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Revenant

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Journal Entries posted by Revenant

  1. Revenant
    I was gone all night at a professional function. I finally got home around 9:00, my son was already in bed. My mother-in-law stayed with them all evening while I was gone so Shandy wouldn't be alone, just in case.
    Maybe 5 minutes after my mother-in-law left, less than half an hour after I got home Shandy started bleeding. We went to the hospital. She was having contractions she couldn't feel and there was no way to stop the bleeding with the contractions and so she's in the OR now and I'm waiting. The surgery will take about 4 to 7 hours, maybe longer.
    29 weeks and 2 days. Didn't quite make it to 30 weeks but ya get what ya get.
    Now just a lot a waiting, and I'm a pacer.

    Update 2/13:
    To my unending surprise the doctors came out in less than an hour and said the placenta had detached and there was no acreta like they'd thought. Instead of a 5+ hour operation it ended up taking about 2. They didn't have to do a hysterectomy but we went ahead and had her tubes tied. We will not be tempting fate again after this - all the risk factors would be higher next time. She seems to be recovering relatively well so far but I'm expecting Thursday / Friday to be bad days as some of the pain killers from the operation wear off.
    The baby was born at 11:55 on 12/12 and weighed a little north of 3 pounds. He's doing well relatively speaking and they haven't had to intubate him but it's still a possibility. He wasn't given steroids in the days leading up to the birth because we had no warning so his lungs are not as prepared as we would have preferred. He will likely spend about 8 weeks in the NICU. The place he's in right now is a Level III NICU, for babies born mostly before 30 weeks - There is a Level IV, for so-called "micro-premies" but those are mostly born at 23-25 weeks, at 29 weeks, Samuel has several substantial advantages over that group.
    Thanks for all the well wishes. We'll probably know a lot better how he's doing after he's made it to 72 hours old.
     
    Update 2/14
    Well, you always hope your kid will defy the odds but they usually don't. Sam had to be intubated today because he was wearing himself out too much just trying to breathe. He's also dealing with some low blood-pressure issues. All of this was stuff they told us to expect that was probably coming. They can warn you all they want in advance but it's still going to suck to hear that it's happening.
     
    Update 2/16
    Well, I guess it's a good news - bad news kind of morning. We went to bed last night knowing something seemed wrong but not knowing what. The doctors suspected he might be getting pneumonia.
    As it turns out, he doesn't have pneumonia, but he has had intraventricular hemorrhaging in his brain. Grade 4 (the worst) on one side. Grade 2 on the other. No way of knowing what, if any, consequences that will have for him. 
    2/16b: He's showing high bilirubin so they have him on the lights for jaundice. After hearing about the brain bleeding this just seems so mundane.

    Update 2/17
    Shandy was discharged late yesterday and we spent the night at home with our soon-to-be-3-year-old for the first time since the birth.
    Today leaves me with more hope than yesterday for the first time in a while. The bilirubin levels are down and they've taken off the lights for it. He's breathing 21% O2 air and taking only 30-45 breaths per minute now. In the past they've had to have him on 40+% O2 air and he was still fighting for breath with a respiration rate in the 70s or higher. This is the most peaceful and relaxed I've seen him in that regard. His increased struggles to breathe, in combination with the unusual way he was holding his arms straight out and away from his body were some of the first signs that something was wrong which lead to the diagnostic tests for the bleeding in the brain. Today he's sleeping and resting with his arms bent and brought in to his body and face - much more natural and relaxed looking.
    I'm adding a picture from yesterday when he was under the lights. I'll see if I can get and share a picture of him today later.

    Update on 2/19.
    I think this is going to be the last time I update this post and I'll just include comments as appropriate in other entries moving forward. Sam will be a week old as of midnight tonight.
    His improvement has continued into this morning. His sodium levels, which were low, have come back up. The bilirubin lights have been on and off recently but they're back on for now. His heart and lungs continue to do well with no signs of new / additional bleeding recently. They think he'll be extubated today and put back on the CPAP. They're going to start feeding him milk again because they're liking the belly sounds they're hearing. So he seems to be doing well and out of most immediate danger.
     
    Update on 2/22:
    Couldn't resist one more:
    On 2/20, with the ventilator out (and he took to it well so he hasn't had to be intubated again) we got to hear him crying for the first time. It sounds a little like a small puppy honestly.
    On 2/21, Shandy got to hold him for the first time.

    On 2/22, I got to hold him for the first time.

  2. Revenant
    I was looking around at pop-culture news on the internet recently as I sometimes like to do, as nerds like me sometimes like to do, and I found an article saying that there’s going to be a Funko Pops movie - it’s going to try to piggy-back on the success of the Lego movies. This has me in the mood to rant a bit. So this is me being my best “super-judger,” as my wife would put it – anyone reading this is forewarned now.
    It has been interesting to me that Lego sets have become collectable in recent years and that some of them have appreciated in value quite significantly - to the point that I’m now starting to see articles talking about them as “investments” and that economists have been doing complete studies and publishing papers about the returns they’ve realized. I think the whole thing is a ridiculous and insane bubble that is going to pop and leave some people in tears… but I’m getting off topic.
    I like / love comics and comic characters and love watching the superhero movies - much to my wife’s chagrin - but I have not and likely will not ever buy one of these little Funko Pop figures, with their odd, cutesy, chibi-style artwork, that retail for about $8-15 each most of the time. I just see them as mas-produced plastic garbage, the likes of which we already have entirely too much of in the world already.
    My brother-in-law does not share my view on this. He collects them, quite avidly. I’ve never been inside this room in their house and I’ve never witnessed it, but supposedly he has an entire room in their house full of boxes of these things. He has so many he has to store them in the boxes, and he can’t even pull them out and display them properly in a way that he might get some kind of enjoyment out of owning them. I find it vaguely insane.
    One of the biggest head scratchers for me is that these things occupy a room in his house and my sister lets him get away with this. I think my wife would murder me if we had a room in our house that couldn’t even be used because I was using it just to store my collectables. The smallest room in our home serves multiple functions as an in-home office for me while also being the place where I store photography equipment, coins, coin books, gaming books, and we even keep a twin guest bed in there on top of it all.
    At Christmas last year (2018) we got into a discussion about them and he claimed that some of them, some of the ones he has, can be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars. I think that if someone will actually give him that much for some of them, he should sell them now while the money is good and my sister agrees, but what do we know? I did some research after that conversation and found that there are a handful that collectors of these figures will pay $500 to up to $2,000 for, but these are almost all special, convention exclusive variants with limited productions of 500 or less. I didn’t see any of the off-the-shelf ones that he’s always asking for for Christmas on that list.
    To me, these things are a fad. They’re not at all unlike beanie-babies, baseball cards, comics or anything else. They’re popular and new right now, you’re going to see some crazy prices for a while, but, eventually, those prices are going to pop, and they’ll probably never see those high prices again. I think this movie is going to help build-up, hype up and extend the life of that bubble, but, in the long-term, I see these things going the way of the do-do. I wouldn’t want to be collecting them and left holding the bag when that happens.
    Don’t get me wrong - I know coin collecting has had its booms and busts over the decades as well and that’s something we all have to watch out for. However, I think those booms and busts in the modern context of coin collecting tend to be more contained to smaller sections of the broader market, in areas that I don’t currently participate in. I don’t think there’s a bubble in the 19th and 20th century European gold coins I’ve been buying for about 20-50% over the spot price of gold. I think we might one day see a crash in the values achieved by modern condition rarities, but I think that’s going to be a problem for people that collect those condition rarities. I guess we’ll see if I’m ever proven wrong there.
    My brother-in-law compared his collection of these toys to my coin collecting at one point. Call me biased, but, no. These made-to-be-collected toys will never be the same as 18th, 19th, and early 20th century coinage. They don’t have the artistry. They don’t have the history.
    It’s also odd to me though that he feels that his collecting experience is similar to mine. I don’t know if he spends time researching his collection beyond mere price-discovery activities, but it’s hard for me to imagine that there’s much to look into or research there (again, maybe this is my bias showing). But I spend a lot of time with my collection. I spend a lot of time researching it, reading about it, taking pictures of the coins and notes, writing about them here and elsewhere. His Funko Pops sit in boxes.
  3. Revenant

    Moving along...

