Fenntucky Mike

You forgot about option Z, give the grading credit to Mike. Ooooo   Miiiike.  

A turtle themed Sig set could be interesting and LARGE, I can't think of an individual series of coins with turtles. It's a tough question but you've got some time to think about it. Maybe a theme that the boys would be actively invested in, toys, cards, etc.. 

Congratulations William! Well Deserved my friend. 

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Let me first say Congrats to Mike. I was happy to see so many familiar names, but I was most happy to see his name pop up on both the NGC and PMG side.

Thanks! It was a long row to hoe on the PMG side but I got there. Yes! 

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I really was not thinking that would get a Best Presented this year. I thought If I got a Best Presented it might be for the 500 Lire set. I thought if that Venezuela set would get something it would be a Best New Set. - Don't ever think I have a crystal ball, I'm often wrong.  However, the 500 Lire set did not win this year, so Mike's crystal ball also clearly is not perfect either, at least this year.  

Meh,  but now I think the 500L set is really poised for 2023. 

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The judges got me chuckling a bit this year with the comment about "Revenant documents the circuitous ways in which he built his collection." 

Ha, that got a laugh out of me as well and then I had to look 'circuitous' up in the dictionary. 

On 12/8/2022 at 9:16 PM, mailman1959 said:

I was wondering about the missing edge letters. I read some articles on it and the mint was first notified of them on Thursday March 8, my package is round-dated with the Post Office date of March 11 in Cleveland Ohio and it was shipped on 2/27 out of Memphis Tenn. 10 rolls, what's the odds that I got some of the errors?

Your best bet would be to open them up and see, I can't see anyone paying much of a premium unless they can verify what is in the rolls. The shipping date is not enough to identify them as missing edge lettering coins, from what I understand.

I really don't think you have much to loose either way, so I'd open them. 

On 11/7/2022 at 11:27 AM, Revenant said:

The thing for me is, it takes a decent amount of time to find Raw coins or lots for sale, get them, look for ones that are good enough, fill out the forms, and send them in and wait for them to get back. For a smaller set (many of these sets are under 15 coins), it's not a terrible thing to me to pay someone else $20 to do that work for me and give me a guaranteed MS67 or MS68. Like I said, it lets these be more of an "easy" project while I then save my other efforts for things like Venezuela and Zimbabwe, which others are not grading at the moment.

Totally makes sense from that perspective. My dealings were more along the lines of picking up a few low cost world coins in high grades for gifts or just because I liked the design, etc., not for set construction. Guess I need to come to terms with the fact that things ain't getting any cheaper and that prices are not going to fall back anytime soon. I need to stop being such a tight arse, but I'll probably move more towards raw coins and modern mint sets and the like as opposed to graded coins for impulse buys/gifts, I feel there is more value for my $20-$40+ that way. 

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As has tended to be the case, they eventually listed one for $50, which was starting to become more reasonable.

I hadn't looked at this seller in quite awhile and they seem to have raised their prices quite a bit from where they were. I seem to remember most of the auction listings starting off at around $30 or less, now it looks like most listings start around $40 or higher.  

$20-$30 for a graded modern that almost no one collected was livable, but I'm having trouble coming to grips with $40.

Wow! Those images look great, the banners too! Well done. 

Pizza goooood!

Glad to see everyone is back home! 

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I'm wondering if Mike is seeing the same thing in Ukraine.

I am, it's been eerily quite on that front.  The only thing is that they are not the only active collector in the Ukrainian note categories, there is another collector who also goes after the crème de la crème of modern notes. 

Glad to read that he's recovering, hopefully you guys are outa there soon and Sam is back to his normal happy-go-lucky self. 

Pretty dang good results if you ask me, anything over a 66 on a coin intended for circulation is damn nice!  

I'm with you in that 68 is where I might be tempted to spend a few extra dollars on a graded modern coin that, almost, no one else is interested in,  anything below that better be a sweetheart of a deal, rare, or a real looker. I can send in 65-67 coins all day long on my own. 

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I think I will definitely be begging the wife for the 1/10rh and the 1/4th oz.

Good luck with this, I think a nice display for the 500L could help your cause. 

Awesome pics William, the detail is fabulous.   I really like the 500L coins, well done.

Were the cents the hardest to image or another coin?

My deepest condolences, so sorry to hear of the loss of your loved one.  

Fantastic pieces and congratulations on everything else.  Especially the YN on the way! 

