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Revenant

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Journal Entries posted by Revenant

  1. Revenant
    Well, I've been a bit quiet lately because I've been hoarding my cash and working on some other things, but I thought I'd pop in and check things out.
    I got quite a shock when I saw this:


    I've said before that I thought that set was strong enough that it had a good chance of holding up over time, so this immediately got my attention and then I see this:

    I've been aware that Xanno was trying to complete his set and he was rapidly filling his in, but how is it even possible that he's suddenly beating me by a factor of about 6 and why is my 100% complete set now at 95%...???
     
    Well... Apparently Xanno graded and added 2017 50 cent bond coin and so they had to add that as an eligible coin in the slot... except they apparently did this by disallowing the 2014 from the slot, even though it clearly fits the slot, kicked my MS66 out, and gave his MS64 coin a point value that makes most of my gold coins blush... 3,647 points? I mean... My MS69 $2 Bond coin only gets 205. 
    3,647 points?  Someone was smoking something...  I accept no other explanation.
    April 2nd... Someone was a little late, but this looks like a joke.




    As you might imagine... I've put in a request to get my 50C back in... and if they don't change that score, I'm going to be asking for that too. That score makes the rest of the set completely irrelevant.

    I mean... April 2nd was Tuesday. You can't even blame this on a case of the Monday's or a Friday afternoon. And the eclipse wasn't until the 8th so they couldn't have blinded themselves by this point...

     
    All in good fun. I mostly find this so insane it's funny, but I wanted to remark on it and preserve it for future laughs.  
     
     
    Edit: They added mine back, but left it at 20 points and left his at 3,600... I've requested the score change... I mean... really???
  2. Revenant
    As I've referenced recently, I've been sitting on and trying to accumulate some cash in my hobby budget to maybe buy a 1924 $20 double eagle in MS65 - my grandmother's birth year and now a newly 100-year-old coin. My grandmother would have been 100 years old in February if she were still alive.
    I finally got some things moved around and have saved enough that I now have almost $2600 in my hobby budget, and the coin, back in January, was going for about $2,500-2,600.
    But gold has moved up about $295/oz in the last 3 months and the coins are now going for about $2,900-3,000 now.
    I'll soon have about $2,800 available. If I wanted to pull the trigger on it and get the coin while not quite having enough to buy in in my hobby budget I think Shandy wouldn't give me a hard time about it.
    But I think I'm still just going to watch and wait a bit for now.
    I may regret it later if the price of gold keeps heading up in the near term, but I don't know that it's going to stay at these levels.
    The same people that have been predicting $3,000-5,000/oz for years are again going insane and screaming "buy now!" but, they've been saying this for quite a long time.
    Gold hit about $2,050 in 2020 and hit about that same level in 2022. $2,050 in 2020 is about $2,475 now. So it would seem that this may only be an adjustment for 4 years of inflation. And that is the inflation adjusted 2020 peak. We might (and probably will) see it peak and drop back again, just like it always tends to. Until this recent spike, it's been basically flat for 4 years.

    I looked up the all-in sustaining costs for some of the major gold miners and, they've gone up some, but they're still in the range of about $1,300-1,400 for most of the big ones, which is only up modestly from the $1,200-$1,300 it was a few years ago.
    This spike up might have some legs yet, and it does bother me to watch something I want getting more expensive, but I'm going to calm myself and wait a bit yet.
    The higher prices will inevitably bring more marginal production online with a lag, high prices always bring sellers onto the market, and spikes in demand spike premiums, which sour people on buying for a while. All of which will help reverse the trend.
    Because of some bonuses and other things going on I'll probably get to add another $1100 to my hobby budget in the next 4-6 months, in addition to the $200 a month I normally get for my discretionary spending. And that also means that, barring a continued huge spike up, I might be able to get the double eagle and maybe one other thing - maybe a coin from Sweden to add to my old, world gold set.
    On the other hand, maybe it's time to go for something from Mexico now that I have Venezuelan gold. Or maybe it's time to try to get some of those Zimbabwean bullion coins.
    I guess we'll see how it all goes.
  3. Revenant
    After my mother-in-law got me an MS70 2013 Koala, that got me looking at the set again. My wife got me the 2014 and 2016 in MS70 coins as part of my anniversary present a couple of weeks ago. Around the same time I scored pretty good deals on the 2019 and 2022 coins...
    As a funny aside, entered in the 2022 coin this morning, and I saw the pictures entered in the data base for the coin... that... doesn't quite look right...  

    So that leaves me just needing to get the 2015, 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, and (soon) 2024 to bring that set back up to being 100% complete for the first time in years.
    I started the set back in 2008 and 2009 and won "Best in Category" in it for those years (along with a bunch of other people), but I haven't had the set caught up and complete in... 15 years. Wow. Time has flown... 
    But I'm having fun just making some low-effort pick-ups when I find one at a reasonable deal. I think I'll keep looking and slowly trying to get the remaining coins over the next 9 months or so as I find them at attractive prices. 
    "Low-effort" might seem kind of blah / harsh but... when you compare buying large lots of raw coins, searching through them, and submitting yourself to just picking up pre-graded MS70s for barely more than the price of the silver + grading... it's a different process.  No dig to those that do this most of the time or exclusively in their collecting, but it's a different process and... it's just easier.
    On another front, because my collecting efforts haven't been very cost-heavy the last year or so - in part because past major award wins have subsidized the grading and building of some of my last few project sets - I'm sitting on more hobby money than I've had in a while - pushing $2,000 - and I'm seriously considering continuing to hoard some cash until I have the ~$2500 I'd need to buy an MS65 1924 Double Eagle. It'd be a large gold coin - the largest I'd own by a wide margin - and it's a Double Eagle, which I think is one of those "must haves" if you collect US coins. And 1924 would be for my grandmother's birth year. If I ever went for a 2nd one, I'd go for a 1920 - grandpa's birth year, my namesake.
    At the same time, not winning a major award this year and not having a $500 use-it-or-lose-it credit takes off the pressure to find / have things to submit and also frees me up to change my effort or where I spend my energy. I've been somewhat avoiding spending my time and budget on pre-graded stuff the last couple of years specifically because it doesn't help me with the goal of using / burning that credit.
    But I will probably be submitting something, because I'll get the $150 credit when my membership renews, and that will probably go towards some turtle coins.
    My step-father has discussed in the past the possibility of getting a non-1932 double eagle just to have one, just because neither of us see that 1932 double eagle in the cards.
    As part of this I'm realizing that a gift card that my brother-in-law gave me for my birthday has a slightly higher balance than I'd anticipated, and I'm discussing / considering with my wife spending that on more household expenses and rolling the equivalent cash into my budget fun / hobby money to get closer to that $2,500.
    Another one of the big ticket items that's kind of a soft-entry in my list of wants would be buying a new camera body - a mirrorless one this time - to replace my D600/D610. I've discussed / joked in the past that a double eagle could be my wife's 10th anniversary present to me. Maybe if I buy the coin, she could do that herself in 10 years.  I guess we'll see how it all works out.  
  4. Revenant
    About 4 years ago my Mother-in-Law went to New York and, while she was there, she stopped by the Mint in Philadelphia and bought me a proof SAE and a 2019 Birth Year set for our then new baby, Sam.

    I hadn't really been aware that these were a thing, so I hadn't gotten one when Ben was born, and, of course, in 2019, they were sold out of 2016.
    I've kept an eye out on eBay for the last few years but 2016 seems to be a harder-than-most year for these sets and if one ever comes up the seller is usually asking something silly for it like $125-150.
    About a week ago one came up for bid with a starting bid of about $41.25. I was hoping this would be a good chance to go for one at a more reasonable price, but there were several other people watching it and it ended up going for $96.00.
    I'm just not willing to spend that much on it, in part because, while I think Ben MIGHT like having one and might be jealous of Sam having one, I don't expect him to be THAT into it and for $100 I think there are other things I'd rather get him and other things he'd rather have. So, for now, I passed and I'll continue to watch and wait.
    I have an MS70 1/4th oz gold eagle for both boy's birthyears. I've also considered going back and trying to get each of them a 1/10th oz. While more expensive than $100, that's still on the list of things I'd rather get him / them if I'm going to be dropping $100+ on something.
  5. Revenant

    Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

    By Revenant,


    Family
    I hope everyone on here had a Good Christmas a few days ago and is looking forward to a good New Year's Eve and New Years Day.
    We'll be hosting a New Year's Eve party this year because Ben really liked it that one year and he wants one.
    From a coin collecting standpoint this year was a little more muted than last year - Shandy got me a 2023 MS70 Panda, surprising me after head-faking with the Koalas.