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwean Coins and Currency
    I thought it was worth an update to say, I got the email from NGC this week saying that they acknowledge the receipt of my 29 coin submission (22 Zimbabwe Coins, 7 Italian Coins).
    So the timeline so far is:
    1/14 - Package Mailed
    1/26 - Package Delivered
    2/22 - Receipt Acknowledged and Submission entered as received by NGC
    2/23 - Payment Acknowledged
    Looking at it, since I sent this box in, World Moderns have increased from the 71 business days they were at in January and are back up to 85 business days. So, 85 business days from 2/22 is Monday, 6/20, excluding Saturdays and Sundays. So, I'm thinking I might get grades back in the July to early August time frame, because I'm not going to get my hopes up for late June..
  4. Revenant

    A Fresh New Hell

    By Revenant,


    Family
    Well, it had been my intent to make a post this week about some progress working on the Venezuelan competitive set - taking some pictures and buying some coins, getting some in the mail, but Monday night Sam had a seizure that would not stop. Which forced us to call an ambulance.
    He's been in the hospital, intubated and under heavy sedation for going on 30 hours now. We're waiting to have some final test results soon but maybe they can bring him back up and take out the tube - EEG has been clean. He has an infection but We're waiting to hear if it's in the brain or ear related or if he'll need surgery to drain fluid.

    So not the update I wanted to make this week. But it's where I'm at.
    After this we'll probably have emergency seizure meds to add to the list of things we carry with us everywhere we go just in case.
    His medical history puts him at increased risk for seizure disorders and fibrular (sp?) seizures so this was always on the list of risks.
    Edited:
    So far no brain infection. Treating for a blood infection that will keep us here several days. Trying to get the tube taken out.
    EDITED:
    Officially no brain infection, but it sounds like we're getting an epilepsy diagnosis.  Also seems like the blood infection has a touch of pneumonia now so breathing tube is probably staying until tomorrow at least.
    10/13: He was extubated around noon and he's doing well. Probably here several more days for IV antibiotics.
  5. Revenant

    Covid continues to mess up... EVERYTHING

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwean Coins and Currency
    I mailed out that submission to NGC on Jan 14th. It got to the Sarasota distribution center around midnight on Jan 20th, processed through there in about half and hour and was marked as in route to the destination facility. And then... Nothing.
    Today is the 26th. It has not been scanned in 6 days and about 10 hours.
    Starting Monday I started sending emails and trying to shake things out because if it isn't at NGC by COB on Monday the 31st the new pricing comes into effect and the cost of the box goes up $32.
    Well, turns out it has been in a container for 6 days, between the Sarasota distribution hub and the local PO, and they have apparently a line of about 25 containers they're working on, and they've been having delays because of lack of personnel and lack of drivers and...
    But.. 25 containers. Wow. Talk about bottlenecks.
    It has been stuck in Sarasota, waiting to be sent to the final destination longer than it was in Transit from my local PO in Texas to the Sarasota distribution hub.
    I would have thought that 17 days would have been PLENTY of time for something to get there. Normally it takes a week or less. Clearly in this case, absent this one bottleneck at this one leg of the trip, it would have been there in 7 calendar days.
    Normally this would have been fine. But this isn't normal.
    The very nice, polite woman at the Sarasota post office that called me (not being sarcastic at all here, she was very nice), was hopeful that it could come through today based on what she was seeing. So I'm just going to cross my fingers that they can make it happen and get it to NGC by Monday.
    If not, using Registered mail might cost me not just the $13 for Registered, but $32 for the price increase, making that a fairly expensive safety measure.  But, if that happens, I'll just let it go.  At the end of the day, after all the work that went into those coins, if that box had gone missing I would have gladly given up $32 to get it back., and even if it costs me I still think it was the right choice. $32 won't break me this month.  Not even close.  
    It is just very frustrating in the moment. 
     
    Edited to Add:
    So... Only about 40 minutes after she called me the first time, the USPS worker I'd talked to called me back again and let me know that it had hit that location / come out of the container and that it would be continuing on today. So, YAY! it should easily get to NGC by Monday.
    I had nervously run the tracking number a few times this morning and it must have just come out just a few minutes after we talked the first time or something.
    She said she'd had a list of ones she was watching for / tracking because she apparently has a few people making inquiries that a freaking out or in a near panic. I can't say I don't sympathize with them but hearing that did make me laugh a little.  Misery loves company I suppose and it's nice to not be alone in your crazy. 
    Side note but I am increasingly resigned to the fact that these coins are going to be away for... a... VERY. Long. Time.
     
    I am just increasingly glad, as the reasons add up (the long turnaround times, the price increase, this shipping delay...) that I did not drag my feet and I just got that box out. I'm increasingly convinced that, if I want to make another submission this year, and have confidence in it getting here by December, then I need to make something happen more in the March / Early April time frame.
    None of this is harshing NGC - I know they're working hard over there - just stating facts. Nothing is going to be fast this year; we're all going to have to have longer time horizons, and for some things, unless you're planning to pay extra for speed, the effective cut-off for the 2022 award season might be a lot earlier than some of us realize.
    I wonder if there's ever been a case of someone paying for Walkthrough service on something cheap and/or modern just to get something back super-quick to win something in the Registry.  There could be a funny and amusing story out there.
     
    Also: It's worth noting that, in discussing this with Shandy, she also very much shared my concerns over this box last night and referred to them as "our coins."  
     
  6. Revenant

    It is 100%, for sure FOR SURE, someone else is submitting these too…

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwean Coins and Currency
    So today saw another census update and another big increase in the Zcoin population.
    Last week we saw an increase from 33 to 41. Today we saw an increase to 57. At the start of the year I think it was only 29 total - including 12 NCLT S$10 coins.
    The MS population increased from 9, to 17, to, now, 33.
    Interestingly, looking again, I actually don’t think the update last week included my coins like I thought and I think this week's update does - especially based on the dates and the fact that this update includes some bond coins.
    That’s what I get for trying to get information by trying to interpret the bones and the tea-leaves of the census. However, based on what I’m seeing today I think my Bond Coins did pretty darn good overall. I think I pulled an MS67RD, 3 MS67s and an MS66. I THINK. I think I think I think… still nothing official and this morning is teaching me the error of assuming I’m the only one crazy enough to grade these is me so an increase in the pop reports has to be mine.
    That said, if I’m correct this time, the grades aren’t that different. They’re mostly the same. A coin I thought was a 64 might be a 65, a coin I thought was a 64 based on last week might be a 63. A coin I thought was an AU55 may have gotten an AU58. The big loss if I’m right is two coins that I thought last week might have gotten MS62/MS63 might both be AU58s… Which, honestly, makes a lot more sense. I was worried about those, really suspicious that they’d come back as AU when I sent them in but sent them in because I had grading credits and for the heck of it. I was a bit shocked / surprised by MS grades on those and the AUs just make more sense. - Assuming any of these are mine, but, surely there aren’t 3 people submitting all of these right now?? Surely. SURELY. What would be the odds of that?!?
    Still…. There is something VERY interesting in this.
    In order for those to have ticked the pop reports higher just last week, that suggests that someone else must have submitted some of these for grading within a week or two of me sending mine in, right around the time I was writing a bunch of journals about doing this. That is a very interesting coincidence of timing.
    On the PMG side there’s someone that’s been smacking me upside the head in almost every category from P-1 to P-105 for about 10 months now and I’m about 95-99% confident this person reads my journals over there at a minimum and I did reference expanding into coinage in those journals too.
    I’m really wondering if there’s another type set of Zimbabwe coins that is about to pop up and if it is going to belong to this person… I am REALLY curious about this.
    Should I be offended or flattered if this person really is just determined to come for my scalp in every area they can for some reason?
    A saner, smarter, person might look at this and wonder if they should shut up and keep their plans to themselves… but I’m not that person! Come at me, Bro! This whole thing just got soooo much more interesting. I think I’m actually more excited now.
    A couple of months ago I’d written a set description for my Z coin set saying that set would have 70% of the NGC Graded MS coins in the world in it. At the time, if I’d been the only one grading, I’d have been right. Now, it’s going to be about 45%. Still rather high if we’re being honest,
    This also puts my joking post about a cute, dopey, derpy set of top pops in a fair bit of peril. It may still happen just because some of the coins that I submitted have different dates than the coins this other person submitted. So they may still be marked as TOP POP for now even though there is another, higher graded coin of that type.
     