The Smithsonian, specifically the National Museum of American History, has an exhibit called Really BIG Money which features the Quetzal bird. The exhibit is geared towards teaching children but still fun. https://americanhistory.si.edu/exhibitions/really-big-money 

I like how you snuck some banknotes into this Journal entry. 

That 69 is a beauty, can't wait to see it in the registry set! 

Hope everything goes smoothly today and that you guys are outa there quickly.  

Sounds great. The coin budget just doubled.  Pretty soon you'll be the one reigning her in. 

Nice! And good job Shandy! 

The banknotes I ordered from this seller showed up a week or so ago but it was postmarked from Germany. Amazing that they are still conducting business and getting packages out of these areas (I have received items postmarked from Kyiv as well as other locations). It seems that quite a few of my regulars were able to escape from some of the occupied areas, but some have not resurfaced.  

On 3/25/2022 at 12:48 AM, Joseph Franklin said:

It sucks that I don't have the $20,000 so that my collection can get certified and silence everybody.

Send the few coins in that you've posted here, should only cost a few hundred, then sell them to raise funds for the next batch and so on.... Or send them in small batches as funds are available and keep them if you like. The last thing you should do is spend 20k to submit the entire collection based on the coins you've posted. Sending the entire collection shouldn't even be in consideration at this point but if you want to test the waters a bit I get it, just don't dive in head first.

On 3/25/2022 at 12:48 AM, Joseph Franklin said:

Did you know Mike that a 10x loop is required to investigate and verify some of these tighter spreads of DDO?

Don't need a 10x for this one, your pictures are sufficient.

On 3/25/2022 at 12:48 AM, Joseph Franklin said:

There's way too much info out there

Exactly, and too much of it is either false, misleading or gets twisted to fit a narrative/hope. 

Not a match for FS-101, not a DD of any kind. If you're referring to the area above and left of the "1" in the date as containing a "P", it doesn't/it's not. Probably a stain of some sort along with a plating blister. 

Very nice!  I haven't pulled the trigger on one of these yet, still dragging my feet and deciding if I really want to. I'll probably pick one up as a gift and if I'm getting one I might as well get two. That's my SOP. 

I agree the proof registry set is a jumble, and they should separate some of those. NGC/PMG are usually very accommodating with set suggestions as long as you have the coins/notes and aren't being completely ridiculous. My experience that they'd rather make individual sets for each denomination, but they do have sets by year in the registry as well, so.. 

I went down the same path you did William, checked to see where the seller was, etc.. I can say that to a person, everyone I have emailed back and forth with in Ukraine, since the invasion, have told me it ain't looing good. This is one of the few sellers that I have not been in contact with directly but I decided to make a purchase from them a few days ago, knowing full well that there is pretty much a zero chance that I will see the item. I look at it similarly to everyone renting houses in Ukraine via Airbnb that they will never go to. A donation to my numismatic brethren.  I've since done this with all of my Ukrainian sellers, most say that they still "can and will ship" the items, some say that there is no guarantee or that they can't. To all of them I say don't worry about it, take care of your families, yourselves and do what you must.

Below is a list of some of some sellers ebay stores, sadly some of them have pulled all of their inventory or closed their store. Vitaliy, Dmytro, Svetlana and Oleh be careful my friends. 

https://www.ebay.com/usr/lemberg-zp?_trksid=p2047675.m3561.l2559

https://www.ebay.com/str/antiquesandphilately?_trksid=p2047675.m3561.l2563

https://www.ebay.com/str/banknotesandbonds

https://www.ebay.com/str/ukrainecoins?_trksid=p2047675.m3561.l2563

https://www.ebay.com/str/megasellercoins?_trksid=p2047675.m3561.l2563

https://www.ebay.ie/str/sellsvit?LH_BIN=1

I'll have more on the situation in some upcoming Journal entries over on the PMG side.

On 3/8/2022 at 11:25 AM, Revenant said:

I think I'd pass on submitting Modern Silver unless you feel like it just really needs to be in a slab.  

It's the registry bug, I've been bit.  I've been hanging onto some modern silver for a year or more now and it's for one registry set that I'd like to keep up to date, but until the mail gets caught up and the turnaround times drop a little I'll probably still hold them back and maybe go with a PMG submission instead. 

On 3/7/2022 at 10:02 PM, Revenant said:

World modern turnaround times are now down to 56 business days. 

Nice! They are getting closer to catching up with opening the mail as well. 

I'll probably have a small submission of gold coins ready to go in the next few weeks, I'm still debating on whether or not to send some silver though. 

I was expecting something completely different when I saw the title.  Love the venezolano.