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Revenant

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Journal Entries posted by Revenant

  1. Revenant
    My wife's mother is offering to take her on a trip with her to New York City in a couple of weeks. This would mean she'd be taking the baby an leaving me at home with the 3 year old for three days.
    She was asking me if there was anything I'd like her to bring back and the answer was, honestly, no.
    I went to New York myself when I was 11 and I got a few things from that trip, one or two of which I still have to this day. Those mean more to me than anything that she'd bring back from a trip I didn't go on would.
    My wife and I talked about it and there just comes a point in your life when you just have enough random nick-knacks in your house.
    I just told her that, if we're going to spend money on something fun for me, I'd rather her just let me have some money I can put towards coins and currency or one of my other current projects. I'd just get more enjoyment out of that than some random thing from New York.
    If she'd been going to a different country my response would have been different to a degree but pretty easy. I like getting the left-over pocket change / coins from a trip like that. Even if the coins aren't rare I like to keep them and look at them and have stashes of coins from many countries because of things like this. But she's not going to come back with any fun coins from a trip to New York.
    Mentally I'm in the process of "switching gears" a bit. I spent the first 7 months or so of this year focusing on building up my Zimbabwe note set. I've reached a point where I'm kind of done with that for now and will probably be taking a break from it unless a really nice deal becomes available. Around Sam's birth the set was nice to work on - I could get notes very cheap and being able to constantly get new notes, take pictures, add descriptions, and such formed a nice stress relief for me. Things are getting a little more settled now and that role of the project is a little less important in the short term. Now I'm thinking I want to horde my cash a little and see if I can do something similar to last year around the end of the year and pick up a coin for the 10G set or another 19th century European gold coin - a British Sovereign and an Italian 20 Lira would both be high on my list now that I have the French Angel and Rooster.
  2. Revenant
    … when you deal with things that are priced close to melt anyway.
    When I was shopping for an 1877 10G late last year the common dates in the series in MS65 and lower were going for about $275. That's not that much given that the coins had a melt value of about $242 with gold around $1200/oz.
    I have an eBay saved search for these things that I keep active even at times like now when I'm not really actively hunting.
    The other day a couple of auctions popped up for an MS61 1875 and MS62 1876. These are easily the two most common dates with the highest mintage and if it isn't MS65 it might as well not even be graded. Last year you would have been lucky to get $275 for these. So I laughed when I saw bidding starting at $350 for them.
    Then I had to think about it...
    With gold at about $1500/oz the melt on these things has gone up to about $300. So I still think $350 is a bit ambitious for these things - they're not going to recover those grading fees - but $325-330 is probably reasonable / achieve able and $350 isn't as crazy as I was thinking at first.
    This window of cheap gold that we've been enjoying since about 2013/2014 might be closing for a while. (It fell from the highs in 2011 but it was coming down more gradually for a while after that.)
     
  3. Revenant
    It’s almost always a little funny when my wife takes notice of something in my collection that she’s never seen, noticed or paid attention to before. She’s never been especially aware of some of the things in my collection because I don’t talk about them much. Other things I talk about all the time and she probably wishes she could stop hearing about. But sometimes she’ll notice something and ask me if it’s new and I’ll just be like, “Nope. I’ve owned that longer than I’ve known you.” Anyway...
    I have a pair of “silver” bars in my collection that I have to put quotes on the “silver” for because they aren’t really silver. They’re plated with a whopping 15 grains of fine silver. The rest is base metal. Buying these was one my earliest and dumbest moments as a collector. I got them because I thought the designs were neat - they deal with the horoscopes / star signs. I’ve never thought much about horoscopes or put stock in them, but these were fun to look at. So, I got them - while failing to read the fine print. I’ve kept these over the years as a reminder to be more careful and be more aware of what I’m buying /bidding on, what it actually is and not what I think it is.
    There’s just the two of them, not a full set of twelve because I got these in hand, realized the mistake I’d made and didn’t get any more. The two I ended up with were Libra and Gemini. I’m a libra. It so happens that my wife is a Gemini.
    I bought these nearly a decade before I even met her. My wife saw these and thought it was funny and made a joke about “maybe it was meant to be” and laughed at the joke because neither of us puts any stock in such things.
    I’ll agree that it’s an odd coincidence, but not one I can find particularly amusing or gratifying. Something about linking one of my dumber collecting mistakes to my marriage just doesn’t fill me with warmth.
    Side note but Ben is an Aries. Samuel would have been a Taurus if he was born on his original due date. He ended up being an Aquarius.
  4. 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.

  5. Revenant
    Looking back, I made the first entry into this journal on June 14, 2007, when I was not quite 21 years old (clocking in at 32 now, with a receding hairline. Oh, how it does sting a bit). 
     
    This was 10 years before NGC would switch to the new (current) journal format and we’d gain the ability to give a unique name to our journals. I’ve given some thought over time to what I think I’d like to call this (other than just “Revenant” or “Revenant’s Journal”) and I think I’ve settled on an answer: 
    “When I’m Wiser and I’m Older.” 
     
    It’s a reference to a song by Avicii that I’ve loved ever since the first time that I heard it, called “Wake me up.” The first versus and the chorus of the song are as follows: 
     
    Feeling my way through the darkness 
    Guided by a beating heart 
    I can't tell where the journey will end 
    But I know where to start 
    They tell me I'm too young to understand 
    They say I'm caught up in a dream 
    Well life will pass me by if I don't open up my eyes 
    Well that's fine by me 
     
    So wake me up when it's all over 
    When I'm wiser and I'm older 
    All this time I was finding myself, and I 
    Didn't know I was lost 
     
    I had this idea when thinking about a comment I made about the hobby and life being a journey and the self-discovery aspect of that on thisistheshow’s journal entry a few months ago. 
     