    Can't close this out without saying, Sam is doing sooo much better now. Talking again more. Walking around again more. Smiling, playing, bein happy again. He woke up smiling and happy today and we didn't have to give him Tylenol and wait for him to come back alive again. He's doing well. He's going to be home all week and he needs to test negative for Covid before he can go back to daycare. I'm taking him to the pediatrician today for a post-hospital follow-up. 
  7. Revenant

    So we wait...

    By Revenant,


    Family
    Well, no grades yesterday. So that’s three weeks almost / 13 working days in “Grading/Encapsulation/Imaging” without getting grades back. When the submission arrived on 6/7/21 or 6/8/21 the listed turnaround was 49 working days and the coins have now been at NGC for 65 or 66 working days as of Monday. And I really don’t care if the turnaround now is 85 working days - it was 49 when mine arrived, it was 49 for over a month of the time they’ve been there, and it was only later raised to 61, and we’re past even that. But that 49 is the thing I’m scoring against.
    So, I had a nice mad going on about this yesterday - bordering on a small temper tantrum - partially because yesterday had become one of those days when you’re just hating life and mad at the world and these grades coming back and having ANOTHER weekend without knowing was just the icing on the cake of grinding my gears.
    We found out on Thursday night that Ben’s friend had tested positive for CoVID. He came down with symptoms late Monday, and this kid had been playing with Ben all day on Sunday and had had dinner with us Sunday night. So, neither kid could go to school or daycare yesterday. So, what was supposed to be my Friday off turned into accomplishing none of the things I’d hoped to knock out in and out of the house, 2.5 hours in urgent care trying to test a non-cooperative 5-year-old, and trying to contain the 2 year old and the 5 year old - who are on a serious mommy--obsession-kick - while Shandy tried to work and have meetings. So yesterday sucked. Hard. Yesterday was rough.
    Today… today is better. Life feels kinder today. It’s a little easier to smile today. I’m still kind of salty and having a bit of a mad-after-glow on this, but life is better today.
    And… we’re doing much better than they are across the street. Ben’s rapid test was negative and he’s feeling just fine 6 days after the exposure. We’re waiting on the PCR test to come back and confirm negative but at this point I’m not terribly concerned. We aren't going anywhere this weekend and we're hoping the results come back Sunday night so Ben can go to school Monday, but I'm fully expecting a negative result at this point. Across the street, the 5-year-old and the 3 year old baby sister and the father are now all sick, and so we’re dropping off coloring books, and fever reducers… and chocolate. Good chocolate. That poor mother…
     
    On top of everything we have a tropical wave bearing down on us that may cause localized flooding and trap us all at home for a few days even if we manage to clear the test.
    Getting back to the submission a bit… I feel like this is one of the cases were the submission tracker works just well enough to be a tease while also not being terribly helpful some days. In the past I’ve seen things be finalized and shipped within about a week (4-7 working days) of hitting “Grading/Encapsulation/Imaging.” In that situation it makes sense to lump all those together and not split them out. In the case of this submission, they’ve been sitting there for 13 working days, and it just becomes a tease after having been conditioned by past experience to expect results fast after they hit that stage.
    It begs the question “what’s the hold-up?” but I’m thinking it must be the grading part of that situation, because these crazy-long turnaround times are ONLY hitting World Modern and World Economy. If the backlog was in encapsulation or imaging, I would expect that to hit more across the board and hit US modern and US economy too but that is not what we’re seeing. It has had me wondering lately if there could be something wrong that they can’t talk about - like one or more of the world graders being sick.
    But, if it is that, I’ll hopefully never know, because they’d never be able to discuss that with us. The only way I could see that coming to light is if some poor soul died and they made and article honoring them and absolutely no one wants that.
    I keep telling myself that I just need to just stop checking this and just wait for the emails saying they’re done to hit my inbox one evening, but it’s hard. The tease is very real, I’ve been waiting for 3 months, and I just really want to finally know how they did. My worst nightmare is I’m just going to have very disappointing grades come back after all this angst and all this waiting and the whole thing is just going to come down to one massive bitter pill.
    But, disappointing grade results and long waits are far from the worst things in life.
    Also: Coinsandmedals - I blame you and your fancy-smancy Early Bird multi-holder crazy-complicated submission for this. This is clearly your fault - holding up my dirt-simple modern submission. You should feel bad. I hope life is treating you well and we get to hear how those did soon - hopefully he can split those off and get them shipped independently of that modern submission or nobody is going to know how those multi-holders made out until December! Lesson learned for all of us! Never shackle and Early Bird to a Modern to save a few dollars on shipping! Just pay the money!
  8. Revenant
    Tomorrow is my 3rd Anniversary with my wife. We decided to exchange gifts yesterday because I wanted to give her an opportunity to use her gift.
    She’d been secretive about my present. Lately she’s been getting me mostly practical gifts but we’re practical people. As I’ve transitioned into my 30s and fatherhood, I find I have less and less desire for random stuff in my life. My coin collection is one of the few things in my life these days that falls into a special category of “it’s mostly useless but it makes me happy.”
    She’d decided that she didn’t want to get me another practical gift though. She wanted to get me something fun. She also wanted to surprise me and not repeat the arrangement of Christmas where I got the money and I spent it myself (applying it towards that 1877 10G, which we put under the tree).
    So she goes hunting and spends I-have-no-idea-how-long looking for a link to an old wish list I had on a currency collecting site and ordered me a raw Zimbabwe 20 Trillion dollar note. She said she wanted to get me a coin, but she had no idea what to get.
    She was very excited. I love her to death for the thought and the effort she put into this.
    The problem? Well… I already have a graded Zimbabwe 20 Trillion note. A fact that came up when she mentioned maybe having to get it graded so it would go with the others and I was like… “I’m probably not going to grade this.” (and I showed her the one I already had to explain). She was confused because she thought she got something on my list… I had the 20 Billion note on my list, which I still need. It was also a PMG-graded one for about $25-30 depending on grade.
    We shared a laugh about it after she was done feeling a bit stupid (but, who can blame her with all those zeros?). We hugged and kissed. We’ll laugh about this for years I’m sure.
    The store she bought the note from has a return policy and so she’s going to hopefully return it to try to get most / all of the money back and then we’ll have a discussion about getting something else.
    Normally, I would have kept it just for laughs. I truly love that she tried so hard to get me something that I would love for my collection. The problem I have with keeping it is the price she paid. She just got completely taken on this note IMO.
    The store she bought it from is the store I bought most of my Zimbabwe note set from. Their prices have historically been quite reasonable, and you can still get many of the Zimbabwe notes from them for reasonable prices, even ones already graded by PMG for barely more than the grading fees. However, since I bought most of my set, someone there seems to have gone a little nuts - particularly on the 4 notes in the trillion set - the 10, 20, 50 and 100 Trillion notes. I’m guessing at some point someone there figured out that those are the four notes that most people want, most people don’t collect the lower denomination notes, and so they could probably get away with up-charging on those four where they couldn’t easily on the others.
    Seeing them charge her $60 for a raw bank note that’s as common as these are has, in all honesty, really hurt my opinion / feelings towards the company.
    After I showed her a PMG graded note on eBay for $42 she just said, “Oh. I just thought the price was the price.” Nope… This isn’t like buying something off the shelf at Wal-mart. If you don’t do your homework, you’re likely to get taken for all you’re worth and some people will be happy to do it to you.
    This all comes after, about a week ago, she realized that I have a massive watch list on eBay with dozens of items that I think would be fun to get but I will never have a budget big enough to get all of them. She told me at the time, a couple of days after she’d already ordered this Zimbabwe note, that I needed to share that with her, so I just wrote my eBay user name and password on an index card and gave it to her. She’d have to buy the item with her own account to hide it from me, but it would point her in the right direction.
    I feel like a horrible gift recipient, but she reads me too well and I can’t hide it from her when something’s not quite right. Honestly though it was a conversation that probably needed to happen. I wouldn’t want her to repeat this and keep over-paying for things like what happened here.
    Not to brag but I totally hit it out of the park on her gift.

  9. Revenant

    I think Sam really has the worst luck...

