm

Q.  To what temperature must the tubes be heated if the steel tube is to be inserted into the brass tube?

The "rattler" exercise for me would be to solve the steel/brass problem but use thermal coefficients of linear expansion for gold and plastic.

While I have the collection out, here's a nice pic…

The thin leaves of plastic between the holders are from "sandwich" baggies.  Using a straight edge and X-acto knife, I cut the leaves a little larger than the holders.  The purpose the leaves serve is to prevent holder-nesting chatter marks where they touch on the faces of the adjacent holders.  There's other surrounding wrapping too, involving comic book size Coin Armour Corrosion Intercepts.

Holders still look beautiful — mint condition — after eight years.

On 2/1/2023 at 4:43 PM, J P M said:

I recently picked up a coin that was out of rotation in the holder. I shook the holder and it was loose inside . I kept tapping it in the palm of my hand and rotating it and it turned until it was back to normal again ..LoL

Thanks… I'll try that.

Knowing that it has to be coin rotation, I, too, wonder if it is a "rattler."  So, I'll test for that.  See if I can "tap it back."

As I've been going through this winter, I've been noticing a nail at the top of the center hall stairs that has raised up again about 1/8 inch.  Every year I have to hammer it down again.  Maybe my coin's rotation has something to do with temperature, humidity, and possibly the forced hot air/air conditioning system of the house, which cumulatively add routine disturbances that might cause micro-movement of many things within the house.

To be continued…