    The part of the song I’ve always loved are the last two lines of the chorus, “all this time I was finding myself and I didn’t know I was lost.” I feel like that fits well with my experience and the changes I’ve undergone in the last 12 years – spanned and covered somewhat unevenly by this journal. 
    It's hard to think of a core aspect of myself that hasn’t changed much since this journal was started. I’ve gone from being a single, 20-year-old, undergrad college student to being a married father of two, with a PhD, 7 published peer-reviewed papers. The things that were the all-consuming focus of my collecting life 10 years ago are almost an afterthought at the moment as I pursue radically different endeavors.
     
    It’ll be interesting to see what I’m doing in another 10 years and if I’m still writing entries here. 
     
    Naming the PMG journal “Gradually, then suddenly,” to match my signature set was pretty easy comparatively. That collection of entries / writings basically exists as a testament to  my obsession with those notes and hyperinflation notes in general – and, one of these days, when I’ve completed or mostly completed the Zimbabwe set, I am going to expand to include Yugoslavian, Venezuelan, Hungarian, Argentinian and other hyperinflation notes. At least, that’ll be the plan / hope. 
     
    Who knows? Maybe one of these days all of this will offer my sons some insight into how my head works. 
  6. Revenant
    Some praises need to be sung for the people that hang out here.
    A few weeks (maybe months at this point) Sheik Sheck offered to send me something for Sam and I got this a short time later:

    This is a ZImbabwean P-9, 100 ZWD note. It's one of the few first dollar notes I didn't have a PMG graded example of. It also happens to be the series 2 note that has an image of elephants in the lower corner that is mirrored on the front and back of the note (elephants being the theme we chose for Sam's nursery and Ben's original favorite animal at the zoo - now he's obsessed with lions and tigers). The other notes feature different animals, like giraffe's and rhinos. I'd been trying to figure out which one, if any, had elephants when I got this in the mail and saw it. That is sitting in a small currency album for now. I'm debating either leaving it in there or putting it in a small floating mount frame and letting them look at it on the wall as they get older.
    Another member had been sending me messages about and talking to me about the Zimbabwean notes - I won't name them because they don't post publicly so far as I can tell so I'm going to respect that. A friend of his gave him a pair of uncirculated Zimbabwean 100 Trillion notes along with some German hyperinflation notes from the early 1920s. I told him to buy that guy a drink if he sells the 100 trillion notes because he can get about $100-200 a piece for them. I also jokingly said that I was jealous of the German notes because I love hyperinflation notes in general and would be looking to get some of those one day. He didn't really want to keep them and didn't want to go through the effort to sell them so he offered to let me have them. USPS turned getting them into an adventure in the worst way possible but I'll avoid going off on that rant / tangent. I got them just recently. 

    I think this may be one of the few times my wife has genuinely found something like this neat (she studied German in High School).
    He also sent these with the notes for Sam / the boys.

    I'll call them "replicas" and not "fakes" - they're actually marked to indicate that they aren't real. According to the sender, they were a in friend's father's collection and he had a habit of buying things off infomercials while drunk - but the rest of his collection, which was real, went for $20,000+ when he helped the son sell it. Moral of the story: Don't watch infomercials while drunk? 
    I could see Ben more so than Sam having some fun with these at the moment. Sam will probably like them in 2-3 years - though, he is a baby and the are shiny. Since I have the real things too these may ultimately be used as fun teaching tools.
    I really appreciate those of you who read these things and like them, and I love that there are people out there in this community that just freely offer and share things like this. I think this kind of thing deserves props.
  7. Revenant
    Ben went to the museum with my wife today and operated the penny press himself.

    Expert press operator that he is, apparently something went slightly wrong. 

    Even so, I think it's fair to say that he was happy with the results.

    Making pre-schoolers happy and making a collector can be quite cheap and easy - $5 for the album and $0.51 every time he gets a coin to put in it.
    He wants to take that album with him whenever he goes to the zoo or the museum now. Sometimes other places too. He just wants it with him because he loves it.
  8. Revenant
    I’ve made references to a piggy bank in a previous journal but one thing I don’t know if I’ve discussed is what the piggy bank is. The piggy bank is a small dog that has been in my possession since I was around Ben’s age, plus or minus a bit - I was too young to remember.

    This is one of two piggy banks that I still have from this early period of my life. The other one is metal, but it no longer works as a piggy bank because I lost the door that goes on the bottom of it to keep the coins in.