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwean Coins and Currency
    Well, shortly after I made my last post we went to pick up Sam from daycare and we found out he'd been lethargic and sick all day and was running a fever again. He's been home since then but lethargic and increasingly unwilling to eat or drink. Today we too him back to the doctor and then later in the day had to give up and take him to the ER because he wasn't peeing anymore.  Turns out he as pneumonia... at two and a half... and his O2Sats are low and he'll probably be getting admitted again for what I guess at this point will be his 4th hospital stay.
    Because of COVID I have to stay home until and unless he's admitted to the hospital and they may not even let me come until his PCR test comes back negative. I guess we'll see. I'd rather give Ben to his grandmother and go to the hospital but they just don't allow that right now... but all the laundry is done. There is once again not a dirty towel in the house.
    So, sometimes when I'm on here a lot its because work is slow. Sometimes it is because a baby has been using me as an inclined bed for 2 days and I have a TV and smartphone with an NGC app.
    The last week or so while taking care of him and waiting on grades I've been doing some shopping for more raw Zimbabwean coins in new and old types to pick through for a future 2nd submission.
    Some things will depend on the grades that come back on the submission that is out - Mostly if any coins come back with particularly bad grades I'll probably be trying again on those if I can get better examples - but I know in the next round I'll be sending in a $5 pre-hyperinflation coin, one of the $2 Bond coins, and, if I can find some that look decent, a pre-hyperinflation $2 and a $1 Bond Coin. There are a couple of others I need to try to get like one of the pennies from before they switched to a steel-plated version.
    I'll probably send those in around February 2022 - once I have a decent number pulled together to send in - and they'll come back... eventually... Maybe in time for the 2022 awards deadline...  
    Shandy has been laughing at me a bit for my shopping and calling me obsessed and ridiculous, but I feel like this set of coins needs to exist / be made to go alongside that note set - which is more or less complete at this point with all but the Cargill Bearer checks and a couple other issues (P-28, P-29, P-31, P-72) included. P-105 doesn't count. I'll buy that as soon as graded examples hit the market at a reasonable price.
    It also feels like a fitting thing to be working on while Sam is sick considering it has been my time occupation and distraction since he was born. Maybe that's why I had to expand to the coin set and I just can't close the book on this project.
    While this is a direct continuation of what I started in 2019 and 2020, 2021 has definitely started a new phase, from shopping online for already graded examples to buying multiples raw and picking through for nicer examples as I dig deeper and deeper into areas that few others care about and which there isn't enough of a market for to get dealers submitting...
    But, as I'll get into later, I'm not the only one buying these, and I don't seem to be quite the only one grading them.
     
    Sadly he's not much improved this morning and he can't come home until he's eating and drinking on his own again, but at least he hopefully won't get any worse now that he can have IV fluids and effective meds.
     

  10. Revenant

    So.... WHY are they slammed?

    By Revenant,


    Random Nonsense
    It seems like one of our favorite things to do lately is complain about turnaround times at NGC.
    The popular narrative amongst the unhappy is that this is clearly NGC slipping but NGC says the problem is they're just slammed. They aren't blaming the problems on logistics - like not being able to get enough slab parts or inserts. They're just getting 800+ packages a day and that working 6 days a week, 12 hours a day isn't keeping up. That suggests that they're dealing with double or more the peak volume they're normally equipped to handle.
    But I can't help but wonder WHY they're so slammed.
    Through most of 2020 when there were delays I thought it was probably CoVID related and had to do with pandemic protocols slowing them down, and maybe it did, then. But that's not what they're dealing with now. The CoVID restrictions in many places in the country - including most conservative states like Florida and Texas, are lifted.
    Also interestingly, things seemed to be getting better and turnaround times were getting shorter in the first part of the year.
    They're just getting crushed by strong demand now... but what's driving that?
    I feel the usual temptation to think maybe it's the stimulus checks and people spending time at home instead of out and about so they're looking at and sending in coins, but does that explanation hold water? The stimulus checks were rolling out months ago and people in may places are out and about again. I don't feel like that explains why they'd still be getting crushed with packages in June.
    Maybe all that TPG marketing and CAC marketing is finally paying off and more people are getting into graded coins and grading coins? But that's a pretty rapid increase for a normal, organic increase in interest.
    Some in the forums would blame the "everything bubble" and the financialization of the hobby but I don't know that that would be good enough to explain this sudden up-tick in the last year or so. Especially since I don't think that graded coins are quite as common, "sexy" or in vogue as, say crypto-currencies for most people.
    I do wonder if inflation fears might be renewing interest in old coins and the history of money, but people that are worried about inflation I think are more interested in accumulating metal, not necessarily collecting graded coins. But the two interests are sympathetic and I do see a lot of silverbug posts with graded NCLT...
    So the whole thing, the whole situation, just seems odd to me.
  11. Revenant
    It is Day 13 of our Coronavirus Self-solation. Frequent walks help make it not so bad with the stir craziness now. We’re taking the cars for short drives and driving out to the woods to walk around so that the cars don’t sit idle for too long.

    I thought it was a good day to have a bit of fun.
    A few years ago I ended up with two graded 1883-O Morgans in my collection. One is an NGC MS63 that I bought. One is a PCGS graded AU58 that another member here gave me when I bought a coin off them in the marketplace and it took a long time for them to get it in the mail so they sent me that AU58 too just to be nice.
    I’ve often thought about cracking that AU58 out of the slab because… it’s a circulated common-date Morgan. It’s not like the slab increases the value any and if I crack it out it can go in an album page and take up less room.
    Anyway. I decided today was the day. I was going to ask Ben to ‘help’ me and we were going to go for it.
    The nice thing about making a PCGS graded coin the victim is that it helps keep him from thinking he can take a hammer to the NGC coins... I hope.

    The thing is… I’ve always heard people talk about how easy it is to crack these slabs open and how it just takes a ‘couple of quick taps’ and yadda yadda. Except… We couldn’t get it open. And we hit that sucker hard a few times, on the edge and on the face. It didn’t break. It wasn't just the four year old hitting it! I hit it too! It suffered some clear physical damage, but it’s still together.
    This result in a number of ways makes sense to me. I was always confused by all the stories about how easy  these are to break. It didn't make sense for something made for archival protection to be so easy to break - especially given the likelihood of drops. Still, I'm having trouble reconciling the stories I've heard with this experience.


    The children's show on the TV is called "Word Party." Ben loves it... I'm not sure why.

    This has honestly given me some new respect for the slabs. I have that thing a couple of pretty solid whacks on the edge. I would not have expected it to hold up that well. I’ve dropped these things on the floor a few times and nearly had a heart attach worrying they’d break because of what I’ve heard. But this? Wow.
    So… what am I missing here? Is there supposed to be a mystery-just-right way to ‘tap’ these open?

  12. Revenant
    My wife was having a hard time deciding what to get me for our anniversary (1/15) so I suggested we could go back to that coin shop she was in about a month ago, look around together and see if we saw anything.
    As I told her when we were driving there, I wasn’t necessarily committed to getting anything. It would just depend on if anything stuck out at me that was reasonably close to the appropriate price range we set for the occasion but I was going to be looking for something different that would stand out a little in my collection..
    Ben was in daycare; Sam was along for the ride – but Sam is a lot easier to contain and manage than Ben. We have this chest-harness kind of thing that lets Shandy essentially wear the baby on her chest or her back so she carried him around like that while I looked at coins. She looked at some of the Jewelry they have there and I think sometimes she watched me.
    I spent a while looking around at some things just to see if anything popped out at me and a few things kind of did. There was a 1936 S Buffalo nickel in an old fatty holder with an MS65 on it and there were a couple of 1834 50 cent pieces in VF20 and VF30 that I took a good look at. I was seriously tempted but wasn’t quire sold on them – though I actually thought the VF20 was nicer looking than the VF30 with the 1834’s.
    I probably would have gone for either the VF20 or that Buffalo nickel but then I saw some Type 3 Standing Liberty quarters that they had, mostly in the range of XF45 to AU58. Three of them in particular were AU58s for $80 each – a 1925, a 1929 S and a 1930. I asked to look at those three and one of the nicer looking XF45s. The 1930 looked really promising on the obverse but then I didn’t really like the Reverse when I saw it.
    When I looked at the 1925 I cracked a smile and really liked it – and my wife could tell I really liked it so she encouraged me to go for it, so I did. It was the clear choice over the 1929 S in my opinion in terms of overall look and detail.
    I have a raw Standing liberty quarter that I got about 12 years ago. It isn’t in nearly as nice a shape as this one and the standing liberty quarter is a design I like that I had wanted to get a better example of.
    I think it's interesting that these, like the Peace Dollars, use the Latin U's (V's) for the mottos on both sides of the coin.