    I also got Choya a 1982-D Half dollar to fill in a hole in one of the year-sets we started years ago. That was a surprise for him because he claims that he'd been looking recently and hadn't seen anything on offer. I looked and had seen several things, but it's entirely possible that what I was willing to spend isn't the same thing as what he was willing to spend.  

    Shandy also did me a HUGE favor on a non-coin collecting front and bought me a padded foam case for storing some of the minis I've been collecting and trying to slowly paint this year.
    It amuses me to think that my old High School Art Teachers, if they're still around and kicking somewhere, would probably be happy to see me still painting and doing things with art supplies into my mid- and soon to be late-30s.
    Lately I've continued working on a project of pink and purple mechs that I'm painting for Shandy:


    My mother-in-law gave me a beefier version of my magnifying lamp that I can clamp onto my table and, when I get to do this stuff in my office, this will be doing like it's smaller brother and doing double-duty for coins and mini-painting... But I need to put it together... Shouldn't be too hard.


    Shandy meanwhile is taking up crochete, and so there are times now when I'll be sitting and painting and she'll be working with yarn.
    I'm quietly (for now) seeing if I can pull something off for Ben. If I pull it off, I'll probably be posting about it soon. We'll see on that front, but I never talk about it until it's done on these things.
  6. Revenant

    Happy Belated Thanksgiving

    By Revenant,


    Family
    Posting this a little late, but I thought I'd say "Happy Thanksgiving" to everyone.
    I found myself remembering a recent conversation with Ben, where he was wondering when he'd get his own cell phone (recall: he is 7), and we thought he'd probably get one in a few years, maybe as he's getting into middle school and starting to do things for school and such without us around or with him more, but we also pointed out that this would be subject to us having the money / funds available at the time for him to have a cell phone and pay the plan on it. We pointed out that it's always possible to have lean times and he just kind of shrugged that off and was like, "but that's not going to happen."
    Oh, how I wish I could share his confidence!
    He's too young to remember the year I didn't have a job. He's still really too young I think to remember much of the time before 2021, before his mother went back to work, and that was the point when we finally really got comfortable again - when we had 2 incomes again. Before that, we were making it, but we had to be more careful with the budget than we have been the last couple of years.
    But that was something I just had to think about and laugh about on Thanksgiving. "Yes, lean times do come. But they're not here right now, and that's something to be grateful for. And we have savings and a buffer to help us when lean times do come. And that's something else to be grateful for."
     
    On another note, I did manage to image the new 3P and 6P coins, and image the recent additions to my modern Italian projects.
    I thought I'd call out the results with the 3P coins. They're copper-nickel coins, so, perhaps unsurprisingly, they tone in a manner similar to what you see with some old US Nickels.
    There's a pretty major difference between the level of detail in the hair on the 1955 vs the 1957. I don't know if this is a die state issue or a strike quality issue. Were the details missing from the die at that point or did the coin just not get hit hard enough to transfer them? Overall, looking at the rest of the coin, I think the strike was solid but the die just didn't have the details to transfer.


    Here's a 6P reverse, just to share how the Leopard looks:

     
  7. Revenant

    Moldovan (Transnistrian?) Turtles

    By Revenant,


    Turtle Coins
    One of the predictable outcomes of me starting to work more seriously on a collection / set of coins with a turtle theme is that its going to have me branching out into some more things and giving me extra opportunities to digress into, "Hey! Look at this thing I just found!"
    I recently found a seller offering 4 of these coins from that feature a sea turtle. I ordered all 4 of the ones they had listed. When those came in and looked great, and I saw the seller had listed 3 more, I ordered those too, just to have several to look at and for some extras.


    I have to say, it was a little jarring to see the old hammer and sickle on a coin dated 2018 - 27 years after the fall of the USSR. And that whole design looks very very anachronistically soviet. 
    Moldova is a very small country stuck between Ukraine and Romania and it's right next to the port of Odesa. It has about 2.5 Million people.

    But as I read more, I've found that this coin doesn't actually come from Moldova.
    There's an even smaller, unrecognized, breakaway state called Transnistria that tried to break away during the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990.
    The Moldovan government has not had control or influence over the area since a ceasefire agreement was made to effectively end the Transnistria War in July 1992, and Transnistria (the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic) has its own president.

    The currency of Moldova is the "Leu" and this coin is denominated in Roubles.
    Transnistria dropped "Soviet" from their name in 1991 and nominally abandoned the socialist ideology... but apparently not the symbolism and iconography, if this coin is any indication.
    Based on Numista, Transnistria puts out tons and tons of different 1 Rouble designs. It looks like in 2016 they did a whole "signs of the zodiac series" / set and in 2017 they had a "Coats of Arms of Transnistrian Cities series," several other commemorative issues, Chinese Zodiac issues... 2018 had their "Red Book of Transnistria" series, which included this coin, as well as a bunch of others.
    They put out a lot of these things.... a lot a lot. If you look at the coins of the "third rouble" (which has only existed since 2000) on Numista, they have 11 pages of coins / coin designs - 530 results. Venezuela has 136 results for the period from 1843-date. SO.... yeah. This little republic apparently likes to pump out limited-run, non-circulating coins with the best of them. A lot like Niue, but with nickel-plated steel instead of 1 oz silver coins.
    They are all non-circulating issues with limited mintages - this coin apparently has a mintage of only 50,000 - and they're all nickel-plated steel.
    So, an interesting little find to be sure.
     
  8. Revenant

    Some additional random bits of Nonsense

    By Revenant,


    Random Nonsense
    Thought I’d throw some notes out about some other nonsense that probably doesn’t rate having a stand-alone post:
    I recently found myself wanting/ needing to get more boxes again for the first time since 2020, and I decided to do something a little different. I remembered that NGC had sold red boxes with gold lettering instead of the standard grey / silver ones with blue lettering. NGC is sold out of those but there are sellers on Amazon that have them for re-sale at reasonable-ish prices. Just for fun I picked up some of them and I’m going to be using those to store the Italian coins I’ve bought to build sets for Shandy. I took the two silver boxes these coins had been in back for myself.

    Because, yes, what started out a couple of random modern Italian purchases to win a few BiC certificates and ribbons and make a quirky romantic gesture to my wife has slowly grown over 2-3 years into something a little bigger and (maybe?) more impressive.
     
    After adding the 20 Kroner coin from Denmark and the 20 Bolivar coin to my collection of world gold coins, I'd been at a bit of a loss on where to go next the last year or two. But it recently occurred to me that I work for a Scottish company that is majority owned by a Swedish company. I have a British Sovereign, but I don't have any Swedish coins in this set, and there are Swedish 20 Kroner coins that clock in at about 0.25 ozt and 23 mm in diameter that, while on the larger side (with the British Sovereign), do match the theme for the set. So I may be looking into one of those soon / next. Another option I've consider is getting one or more of the 10 Gulden coins for the Netherlands that have the different Wilhelmia portraits - currently I only have the Wilhelm III coins. I've also considered trying to pick up one of the older 20 Franc designs from Switzerland from the late 1800s.