    Of all the things I own, I think these two piggy banks are two of three things have been with me the longest, tied with an old teddy bear that was with me from my days in a crib. The bear these days mostly belongs to Ben.
    After we emptied and refilled this (puppy) piggy bank a couple of times my son began to refer to this as “feeding the puppy” or “feeding the money to the puppy.” This is both cute and a little funny given the location of the slot for putting the coins into the piggy bank - it’s not at the dog’s mouth, it’s on the back of the head. I don’t think I’ve ever fed a pet through the skull but… kid logic at its finest.
    This has also led to some funny one-offs that I’m sure would have gotten us some funny looks if anyone was paying attention.
    Shandy: “Oh, look! Daddy found a dime! Ben, do you want to feed it to the puppy later?”
    Ben: “YEAH!” *Smiles*
    The other day Ben decided that he needed to feed “daddy’s monies” - the one ounce silver buffalo rounds - to the puppy.
    The silver coins were picked in part, as I’ve said before, for being big - for being too big for him to try to swallow. At the same time, they’re a lot larger than anything this piggy bank (puppy bank?) was intended to accept - they’re too big to fit in the hole.
    This led to some rather over-zealous attempts by my son to forcefully shove one of them into the slot, which I quickly stopped because I really didn’t want to see him damage my old coin bank.
    That in turn led to me getting a piece of a toddler’s mind as he told me he did not approve of my silly opinions getting in the way of his wants.
  9. Revenant
    I still have this from the first time I became a paid member some 10-11 years ago. Part of me wonders if they still give these to new paid members and just how bad I date myself and how long I've been here based on the fact that I have this. I noticed it collecting dust in a corner of my desk. Maybe I'll give it a perch next to the plaques.

  10. Revenant
    We've been to the zoo a couple more times and gotten Ben a couple of new pennies. This almost immediately brought forward the idea of how do we help him not lose them and keep track of all of them? So I decided to see what I could get on Amazon. I was able to find some "Penny Passport" books for a good price. A seller was offering 1 for about $7.80 and a set of 3 for $15 so I just bought a group of three. I figured, one for him, one for me, and one for Sam and we'll all do it together over time. Each album holds 36 pennies so I'll just get more as needed. They each come with 1 random elongated cent. I let Ben decide which one each one of us got. I have a feeling in a few years Ben might have some regrets when he realizes that he gave Sam the one for Roswell, New Mexico with the flying saucer on it, but he took the one from the San Antonio zoo for himself.

    Recently Ben has been a bit spoiled by both his grandparents and us and almost every day he looks to see if there's a package that's been delivered with a "surprise" for him. This is partially my fault because for a few days we were getting several packages with things like water guns that he's finally old enough to start playing with. Expectations will have to be recalibrated but I'll deal with that later. But all of this meant we had to "find" the package on the porch (even though I'd gotten it from the mailbox earlier) and open it together.

    All and all I'd say he was excited.

    Later on, at bed time, he wanted to take it to bed with him. The next day, when they were getting ready to go to the children's museum, he wanted to take it with him to that.
    I'll have to see if I can convince my wife to let me sneak a few extra the next time we go so I can catch up with him in the books / collection. (the wife: "It's not a competition." … "It totally is.")
    I have 3 old elongated cents from my child hood from Moody Gardens, the San Jacinto Monument, and the Battleship Texas. I'd considered putting those in this new album. But, when I found them, I found that my younger self hadn't done a very good job with handling and storage and they all look a bit green. I'm considering excluding those, especially given their condition and just starting fresh, doing this with Ben and Sam.
  11. Revenant
    We’ve had a fair bit of discussion in the boards lately on phantom sets, ghost sets, inactive sets, and sets with coins that a person no longer owns or never owned or what have you. It’s all a bit cloak and dagger for me. But the discussion did remind me of something that happened to me about 5 years ago.

    I got a notification from NGC that someone else had tried to register a penny that I had registered in one of my sets.

    I immediately started getting indignant and bent out shape because “how dare this person try to register my coin in their set because I clearly still own it and blah blah…”

    Fortunately, for me, I had the idea to get the coin out of the box and look at it before saying or doing anything.

    The coin(s) were bought from a dealer that had submitted a bunch of cents on one invoice. I think they’d even submitted a bunch of this date and mint mark – maybe even a full BU roll. When I bought my coin and registered it to my account, I got one digit of the certification number – part of the 3-digit section that is specific to the coin, not the 7-digit invoice number – wrong.

    It happened that, in this case, the coin that had that certification number had the same date, mint mark and grade as the one I’d bought. So when I made that mistake the system accepted the cert#, the coin went into the slot in the set that I was trying to put it in, and I never noticed anything was wrong – until some other registry member tried to register that coin!

    When I saw what I’d done I – rather sheepishly – released the certification number to the person asking for it and added in the coin that I actually had – double checking the certification number a little more closely this time.

    Looking back on this 5 years later I’m happy to share it and less embarrassed by it because I fortunately took the time to check again and see what was going on before saying or doing anything stupid.

    Ultimately, this is a pretty harmless example. I did own a coin of that type in that grade. I was never claiming anything that wasn’t true – I’d just entered the wrong number. But it’s still a funny story and something to think about, I think.

  12. 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.

  13. Revenant

    The New '32.

    By Revenant,

    Sleep is a splendid and wonderful thing, when you can get it.

    I finally got to have some rest yesterday and, rather than taking a nap in the afternoon I decided to get some pictures taken, edited and sent over to Choya with the new set and coin descriptions. He indicated his approval, so the newly updated 1932 set is up.

    If you've seen the set before I don't think the new version is going to have many surprises for you. Other than the updates regarding Bob to the set description it's a fairly minor update to adjust for 10 years having gone by - updated population numbers where I reference them, some discussion on the 1932 quarter about it's relatively newly acquired renegade status, etc. It needed to be freshened up but I didn't want to take a hammer to the presentation / format that won an award in 2011.
    The main advantage I think the new shots / images are going to have over the old ones is consistency and accuracy in the rendering of the colors, which was a major problem with the old photos. Taking the pictures all together, at the same time, with the same lights, using similar camera settings, and using photoshop on the RAW files to adjust the white balance on the shots so that I get a true, neutral white (or close to it) for the core / insert of the slab helps this greatly.

