Revenant

For the first time in about 2 years, I’ve received a grading credit from NGC, and I’m actually faced with thinking about how I wanted to use it. A couple of years ago I knew I wanted to reholder the 10G set and I immediately saw that credit as a chance to build a graded set of Zimbabwe coins for a registry set. Last year I knew before I even finished the Zimbabwe set that the next thing I wanted to do was Venezuela – and I even went out-of-pocket on most of that because I’d already used the credit finishing Zimbabwe. This year, though, I was thinking it’d probably be a smaller, lower-key year, of just using the $150 credit from the membership to try to fill out most of the rest of the Venezuela 2007-Date set and the last three coins of the 500 Lire set. $150 - $10 for an invoice fee leaves you with $140 which will pay for about 7.5 coins, which then just leaves you paying like $12 + Shipping for 8 coins, and 8 coins would have finished the 500 Lire set and left me with only 1 hole (a coin I still don’t have even in a raw state) for the Venezuela set. 1) VEN 2010 25 CENTIMOS - INDEPENDENCE ANNIVERSARY 2) VEN 2010 50 CENTIMOS - BANCO CENTRAL - 70TH ANNIVERSARY 3) VEN 2016 10 BOLIVARES 4) VEN 2016 50 BOLIVARES 5) VEN 2016 100 BOLIVARES 6) ITALY 1995 500 Lire 7) ITALY 2000 500 Lire 8) ITALY 2001 500 Lire But when you add in the $500 credit it starts to look more like this… 1) VEN 2010 25 CENTIMOS - INDEPENDENCE ANNIVERSARY 2) VEN 2010 50 CENTIMOS - BANCO CENTRAL - 70TH ANNIVERSARY 3) VEN 2016 10 BOLIVARES 4) VEN 2016 50 BOLIVARES 5) VEN 2016 100 BOLIVARES 6) ITALY 1995 500 Lire 7) ITALY 2000 500 Lire 8) ITALY 2001 500 Lire 9) ZIM 2003 $10 (If I can find one that seems worth sending in…) 10) ZIM 2003 $25 (If I can find one that seems worth sending in…) 11) VEN 2011 25 CENTIMOS - INDEPENDENCE ANNIVERSARY (If I can find a good one, which I think I can) 12) … 25) And with the $150 credit… 26) … 33) There was this Raw / ungraded 1955 Rhodesian Half Penny that looked good for $6 on eBay and I’d been considering buying it and sending it in to get to 4/5 (80%) on that Half Penny Set. If it graded well, it could even put me in the running fort the top spot in the category. I’d been looking at that and when I found out about winning the award I just went online and got it. I hadn’t considered at the time but because it is from the mid-1950s and not mid-1960s it would have to go in under economy ($23) and incur its own $10 invoice fee, so the incremental cost of that coin would be $33 and not $19, but it could still be worth it if the coin looks like it would grade well when it comes in. So that could eliminate basically 2 of the blank spots above – if it looks good enough – but that doesn’t really solve “the problem” of those potentially 22-25 blank spots in that list. Now, don’t get me wrong – this is a fantastic “problem” to have, but for the first time in 2 years, I’m going to have to think about how I want to use this. Before the announcement was made and the question became “real,” I’d toyed with the idea of looking through some of the Italian coins I have in my binder and see if there are some 5 Lire, 10 Lire, 50 Lire, 100 Lire and / or 200 Lire coins I could send in and possibly add those two and strengthen those Lire sets. But the more I think about it the more I’m not sure that idea appeals to me. The reason being that I don’t think I’ll get much of the normal “fun” I get out of these sets by doing this. The best part of these sets for me usually is researching them, researching the design elements and the history of the different coins and designs and the historical context and building the presentation of what have now become 2 “Best Presented” sets. As you might imagine, I think the reason why those sets “work” is that I have really enjoyed making them and building them out on the registry and that part is usually what I get the most personal “value” from in spending my hobby money. And I think that’s an area where the 5, 10, 50 and 100 lire sets fail – because they’re 50 year runs of the same design. So, there’s not nearly as much there to look into and a lot of that work is ready done and built into those sets. So, I don’t think there’s enough meat on those bones for me to sink my teeth into. Those side sets work as fun side projects to buy some new coins for here and there where they come up but I’m not convinced they’d hold my interest and keep me happy as a main focus for a year or two like the Zimbabwe and Venezuelan Sets have. The 500 Lire and 200 Lire circulating commemorative sets hold a little more promise in this regard with some fun designs to research and comment on, but these things do not hold up well and trying to find them in high grade, looking good, for not much money, can be a bit of a difficult thing. But… the other thing about those sets is, if I’m being honest, I’m hoping that certain dealers will continue to enable my laziness on those. The other thing about that is that we’re talking about 22-25 coins. The first Zimbabwe submission – the one that won the award – was only 14 coins. The Venezuelan submission – that didn’t even fully feed into the 2007-date set – was only about 26 coins. A submission of that size just calls out to me to use it to build “the next set” - the next big research project, the next great adventure of buying hundreds of raw coins and filling another binder with pages and flips… But… what set is that going to be? An obvious standout for me has been Turkey – they’ve been going through a pretty major long term inflationary crisis that has gotten much worse in the last few years and it could be a great new project, continuing my theme from the last two. Another one that could be a great continuation of my recent theme is Argentina… There could be some fun here with just snickering about the gap between the official inflation rate and what the apparent actual inflation rate is. Of course, building either of those sets in the way that I want would depend on finding large quantities of their coins in good conditions at reasonable prices so I could do what I’ve done with the last 2 sets. So far, with Turkey, it has not been looking good / promising. But then, the other question becomes, do I want to stick to theme or go with something else? Is now the time that I decide to build elephant or turtle thematic custom sets for one or both of my boys? But if I do that I wonder if I’d be better going for turtles over elephants as a focus. The Zimbabwe set (Notes and Coins, making it collectively HUGE) is so strongly linked to Samuel. The Rhodesian Pennies with the association to Zimbabwe and the elephant theme also have a strong link to Sam. If I keep pounding projects like that, I might risk a day in the future when Ben is going to look at me a bit sideways… Even though he is my namesake “William” and therefore the 10G set is something I mentally have going to him one day. So maybe it’s time to build a Turtle set? The main problem there is I’d be starting from Zero pretty much, and I’m time-limited on getting a group of coins together and ready while the credit is still good. In the meantime, I think I'm going to see if I can get some more raw examples of the 1995, 2000, and 2001 500 Lire coins. I have examples of each, but I know they're not going to get super-high grades. So I think I'm going to try to find some better alternatives while I have some time to shop.