    Regarding getting back into the Koalas, having remembered that my MIL got me that Koala at my wife’s suggestion, remembering that this was one of my wife’s ideas for buying me presents, and remembering that Christmas, our Anniversary, and Valentine’s day are all coming up, I’ve decided NOT to touch the rest of the Koala’s that I “need” for now. I don’t know if my wife will buy more coins for me for this set for any or all of these occasions, but I’m going to leave it alone to leave the option open for her, just in case it ends up making her life easier.
  9. Revenant

    A Bouquet of Flame Lilies

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwean Coins and Currency
    I had mentioned recently that I’d ordered a Rhodesian 3 Pence (1 1957 in MS66) to go with the Rhodesian Federation 6 pence my wife gave me for my Birthday.
    Shortly thereafter I saw that I seller I’ve used for a lot of my Rhodesian Federation coinage had a 1955 and a 1964 in MS66, so I put in some offers, which they accepted.
    After the coins spent a week in the Post Office, after the substitute carrier once again just put a slip of paper in the mailbox and didn’t come to the door, ring the doorbell, or see if I was actually home or not (or claimed to, since this time they didn’t even put the slip in our box and I had to print the tracking information of the website to take with me, but I’m digressing..) I was able to finally get out and get them picked up.
    I still need to image the coins, but, as promised in another recent entry, here we get “A Bouquet of Flame Lilies.”
    As my prior posts and my naming conventions for these tend to indicate, I tend to view all of these Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland sets as 1 project in multiple parts and I’ve taken advantage of the different short-run denominational sets to break it into smaller, easier to tackle chunks that I’ve mostly taken on one at a time.

    At least for now, unlike the penny and half penny sets, this one is not a #1 ranked set. There’s a 100% complete set in the category, and that’s hard to overcome with a 50% complete set. The other problem I’m going to face here is that the 1956 is a key-date from a points perspective. That coin is worth considerably more than most of the other dates in the set in similar grades so it’s going to be hard to take the top spot in the category without getting one of those.
    There currently are no pictures that are up to my normal standards for these coins and sets, but one thing that you might be able to notice from looking at NGC’s pictures of the coins in the slabs is that these 3 pence coins in particular are quite small. At 16.3 mm in diameter, they are a fair bit smaller than even a Roosevelt dime, which clocks in at 17.9 mm. The 6 pence coins come in a little larger than a US penny, with a diameter of 19.4 mm. I have to wonder a little WHY did they make these so small given that they’re not silver – they’re copper-nickel – so it wouldn’t have been an issue of keeping the silver value / melt value down.

  10. Revenant
    I got some belated birthday presents from my wife’s family this weekend and I finally got to find out what my wife said when she said she’d given her mother her “other idea.” My MIL gave me an NGC MS70 2013 Koala.
    I had not been looking at these in a while and they weren’t on my wish list on eBay. She went into my registry sets and found a coin I didn’t have for a set and went on eBay and found it, in the right grade. The rest of the set up to this point has been all MS70s and they got an MS70.
    I’m quite surprised – she’s getting better at figuring this stuff out and finding stuff on her own.
    This does however make it more important to register things and have them in sets after I get them though. It would be sad to see her efforts wasted and fouled by an out-dated registry set.
    I’m not sure if it’s the byproduct of getting back into things here to finish the Austral set up and running after my submission came back but before the deadline or of getting a coin from my wife a few weeks ago, but I seem to have the bug back.
    I’d been building up quite a bit of money in my coin budget because I hadn’t been buying anything. I’d bought the raw Argentinian coins a while back and then nothing, and the raw coins were cheap. Now I’ve been buying a few things again – a few things for the 5 and 10 L sets, a couple of new Rhodesian coins…
    And it has me pumped to start making a few more posts here to talk about some of this.
    Also – miracle of miracles – I’ve updated that World Gold Coin custom set to include more coins and include some of the pertinent facts and design details. I know... It’s shocking.
    I think when I first got back into the registry a few years ago I bought a few more coins for the Koala set myself, but I dropped it because it was going to take too much of my budget at the time and I couldn’t do that and other things. Having gotten this 2013 Koala, I am seeing that several more of the 9 coins I’d need are on eBay in MS70 for only about $60-75. It wouldn’t be hard for me to get that set back to being much closer to being complete and up to date again for the first time in a very long time.
    We’ll see. I’ll be giving it some thought, and I may get a couple now / soon and a few more later. They are a nice  group of coins and they’ve never been as impacted by the spotting issues. That’s why I played with them again a few years ago.
  11. Revenant
    So, I've always thought the expression "It's all over but the crying" was a funny one, in part because when something is over people can be crying because they're happy or because they're sad. You see it on awards shows all the time with the happy cry, but, given that televised award shows are often for TV and movie stars who are, after all, professional pretenders, it does make you wonder sometimes how much of the happy crying is genuine.  
    What I never knew, however, but what a little bit of quick googling has now taught me, is that this is apparently the name of and a line from a Hank Williams Jr break-up song from 1947. Which was... a bit before my time, if I'm being honest. I am now wondering what the broader cultural awareness of this song and the cultural origins of the phrase seem to be. Am I not aware of this song simply because I'm not 60-80 year old or is this something that most other people in their mid-30s currently are aware of and I'm just out of the loop?  
    But, anyway... 
    The registry awards are now closed. I wish everyone luck. I'll resist the temptation to make the obvious Hunger Games reference.
    I thought I'd take the occasion to follow-up on a post from last year.
    After I won in 4 Modern Italian categories last year my wife had jokingly asked, "So, 6 next year?" My response at the time was that I'd be happy to hold 2-3. It looks like the end result is going to be 5 for this year - Very solidly not bad.  

    I guess we'll see how long people let me continue to get away with this.  I think the only set in that group that it would REALLY annoy me to see get knocked down from #1 would be the now-100% complete 500 Lire set that includes two coins her family brought back from Italy. That one I really would want to defend.
    Somewhat to my surprise, the 1932 set was not challenged or bumped after the CAC points were removed, and, for the first time in 3 years, it'll take the top spot, and take both the overall and the NGC award, bringing that one up to 25 Best in Category awards earned over 16 years, which goes far beyond what I ever expected for that set.

    For a little context - I've been in the Registry for 15 years from 2007-2022 and earned 48 Best in Category awards, and literally almost half of those are on that 1 set.
    Some of my recent efforts are starting to change that. I think this is going to be my best year ever in terms of BiC awards and a few more years of this might help make that set less of an out-sized contributor, but I do still find it kind of amazing. But I think it continues to be a source of pride for my Father-in-Law.
    I can't remember if I ever talked about this at the time (looking back, it would appear that I did not), but a year ago I gave my stepfather a 6-coin glass-lid Volterra display case as a Christmas present - very similar to the 5 coin case my wife gave me a year prior. When he saw it and saw that it held 6 coins he understood immediately and there was zero need to explain exactly what the idea for it was. And yes, 6 slots would do - because short of winning the lottery we are never getting that $20 Double Eagle.  But! If we ever do win a couple of hundred million dollars, I will gladly buy a new custom 7-coin case.  And at that point I doubt I'll ever have to worry about that set losing the top spot in the category ever again, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the old coins in the set - like the MS63 $10 Eagle - got some upgrades.  I tried to talk my Stepfather into some MS67RD pennies over the years I think but he hasn't bitten so far.  
    For my part of the crying, I think the main thing I wanted to get done that I failed to do was that I failed to get pictures done and update the presentation fully on the 5L and 10L sets. Like I said before though, I was pretty sure that was dead as soon as Sam went into the hospital earlier than expected.  I also did not get the turtle coins fully imaged, and I have not set up anything for showing off that effort as it moves forward, but I've known for a while that that was going to be more a "next year" thing that I was just starting to work on this year, so I don't mark that as much of a failure.
    I think the major focuses for next year will be to:
    1) bring the Austral set closer to 100% if I can - it closed this year at 61%, there are 5 coins that I'll need to find and grade, and I've managed to pick up a raw example of 1 of those 5 so far.
    2) do more with coins from the short-lived Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and maybe spread into the Republic Era that lasted from about 1965-1980 - an interesting period given that the country was in a Civil War for pretty much the entire time. But I do want to try to fill in this gap between my Federation-era sets and my Zimbabwe set. This year though, given that I have "A Tower of Towering Giraffes" and "A Parade of Dancing Elephants," I think you're going to see "A Bouquet of Flame Lillies" and maybe "A Leap of Vigilant Leopards."
    3) do more with Turtle coins. I really am working on a few things with this, picking up some various raw coins where I find promising examples. Much like with Sam, I'm going to build this I think, even if all Ben ever does is roll his eyes at me for it later.  
    4) work on my "Golden Nickels" set. I realized recently that I only have 5 coins listed in that little custom set I have, even though I've added several coins to the collection in the last couple of years and I think I could actually have 10 coins in that set right now. But I think the extent to which I've ignored and neglected this set is a testament to how much I don't like the old Custom set system at this point, which probably bodes poorly for the turtle set, if I'm being honest.  
    Because, yes, it is sometimes fun to make these statements, call the shots, and see a year down the road if I actually kept to plan and did what I said I was going to do.
    But that's my ramble for the day. Lots of laugh emojis just because I'm feeling silly and trying to relax after last week.
  12. Revenant

    A bit of family history emerges.