    Yes, the name of this post is totally (to my mind) a reference to DC comics and the "New '52." Because I'm a geek like that.
    I'm finally starting to research the Texas Independence Commemoratives a little more with regards to the history of the coins themselves, which is a bit funny to me given that we built that set 10 years ago. I'm starting to find some interesting things.

     
    I'm going to show the new quarter images below because the quarters are the stars of the set.
     






  14. Revenant
    My wife hit upon the idea of putting coins / spare change in some of the eggs for the Easter egg hunt we set up for Benjamin late in the day on Easter Sunday. We had dinner with her parents and then did an egg hunt just for him in the back yard around 6:30 or so. Shandy came up with the idea of letting him have money in some of his eggs completely on her own. It was her idea. I had nothing to do with it – I swear! Some of the eggs hand your standard fair – jelly beans, chocolate kisses, Reese’s peanut butter cups – and some of them had quarters, nickels and dimes.

    Ben was quite excited to have the money in some of his eggs. As he started emptying them, I got him 2 zip-lock sandwich bags = one for the coins and one for the candy. I’ll admit that I wasn’t totally thrilled about him touching the coins and the candy together / one after another while stuffing his face. Pocket change isn’t terribly clean / sanitary, but I guess the germs will be good for him in the long run.

    He didn’t even get half way through opening the many, many eggs they left for him to find before he got bored and went back to playing. When the family asked what was in his basket it went a bit like this:

    “What was in your Easter basket?”

    “EGGS!”

    “Okay… What was in the eggs?”

    “Lots of money!! … and lots of candy.”

    Seriously – he said money first. Like he was more excited about the coins than the candy.

    Interesting… This has potential.

    We’ll have to empty the rest of them later. He’ll be hopped up on sugar for days. The coins will go into the puppy.

  15. Revenant
    Things went well and fell into place yesterday and Sam was released this morning. He's finally home from the NICU after 59 days (16 days before his due date).
    2-12-2019 to 4-12-2019 - Finally home from the hospital.
    Now the fun really starts. I may not be getting to play with coins and the camera this weekend...
    USPS was supposed to deliver a package yesterday for the Zimbabwe set. Apparently, even though the package has been in Houston since Wednesday, they're being a bunch a insufficiently_thoughtful_persons with it and it's probably not even going to be delivered today. I don't know how it takes even the postal service 2 days (much less 3) to make something go from one side of Houston to another.





  16. 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.

  17. Revenant
    Sam has been doing well since having the shunt put in but he’s having trouble getting through all his feeds without help. He hasn’t had a brady in days though. We’re trying to see if we might be able to (finally) bring him home, even if it’s with an NG (nasogastric) tube to supplement his feeds. I went to the hospital yesterday to learn how to “install” the tube. I do not know who came up with the idea of using the word “install” to describe threading a tube into an infant’s nose, through his throat and down into his stomach. It’s actually pretty simple, but I wouldn’t call it fun.

    He has been in the hospital for 8 weeks. It feels like it’s been 8 months some days. He still needs to pass his car seat test though and it’s unlikely that we’ll get to bring him home before early to mid-next week. Still... maybe before Easter we’ll all be home. He’s doing very well, but just getting enough food is hard when you’re 5.5 lbs.

    We got to give Bob the send-off he deserved today – complete with military honors and the flag going to his wife. When it was all over, I picked up the coins for the ‘32 set from him to try to update the pictures. I also have a copy of the full obit now. I’m going to use that to further refine the updates I’m planning for the set description. I’m hoping, soon, I’ll get put up the new descriptions with the new photos in one big update to it.

    Since they were in the same box, I brought the Texas Commemoratives set back with me too – most of those don’t have images at all and it’s a great little set. If I’m remembering this right, Choya is a 5th generation Texan through his father. That was the major motivation for him wanting to make that set. At some point, when life maybe gets just a little more settled, it could be fun to try to take that set and build it up and make something out of it from a family history perspective. If I’m right about him being 5th generation maybe something could be done around the 5 generations and the 5 years of issuance of that half dollar...

    In a different vein....

    Some coins, as we all know, end up in bags or rolls in the backs of big vaults and they never see the light of day and never see circulation and they survive as uncirculated beauties for decades. That’s why we still have so many BU Morgan dollars floating around, 100-150 years after production.

    Other coins… just don’t get that lucky…

    I was walking down the street the other day with my son - very slowly making our way towards a local park – when I found this in a neighbor’s driveway.



    Ouch…

    2018…

    Life is brutal and short for some unlucky coins.