Congrats to you as well! 🎉

Thank you! To you as well! Like I said, the first was 11 years ago, so you could be forgiven for having forgotten. 🤣🤣

This was also my 3rd - 2nd in 2 years but the first one was 11 years ago now, which is crazy to think about in it's own way. I think getting 1 is pretty prestigious... 🤣 It might be worth looking into what % of the user base even has 1. In the history of the awards I think NGC has only awarded about 600 major awards and a lot of those are concentrated with several of us having more than one and a small elite few like Gary having ~10. So I think it's only in the range of 200-300 users (out of ~13,000) that have one of the Major awards. Granted, most of that 13,000 has few coins and may not even have eligible sets, but it's still a small percentage.

Honestly this outcome makes me a lot less confident on that. The judges just don't seem to respond as well to the personally themed projects like the 10G set and now those Italian sets. I seem to win awards for the sets that are more focused on the coins and the historical context of the coins. Which makes sense but Im not sure it portends good things for that undertaking. I guess we'll see. 🤷‍♂️ In either case, some of that $500 credit is going to go towards filling the last 3 slots in that set with the best examples I can find. I'll be proud to bring that to 100%. I can ALMOST bring the Venezuela set to 100% now like I did Zimbabwe last year but there's still 1 more coin I'd need. I guess more on that later.

Thanks! Anything new and big you're working on for down the road or are you continuing to focus mostly on the penny set that won last year?

Thanks! You should check out his Ukrainian note set on the PMG side. Ben is a healthy kid and just shrugs things off like you'd expect a kid to. Sam continues to be more complicated, but we managed to stay out of the hospital this time, albeit with the help of steroids, inhalers and a whole bunch of drugs and support. I'm not going to be surprised if he ends up with an asthma diagnosis and he just generally does not seem to deal with respiratory infections at all well.