    By Revenant,


    Argentinian Coin Sets
    A couple of weeks ago I reached out to my Mom to ask her about the date ranges for the time when they were in Argentina, where they were, etc.
    I wanted to have a little more information so I could incorporate this into the set description for my Austral set:

    The coins I had gotten came mostly from my grandmother, giving me coins my grandfather had kept.
    However, apparently, not long after I reached out to my mother, my sister found this in a bunch of papers and other things my mother had given her:

    Inside she found these:

    My mother had her 14th birthday about a month after they got into Argentina, and her classmates had given her 1 Peso coins, which she put in this tin, and those coins have been in this tin for 50 years I guess. You can see "Birthday $" written on it.
    My sister returned the tin to my mother.
    Last night we were getting together to celebrate some birthdays - mine and my nephews. My mother had the tin. She gave each of her 4 grandchildren one of the pesos and then gave the tin and the rest of them to me.
    The coins are obviously circulated, but, more interestingly, they're about a 50/50 mix between the 1810-1960 1-year issue 150-years after the May Revolution coin (KM58) and the KM57 1 peso coin. But the coins are all from 1957, 1958, and 1960... Nothing from the later 1960s... and my mother got these in the 2nd half of 1970. And it didn't make sense for that to be a coincidence.


    It turns out, after a bit of looking, that Argentina last produced KM57 in 1962 and didn't produce 1 peso coins again until 1974 - years after they'd left the country. So, at the time my mother was in the country, the newest 1 peso coins that had been made were 8 years old.
    Odd to think about.
    I think I'll probably keep these in the tin for now. I could take them out and put them in flips but... The tin feels like part of the story for these.
     
  13. Revenant

    So... There's a 2 Lire coin, you say?

    By Revenant,


    Italian Coins
    Some of you may recall that, when I started buying graded Modern Italian coins in late-2021 to build sets for / to celebrate / in honor of my wife, one of my initial wants / goals was as 1986 Mint set for Italian coins. 
    I haven't talked about it much recently because... it just came together quickly and I completed it easily and... it was built but doomed to rot in the purgatory that is the custom set feature in the old registry.  

    Seriously though, how do you even brag up a custom set these days? Is there even an easy or clear way to access them from the New Registry site or am I right in thinking you have to go through the old Collector's Society site? This is the single biggest thing that keeps me from getting excited about building a turtle themed set. I'm just worried it will get no visibility or attention.
    Anyway...
    That set included 7 coins.
    - 5 Lire
    - 10 Lire
    - 20 Lire
    - 50 Lire
    - 100 Lire
    - 200 Lire
    - 500 Lire
    What you do NOT see there is a 2 Lire...
    Done, right? RighT?!?
    That's every coin that is in the Franklin mint sets from the period... So that's a full set, RiGhT?!?  They wouldn't lead me wrong, Right?

    So, then what is THIS!?!?!

    Well... it would appear that Italy DID make 2 Lire coins in 1986, but they did not make them for circulation. They only about 73,200 of these to go in BU sets and made about 17,500 proofs to go in Proof sets.
    It DOES totally make sense to me that they would not be striking 2 Lire coins for circulation at the point where they're striking 500 Lire coins.
    It does make sense to me that the Franklin Mint would not have included very limited release coins for these little collectable cards - 1) how would they have gotten enough of them, even if they cornered the market on the BU sets? and 2) why would their target audience want sets that included coins that they would not have seen in their travels or used if they went to the country? It kind of goes against the concept of those sets / what it seems like those sets were trying to do.

    Anyway... I found this thing on eBay and the seller was offering it for about $36. It would cost at least $19 (plus shipping) to grade one myself, assuming I could find one worth sending in to try with, And finding and buying that raw coin would cost a few bucks soo... at that price, why not just take a guaranteed MS66? They only made 73,200 of them, 37 years ago, and I imagine that many or most of those are still locked in sets and not available for me to try to pick up as an individual piece. And I've found that trying to buy those old sets can get pricey.
    So, I just bought it, and this will go in with the rest of the set once I get it.
    Coin #8...
    The 2 Lire coins from 1986 did not circulate and they were not strictly speaking struck for circulation, but they're BU / MS coins, and I am going to include this one in that set for my wife.
    I've shown her this denomination / type of coin before and she thought it was interesting and neat. I just hadn't gotten one because I didn't think they had them in 1986 and getting a random 2 Lire didn't fit in with anything else I was working on or trying to accomplish, and I had already started a lot of fires / had a lot of pans in the oven for this.  
     
    I wonder if I should just bite the bullet and ask to see if the Registry gods would make this a competitive category for me... 
    I would just ask for a Republic era type set and use that for a mint set, but every time I try that lately I get a set with bunch of slots for coins (especially circulating commemoratives) that I don't really want to collect, and given what I know about the circulating comems they did with the 200L and 500L that would almost certainly be the case, and I know there'd be a 1000 Lire slot in that set that I do not want in this set.  
     
    Edited to add: There is also a 1 Lire, also only made for BU sets with a mintage of 73K.  I guess there may be some more work to do. 
  14. Revenant

    Because the #1 set should be worth looking at...

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwean Coins and Currency
    So I'm probably going to come off like a bit of a "super judger" (as my wife puts it) while also preaching to the choir a bit, but I wanted to post about the work I've been doing on my Half Cent set recently.
    I said recently that my wife gave me a 1955 Rhodesian Half Cent, following up on the 1957 and 1958 she'd given me at Christmas, buying things I'd put on my watch list. 
    Putting this coin in my set put it in the #1 spot in the category. And so, it was a #1 ranked set for me - with none of my own photos, just NGC photos, no set banner image, no set description and no coin descriptions.
    This happened in large part because I hadn't been focusing on this - I'd been focusing on buying and working on coins for another set that I'm also researching at the moment and I'm going to build it out as a phase 3 to what I've done with Zimbabwe and Venezuela. But then this new set snuck up on me, going from 20% complete and rank 5 to 80% complete and rank 1, driven completely by my wife, who knew I liked them and had heard me talking about them.
    But once it was #1, I really felt a need to table some of the other stuff for a while, get pictures of these, and build out a presentation for the set. Because - I really think, if you made a #1 ranked set, you should make it worth looking at and fun to look at if you're at all able too - no shade intended at those that can't get a good photo of a coin, perhaps just because they don't have the equipment. But it is just so much nicer to click on a #1 ranked, 100% complete set and see gorgeous, lustrous, detailed, close-up photos. And I love that NGC made it easy to pop-in their verification photos... but that's photos are just not as good as what many of us can produce and they often do not do a good job of showing off the coin. Those photos are produced in a quick, generic, assembly line kind of way and you're not going to get the best images of a particular coin unless you're taking your time with each coin - something NGC just can't afford to do unless you're paying them an extra fee for their high-end photos.
    And so, that's what I've done and built and at this point the set presentation is more or less finished and built. I have at least 1 more coin description to get to, as I'm about to get to.
    Getting the 1955 meant I only had one more coin - the 1956 - left to get to complete the set. So getting that coin moved up my priority list in a big way after the 14th of last month.
    As I started looking into building a presentation for the set, one of the things I like to look at and reference is the mintage for each year.
    And that brought something to my attention - the 1956, the only coin I hadn't acquired, the only coin I hadn't even really seen for sale, is also the lowest mintage year with only 480,000 made that year. The next lowest had 720,000 made - 50% more - and all the other years were in the 1-2.5 million range. 
    And, coincidentally, as I was looking at all of this and figuring all this out, a seller I've bought several of these Rhodesian coins from listed a 1956 in MS65RB. For reference, there are no coins at MS66 or above presently, there's a single MS65RD graded by NGC and only about 3 MS65RBs. So, this was one of the better NGC-graded examples.
    So I immediately wanted that coin, and I have some hobby money saved up and I was ready to bid aggressively to get it, since it was an auction. Because, I'm not sure how long I might have to wait to see another one this good - maybe not long, maybe quite a while.
    Turns out I didn't need to worry - no one else bid and no one fought me for it. But the set is now complete. 
    I won the coin last weekend, and it arrived on Wednesday. I took some time last night to get pictures taken and edited to go with the pictures I took of the others last week. And so, here it is. I just need to get that last description finished.