     
  18. Revenant
    A while ago I was looking back through some of my old journal entries, something which I’m sure many of the long-time journal author’s do, and I found the first entry that references my 10G set, just as it was getting started, which I made right around 10 years ago in May 2009.
    The thing that struck me in reading that post was how much of that information I’d forgotten in the intervening years.
    I remembered that the 1875 was the first coin purchased for the set. I had not remembered that I stumbled upon the 10G series and that coin because I was shopping for 1875 dated gold coins – a year I apparently picked out because of a, in retrospect, rather bizarre feat of mental gymnastics. I had not remembered that Gary (gherrman44) had linked me to / shown me the PCGS MS67 that I ultimately bought.
    If I had not written that down myself, I don’t think I would have ever remembered it, and I’m not sure I would have believed some of it.
    Sometimes reading my old journals is fun. Sometimes it’s painful. Sometimes… the stupid. It burns. Sometimes reading the old entries feels like reading the thoughts of a different person. Sometimes I really wish it was a different person.
    There are days when I wish I could split my journal, the old from the new, possibly using the day / time when the system switched over to the new format in 2017, because I feel like my perspective and my voice has changed so drastically since the last time I was more active in the 2007-2010 period and there are things I said and positions that I took back then that I would not voice or agree with now. There’s also an odd problem with some of the old journals whereby some punctuation marks have been replaced with “?” throughout the post. There’s an old post from 2009 that I’m pretty sure I called “Thanks!” That now reads, “Thanks?” I came across that and thought, “What? Well that seems a little ungrateful of me…” Lol
    Still, I suppose that, too, is in the nature of a journal maintained for a long period of time – and you take the good with the bad.
    Mokiechan accomplished something akin to that (splitting off and starting anew) by just making a new account but that’s too drastic for my liking. While it is tempting some days, I wouldn’t have wanted to just lose / burn / orphan my old posts and content and lose that part of my history on here.
  19. Revenant
    As they say, “when it rains it pours.”
    My step-father's father, Bob Wright passed away yesterday. I can’t say it came as a complete shock, but the timing was still surprising. I spent as much of the day as I could with my Step-father on Friday (3/28) while still making it back to my side of town to get my son from daycare – we live about 45 miles away from each other.
    The loss of Choya’s mother was the instigation for building the 1932 mint set and the other birthyear sets that we made around 2008 and 2009. The description for the set that I wrote heavily emphasized her and that point as a result, but 1932 is also the birth year for his father so we always knew that set would ultimately pull double-duty and it was another reason to build it up with high-grade coins. In the description I wrote:
    “1932 is also the birth year for Choya’s father. Hopefully he'll be with us for several years to come yet.”
    I wrote that (I think) in the early months of either 2009, maybe 2010, so right around 9 or 10 years ago (I think the “history” tab only goes back to early 2010 and doesn’t reflect / indicate changes that don’t change the score so it’s hard to tell looking back at it now). Looking at it like that, I guess I mostly got my wish, but, it’s never long enough, and it’s never going to be.
    We’ll be getting an obituary written up for him soon and I’ll probably use some or all of that as the basis for updating the description of the 1932 mint set. That’ll be the first time I’ve made any meaningful changes to that set in the last 9-10 years and it’ll probably be one of the last times I update the set for quite a while. That said, I do want to get the coins from my step-father at some point and take new photos to update that part of the set’s presentation. My abilities with the camera have come an extremely long way in the last 10 years and I think I can significantly improve the presentation of that set.
    I feel very much aware of the “cycle of life” lately – 6 week old premie babies, the passing of one of the last members of a prior generation, watching my step-father prepare for a funeral and thinking about the a day in the future when we’ll start to see more members of his generation pass and it will be myself and my siblings and cousins making the preparations. I frequently think about and see parallels in my interactions with my son vs my own childhood.
  20. Revenant
    After my son’s lukewarm response to the Chuck E Cheese 40-year tokens in the aftermath of his birthday party I left the tokens sitting out on my nightstand. Ben comes into our bedroom a lot in the mornings when he first wakes up and he likes getting things off my nightstand and playing with daddy’s stuff.
    Today he comes into our room and sees the tokens sitting there. He takes interest, picks one up, holds it out to me and says, “Daddy, I need it” - his way of telling me I need to get it out of the packaging.
    I get it out of the package - taking some care to not damage the cardboard card too badly and give it to him. I quickly hid the 2nd one - I’m going to keep that one in the original package and safe for later.
    He proceeded to spend the next few minutes playing with it in our bed and telling us how it was his money and it wasn’t for Samuel or Bentley (the dog) - just him. I agree with him that it isn’t for the dog - I don’t need that vet bill in my life right now.  
    We came downstairs shortly thereafter to start working on lunch. He sat down in front of the TV to watch one of his favorite TV shows. He brought the token with him and played with it in his hands while he sat there, sometimes dropping it on the tile and listening to the sound it made - the girl at the counter thought it was plastic, but this thing hits tile with a ringing that only metal makes, I’m guessing aluminum, zinc or nickel… But then again, based on the color, it might be manganese brass like the presidential dollars.
    I loved watching the way he absent-mindedly played with it and twirled it between his fingers while he sat there.
     

    It didn’t last long - he quickly moved on to something else. He is 3 after all. But I found this very encouraging.
    Edited to add:
    Today turned into a great and hysterical day for me, Ben, and coins (there was another aspect to this day / weekend that I'll address separately tomorrow but... Anyway). 
    Ben went into my office and grabbed up that tube of Silver rounds and said he wanted to play with them. This turned to me having to shower him with silver rounds while he rolled around in them in our bed, laughing uproariously the entire time and declaring that it's all his money and talking about buying his new helmet while grabbing up the silver like he was going to use that to pay for his new bike helmet when we go to the store.