Well, NGC and PMG announced the awards today around lunch time. 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. Also congrats to many of the others I've often seen on the forums: The Welsh Dragon, ChrisInJesup, Physics-fan3.14, libertad1998, lehigh96, Ray USMC,... Hopefully I'm not missing anyone there but, gosh, it is a long list these days. NGC is increasingly generous on that front. But, in saying that, please don't think I'm marginalizing the accomplishment - there's like 13,000 users and they give out about 45-50 plaques a year and I think only 1-2% of users have ever gotten a major award in the ~20 year history of the awards. So, Congrats! It's a cool thing. I am very happy to get a New Best Presented Award for my Venezuela set! 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. And, now, instead of waiting until my membership renews in June, I need to get on getting the rest of the coins for that set ready to go in. Or... I might end up waiting until June anyway and spending the Reward Credit and the Membership Renewal Credit at the same time. Time to finish that set and have a set so nice and dominant it sits on the top spot for the next 10 years, right? The judges got me chuckling a bit this year with the comment about "Revenant documents the circuitous ways in which he built his collection." I mean, admittedly, I do drone on about how these sets were built in the coin descriptions. I do often wonder if I drone on and belabor this a bit too much and it might lead to audience tune-out . At the same time, the lengths that I have gone through to build these sets (Zimbabwe and Venezuela) are the main reason why I think they might not have a serious challenger for the top spot in the category for a long time - at least on the NGC side. On the PMG side, thanks to certain specific dealers, there's enough graded material to make those much more approachable. But, on the coins side, if you want to build these sets out, you can't just open your wallet. You have to do the work - at least for now. This may change in the future. You haven't heard from me much lately because December was full of, among other things, kids being home sick all day with colds and such. But, I'm also shifting to a lower gear for now on the coin and note collecting side. Part of this is just because I've mostly finished most of my main projects for now - I just need to send in some coins to fill some holes in the 500 Lire and Venezuela sets. But, I don't know that I'm going to have a lot to talk about until and unless I find some cool new thing to build out in some epic way and add written and photographic flourishes to. I do have a few ideas... Shandy did surprise me on the 25th however with 2 new Rhodesian Half Pennies. That's a nice little set to build but emphasis is on little - it's only 5 dates / 5 coins and I now have 3 of them. But I may be emphasizing trying to get the last 3 coins to finish a half penny and a penny set from that last period where Zimbabwe was still part of the Commonwealth of Nations. I'm also considering messing around with ~1970s era Rhodesian cents from the Civil War era - the civil war lasted like 15 years... which sounds... hideous. Another contender might be spinning off from those Dancing Elephants (Rhodesian Pennies) and building an Elephant themed set. I recently rain across a 1941 Liberian Cent design with an elephant on it. From what I was seeing (haven't confirmed) I think it might have been struck in the US, at the PA mint, which immediately made me think Coin928's set / collection.

So far they show little inclination to mounting a serious challenge in that set, but we'll see. They could always change their minds. 🤣😅

Well, I think that's $250 face value. With them being mint sealed rolls you might get a premium ($30-40?) Selling them individually or the right person that wants it might give you $350-$400, but presidential dollars didn't catch on with collectors or the population like the State Quarters did or like the mint hoped, so they haven't seemed to hold up in value over the years - quite the opposite. I mostly see the values way way down.