    And so the next post will probably focus on what I've been working on now that this is done.
  15. Revenant
    Well, I wasn't planning to submit this batch of coins until my membership renewed and I got my additional $150 credit on June 12th...
    The problem with this is that not having coins graded that I can pop into a set and not having a public set I can actually build has proven ... demotivating... when it comes to my research and writing efforts.
    It simply isn't as fun or as satisfying to work on a Word file with no pictures.
    So I've found myself pulled in other directions recently. But I'm still confident I can probably get something good together before November. Probably.
    Another problem I've been grappling with however is just getting some of the coins I've ordered.
    I've ordered some coins for the Venezuela set and the Italian 500 Lire set from different dealers in Europe and both sets of coins have not arrived. I've had to put in "Item not received" tickets on these, getting my money back in one instance and not in another. So, this is probably going to force me to just leave a hole in the Venezuela set for now and to just go with what I have on the 500 Lire coins.
    On an unrelated note, I've been experimenting with Miniature painting recently and Ben got into it with me a little. I'll resist the urge to spam pictures on this.
    Much like with the coin collecting, I find that he unsurprisingly lacks my patience. He'll declare himself done with a miniature in 30-45 minutes but I'll work on one thing for more than one session, applying more than one coat of paint, and spend a couple of hours total on each mini.
    But it's fun to work on these and like me he likes using the same magnifying lamp that's been seeing use as we pick coins for grading.




    I still need to find / buy / pick out some additional coins to grade when that submission goes in just to round it out. Given that we're in mid-May I should probably get on that... probably.
    Or I may just end up submitting what I have or just throwing some more random stuff in.
  16. Revenant

    Moving along...

    By Revenant,


    Argentinian Coin Sets
    So, starting with a small update on Sam... Two ER visits, a Neurosurgery follow up and 3 CT scans later... we're waiting and watching see when he has clinical signs of shunt failure before moving forward to surgery - probably an ETV to try to free him from shunt revisions. Two ER visits, a specialist appointment, and 3 scans later... we're right back where we started...  watching and waiting... for an indefinite and unknowable period of time... What the actual hell?!?
    So... I guess we'll see there.
    My submission hit "Grading/Encapsulation/Imaging" on 8/31 - or that's at least when I noticed it was in that phase... but I check it pretty much daily, so... I don't think I'm off by much.
    It's still in that stage but having them hit grading at the tail end of August got me more hopefully and optimistic that they'll be done early enough in October for me to get them and photograph them. So that has gotten me to shake off my apathetic laziness on this front and continue drafting out my set and coin descriptions - for the new, planned Argentinian sets in particular.
    I've drafted up one of my typical "opening essays" for the set description, once again centered around an old quote that I found and enjoy. Each coin is going to have some coin facts for the coin (composition, diameter, thickness, KM#, etc) and some information on the animals and structures featured on the coins. I'm hoping to add for different coins in the Austral set historical information on some of the old debt defaults from 1827 to about 1889, and then have the Peso Convertible set focus on the origins of the Peso Convertible specifically and have an emphasis on the more modern troubles surrounding the 2001 and 2014 debt defaults and the more modern 2019-2023 debt and economic crises. 
    I feel like I can definitely have the coin facts and discussion of the features up well before November. I'm pretty sure the Austral set's discussion of the historical debt defaults are do-able before November... The Peso Convertible set being fully fleshed out may be a bit of stretch goal - we'll see.
    I haven't looked recently but I think I drafted out information for the new Venezuelan set hole-fillers and the 500 Lire set hole fillers months ago. If I'm right I can just pop those up when the coins come back. If not... I think I can bust them out pretty fast.  
    I'm hoping some fun new turtle coins I ordered will be here... soon? ... in the next couple of days maybe? ... I'll see if I can get another post about those out.
     
     
    The set is not public yet because it has no coins registered in it, but below is what I'm working on for the Set Description for the Argentinian sets:
     
     
    “Debts are like children – begot with pleasure but brought forth with pain.” - Moliere
    The name of Argentina comes from argentum, which is the Latin word for silver (and the reason why the atomic symbol for silver is Ag). In the early 20th century, Argentina had one of the largest national economies in the world, thanks to its production of beef, wheat, and other farm goods, combined with an educated workforce made up mostly of European immigrants and their descendants. Argentina emerged from the 2nd World War in the mid-20th century as the 7th Largest Economy in the World. But the constant economic crises, often attributable to government mismanagement, sometimes combined with fluctuating commodities prices, have plunged millions into poverty and put the country off-limits to most foreign investment. Even with everything it has gone through in the last ~70 years since WWII, Argentina has still been hanging out at around 25-27 on the list of the largest economies in the world since 2021, with a GDP of about 520 Billion dollars.
    But, with Argentina, while commodities prices crashing played a role, as it did in Venezuela, the ongoing story of national misery seems to have long centered around the management of national debt.
    The country, by some counts at least, has defaulted on its debts 8 times since declaring independence in 1816. Some sources will say 9 defaults. Some say more. And I think part of the disagreement in count may come from debating the definition of a “default” or a “partial default” / “full default.” Personally, I think most of the counts are unfairly high as, in some cases, you have more than one default listed in a short period of time and a more through look at the facts show that the country never fully emerged from the crisis that led to one default / missed payment, and they were forced to miss another one. This to me, doesn’t constitute two separate events - it’s one long crisis.
    To illustrate this point, you can look at a 2019 Bloomberg article that listed 9 defaults. These 9 defaults were:
    •    1827
    •    1890
    •    1951
    •    1956
    •    1982
    •    1989
    •    2001
    •    2014
    •    2019
    I don’t really see how the 1951 and 1956 events can be treated as separate and distinct events given that they occurred as part of a decade’s long era of pollical and economic instability in the post WWII era. The 1982 event was precipitated a collapse in commodities prices combined with Volcker’s interest rate hikes, which made the country’s debt to US and British Banks unpayable. These same events caused 27 nations – including 16 in Latin America – to restructure their debts. So, Argentina had company in its misery, but this triggered a spike in inflation and efforts to bring that inflation under control, and those failures lead to the 1989 default. So, it’s hard for me to treat those as completely separate events. And the 2014 default was triggered because of legal actions brought by creditors from the 2001 default that the country was never able to come to terms with.
    It’s also worth noting that the Bloomberg references September 2019 as a default, where some articles reference a 2020 default, and everything being discussed by various sources and articles presents what looks more like one continuous period of pain that started up around 2017/2018, continued through the COVID era, and now seems to have entered another phase that could provide as terminal for the Argentina and the Peso Convertible as the Zimbabwean crisis of the early 21st century and the Venezuelan collapse that followed a few years later.
    The thing that adds an extra layer of interest to this, for someone that loves coin and currency collecting anyway, is that these debt defaults often corresponded with spikes in inflation – sometimes into hyperinflationary territory – and these inflationary spikes often led to the death or abandonment of the national currency and the creation of a new national currency for Argentina. So, from 1813 to the present, there have been 7 national currencies for Argentina.
    •    Real (1813-1815))
    •    Peso Fuerte (1826-1881)
    •    Peso Moneda Nacional (1881-1969)
    •    Peso Ley (1970-1983)
    •    Peso Argentino (1983-1985)
    •    Austral (1985-1991)
    •    Peso Convertible (1992-Date)
    If you look at the date ranges for the currencies vs the debt defaults, it’s clearly not a perfect 1-to-1, but you can see a lot of places where the national currency changes with a couple of years before or after a debt default – usually a year or so after, consistent with the idea of the default leading to an inflation and currency crisis, leading to the “death” of the currency.
    This Registry Set includes the coins from the brief reign of the Austral as the national currency, from 1985 to 1992.
  17. Revenant

    The plot thickens...