  21. Revenant
    Today we had Ben’s 3rd birthday party at Chuck E Cheese’s (which my son still calls “Micka Mouse” because I don’t think he yet fully understands that Mickey Mouse and Chuck E Cheese are different characters, but he understands that they’re both mice). He loves going there and he’ll often ask, “can I got to Micka Mouse?” So it seemed like a great place for his party. The party was originally supposed to be March 3rd. We’d planned to have it really early just in case my wife was put on bed rest at the end of the pregnancy but… we all know how that turned out. So we later rescheduled it to today to bring it closer to his actual birthday.
    Not to plug too shamelessly here but I can’t really say enough for how happy I am with our decision to have the party there. For a very reasonable price we got to have a party for 11 kids and each kid got pizza, unlimited play for 2 hours, bags of goodies / party favors, etc. Also for a very reasonable price they even provided a great Paw Patrol cake and the kid is obsessed with Paw Patrol. We didn’t have to do anything for the party other than show up and pay the bill at the end. They only charged a small upfront deposit, we were able to reschedule it with almost no effort, we were able to change the number of kids / attendees at the last minute as needed… Honestly, with everything else going on with Sam and everything, especially this weekend, I don’t know how we could have had a birthday party for Ben without an option like this and it was great to be able to have a few hours today to make about Ben with all the craziness with Sam’s birth and care.
     

    This Friday (3/22) was the day my wife was originally supposed to have a C-section birth for Sam. It became the day they scheduled Sam for surgery to put in a shunt to relieve the fluid/pressure build-up in his head. We'd been watching the situation for weeks and hoping it would resolve on it's own but they decide last week that it was time to take action on it. The surgery got pushed back on Friday and he had the surgery first thing Saturday morning. I’m very happy to say it went great, he’s recovering very well and seems to be doing much better. His head looks much better now. It’s been a relief to have it go well. If he hadn’t been recovering well that’s one of the few things that could have made us cancel / delay the party today. With everything we had going on everyone kept asking if the party was still on because they honestly expected us to cancel, but Ben had been looking forward to this and we’d all been talking about this and we wanted him to have his day and celebrate him too in all of this. 
    We were at the hospital most of the weekend though while Ben spent a couple of nights at Grannie and PawPaw's house and I've spent a number of hours holding Sam this weekend, before and after the surgery.
     

    Now… let me see if I can get back to my original point and what I was referencing in the title of this post…
    Ben got a LOT of free tokens for being the birthday boy and other things (like 2500), but, by the time we were trying to pick out prizes (after being there 3 hours), he was tired and grumpy. We couldn’t get him to agree on what prizes he wanted. He’d asked for one of the prizes up high that was about 6000-8000 tickets and he didn’t have THAT many. After he got told no on that he just got grumpy and wouldn’t agree to anything. He finally agreed to let me pick instead. After he agreed to that my wife lead him away to go gather up the last of our stuff.
    I picked 3-4 things that I thought he’d enjoy including this little grabby claw that he’s now a bit obsessed over. Then I got down to about 200 tickets and, for anyone that has been in one of these places, ever, you know you can’t get a lot for that.
    But then I saw these things that looked like a token for “40 years of Chuck E Cheese” for 99 cents / tokens. I asked the girl at the counter about those and she’s like, “Yeah, but that’s just a little plastic token,” like it wasn't all that great or something. I’m just thinking, “Perfect!” I had her give me two of them – little gold colored tokens inset into cardboard holders. We now have a “Micka Mouse Money.”
    I will turn this kid into a coin collector yet! Also – my wife should probably never leave me unsupervised if she doesn’t want to have these things happen, but she’s allowed to roll her eyes and laugh at me.
     