    Edited on 1/30/2020 to add photos of the old raw coin I had, just for fun.


  13. Revenant
    I don’t know if many / any others here do but I like watching Pawn Stars – I know it isn’t real, but it’s usually at least mildly entertaining.

    I haven’t had cable in 10 years, so I watch it on Hulu when I have time and / or can get away with it with my toddler, who doesn’t seem to find it terribly interesting.

    As a result, I don’t know how old / dated the episodes I’m seeing are – I just play what’s there. So what I’m about to comment on may be very old news to others here.

    I saw a couple of episodes recently that I think were part of “Season 14” (whatever that means for that show) where coins feature prominently, and I was surprised to see NGC “name dropped” both times – NGC specifically.

    In the first instance, a guy brought in a set of Oregon Trail commemoratives and Rick makes a comment about how to sell them and get the most out of the coins he’s going to have to take them out of the frame / display holder they’re in and get them graded by “NGC or somebody.” The thing that was interesting was that NGC was named, but not the other guys / leading competitor. They were just part of “or somebody.”

    In the second instance I noticed, a guy brought in 2 graded coins. One he was asking about $30,000 for and the other he was asking about $15,000 for. One was graded by NGC and the other was graded by PCGS. Interestingly, a LOT more screen time was spent showing shots of the NGC slab and you can see the name NGC I think 3 times. You only see the PCGS on the PCGS coin once. That said, the NGC graded coin was the more valuable of the two, so that might have been the driver there.

    I’ve seen other episodes in the past where Rick got a note graded. I don’t recall if he ever said the name of PMG or if they showed the label / holder in detail, but I thought it looked like it was graded by PMG and not PCGS currency.

    Anyway… Just something interesting / funny that I noticed while watching a show and seeing my hobby and TPGs pop up in the “pop culture.” The apparent preference / bias towards naming / using NGC just really stuck out at me in this case.

  14. Revenant

    My Son's Monies

    By Revenant,

    About a year ago, in late 2017, we were going through a move and packing things up. I left the door to the closet open and my son saw the safe. I usually tried to keep the closet closed to hide the safe because he’d developed an odd fascination with it and pressing the buttons to make it beep. He also liked having us open and close it a lot – it’s all great fun apparently. Once he saw it, and remembered that it was there, he wanted to play with it and it’s often not very fun to argue with a toddler.
    This time, I think for the first time, when we opened the safe, he went after something inside it: a tube of 2010 American Eagles and some smaller tubes of Sunshine mint ½ ounce rounds that I had in there on top of all the NGC display boxes.
    Initially I really didn’t want him messing with it but he was insistent and cute and so he ended up getting to dump them out and play with them. I guess I decided around that point that they’re just bullion rounds that I was keeping mostly as silver. It doesn’t really matter if they stay pretty. They’re still worth melt, and he was being cute – also, I’m a sucker and he gets what he wants, probably way too often. One of the pictures I’ll post at the end of this entry is from this time. I think it’s the first time he’s really showed interest in these shiny little disks of metal that we call coins / rounds / tokens.
    We didn’t really repeat this experience for a while. In Sep 2018 I decided to give him some rounds to play with. I’d recently gotten a small 10 round tube of 1 oz buffalo bullion rounds (since there was room in the tube for one more round, I bought an 11th round and added that to the tube). I gave him that to play with one day – he was sick and I was hoping it would cheer him up. It did the trick.
    He enjoyed them so much that I started leaving this small tube out, often in the living room or our bedroom. Sometimes he’d see it and ask to have it to play with. Sometimes he would just think of them and ask for them, saying, “I want my monies, Daddy.” I don’t know where he got the idea that they were “monies.” I guess it was because we’d counted and rolled up coins from a piggy bank that had gotten full and he heard us call the coins “money.” That’s about all I can figure. I didn't mention this in the prior entry about it, because it might not have made sense without this context, but he also called the elongated cent from the zoo a "money" / "my money."
    They are sometimes called “daddy’s monies,” but only when he isn’t feeling possessive – if you ask him what they are I’d say it’s about 50/50 whether he responds with “it’s my monies” or “it’s daddy’s monies.” It’s the same tube of rounds. I’m pretty sure he knows this, but the ownership of them is clearly a bit fuzzy and poorly defined.
    By this point he’d learned to count to about 15 so we had a lot of fun at various times sitting down and counting the rounds. He’d dump them, we’d count the rounds as he put them back in the tube one at a time, and he’d dump them again when we finished. Over and over – and over. Those buffalo rounds have been smacked and banged together a lot in a way that only a toddler can manage and they’re quite scratched and abused-looking at this point – but that doesn’t bother him at all so far as I can tell.
    I chose the one-ounce silver rounds for a few reasons:
    They pass the “toilet paper roll test” – he can’t easily swallow or choke on them 99% Silver does not support bacterial growth and biofilms in the same way that some things like copper can. Generic silver rounds don’t have any historical value so I don’t feel guilty watching him trash them in the same way that I would, say, old Morgan dollars. Even if they’re circulated common dates, I’d just hate to see nearly 100-year-old coins abused by a toddler. I’ve tried showing him some of my Chinese pandas recently (he likes bears, I think). When I ask him what it is, instead of focusing on the fact that it’s a picture of a bear he sees the fact that it’s a large silver coin and says, “it’s a money.” He’s not wrong.
    It’s a nice place to start a love-affair with coins.
    I think one of the funnier moments to come out of these introductions to coins was showing him a graded coin for the first time. He looked at it for a second, flipped it around a bit, then started trying to find a way to open the slab and said, “We need open it.” “Uhh… No. Let’s not.” I’m sure that will make him popular with those that think coins in general and modern bullion products especially should be raw, but not happening. Not in this house while I’m around.



  15. Revenant
    I've pretty much made up my mind that, before the year is out, I want to get my 10G set reholdered in scratch-resistant holders to harmonize the look of the set. I'm considering having them review the ones in old fatty holders to see if they might be able to pick up a point - this would be especially nice with the MS64 1887. I'm not sure how the best way to do this would be because, even if the grade doesn't change, I'd still want it cracked out and reholdered - There's just little point to me if the whole set doesn't come back in the same type of holder. I'd on the fence about using this / taking the opportunity to roll the dice on reholdering the PCGS 1875 - even having bought the newer NGC graded 1875 I don't think this issue / question will ever fully get out of my head.

    The thought of putting 8 coins that I've spent nearly $3,000 and 12 years gathering together in a box and handing it to USPS has me pretty nervous. In the same box I'll probably also be sending some Civil War tokens and one other small gold coin for grading.
    I'm absolutely going to send them via registered mail when I do this. That said though, I think I'd have to take the box to the Post Office and ship it in person to do that, and that's something I really don't want to do right now with the CoVID cases so high in Texas right now. I'm sure that some would say I'm being paranoid but I'm still just not going to expose myself more than I have to right now.
    The cruse my wife and I had planned on going on in October is officially canceled and we're working on making other plans to have a little get-away where we can also be alone in the hillcountry and limit our exposure to other people. With the no-sail orders already extending to 9/30 and the spike in cases it just seemed like the best thing to do.
    I don't know that I've said much on this front in quite some time but Sam continues to flourish and impress his PT and OT. When we started to self-isolate in March he was just starting to roll over and sit up on his own. He finally got to where he could stay in quad (on all fours) good in April, started crawling and pulling up to standing in May and was cruising (taking steps while holding something for balance) by late June. He's now standing without holding something for 3-4 seconds with increasing confidence and I expect he'll be starting to walk independently in the near future. He's showing some cognitive and speech delays but we'll continue to work on that.

  16. Revenant
    So, counting the post yesterday on the PMG side this'll be three posts in three days but I guess things are finally starting to settle and I'm starting to de-stress and I feel like talking / writing again.
    The good news on the tax return front, other developments in the political sphere that I've referenced before, and the recent dip in gold prices have me optimistic that, in the near future, I'll get to knock a coin off my wish list, and I think its going to be an Italian 20 Lire.
    The more I think about it I'm increasingly liking the idea of making a small display with a Sovereign and the 20 Lire since my wife lived in those countries growing up (I brought this up in the "5 Years" post in January). Having discussed it with her I think see likes the idea too. This led to a bit of dreaming and browsing on Amazon and sharing some images / ideas with her, which she also seems to like. I really like the idea of combining this hobby of mine with a bit of her family history and something she loves and thinks of fondly for something we can look at and enjoy together.