So I made my post a few weeks ago about picking up that 1981 200 Lire and I talked about wanting to get a 1980 because of the design of that coin and how fitting I thought it was for a tribute set to my wife. At the time I was hitting up eBay to see if I could find any of the 1981 graded by NGC - most likely from this same seller because this seller seems to be about the only one offering modern Italian issues graded by NGC. But I didn't find any. So that had me looking for raw examples to maybe grade myself for this set because, I really liked that design, my wife liked it, and I wanted to get it. Sadly... no luck! These things do not seem to age well if they get handled at all. I don't think they do that well wit oxidation and oils from hands and handling. Anyway.... I'd about given up for the time and I was feeling a bit bummed about it, thinking this might just be something that'd require time and patience... and then...! I found this: I've joked with others that this is one of those moments that gets the paranoid part of your brain going, wondering if the dealers watch the registry and what you post and what the holes in your set are and then the coins you need magically appear! But, then you take a closer look, see the cert#, realize this coin is from the same invoice as the 1981 I bought before, realize that this coin was graded before I ever talked about it. My fantasies and delusions of my own influence aside, this had nothing to do with me. The seller is just submitting and grading things and offering them for sale, as always. They just happen to be coins I want. So then, why did these magically appear after my post? Well, they probably didn't. They were probably listed and for sale the entire time. Why then, did I not see them? Well... likely through a copy and paste issue, the seller had them listed as 1000 Lire coins. And this is totally on the seller - NGC correctly labeled them as 200 Lire, and Italy didn't introduce 500 Lire coins until 1982 and 1000 Lire coins until about 1995. There are no 1980 dated 1000 Lire coins that I'm aware of. I just got lucky finding these because I did a broad look for "NGC Italy," just to see if anything interesting popped up. Since it was around Black Friday, everyone was marking things down, and the seller takes offers, I put in an offer for about 80% of their ask and they accepted. I'm going to cross my fingers and hope these folks keep making my life easy for me on this set: I gotta say though, the pictures the seller takes of these coins are so unflattering. They look so much shinier and more lustrous and pretty in hand than they do in the seller's images. As often seems to be the case with me, I'm finding these type sets with different designs more fun to build than long-run date sets that all have the same design. So, while I had thought that I might try making a play to retake the top in the 50 Lire set, this 200 Lire type set seems to be becoming my secondary Italian focus, having mostly built a solid 500 Lire date set. Although I'm very much also interested in a 500 Lire type set that includes the circulating commemorative years. While I was shopping for these, I was surprised to find that there are 1980-dated coins that use the more "standard," non-circulating commemorative design. So they issued two different 200 Lire designs in 1980. And this has me wondering waht other years this is true for. In other slightly funny news... You know how, back in May, I talked about how someone came along 15 minutes before an auction ended and sniped a 1983 500 Lire out from under me... Well, today, I looked at the one other 500 Lire type set in the registry... and it has one coin... a 1983... in MS65... that was added in May... right around when I lost that auction to the sniper ... But... I guess that means it probably wasn't a shill... There will be no mercy.

One of my wife's favorite reasons to laugh and roll her eyes at me (other than my nerdy coin-collecting ways) is that she thinks I'm far too polite to people that come to the door trying to sell solar panels and telemarketers... It's how I was raised. I try to be nice and civil and give people soft but firm nos. I try to respect the fact that they're just trying to earn a paycheck and a living, and I try never to abuse or be rude to them. And yet, lately, I find these people testing my patience. Around the time Sam got out of the hospital someone must have sold their contact list, including my number, because I have been getting absurd numbers of calls from coin and bullion companies trying to sell me things and these people are obnoxiously pushy. I'm not going to buy from them. 1) I don't buy from cold calls for companies I haven't done business with. 2) I'm not buying bullion right now. 3) anyone trying to sell me PCGS coins doesn't know me as a collector. 4) even to the extent that I'm buying numismatics right now I'm making myself happy in an extremely niche world modern area that they are not going to be equipped to sell to. And yet... all the pushy BS and aggressive, borderline condescending responses... I've been just hanging up on them more and more. Increasingly, once I've told them I'm not interested politely, I've met the standard of civility. If they choose not to respect that at that point, and try some aggressive pitch, then they're the one in breach of social norms and I'm good to just let them hear a "click." But these salespeople are just so obnoxious. These are the calls I answer out of concern that its work or kid related. My phone is also getting flooded with calls flagged as "Scam Likely" that I just don't even answer. I wish I knew who gave them the number. I'd probably never buy from them again. In more positive news, after I got those 2010 25C 200th Independence Anniversary coins that I liked the condition of, I saw the same seller had some of the 50C coins made to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the BCV (Central Bank of Venezuela), so I picked up a bunch of those and I've been similarly pleased with the coins I got. So now I have everything except the 2011 25C commemorative, and I'm well set up to send in some coins in 2023 that will pretty much finish that Venezuelan type set. It has been about a month since my wife greenlit a new gold coin purchase and, while I have something in mind, I haven't pulled the trigger because I've been waiting to see the fall-out from the hospital stay and a minor car fender-bender to play out before making any large, unnecessary purchases, no matter how secure I'm felling overall. But I have gotten her anniversary present ordered... Now I just have to figure out a Christmas present for her. She already has the kids pretty well planned out and taken care of.

Yeah. I actually have a specific interest in these sets and series. I wouldn't be paying these prices for something as an impulse or a "Oh, well that's a little neat." kind of thing.