    I haven’t actually shown him or talked to him about the tokens yet. He got a ton of toys today and those toys are all way cooler than those little tokens (I think the kid made out like a bandit. He didn't even want to play in the arcade after he opened presents. He just wanted to play with his new Paw Patrol toy) and so I’m going to have no luck getting something like that to hold his attention for a while with Paw Patrol toys and dinosaur toys and all that other stuff to go nuts over. I may have to give it a few days before I trot them out. We’ll see.
    The Zoo and now Chuck E Cheese. If I can just keep getting him to associate all of his favorite childhood places and memories with coins, tokens and shiny round things I might make a coin collector out of him yet.
  22. Revenant
    Some of you may remember from my post about getting my MS65 1888 in early 2018 that, at the time I won that coin, I’d only seen one other coin of that date come up for sale that had been graded by NGC. That wasn’t too surprising given that, at the time, only 20 had been graded by NGC and, even now, only 22 have been encapsulated by NGC.
    I don’t think I’ve ever bothered to check this before but PCGS has graded a total of 33. So, assuming there hasn’t been any that were cracked out and/or re-submitted without having the old labels sent in to have them pulled from the census, there’s at most 55 of these coins graded by the two major companies. Side note – but I’m a bit surprised that more of these have been graded by PCGS than NGC – I thought NGC tended to grade more World coins and had a better reputation with World coins but maybe collectors of this series prefer PCGS overall – or maybe they used to. It’s all hard to say for sure.
    That other coin was an MS-62 that the seller wanted $875.00 for. I watched that thing I think for the better part of two years, wondering if it would sell and wondering if the seller would drop the price if it didn’t – they never did. In early 2016 – before I got laid off a few months later - I tried to offer the seller $650 for it - more than reasonable I thought at the time (I think the price guide at the time put it at about $575 in MS63). They still wanted over $800 and counter-offered with $825.
    I passed. I had had a hard enough time just making that offer. I found the idea of an MS62 for that set fairly underwhelming. I really wanted MS65 or better for that set but I had been somewhat willing to accept it for that coin just because it was the key-date of the series.
    That coin continued to sit in their inventory – until it didn’t! it went poof one day and I never knew (but always wondered) if someone finally bit the bullet and paid what they wanted for it or if they just gave up and pulled it off eBay.
    Well… I think I might have found out!
    The other day I got an email for my saved search on the 10G series and it was an 1888, in MS62, in the same generation of holder as that one from before (they were both in the newer generation of holder with the edge-view and the prongs). I can’t remember 100% for sure - it’s been a long time, literally years - but I think it was the same seller offering it for sale too. Except now, it wasn’t not listed as a BIN for $875. It was selling in an auction and the starting bid price of $0.99.
    I guess, after about 5 years or so now, they’ve finally given up on waiting, wishing, and hoping they’d find someone willing to buy it at that price.
    It reminds me of something “Just Bob” said on the chat boards recently – “you have to remember that, for many series, 600 pieces extant would be a huge hoard.” Even with only 22 graded by NGC (I have no clue how many of the original mintage of ~35,000 survive to this day), if the collector base is shallow enough, as it seems to be with this set, an MS62 could still prove to be a cheap coin that can be had for near melt. “Rare” is relative and “rare” doesn’t always translate into “valuable.”
    Seeing this pop up like this immediately got my interest and my curiosity piqued. Obviously, my finances being what they are at this point, I have no interest in getting in on this. Even if I had the cash, I wouldn’t have to worry about bidding on this. I have the 1888 that I want already – fortunately this does not have to be salt in the wound right now. I got to watch this sell, never bidding, and smile the whole time, because I got to see what everyone else thinks this thing is truly worth. Even if I’m wrong and it isn’t the same coin or the same seller, I still got to see what this thing went for when the bidders get to set the price. (There’s only 6 graded by NGC in this grade, so I have at least a 16% chance I’m right, right?)
    I knew going in that it wasn’t going to get anywhere that $875 asking price of yester-year. Even the MS65 I got only pulled in $500, so unless in the last two years a couple of collects with deep pockets that feel a burning need to get one of these coins that’s graded by NGC this wasn’t likely to exceed $500.
    The end result?
    $327.75 after shipping (a hair over 37% of that old original $875 asking price).
    15 Bidders made 25 bids. So, you can’t say that it flew under the radar or didn’t get much attention.
    It feels good to know / have it reconfirmed for me (as if getting the MS65 for cheaper wasn’t enough) that I was right to not go for this back in the day and that I was far from being alone in thinking that that asking price was too high.
    Always go with your gut. If it feels wrong, if it feels like too much, it is. If it feels like a bad buy, it is. If you aren’t 100% thrilled to pull the trigger / enter the bid / hit “buy,” don’t do it. In my experience, if you aren’t happy in that moment, it doesn’t get better.
    Now to go look at my MS65 1888 10G - which I still think is freaking awesome 13 months later.

  23. Revenant
    In fairness to a seller that I have and now continue to do business with I think I need to take back my earlier assessment that they overcharged my wife when she bought that ungraded Zimbabwean 20 Trillion Note for $60. 
     
    I guess the thing that should have been my first clue was that they’ve always offered returns and gave us a perfect, no-fuss return on the note and I’ve always been able to get very reasonable prices from them on so many other things, including most of my other Zimbabwe notes. 
     
    In saying that they overcharged her I was thinking about what paid for most of my Trillions notes back in late 2015. It would appear, since that time, the Trillions notes specifically have appreciated in value. As I’ve been shopping around, I’ve seen other sellers asking that much for the note and some asking quite a bit more. 
     
    I can’t find the records of the sale anymore, but I think when I bought my 100 Trillion note in 67EPQ a few years ago I paid about $35-40 for it. The other trillions notes that I have are 65EPQ or 66EPQ and I got them for about $20-25 if I remember right. The other day I saw one of the 100 Trillion notes in 65EPQ sell for $95 (+$6 shipping) with another recently getting $92 (+$8 shipping), putting the price around $100 for a 65EPQ. These weren’t BIN sales. These were auctions with the bidders getting to determine the final price. 65EPQs have achieved up to $142 recently after shipping and it looks like 66EPQs have achieved up to $170. A 67EPQ sold recently for $350, and, I won’t lie, that one shocked me. 
     
    I am very glad that I bought examples of the Trillions notes when I did and got them for the kinds of prices that I did. If I was shopping for them today, I don’t think I’d ever be able to buy them. I could just never imagine or get behind spending the same amount on that 100 Trillion note that I did to get that 1886A 20 Franc - more than what I paid to get my long sought after 1877 10G. As it was, it was a stretch for me to pay what I did back in the day. I only did that to get a graded example and I wanted a high grade because that note was inevitably going to be a highlight / centerpiece of the set I was hoping to build. 
     
    I feel like there is a crazy but cool message about subjective valuation here. A coin with 130 years of history and nearly a fifth of a troy ounce of gold vs a 10-year-old piece of paper with ink and a lot of zeros on it, but, to the right people, they can both be sold for $300+. Of course, I know there are people out there that pay $8,000+ for US Education Series notes and people out there that pay $100,000+ for 1932 double eagles, so maybe this shouldn't surprise me as much as it does. I think part of it for me is the fact that those old notes and coins are actually fairly rare. These 100 Trillion notes still seem almost as common as sand on the beach. You still see people selling even the 100 Trillion note by the brick. It's hard for me to wrap my head around that valuation when they're still seemingly just so excessively available.
     