    Another idea that has some appeal to me though would be getting something a little bigger and including one of the Netherlands 10G coins, a Swiss 10 or 20 Franc, a French 20 Franc and maybe (eventually) a Prussian 20 Mark. This idea would be somewhat aspirational in nature too though in that she want's to return to Italy with me for a vacation one day and I think she's wanting to visit other places in Europe together over time because she just loves travel - she's very experienced based in her thinking and not at all really a collector or a "stuff" kind of person. Makes me wonder why she married a hording homebody like me but I probably shouldn't question it much.

    But (and this is just more of me musing and dreaming) if I ever manage to complete a 10-coin date set of Willem III 10G coins I'd love to get either two of these or something that could display 10 coins and make a really cool display of that set. If I somehow manage to finish that set after like 15 years and get them all in pretty new-gen holders that match I have to find some fun and cool way to display that set. I just have to. I'd love to have them all in 1 case but I've only seen options with up to 8 coins displayed at a time. So if I want 10 I think I may need to find a custom option or get 2 of these 5 coin ones... If I'm dumb enough to get the 1879/7 variety and make it an 11-coin set I may be very SOL. Maybe I could put the 10 coin date set together and put the 9/7 in with the multi-currency displayed above. 
     
    I wonder if anyone else here has experience with these things, owns some or use them to display anything? I see a lot of them for "challenge coins" too.
    Oh my... me and my big dreams.  I used to laugh and roll my eyes at my mother for all of her big plans and big projects that never came to fruition and I still laugh at my wife for all of her day dreaming about things (like winning the lottery and going off on her millionth vacation idea) and here I am doing the same .Her favorite dream and point of discussion is possibly buying a home near her parents soon and moving away from this house.
    Talking about all of this got her asking me about what my favorite coin(s) is / are. In response to my answers I got a "I love my coin nerd," and a "I would love to go to a show with you and be bored to tears just wandering about and holding your hand." I have this in writing in Messenger so there's proof and she can't call me a liar later!  
    On a slightly random note on the 10G set, I almost never see anything over an MS66 graded by NGC but I have several times now seen PCGS graded coins at a MS67 or MS68 come up for sale - especially at Heritage and similar places. There's only two theories I can come up with on this - either 1) PCGS just grades higher / looser on these than NGC does or 2) all the REALLY high grade examples have gone to PCGS and not to NGC for grading because that was the preference of the owners / submitters at the time.
    I'm worried that it might be number 1 given what I've heard with regard to PCGS world coin grading but I simply have not seen enough PCGS graded examples in-hand. All I can say is that I think the NGC MS66s I have look as nice or nicer to me than my 1875 MS67, which PCGS graded. But I'm not a grader, and I don't claim to be able to grade these (or anything) in that grade range where small nicks and differences count for so much. A lot of this has just continued to dim any hopes I had with regard to perhaps one day crossing that PCGS coin at the same grade and further convince me that getting the NGC graded 1875 to go with the NGC registry set instead was probably the way to go. I don't want to give up that MS67 on the slab if it ever comes time to resell (but I like the coin and I'm not in a huge rush to sell) but I also like the idea of having a full NGC-graded matched set one day.
    That's all for now. I may have more soon though, either here or on the PMG side.
  17. Revenant

    Well, Xan gave me my answer... or part of it anyway. lol

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwean Coins and Currency
    Xan Chamberlain must have gotten a box in the mail yesterday.

    This set popped up last night with just one coin and now the other 7 coins from that submission that got added to the census about 2 weeks ago have been added. It also looks like he has a $2 coin that popped up in the census the following week when my coins were added.But I'm not seeing in his set (yet, anyway) a 1999 10C in MS64 or an older-type $1 coin that popped up in the census the same week as my coins and that $2 coin. What I'm seeing in our two sets only accounts for 22 of the 25-27 MS coins that I think have been added to the Zimbabwe census in about the last 6 months. And if I remember right, some of the others were $5 coins and it wouldn't really make sense to me for him to send in two of those in such a short span of time - again, not saying that he didn't. I don't have nearly all the facts. I'm just thinking with my gut here. Add in the fact that there were MS graded coins out there before April 2021 and someone submitted the MS65 10C that I have... there's someone else, out there, right?
    So, I think there is still some mystery to dig into in that I think there's a third person getting these graded. It's either that, or Xan submitted another 2-coin submission a while back (or a submission with 2 Z coins) and then got 2-3 more graded about a week after this coin going group and those coins hit the census with mine, and then there was a 1 coin submission that hit the census on 10/5 with a single 1983 cent. I'm not saying it is impossible but it would be odd to me to see someone send in 3 small submissions in the space of a month and about 4 in about 6 months for the same country.
    I guess I'll see if a 1999 10C coin, a 1983 Cent, or one of these other new-to-the census coins hit Xan's set in the next couple of weeks and if the census keeps going up.
    So there is officially a little competition and a little life in that category now.

    I wonder if he used part of his 2020 grading credit to do this just like I did.
    Especially given the timing, I wonder if he got the idea for this from me and I'm wondering if he'll read this...
    It's always funny to think about.
    I wonder if he'll chime in or drop me a line / a message and shed some light on it for me.
    He collects some older Rhodesian Coins but I don't see that he participates on the PMG side with the notes. 
    I wonder what brings him into it and why he decided to go down this road. I wonder if there could be some fun chats about it.
    But, I think the same thing about Adrian123456, and he seems to prefer to watch in silence too.
    Adrian has a fantastic, nearly complete variety set of the 2003 Emergency Bearer Checks (P-21 to P-23) that I think is one of the more impressive sets in the PMG Zimbabwe Registry - getting all of those varieties is not easy and he's had to compromise on grade on some of the type-a's even though the notes themselves still look quite nice in his scans - or maybe he uses PMG's scans. I'm not sure there.
    I wonder if Adrian could be submitter #3, but I think he'd list / register his if he were... 
    You guys should talk to me. This could be fun. Just talk to Mike. He can attest - I'm not crazy!  
  18. Revenant
    Mike has earned some kind of "I told you so," as he made references back in, I think, October, about the Zimbabwean coin set winning "Best Presented" this year and I was like, "Nope. Nah. Not gonna happen."
    I am, once again, very honored by the award and the recognition. 😃
    I'm thrilled for Coinbuf, Lem E, deposito, jgenn and coin928 for their wins, many on sets that have been long labored and personal projects. It's a humbling thing sometimes to be listed next to such endeavors. But some of you guys really need to stop counting yourselves out and selling short your chances.
    My wife and I popped a bottle of Champagne Friday night that was left over from New Year’s Eve. I’m not sure if this means we had a lame NYE party or if we bought too much booze. I guess it’s cool either way. She wanted a photo to go with this post and specifically dragged me back up to my desk to get the case from Father’s Day with the 5 gold coins in the background of the shot because she was feeling the need to be artsy I guess. Poor choice of subjects if you’re going to be artsy. Ick… 35… I’m getting older and these kids are sucking the life out of me and the hair off my head.  But the wife keeps insisting that I look Handsome... now where's that Meme of the Old Man saying he was lied too... 

    The comments from the judges mention the set having 21 coins, and it does - 23 actually - but I only had 14 graded and in the set as of Dec 1. Which is the main reason I was convinced that set had not a chance - not a one - this year. But, the coins are ready, I've already started the online submission form, and I will be finishing it as soon as I can. Now that this has come through though I think I’m going to be tacking on some 500 Lire Italian coins at the end of the submission.
    Shandy of course immediately joked, "so, you won, so now we're going to just drop that and move on to something else, right?" But, naturally she knows that isn't what we're doing and I think she'd kill me if I tried after all the shared effort looking at and picking coins.
    This seems to be becoming a recurring theme for me - I win and then I spend the credits mostly on the set that won - which will not win again - rather than putting it (and the time and energy) towards something new that might win next year. I spent all of the PMG credits from the note set winning on that same collection. Fun collecting, but bad strategy I suppose. But, you can't just not finish something like that after putting so much into it.
    My candidate for "Worst of the Best 2020" is now "Best Presented 2021" - just to continue to reference the past of this journal as we prepare to start a new cycle in earnest.
    This is going to be one set where it’s going to be a lot of fun for me over time to see the progress of it in the archives over time - getting to see it as it was in 2020 with one coin and no banner, see it in 2021 with the banner, and, hopefully, maybe, see it as the #1 in 2022 with all the coins filled in / 100% complete, and then maybe see it again in 2023 with some coins upgraded. Snapshots in time as the set progressed - assuming it stays #1. I guess we’ll see if anyone wants to throw down in a crazy-off.