For me there's a healthy dose of "it depends" on this. 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.

So, the awards deadline has come and gone, and I made the joke to Shandy along the lines of, "Well, I lost the 50 Lire this year, but I managed to win in 4 Italian categories instead of 2 this year, so that's cool, right?" Her response was, "So, you're going to get me 6 next year, right?" "You planning to up my budget? " More seriously, my quip back to her would be that I'll feel pretty good about it if I manage the defend the title on 2 or 3 of these 4 next year. I seem to be decently good at calling attention to categories and getting more sets created. Can you tell which one was created as a bit of an afterthought that I haven't had a chance to really mess with yet? Seriously.... I thought I'd made and posted a banner for all of these, then I actually looked at the 5 Lire set last night and was like... "Ooops." At some point I'm also wanting to work with an image of the 1994 500L to work on and differentiate the 500 Lire type set banner from the non-circulating commemorative date set. But it works for now. Most of these coins that I haven't bought raw and graded myself have come from 1 dealer in particular and they've had some MS67 1981 200 Lire coins - celebrating the first observation of UN FAO's World Food Day - that I'd been wanting to get and add to the 200 Lire Type set. The only problem was, consistent with their usual, they'd listed the coins at $300 each, which is.... Silly. Just for Lawls, and as a reminder to myself I watched the listing on eBay. The seller then offered me a 15% discount. $255. Which was... Slightly less silly. "Nah. You can still keep it at that price." As has tended to be the case, they eventually listed one for $50, which was starting to become more reasonable. I'm pretty okay to let someone recover their grading fees and make a little money if it is a good grade and they're saving me the work of hunting and submitting myself. When they're half-way reasonable on price I like these people. They make my life much easier on these sets, letting me focus more energy in other areas, so I do want them to continue having an incentive to keep submitting and supplying me with coins. So, I watched that listing thinking I might pull the trigger on it later. Then the seller offers me another 10% discount, knocking it down to $45. At that point I finally showed it to Shandy, and she was with me on taking it at that price. $45 plus shipping - down 85% of the original ask. I am still frequently amazed by and in awe of what people will ask for on these rarely-graded, thinly-collected-as-graded-coins, modern condition rarities, frequently bragging up that the coin is Top Pop (for now, but in no way guaranteed to remain such). I'm really looking forward to getting this one in, and when I do, I think it's going to be time to look into updating the 200 Lire banner to show off some of the different designs. I suspect she'll take this one and add it to her small-but-growing stash. So I may have to steal it for the short term to take the pictures. One coin I'd particularly enjoy adding to this set would be the 1980 issue: Between the child hugging the woman and the book in her lap I think that's almost a perfect design for my wife. Interestingly, this coin also references UN FAO, but unlike with the 1981 coin, I haven't researched this to figure out what the connection to FAO is with this one.

Thanks! Always happy to hear the these are read and enjoyed. I'm also a fan of German / Prussian Imperials because I think the old War Eagle design on the back is awesome to look at. In the set of mostly late 19th / early 20th century 0.18-0.25 ozt gold coins I have I think the Prussian 20 mark is one of my favorites from a pure design / look standpoint. But the last few years I've found my collecting efforts focused on sets of coins where I find the story of the historical context (hyperinflation) more interesting than the designs themselves in many cases.

I hope you do! 👍 Always good to see sets with great pictures and banners when you go looking through a category. What sets are you working on?

Hey, Tim. I'm not at all an expert on Struck-through errors in general or on US cents in particular, and I'm not sure if you're asking to say that you think you found one or if you're trying to ask if that coin is one. So, a little more text added to the post would probably help us understand what you're trying to say. I'd also say, if you're looking for information or insights on this coin, the journals are not the best place to post this. You're better off posting a question in the more general chat board area. Many don't read and comment on the journals. For my 2 cents, that looks like it's just a heavily worn and damaged cent. I don't think it's an error and I don't think it'd be worth much if it were because of all the obvious, severe, dings and hits. Welcome to the journals and these chat boards. I hope you find what you need here.