    By Revenant,


    Venezuelan Coins and Currency
    I did manage this last week to print the label and mail off that large, mixed submission to NGC for grading. I decided just to use Priority Mail and let the carrier pick it up from my front door - hopefully they don't give me cause to regret that, but it seems unlikely.
    In the interim things have gotten a little more interesting and there's slightly more riding on that submission now.
    I noticed a week or so ago that a new set had knocked my Venezuelan type set down to #2 in the category. That person didn't have a complete set at the time and they were barely ahead of me but now they've brought their set up to 100% complete. 
    There are 6 holes that I need to fill in that set. All 6 will be filled by this submission I've just sent in. But, looking at the point spread, I need to pull mostly MS66s and MS67s on the new coins to pass the new guy up again - some MS68s or another MS69 would be welcome.
    If they're out there I might also consider buying a couple pre-graded coins if they'd help bump me up just a little - I have some spending money set aside and I am willing to maybe deploy a little of that to retain the top spot for that set this year. Unless all the grades on those coins come back horrible and low it's going to be a tight race with a narrow gap between us once I add those new coins in.
    Though there will definitely be a limit on how far I'm going to be willing to go on it. I'm not going to continue buying up more of these same coins and submitting them in hopes of high grades when I find a really good one, for example. Part of the problem there is, I've built this set, I've had my fun building it, and I know I'll have more fun in the long-term building and researching something new than fighting over this category. But I will try to defend the title on a category - especially for a set I put so much time into and which won a major award. And on that note, no matter who takes #1 this year, I'm pretty sure my set still wins on presentation.  This reminds me of something Mike said a few years ago now about the Zimbabwe set and my thoughts at the time about it possibly being unseated.
    The Zimbabwe set and it the 500 Lire set I'm building for my wife (and about to bring to 100%, I think, with this submission), remain effectively unchallenged. I guess we'll see if that changes. I DID go ahead and include a new $10 coin for the Zimbabwe set in this new submission. I don't think the new coin is going to get a great grade, but I do think it would be very nice if it could take some low MS grade (even an MS61) and bump out the current AU58 in the set. That and that $25 coin remain some of the few really weak points in that set. But finding nice examples of those coins has proven oddly difficult - and I've tried. I'm also not thinking the grades on the 1995, 2000, 2001 500 Lire coins will be great either, but there weren't many of those made in the first place, and they're a pain in the butt to get, so I'll consider it a win just to fill in those gaps for now.
    We'll see how it all comes out. World Modern turnaround times are still sitting at about 9 weeks so I may not know grades on those coins until Mid-September.
    I've been busy at work lately, which is good in some ways - paid work is job security. But I'm going to have to try to start shifting some focus and time soon into building out the structure of the Argentinian Sets I want to build. I'm not terribly concerned about the 500L coins or the Venezuelan coins in the submission. Those will be easy for me to build out and incorporate into the structure I've already built for those sets.
    The turtle coins are probably just going to sit for now. I think that thematic set is going to have to reach a certain critical mass in terms of coin count before it makes sets to build something out in the registry for it.
  18. Revenant

    Birthdays and Battles in the Registry Backwater

    By Revenant,


    Random Nonsense
    The family and I celebrate my birthday this week / this weekend, and, this year, unlike last year, neither kid is in the hospital, currently - and I'll take the win. However, we do now know that Sam's in-patient time is going to start on November the 13th. So there's that to "look forward" to.
    I now have my historical blurb sections on 4 of my 8 Austral coins written or at least mostly written - these things tend to go through revisions over time and I'm still very much working on them.
    For my birthday, Shandy got me an MS66 Rhodesian 6 Pence coin from 1955 (you may note that this is also one of my birthyear set years that I worked on with my step-father).
    Now, if you want the funny on this, I'd thought this coin had a turtle on the back of it and that's one of the reasons I put Shandy onto it. I thought it would be a fun addition to the set of turtle coins I'm now unofficially, officially, building. 
    It turns out I was wrong. It has a cougar / mountain lion on the back of it. 

    The FIJI 6 pence from this period has a turtle on it.

    So... That's a little funny... they're both 6 pence coins, from the 1950s and have Elizabeth II on the front. I buy Rhodesian coins a lot and I got myself confused.  Often wrong. Rarely in doubt. 
    But I'm still happy to have the coin. This may end up being the start of an Elizabeth II, Federation of Rhodesia an Nyasaland type set, which, let's be honest, we all know was probably coming at some point.  
    But this has Shandy encouraging me to get the Fiji 6 pence and a Rhodesian 3 pence to pair with the 6 pence.  So maybe I fail upward? 
    I could definitely see the turtle set(s) / turtle coins and a Rhodesian type set being the focus of my coin collecting efforts next year now that the Rhodesian pennies, Rhodesian half pennies, and the 500 Lire set are all basically done.
    On that note, Shandy said jokingly that "all of your sets (or at least the ones I am really into and talk about) are either very full and complete or very hard to find coins for." Hmmm....  How about that, folks?  
    In the course of our conversation, it came up that the same seller that we've bought a lot of these Rhodesian coins from has just a lot of coins from different places and years and just a lot of cool, random old stuff. I made the comment to her, "Ya know, if you ever see something of his that looks interesting, even if it isn't something I'm collecting but you think it's cool and I'll enjoy it, you can go for it and surprise me." I'm not saying I'd want her to buy just anything or from anyone, but when it's a seller we've bought from a lot that offers generally reasonable prices, I'm down to let her take some risks on her own.
    Speaking of coins that are hard to find, I did manage to find a 1990, 1000 Austral coin that looks pretty good (advertised as uncirc, but I have a hard time telling sometimes with the old steel / aluminum coins) and that may end up getting sent in for grading next year to add to the Austral set. I need to find the 100 Austral and the 500 Austral to try to complete that set.
    Doing all of this work and making a banner image for the 10L set recently also got me looking at some modern Italian coins and I ended up picking up a 1953 and 1954 10 Lire coin for that set. They're both pretty big wins and additions to the set and they put me ahead of the guy that beat me in the 10 Lire category last year. Those two coins are enough to over-come the 1951 he has in that set. He had another coin in his set that had his point total up to 106 but 24 hours after I added my new coins, he removed the other coin he'd had in his set. I'm not sure if the two events are related but the timing was interesting. It'll be interesting to see if he comes back later this month or next year and we slap it out over the category a little. 
    It's very funny in the registry to have sets like the Morgan dollars where there are literally thousands of sets and building a set that gets anywhere near the top can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and then simultaneously to have quiet little, "backwater," modern categories where a couple of guys can "slap it out" a little with 10% complete sets for a couple of hundred bucks.  
    That's all from me for now. There will be more forthcoming...  
  19. Revenant

    I like learning... not homework...

    By Revenant,


    Random Nonsense
    When I was growing up my mother started (but failed to finish) a 2nd Master's degree. She would often make the joke that she "could have been a professional student" - meaning she loved being in classes and learning things like that - mostly about history.
    Having reached my mid-30s, having earned my PhD, my 3rd and terminal degree, and gone on to hobbies that involve a lot of reading and writing, I can honestly say that I like learning - but I do not like homework, and so I don't like being a student. I'll be just fine if I never have to take another written test in my life. I'm just fine googling things and learning for free and not paying tuition. 
    The older I get, the stranger I find my mother's statement.
    Anyway... My membership renewed about 2 weeks ago and I have my ~35 coin submission ready to go. I just need to seal it up and put it in the mail.
    I'm debating on if I really want to go through the effort to take it to the PO and send it registered or if I want to just take the risk and mail it Priority Express.
    This submission is going to be quite a mix as it tries to 1) Finish the 500L set, 2) Finish the Venezuela set, 3) Build / start 2 Argentine sets, and 4) submit a bunch of turtle coins I found that are going to start what may or may not be formalized as a turtle themed custom set for Ben.
    I may have some pictures to post of the turtle coins I've been picking up down the line. I just haven't found a convenient time to try to snap shots of them and what time I have had as been acquiring and selecting the last few coins and getting the submission ready to go.
     
  20. Revenant
    This week has had emails from annoying clients every day right at the start of the day. Emails from clients that don't communicate internally so that your Point of Contact agrees to something but then never communicates that to the rest of their team, so you get questions about it for months. Clients that expect you to be at their beck and call and let them have meetings with you on 15 minutes notice. Clients that want meetings to discuss or clarify things that are clearly written in the report... not that they would know that because they never read the report, even when you told them in an email what section or what page to look at... That kind of thing.
    However, I did get one bit of good news in the midst of this!