    The 10G set is another one that I love being able to look back at how it has incrementally grown and improved over now 6 years of being #1, but I think I’ve said that before.
    But this outcome has reinforced my decision to cull the submission down to 22 of the best coins from the original 33 and then move on to other things for now once the set is full in a graded state. And I do have at least two things I'm looking at that are in the pipeline, and which will probably now be 2022 projects instead of 2023 projects.
    As far as the journal awards go, I'm not going to lie - I'm more than a little sad to see that go - and not just because this means I'll have to do more than just run at the mouth if I want to keep winning major awards and because this means I'll never catch up to Gary.
    The Journal Awards had been given out every year since about 2004 or 2005 and, as such, they were one of the oldest and most consistent features in the awards. But participation has been dropping for years and I think it was down again this year vs last year. And I guess this year was the year NGC decided enough was enough and to pull the plug on them. I had thought we were at thus point 2 years ago when the journal awards weren't announced / listed for 2019 but instead they actually upped it by extending the $500 credit to the journal awards where it hadn't before. I guess the last two years were the last chance to see if it would rebound and it... didn't.
    Now that they are officially axed, I don't expect the journal awards to ever return but I hope NGC will consider replacing them with something like the community awards that are given on the Comics side - something that can celebrate some of the people that make it worth it to keep visiting the chat boards and who come to share the joy of collecting and not to grind political axes and grumble.
    But... while the journals awards are done, don't think you're rid of me yet. I posted in 2019 when I thought they were dead and in 2020. I expect to have more to say in 2022, though I expect inevitably, eventually, my time and efforts will likely go elsewhere for a while just like they did from 2010 to 2017 - because life is like that, and I can't always actively collect, and I don't post or have much to say when I don't actively collect.
    But, right now, I'm collecting pretty darn actively. 😃
  19. Revenant
    We went to the Houston Zoo as a family yesterday with my son, wife, and her parents. The zoo here is full of those old penny press machines. I'm sure most of us in the US will be familiar with them but I don't know if they're common outside the United States.
    For those unfamiliar with the concept: You feed the machine $0.51 (2 quarters and 1 penny) and turn a press-wheel. The quarters go to pay the machine / the company that owns it. The penny... gets smashed. The machine presses / rolls the penny and reshapes it into a thin oval with a new pattern / design on it. I think the Houston zoo has 4-6 of these machines, each one having four different designs that you can press into the penny, so if you wanted to you could make quite a set of zoo / animal themed novelty pressed-pennies.
    While we were in the reptile house my son saw one of the machines and got really excited about it. There have been a few times when he was younger where he wanted to play with the machine and just spazzed out about spinning the wheel round and round - not really understanding the purpose of the machine. This time we decided to let him press a penny. When the penny got to the point where it was going through the press it got too hard for him to do on his own and I provided a little extra torque.
    I have joked with my wife about the possibility of coming to the zoo with a roll of uncirculated, shiny new pennies when he is closer to 5 and making a day of collecting a full set of the designs from all the machines. My wife countered with possibly starting a tradition of having him do one penny every time we come and building a set over time with each visit.


    In other news, my wife has been trolling my photographic efforts recently.
    I had set up the camera and tripod and made a little area for trying to image some things. My wife decided that she wanted to get a picture of the cake she had just made (the very pink cake she had just made). She walks up, says, "well, since you've got this set up so nice already," drops her piece of cake right in the middle of my set-up and takes a picture of it with her phone. She is smirking the entire time.  I'm just looking at her like, "Are you for real right now?" And she just laughs. 

    I'll cap off a family-centric post with an update on the pregnancy:
    As of yesterday, we're 27 weeks in with it expected that we'll have the baby by C-section at 34-35 weeks. The main thing at this point is that she must take things easy and watch for bleeding. If she bleeds or starts having early contractions it could force the doctors to take the baby out earlier - maybe immediately. I am told that these cases deliver prior to 34 weeks about 40% of the time.
    28 weeks into the pregnancy is a major milestone. At that point, the start of the third trimester, the baby can be born with minimal, if any, long-term health problems. That's only 6 days away. 30 weeks and 32 weeks are also great milestones with survival virtually guaranteed at that point. At 34 weeks, the baby might only stay in the NICU for one week.
    One week ago, on the 21st, we went out and took some maternity shots. I took the photos and retouched them myself and I've attached one of my favorites below. My camera skills were definitely part of the deal when she married me.

  20. Revenant
    A while back there was something going around that eBay, after this year I think, wouldn't allow coins, currency and bullion to be sold on the site.
    I remember saying or thinking at the time that, if they made that rule change, I'd probably be done with eBay just because that's literally all I shop for there and I just wouldn't see a point in looking or shopping there most of the time if that happened.
    Well, this week, as part of their 25th anniversary celebration, eBay sent me an email summarizing my activity / history on the site and it included this graphic.

    I think the electronics purchase was a control unit for a car's AC system, but... yeah. 95% Collectables and Art. Take that away and I haven't used eBay for much in the last 15 years.
    One track mind? One trick pony? I don't know... 
    Actually I think I used eBay years ago to buy a cheaper used camera body to have a back-up / secondary body for my canon lenses years ago... so maybe there's that too for electronics. Or maybe the AC control unit was the "other."  
  21. Revenant
    I don't intend this as a whine or a complaint - just want that out in front - but, having seen this, I wanted to comment on it here, this being a journal and a record of my thoughts and a chronicling of my activities here.
    After 12 years of getting the "Best In Category" award in the 1932 mint set category, we've been bumped from the top spot in the rankings by a new set. For clarity - there has been a set that outscores us for years now (I think 5 or 6) but it has always been obscured / private / hidden / whatever so we've been the top ranked set - but not really the highest scoring set. The new set started adding coins about 10 days ago and just yesterday a new coin has been added that makes that set outscore us by a whopping 19 points. Really, the thing that shocks me as much as anything about this is that it took this long. I've been expecting / waiting on this for years.
    Interestingly, the new set is made up of 5 PCGS coins and 1 NGC coin, making it almost a mirror image of our set, which has long had 1 PCGS coin and 5 NGC coins - the PCGS coin we have is not the same as the NGC coin that they have. If memory serves we actually have an NGC graded example for that PCGS-graded quarter, but it has a slightly lower grade so we don't / haven't used it in the set. I think I'm remembering that right anyway.
    This new set has therefore been made possible in part by the rules change this year allowing new PCGS coins into US sets again. But I can't really complain (and don't intend to) - We've been benefitting from the Grandfathering - but to a lesser degree than this set - for the last 7 years.
    I shot a message over to Choya about it just to let him know and for the laughs. We'll see if this convinces Choya to finally upgrade that old MS63 Eagle to something with a little more teeth. I've been saying that that coin was a prime target for upgrading / improving the set for a decade now. Even if he does though, this new set popping up just about 5 weeks before the cut-off virtually guarantees that they'll get the "Best in Category" award this year as I simply don't see us moving on a $2000+ dollar coin in that short of a time frame.
    Because the set has only 1 NGC coin to our 5 we will still win the "NGC - Best in Category" this year (assuming nothing else pops up in the next 5 weeks), but we won't take both awards in the category, for the first time in almost a decade of having both awards on lockdown.
    It has been one hell of a run - 12 years without a single upgrade or change to the set other than new pictures and description updates! I've often wondered if there's another set in the registry that can claim that.
  22. Revenant

    Yesterday’s Delivery

    By Revenant,


    2020 Awards
    So, unlike with the PMG plaque, which arrived on 2/27 - much to my shock – I can’t really call this one a surprise in the mail. I’d seen other’s posting about getting theirs on Monday and Tuesday, so I knew the arrival of this package was probably imminent. Still, it was great to get it.
    My home office and my windows sit almost directly above the front door to the house, so I heard the carrier scanning the barcodes and the beeping as it was dropped off and I wondered in that moment if that’s what it was because I wasn’t expecting anything else in the mail today.
    I didn’t open it right away. I took it upstairs and stuck it in the bedroom to wait until after the kids were asleep. I will likely repeat what I did last year and try to get a shot of the two boys together this year holding the two plaques for this year now that I have both, but I wanted to get a minute and just enjoy opening this and looking at it in peace myself. I opened the PMG plaque with Sam around and it took a while before he let me have it back.