Okay... So I was working during naptime and in the evenings over the weekend, and work has been slow the first half of this week - both because the client on my main project isn't answering my questions and I think because they're not putting much on me right now having just gotten back from being at the hospital for two weeks, so I've taken pictures, and edited them and done some writing... but I just really want to show off these Rhodesian Penny photos and these banner images because I'm really proud of how these came out: Having gotten those made, I took the images for the 1962 - an MS67RD, the highest grade and nicest looking coin in the set - and made this banner image. I also made the following for a Venezuelan Bolivar Set. Banner images for sets like this are a little more "interesting" to me because there's more than one design and so there's more that I want to show and highlight. With this one, the things I really wanted to show and pull out are 1) The two (old and new-2021) portraits for Bolivar on the obverse, and 2) the Bimetallic bolivar and 3) the coat of arms, which, other than Bolivar, is the most commonly featured device on the coins. Also at this point, all 12 coins in the Venezuelan set have a comment on them. I had to laugh a little bit because, when I opened my old Word file for saving work on this, most of my work had been done on 1) the 1989 coins that are not in this set and 2) the 2016 coins that I ... forgot to submit. So that pretty much had me starting from scratch except I'd pulled some vital stats on all the coins previously including weight, size, composition, etc. This is still going to be a work in progress as I still want to put in more design commentary and maybe layer in some more context. However, I went really hard on the history and the timeline for this period in my notes set, so I may not do that again for this coin set. So... Yeah. I took advantage of some slow time to get this done, I'm very happy with what I got, and I wanted to share. I took this recently and sent it to my wife saying, "can you tell how I like to relax?"

I was looking at Libertad1998's Swiss Gold 20 Franc set (won an award in 2018) and it looks like the Expert comments displayed are for a different winning set. They reference Argentina and eight reales coins from 1813-1837. I was hoping this could get fixed so the correct comments can be displayed with the set.

Hey, I hope this message finds you well, but I was hoping you could shed some light on something for me... Many of these newer coins have 8 stars on them. specifically 8 stars. I'm wondering if there's a significance to this, like the 13 stripes on the US flag representing the 13 original states while the 50 stars represent the current number of states.

i edited the post above to have the picture of the six dates (7 coins) of Rhodesian Pennies together after Shandy and Ben handed them to me tonight. The set is now populated with a description that I wrote for it. Set Details | NGC Registry | NGC (ngccoin.com) I used Sam's nap time today to edit and crop down the images of the 2007-date Venezuelan coins and I've now posted those to replace the NGC images. I'm ratehr pleased with how these came out. I was worried about a few of them, looking just on the back of the camera when I took them two weeks ago on 10/07, but I'm very pleased with the final results. I'd taken multiples where needed and I got a good set of images out of it. I'd been worried I might have to try to shoot the 2021 coins in particular again but the pictures looked nicer than I'd remembered: With that done, I think the action plan is: 1) Take and edit shots of the Rhodesian Pennies. 2) Make descriptions for the pennies using my journal about them from September as a base / starting point 3) Make a photoshopped banner image for the Rhodesian set. Time allowing: 4) Make a Banner for the Venezuelan Set 5) As time allows, build out what I can for the Venezuelan Set.

If you do not count the NICU stay when he was born, we're up to 5 hospitalizations in 3.7 years. 2 Shunt revisions. 2 bouts of pneumonia / possible meningitis in this case. it just seems massively, massively unfair to a child where, every time everyone meets him, they talk about how sweet and loving he is.