    Huzzah!
    We have made it to quality control! Grades soon! Maybe! - Probably!
    I saw that it went to quality control on Tuesday, early in the morning, so I'm hoping that maybe tomorrow if I'm very lucky or maybe next week I'll see grades. I'm thinking next week is more likely. Week after next is possible. But I'm definitely feeling confident I'll have grades and maybe coins to take pictures of by early October!
    Last week on Thursday I got a pink notice that USPS tried to deliver a package / envelope (LIES!!!) and so I was able to get out and collect it yesterday. As suspected it was my shipment of coins from a dealer in Hungary.
    The coins are 2014 issues from New Caledonia. I'm going to make this easy on me (be lazy) and use the seller's images to show the coins for the most part.






    I saw these online and thought they were very cool with the stylized, abstract turtle designs.
    What the above images don't do a great job of showing is that the 2F and 5F coins are a golden-colored brass material that I've seen a fair bit of lately where the 10f, 20f, and 50f are silver-colored and probably made of zinc or nickel or plated steel. I'm not sure which yet.
    The other thing I wasn't prepared for was the range in sizes involved - the 100f is actually quite massive, as is the 50f.
    I'm not sure my picture below is doing a much better job of expressing the color difference (the 100f is an orange brass colored ring around a "silver" core, btw), but it should give you a feel for the range in the sizes.
    I put the 2f coin at about 18 mm - same size range as a US dime - and the 100f coin around 38 mm - putting it in the same size bracket as a Morgan dollar, somewhat smaller than a lot of modern 1 oz silver bullion coins (~40-41 mm).

     
     
  21. Revenant

    The heat is on...

    By Revenant,


    Random Nonsense
    I managed to make a little progress on my goals this weekend, which is pretty solid in light of the fact that the coins hadn’t been physically delivered yet and 3 of my remaining 4 points relate to imaging and editing shots of the new coins…
    1) Getting the coins programmed in and in the slots, (Except for the Austral coins)
    2) Getting my pre-written descriptions posted on the coins (for the new $10 Zimbabwe coin, 500L set, Argentinian Set, and Venezuelan coins)
    3) Getting pictures taken of the 500 Lire coins to polish the presentation on that set,
    4) Getting pictures on the new Venezuelan coins to maintain the quality of the presentation on that set,
    5) Getting the Austral coins imaged and
    6) Getting my historical write-ups for the Austral Set ready.
    But to this I have to add…
    7) Making a banner / set image for the Austral set – which I haven’t made a banner image for this one yet as I usually use images of the graded coins, which
    Guess what Fed-Ex dropped at my door today:

    I’ll have to have an unboxing with the wife soon – probably tonight, possibly not. We also have TV to watch.
    I have the day off on Friday and I might try to use some of that time to get some pictures taken – assuming I don’t get a chance before that.
    The crush of things at work seems to finally be slacking off after some very hectic months this summer.
    Overall, I’d say it’s coming together, which is probably good considering I logged in today to post this and I noticed… Dun dun dun! ... The countdown has begun!

    We are officially in October, and this looks like it was (logically) set to start displaying when we were 30 days from the deadline.
    I think I at least have a framework for how I want to do the historical write-ups for the Austral set.
    The Peso Convertible set is officially becoming a “next year”-thing, I think. 
    In the midst of this... we're also getting ready for another hospital stay with Samuel, albeit a planned one this time. To get to the bottom of his headaches and determine if it really is low ICP (intracranial pressure) we're going to pick a Monday when some of the best neurosurgeons in the country are... not on vacation or at a conference... and we're going to go in for them to put in an ICP gauge and spend about three days measuring the pressure in his head. At the end of that, we may go home without answers, we may have a shunt revision and replace his shunt with a programmable shunt, or we could be strapping in for a procedure called and ETV... which could have him in the hospital for 6 weeks... I'm mostly hoping for not that last one.
    I am very much hoping that this happens soon, so his headaches can stop. So that does have the potential to impact my ability to pull off some of this... but, hey, we all know I can take pictures and write some stuff in a fairly short period of time if I feel the need, and this has been a source of stress relief for me since before 2019,  so don't count me out there. 
     
    On a closing note... That $25 coin is clearly mocking me...  I may have to do something about this... 


  22. Revenant
    So, I recently have been seeing some chatter on Facebook and elsewhere that CAC, no longer content to just deface PCGS and NGC slabs with oval stickers, is now going to be grading coins completely on their own, and putting them in slabs that look shockingly similar to PCGS slabs... I wonder how PCGS feels about that. 
    Then I come on here the other day and see the 7/24 announcement that NGC is taking away the points bonus for CAC stickered coins effective the next day. As I look on the boards, there's some chatter about NGC not being able to use the verification service anymore and its starting to look like someone - possibly someone in CAC - decided that the friendly relationship that has existed that allowed for PCGS and NGC to check the CAC stickers and award these points in a highly efficient and automated way may be over because it may not serve someone's perceived interests anymore.  Yeah.... it's conspiratorial of me, and supposedly the functionality is coming back... but it has been down for about 1.5-2.0 months apparently, which seems interesting and suspicious, including with the timing. 
    But, for me, this change to point values has some interesting personal side effects.
    Some of you may remember that about 3 years ago the 1932 set I built with my stepfather lost the top spot in the category after being on top for more than a decade:

    I made a post about it at the time and otherwise mostly shrugged it off - we weren't going to spend $$$$ to defend the title on such short notice.
    My stepfather, at the time, was not thrilled as you might imagine, and I got a call not long after asking - somewhat bitterly - why PCGS coins were getting more points than NGC coins in the NGC registry. It didn't make sense to him. I had to explain that it wasn't the fact that they were PCGS coins - it was the fact that they were CAC coins. I could understand his confusion though - in addition to being almost fully CAC stickered, the other set was almost completely PCGS coins where ours was almost fully NGC graded. But it was the bonus for the CAC stickers that was putting him over the top of us.
    Note - they have 5 PCGS and 1 NGC to our 1 PCGS and 5 NGC coins. But they have 5 CAC stickers to our 0 and the stickers are all on the PCGS coins.


    I had actually looked into the pricing for submitting coins to CAC in the past couple of years and tried talking to my step-father because I knew getting some of our coins stickered and getting the points boost could have put us back on top, probably for just a couple hundred dollars - a lot less than trying to upgrade one of the $1,000-$4,000 coins in that set to something even more expensive. I'd been thinking if we went the upgrade route the best option was probably going to be the $10 Eagle just because bumping that from a 63 to a 64 or 65 would be easier and probably cheaper than trying to track down MS64 or MS65 D and S quarters. But, based on current pricing, upgrading the S quarter to a 64 might have been an attractive and reasonable option.
    But... as of yesterday... all of those bonus points are now gone! (For now?) So, Liberty just took about a 700-point hit, and that has flipped the balance of the points back in our favor.

    So, if you want a funny... We made our set back around 2008, and we have not upgraded anything in close to 15 years now, I think, and we won for about 12 years (2008-2019).
    Liberty then made their set in October 2020 - a month before the cut-off - and has not changed any of their coins out in the last 3 years, and they've won for the last 3 years. For the last 3 years we've still gotten the "best set" award based on only NGC coins because... their set barely has any NGC coins.
    And now we're back on top in #1 and we may take the awards again in about 3 months - both awards possibly, NGC and overall.
    In that time - we'll say 3 years, since October 2020 - nothing has changed. I guess technically my last re-imaging and presentation update might have happened in that period - I can't remember the timing on that - but neither set has been upgraded. The only thing that has changed is how points are assigned.
    I'll be interested to see if this prompts some kind of response or some upgrades from Liberty to try to take the top spot back.
    I haven't talked to my Stepfather about this, but I guess I'll have to give him a call soon and let him know, just for a laugh.
  23. Revenant
    Okay, so, after several rounds of going back and forth between “Grading/Quality Control,” “Grading/Encapsulation/Imaging,” and “Quality Control/Finalized,” the submission is finally finalized and shipped, and I have grades.
    On a few of them, all I can say is… Woof…
    For Italy…
    While these mostly are not great I can’t call most of these disappointments. Yeah… the 1995 is lower than I’d hoped for, but the 2000 and 2001 are better than I’d worried they might be. At the end of the day those were a play to at least get the set finished. All three coins are having to go through NGCs review process to add to the registry because none of those three have ever been added to the set before. The 5L was a disappointment – I thought that would do better. But I’m happy with the 10L.
    Most importantly - I have made the 500L set I built for my wife 100% complete, including coins her family brought back with them from Italy 30 years ago. I like it.