    My wife has attempted to mess with my head by suggesting that I might want to sell the Trillions notes at these higher prices and use the money to pick up some gold coins - like an old British Sovereign or an 19th Century Italian 20 Lira, both of which are pieces I’d like to own. I’d likely be more tempted by this if not for the fact that I’m trying to build the set out more, note liquidate it, and getting rid of the Trillions notes would be quite a blow to the set. 
     
    The higher prices are largely confined to the four Trillions issues (the 10, 20, 50 and 100 Trillion notes, P-88 through P-91) but the 100 Trillion issue in particular. Most of the other issues in the third dollar series can be purchased raw for a $5 or less and graded 65-67EPQ by PMG for $15-25 - barely more than the grading fees. That as much as anything is what threw me off at first. I was seeing low prices for everything else and what feels like moon-money for the Trillion series. But, clearly, for those notes, some people are willing to pay it. 
     
    At $15-20 for a graded note I’m definitely a buyer of this series. I enjoy them and they’re worth it to me at that level. I feel like I don’t have to feel bad about spending it or worry about taking a bath on re-selling them later if I decide to. At $25-30 and above I have a harder time going for them. I have paid up to $40 for some first dollar issues in the past and I may do that again to get my hands on a few rarer, older, issues for that set when and if the time comes, but I don’t think I’ll ever spend much more than that for one of these. At that price, as my wife recently pointed out when we were talking, I can get some nice silver rounds and government bullion issues - sometimes already graded by NGC - and I feel like the silver content of those makes them a better value proposition over time – and, on the whole, I enjoy shiny metal more than paper. 
  24. Revenant
    I’ve been really focusing on my Zimbabwe note set recently but I’ve been having a nagging voice in the back of my mind telling me that I should try to set a part of my budget aside soon and pick up the Falcons I need for my Queen’s beast set. I think the biggest problem I’m having with listening to that little voice right now is that the Zimbabwe notes / set / collection has me feeling pumped and excited and interested right now and that Falcon just... doesn’t.
    If it weren’t for the fact that I have been buying the 6 sets and I want it / need it to finish those sets I don’t know that I’d be all that interested in buying it. It just feels like a really disappointing and underwhelming design IMO. It just does not live up to the promise that I saw in the Lion, the Griffin, and the Dragon.
    And, now, while cruising the internet and window-shopping around on eBay, what do I discover? The new design for the Yale has been released and… Doesn’t that just look… odd?
    Before seeing this, I didn’t know what a Yale was. Looking at this coin; I just don’t know what to think. It looks like the thing has chicken pox or measles or something. I can see from other depictions of the thing that it does have some kind of spots or horns on it but the way it comes across / looks in this design just looks funky to me.
    That… is going to take me some time to wrap my head around.
    I’m writing this as much as anything for my own future amusement and reconsideration down the line. When I saw the Bull for the first time it didn’t thrill me but it definitely grew on me as I looked at it more. Six months after seeing it, the Falcon really hasn’t grown on me the same way. I still just don't really like it. I’m curious to see if I’ll look back on this design in a year or 10 years and have decided that I like it or if it’s going to be, “Nope. Still ugly.”
    I’m starting to think that this really is the major risk / trade-off of starting a new commemorative series or something similar with the first design. If you start out with the first design and buy the coins as the come out, you have no way of knowing when you start if you’re actually going to like the entire set. If you wait to see more designs before you pull the trigger or start to commit, it might be harder or more expensive to pick up some of the earlier designs that you didn’t pick up when they were current.
    When you start collecting an issue that doesn’t change over time or a classic series that ended a long time ago you know exactly what you’re getting into. Of course, I say that about coins where the design is static and then you get someone at the mint with the bright idea of making 5 or 10 sub-types or varieties every year.
     

  25. Revenant
    About a week ago I got an email from NGC with a coupon code and offer for $10 off any tier of paid membership, which would have made the lowest ($25) level just $15 for a year. I’ve been debating becoming a paid member again for a while as some may be aware from past entries, but this lowered the threshold for doing so enough to get me to go ahead and do it.

    Honestly, as much time as I spend on here lately, I think it makes sense to support the site / company a little directly, even though I support it indirectly anyway by helping create a market for their services.

    The main thing in this for me is that it lowers the threshold for certain pathways of set development. So far I’ve been able to grow my 10G set by buying graded examples but I think it’s going to be hard to do that if I want to pick up the rest of the set. I’ve recently seen raw examples of the 1885 and 1880 come up for sale but I’ve never seen graded examples come up for sale - there aren’t a lot of them out there. This has had me thinking about the future of that set.

    I’ve talked a lot about crossing the MS67 PCGS-graded 1875 10G that I have but in the last few months I’ve been questioning whether or not that’s the route I’ll go for. It may end up staying in PCGS plastic and one day I may just pick up an MS66 1875 in an NGC old-fatty older just to continue that set theme of the old-fatties. That option has had a lot of appeal lately after picking up the 1877 in the old fatty.

    This also makes it easier to cross over the PCGS graded 1932 quarter we have in the 1932 mint set - something I don’t know that we’re 100% committed to yet but it’s come up in discussion a few times with my step father in the last 6 months because he’d like to see that set be a fully NGC graded set.

    This could also become a pathway for rounding out the Zimbabwe set with some of the more obscure issues.

    But, yeah, we'll call that an effective advertisement / offer.