Sam was finally allowed to go home last night. We had a follow-up with his pediatrician today and he should get to go back to school and ease back into normal activity on Monday. Ben is still, somewhat comically, trying to get his new front teeth in. It was very difficult getting out of there. I have rarely wanted to call a nurse a insufficiently_thoughtful_person to her face so badly. They tried to give him 2 vaccines in his two thighs at the same time and didn't restrain his hands while I held his legs so he tried to grab their hands and the syringe and could have broken the needle in his thigh. We got to go home the day after spending my birthday in the hospital. I would have been just as happy to ignore the day and celebrate at a different time, but Ben had been having a hard time and clearly needed to mark the day and spend some time as a family more than I did so we made it happen. I was more than a bit surprised to look here yesterday and see the timer counting down about 12 days to the awards cut off. I’d completely forgotten a while ago that the deadline was moved up this year. With November no longer available and the last two weeks lost to a void of fatigue and stress, I have two sets that would need a lot of work to get them ready and I think I’m going to have to choose between the Rhodesian Pennies and the Venezuelan Set for getting something mostly ready for the cut-off. And I think it’s going to be the Rhodesian Pennies. I think I can maybe get pictures up for both and I might even be able to get a banner image up for both. I can maybe even get descriptions in for the Venezuelan coins about how they were bought and such. But I’d hoped to have a lot of information about that set about the history of the coins and the country, the timeline of events and such and I just do not have the time or the energy to research that and put that together at this point. I want that set to be an equal companion to the notes set and the Zimbabwean sets, and that just takes a lot of time and a lot of work, and I haven’t been able to do it up to now and now we’re at the end, at least for this year. Fortunately, I was able to take pictures of the new 500 Lire coins that came back - pictures that match up pretty well visually with what was there before - and that set is pretty ready to go. I’m happy with that one and I’m proud of what I built for Shandy. So that one at least I don’t have to worry about. Who knows? Maybe I’ll just bust my butt this weekend and next and surprise myself? The birthday present ended up lining up with the circumstances better than I would have imagined. The Zimbabwean note set is so closely associated for me with Sam and Sam’s birth and now this set, which expands upon it, takes a big step forward on a birthday I spent in the hospital with him. Maybe I just need to abandon the whole damn thing and, if I do, he’ll stop having to go back to the hospital? Anyone think I’m that lucky? Nah. I think I'm just stuck with the hobby as my stress relief. Following up on some recent points: I got that 2010 25C Venezuelan Independence Commemorative from that seller and liked how the one looked so I ordered 4 more, bringing the total to 5, consistent with what I’ve been doing, and I’ll be sending the best of the 5 in to fill that slot in that set later. (Seller's images but the coins look good in hand) I’ve also gotten in the new three-coin sets with the 50 Bolivar coins from 2016, though I haven’t had a chance to look at those yet. However, these coins do mean that, if the Venezuelan set isn’t really ready for primetime this year, it should be nearly complete and firing on all cylinders for next year. I need to try to cut those loose from the paper holder he shipped them in and get them into flips. This is perhaps a petty complaint given the first half of this post but I absolutely hate seeing coins arrive packed like this... because, yes, those are staples separating the coins between sheets of 20-pound paper. The day before we went to the hospital, I got an offer from a seller offering me an old 1965 Venezuelan 1 Bolivar coin – the last year they were made of 0.832 silver. They offered it to me for $29. On Tuesday 10/11 I looked at it on my phone and saw the offer was expiring in like 10 minutes and I just took it. It arrived about a week later. In that price, at that grade, it felt reasonable enough and I just felt like it, so took it. It hadn’t been my plan to try to mess with extending the coins in this set back to the “silver age” but sometimes opportunities come up. (Again, seller's images) One of my eBay saved searched also flagged up to me this morning that one of my favorite notes dealers has, at long last, started listing PMG-graded examples of the new Digital Bolivar notes from 2021. So, I may be expanding the Venezuela Note set to include those in the near future. It's a little funny and amusing that the persion that had been thumping me rather badly on the PMG side and buying all the high-end notes for ZImbabwe and Venezuela seems to have lost interest for now. They haven't been buying, adding or competing for recent new releases when they come up in high grades. I'm wondering if Mike is seeing the same thing in Ukraine. My in-laws had my car through most of the last 2 weeks so they could have car-seats to help with Ben, so they got together and detailed / cleaned the 6-year-old car and it looks quite nice now. I'll have to try to treat the car a little better and try to keep it a little cleaner and nicer this time. This is something Shandy and I had been wanting and planning to do since we paid it off and then they decided to do it for my birthday. Shandy is now offering, since that now didn’t come out of our budget, to let me go out and use a roughly equivalent amount for some nice coin or something else I couldn’t normally ask for from family for a gift. So I’ll have to give some thought to what I might want to use that for. I have no major leads or thoughts at the moment. I had considered going for a Gold 20 Bolivar from around 1930 but I'm not really seeing anything like that at a price I like at the moment. So, there is the rambling, multi-front update.

He's on the mend. If the blood infection didn't require iv antibiotics this is the point where we'd be going home with pills and he'd be getting back to himself but we have to "serve" 5 days in this floor that feels a bit like a prison. Anyway... My wife told me that it's in his chart that he stopped breathing in the ambulance/ the trauma roo. and it was considered a full code. So I think at one point we were in serious danger of losing him to the seizure. But We'll have rescue meds for next time.