    So, here’s the coin:

    A MS64 1881-S Morgan, which will be quite a partner / buddy for my MS64 1882-S Morgan.  I'm now ranked in the top 1,700 for Morgan sets in the registry. It's straight to the top now! #1 set, 2021 awards!
    I had guessed that the coin would be a 1 or 2 ounce graded silver NCLT from 2020. I was wrong and very pleasantly surprised. Fenntucky Mike posted an image of his full slab and (unsurprisingly) looks like all these Award Winner coins have the same 7-digit invoice number and they’re numbered 001 through… 50? I think? He got number -008 and I have -022. Gary appears to have -034.I wonder who got -001? Who got the last / highest number. I'm sure it was all random but it is funny to think about.
    (Edited to add this bit, which I'd said as a comment elsewhere) Honestly, the sheer number of coins they had to give away - and the unstated expectation that everyone would be getting the same / mostly the same thing - is the main reason I was REALLY expecting the coin to be 2020 NCLT, just because those would fit because of the year and would be easy to get in an arbitrarily large number in the same basic grade / condition (69/70).They really surprised me with this one, managing to give 50+ people MS64 Morgans from San Francisco from just a couple of years, but, as Gary said, they are more common dates. Even then, I really wonder if it was at all "interesting" to round them up and how they went about it - Did they go into the market for RAW coins until they had enough MS64s? Did they buy some of their previously graded MS64's on the market? A little of both?
    When the PMG plaque arrived I posted a shot of the 5 together and Fenntucky Mike said something along the lines of I’d need another or a bigger shelf soon. I shifted some things around, cleaned up my desk, and popped over to Michael’s to buy another stand last month, so here is my proof. I made it work (for now). If NGC or PMG are nice enough to give me something next year I'll cross that bridge and deal with that “problem” when the time comes.

    I also got the new certificates in the mail over the weekend. So far, I’ve managed to keep track of all the certificates I’ve gotten since 2016 – including now 5 certificates for the 10G set for all the years since my marriage and Ben's birth.. 
    Thanks again to NGC! Thanks again for those who read these and say they like it / what I write.
    The version of myself that Joined the registry in 2007, the version of myself that started this journal as a 20 year old, did not, and would not have imagined this. Not what’s sitting on my desk hutch now, not my life as it is now, not my wife or my sons, not this past year.
    I’m not done yet! More to come!
    Side note, but one of Shandy’s current obsessions is our next housing situation. With our current lease up on 3/31/2022 she’s looking to move us closer to her parents for more access to free baby-sitting and more date nights. So there’s a good chance that, if I win anything next year – be it plaques or certificates – they’ll be delivered to the new address / the new home or subject to mail forwarding. But we’re hoping that will be the last home – for the foreseeable future anyway. She was looking at this last night even!
    I think Ben’s Beyblade collection now numbers 19 – with three more seemingly lost forever in some magical void that only children can access in some 1-way capacity. I’m pretty committed to not buying more but he does get a weekly allowance now so what ne does with his allowance is his business!
  23. Revenant

    Woohoo! Thank you!

    By Revenant,

    So, first off, thank you to NGC for the journal award!

    When the announcement of what would be given out this year made no mention of the journal awards, I was thinking that meant there would be no journal awards this year - and I don't think I was alone in that assumption. Participation in the journals has dropped aggressively since 2017 and, given that, it certainly could have been an understandable move. I suppose it’s possible that it was their intent to do away with it, but then we pulled out enough participation this year to make them change their minds. Or maybe they were just hedging their bets and not committing. We’ll never know – I doubt they’d ever tell us even if they were considering it.

    In any case, I am happy to be wrong and grateful to get it.

    Of course, that’s not the only happy surprise here – part of the reason why I’m posting this today and not on Friday is I wanted to make sure I was reading the announcement correctly.

    This year, for the first time that I’m aware of, the journal award winners are getting a $500 grading credit, just like the winners in the other categories – another cool thing to be grateful for!

    I have a couple of ideas for how I’m going to put that to use – one is rather likely to happen if I can find a way to make it work. More on that later.

  24. Revenant
    Maybe I shouldn't post this... feels like it might be stepping on a landmine... but... I'm not that smart. So...
    I had to go to the bank today to deposit some cash that a relative gave me to pay for something. I figured while I was in the bank anyway I'd just see if they had any of the new quarters. I thought it might be fun to search some rolls. I figured if I found anything I'd stick them in 2x2 mylar flips and sit on them for 10+ years.
    When I got back into coin collecting as an adult around 2006 / 2007 the first thing I did was buy some coin albums / folders for pennies (which later expanded to include dimes, nickels, and quarters) and see what I could do trying to fill them by pulling from circulation / searching rolls. It's a fun way to kill an afternoon sometimes.
    Well, I'm out in what might be considered the boonies, or on the edge of such, and we don't have big bank branches out here, mostly just small banking centers. My branch doesn't get quarters unless they order them and they don't order new ones every time the mint releases an new design, so I was SOL. They only had loose coins and regular rolls, nothing fresh from the mint.
    So I just deposited my cash and went home with my lightbulbs so I can stop living like a mole with burned out bulbs. I'm just not willing to kill 2-3 hours of my life making a special trip out to a larger branch further into town just to get quarter rolls in the hopes of finding something.
    Sam had to have a CT yesterday after a head ultrasound / MRI (not even sure which) showed that he had a fluid pocket in his head left over from everything draining out after the shunt was put in. CT showed that it was basically just CSF - no fresh blood. So the neurosurgeon is happy and we'll go back in late June or July for a follow-up. It was very strange seeing him packed in in such a way that he couldn't move during the scan, but he was inclined to nap at the time so he just got comfy and slept through it.

  25. Revenant
    I wanted to share a bit of new vs old photo results. Both the coin images are of the obverse of the 1876.
    I set up my equipment the same way I usually do for macro photography of miniatures and other really small objects. I have a 105 mm f/2.8 VR Macro lens for my D600 and I added the 2x teleconverter so I could shoot really close in to the coin - having the coin fill most of the frame for really high resolution images - while still staying far enough back that I didn't get in the way of my light. I set up 2 speedlites. I initially was going to use both and have them behind the diffusion panels of the shadowbox but that was killing the luster in the images. I ended up just using one speedlite with a 1/128th full power setting undiffused. That gave me the results I liked the best. Using a small LED flash light to shine a little light on the coin made it much easier to autofocus with the lens. It's fairly dark in the shadowbox and the 2x teleconverter limits the effective aperture of the lens, making it hard to get enough light in for the autofocus to succeed without a little help. The circle of light projected by the flashlight also made it easier to keep the coins positioned consistently when swapping them out. Since the light from the small flashlight is so week it doesn't significantly impact the final image - the much more powerful speedlite dominates in the 1/100 of a second in which the image is taken.
    Hopefully writing all of this down here will give me something to reference and help me remember later when I want to do this again. I'm including a picture of the set-up on the floor of the room I use as a home-office for now. I suppose it might be easier to do these things if I just set all of this up on a table and didn't force myself to flatten myself out on my stomach on the ground but... hey, I'm still fairly young (31) and don't have trouble getting back up... yet.
    I was able to basically stand the slabs on their edge with them leaning ever so slightly back on the back of the shadowbox in some cases.
    I think the new shots have much better detail, especially in his hair, beard and the field of the coin. They also look a lot sharper overall.
    I'm not sure how this compares to how most others do it. Most of my camera equipment - except for the macro lens itself - was purchased for portrait and event photography and I generally find myself putting the same equipment to use here. I'd love to get a really nice lens-mounted ring-flash one of these days. I think that would provide the best and easiest lighting for something like this.  But so far I just haven't been able to justify the cost.