    The Venezuelan coins are where this hurts – Pretty much all MS66s, and so these fall short of what I needed to take back the #1 set with that Best Presented Set… So… maybe next year we’ll try to reclaim the title:

    The Argentinian Coins… Again… Overall not what I’d hoped for… but… They’re still going to let me fill out a set with a fun narrative. For the Austral Anyway… I’m taking another look at the Peso Convertible and realizing how many slots that set has for circulating commemoratives I have zero interest in hunting down. Lol
    The 63s and the 64s hurt… but the Zimbabwe set also started with some less than stellar and humble grades and such… and I’ve improved from there where I could. 
    Once again... we'll call this a foundation to grow from... maybe... We'll see how much I feel like torturing myself and my wallet.


    Speaking of the Zimbabwe set, the $10 coin scored! Kind of! – It got an MS62. Which beats the AU58 that I had before and it is now the TOP POP, highest graded example graded by NGC. I had been hoping this would grade MS and not AU like the last one, and it did. So, this is kind of a win… but I had hoped it might MS63.  
    Seriously though, finding examples.of these that do not look rough has been hard. I've been trying... for a few years now.

    And finally, we have the turtle coins… Mostly 66s. I can’t really complain too much here. I didn’t really expect too many super high grades here and I mostly just wanted these to maybe form the basis for a future signature set. Yes, high grades are nice, but they’re not essential for a non-competitive set…. that I’m not even officially building yet… and they’re still Gem Uncirc grades.
    But... Hey! That Tokelau Cent! MS67RD!

    Next goals will be..
    1) getting the coins programmed in and in the slots,
    2) getting my pre-written descriptions posted on the coins,
    3) getting pictures taken of the 500 Lire coins to polish the presentation on that set,
    4) pictures on the new Venezuelan coins to maintain the quality of the presentation on that set,
    5) getting the Austral coins (and maybe the Pesos) imaged and
    6) getting my historical write-ups for the Austral Set ready.
    These may not all happen in this order.
  24. Revenant

    The Australs set coming together...

    By Revenant,


    Random Nonsense
    I am now happy to say that pictures are up for both the Austral coins and the Peso Convertible coins. 
    I'm very happy with how these came out...

    But I'm thrilled to say I have a banner image now:
     

    I always try to be mindful of how these look on the PC and my phone...
    One thing that was important to me was having a prominent placement for the obverse of the 10C coin, which features the national Coat of Arms.
    I've even gotten my historical write-ups done for 2 of the 8 coins - which I honestly consider the hardest and most mentally demanding of the tasks I've set for myself this month. The photos and the banner images are mentally much easier. The pictures in particular are mostly just a mechanical process of hammering through the shots and then applying basically the same processing to every shot at this point. Not a very mentally demanding task anymore.
    I've also gotten banners done for two other sets that needed them - the 10 Lire set (Finaly!) and a new competitive set that one of my new turtle coins can go into (more on this one later probably - that Colombian turtle coin is really rather impressive).

    At this point, my list of things I still want to do is shorter than my list of what I've done - always a proud place to be.
    The main thing is just that writing to be done.
    The rest of the turtle coins have had pictures of them taken but I haven't edited them yet. I'll probably use that as a mental break and reward for after a couple more of the write-ups are done.
     
     
  25. Revenant

    This is where the fun begins…

    By Revenant,


    Random Nonsense
    Be honest – how many of you remember that line from the start of Star Wars: Episode 3?
    I have bemoaned several times over the last few months that it is hard to get excited or get motivated about building a registry set when you… don’t… have coins… But! I find that it is much easier to get excited about researching and writing about coins for a registry set when you… have coins… and have pictures to go with "da wordy bits."
    I also gotta say - even feeling slightly disappointed at some of the grades - there’s a special joy and magic to an unboxing and it’s fun to have coins come home. In spite of that initial disappointment, I was very happy and noticed myself smiling when I opened that box Monday night.
     
    My wife also snuck this gem while I was in bed Tuesday night, working on getting the first images edited and posted to sets.

    I decided to start with the low-hanging fruit, hitting the 500L coins and the other coins where I just needed to do images for 1-6 coins to “complete” existing sets, before launching into the Argentinian coins and turtle coins, which are 7-8 coin groups for completely new sets. The part that does make these slightly more complicated though is trying to make sure that the images for the new coins match reasonably well with the old images of the coins that have been in the set a year or two, because I want consistency, but I don’t want to rei-image the entire Zimbabwe set (23 coins) because I’m replacing 1 coin. I don’t want to re-image the 11 older coins in the 500L set, just because I’m filling the last 3 holes.
    I will also admit to just wanting to be able to show off a completed 500L set to my wife. 
    The images are up now. I’d encourage anyone that follows these sets to look at the Zimbabwe type set, the Venezuelan type set, and the Italian 500L set. The new descriptions are up to, and all three sets are now 100% complete (not that that’s new for Zimbabwe anyway).
    A fun image I’ll call out is the Reverse shot for the 50 Bolivars, which shows a reverse struck with a die with a shocking degree of wear that I’m just not used to seeing in modern US coins. Yeah – the coin graded MS66, and it has some scratches, clearly, but look at all those signs of die deterioration around the 5 and 0 in 50, around the outer rim of the legend and around the inner ring around the core design. Personally, I just find that very interesting and cool to look at.
     
    Side note: But the image she snuck of me on the computer is what it looks like when I’m just working on the laptop in bed at night. When I’m up in my office and taking the coins, the set-up is a little nicer. When I replaced my old laptop about a year ago I got a new one that is the same brand as my work laptop, so it can dock into the same docking cube as my work laptop and I can use the same monitor and speaker set-up without multiple docking stations or monitor switching. It makes the home office situation more enjoyable and fun.
     
    The images aren’t ready to go yet but I’ve taken images of the Argentinian coins today, again, finding myself just very excited and happy to get to snap those shots. I’ve gone ahead and gotten the images shot for Austral coins and Peso Convertible coins in 1 go. I’ll just be starting the editing with the Austral coins.
    There will probably be another one of these posts soon as the Austral and then Peso Convertible images go up. I do have a feeling that the Peso Convertible images will be edited before I hit the historical write-ups for the Austral set, just because 1) it's easier to cross that one off and 2) Again... pictures are fun. It's shocking - You would never expect a photographer to hold this opinion. I know.
     
    So, where does this leave me? … Since I also keep finding new things that need to be done or that I want to get done before November 1st, and some of these are smaller (images on 1-2 coins) than others (making new banner images for sets that I’ve apparently been neglecting).
    1) Getting the coins programmed in and in the slots, (Except for the Austral coins)
    2) Getting my pre-written descriptions posted on the coins (for the new $10 Zimbabwe coin, 500L set, Argentinian Set, and Venezuelan coins)
    3) Getting pictures taken of the 500 Lire coins and getting those posted
    3b) Getting pictures of the new 2003 $10 coin for the Zimbabwe set.
    3c) Getting pictures of the new 1983 5L and 1984 10L coins for those Italian sets..
    3d) Getting pictures of our 1977 5L and 1984 5L coins for the 5L set since I apparently never did that… 
    4) Getting pictures on the new Venezuelan coins to maintain the quality of the presentation on that set,
    5) Getting the Austral coins imaged and
    6) Getting my historical write-ups for the Austral Set ready.
    7) Making a banner / set image for the Austral set – which I haven’t made a banner image for this one yet as I usually use images of the graded coins, which
    8) Making a banner / set image for the Italian 10L set since I apparently never did that… 
    9) Getting the Peso Convertible Coins imaged and posted
    10 Getting the turtle coins imaged and..
    11) Starting to build some kind of signature set around that???? – More on this later but this is going to be mostly a pure signature set play... but I'm also finding some glimmers of where there might be potential for competitive set off-shoots.