Revenant

It has been a lot of work to pull it off but it has for sure proven to be well worth it. You'll have to argue with my wife about that one. She's been saying that, after 4 straight years of bringing something home, I just need to mentally accept now that I'm probably about to miss a couple of years (which, she may well be right about), but her justification is that I just don't have anything ready and in the pipeline and it usually takes at least a couple of years to get even a small, cheap project like this into contender status. Every time I bring up the 500L set as one of the 2022 projects and getting it up to 50% so it can at least be in the running she is just like, "I don't think they'll give you an award for making something for me." I guess we'll see, but I'm doing it anyway. I'm sending enough 500L coins to at least get that set to 50% and I'm going to hopefully put together a follow-up submission later in the year / in the summer to add a few on top of that and maybe try to improve the $10 and $25 Z coins while I'm at it.

Definitely very proud of the sets and some aspects of the presentation, which is what is getting the nod - the pictures, the research and the journey. Thanks. There's also some odd vindication in it. One of the things that spurred me back into this in 2019 was one of the members here dismissing the Zimbabwean notes as "just big numbers" and I wanted to show that they were more and impressive and cool with a great story. It's funny to me that that annoyed me enough that three years later I still remember it and it has lead to back-to-back cross-registry wins. I had someone tell me once, "You really do not like being criticized - but you hear it, and then you take it and do something awesome."

Yeah. I think we all knew it was coming. I had just been hoping we could turn it around. This is definitely something I'm not done exploring though. Thanks!

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. 😃

The ones I have seem to be 8 X 11.5. My sheet protectors are 8.5 X 11. So they'll poke out a bit on top but I think it'll work well enough as long as it isn't going to trash the coins. Thanks!

Thanks, guys! This was very unexpected for me as well. I expected that set to win in 2022, or 2023, or 2024, after it was finished. I have it in writing months ago in response to Mike that I thought the odds of that set winning this year were zero! I guess I owe Mike a "You were right" / "You called it." Congrats to both of you as well @Lem Eand @Coinbuf - Coinbuf, when I saw your name I immediately smiled and thought I'd have to call you out for all those times you were like, "I'm never going to win anything big" and I was like "don't be so sure!" So that's my "I told you so" on that one. I'd also like to say I was happy to see @jgenn, @depositoand @coin928. Coin is one of the few here I've met in person and I know that set that won this year is a major passion for him and the subject of a book he's writing. So that'll be some real bragging rights for the book. I think those were all the names that popped out at me from my interactions here, hopefully I didn't miss or forget anyone. On the PMG side I was a little bit disappointed by one of the names I didn't see.

A dark coin like that would be very hard to image well... He did a great job with it.

I would immediately want a set of 1920 and 1924 Double Eagles ( and maybe a full mint set) to honor my grandparents - I'm named for my Grandfather.

I'm looking at / getting some of these "Coin Sets of All Nations from the Franklin Mint and I'm trying to decide how best to store them. I have some sheet protectors advertised as PVC Free and I'm thinking / hoping I could get away with stcking these in the sheet protectors in a binder and storing them with my other raw coins that way. Anyone else think that would be a problem?

I said in the last thread about these, these coins just don't look pretty, much less beautiful to me, and I have no daughters to catch the imagination of, only 2 sons. I made a journal recently about the early 1900s Italian 20 C coin. That coin immediately struck me when I saw it. That coin I thought was cool and it immediately made me want it in my collection. I looked at these the first time and I just blinked a bit, and then shrugged a little. They just seem "Meh." I have an abandoned set of Statehood quarters and I'm not adding an abandoned set of these.

What made you go for a Custom set for these as opposed to a competitive set?

Even with breaking up the sets, I expect the predominant grade after this to be MS65, with some MS66 and some MS64. There will be 2 AU58s for now as I'm not sending a new $10 or $25 in this batch.. This is in part because, while I got some nice coins out of those sets, they do have some flaws and I can't bring myself to hope for more than MS65 on most of these. Looking at all of them again, the 33 coin set I was going to submit was culled to 30 and I think the final group is going down to 23-25 coins, ditching some that would have given me more date variety but where I just don't think the coin will grade well enough, so I'm just going to keep those raw and save grading money for some Italian 500 Lire coins. I suppose I could change my mind if NGC somehow decides to award me $1000 in grading credits in 2 days but I doubt that outcome. Not impossible but I doubt it. That said, based on everything I've seen looking from many coins from many vendors and asking many other dealers as to the general condition of their inventory. I expect that that will still be enough to have the top ranked set for quite a while. Because pulling together this set has been a lot of work and trying to beat it will be a lot of work and expense. The bond coins will / should have MS67 predominant, with one MS66 for now because of that 50C.

So... continuing from the last journal posted about this… When I opened the box from the seller, I had 3 of the 8-coin sets that included later-date steel coins from mostly 2002 and only 1 of the 7-coin sets that had 1997 dated coins, including that 1997 $2 coin. To make things one step worse, the $2 coin in that set had a bad, deep scratch/ ding. Reached out to the seller, who quickly said I could keep the extra 8-coin set and they'd look for and send me another 1997 dated set with the best $2 coin they had. 🙂 Yay! Happiness! Right? Unfortunately... they couldn't find the other 7-coin sets. They'd been misplaced. So, they refunded the money and I got to keep the extra set. Not a bad outcome, but still disappointing given the heartbreaking scratch on that coin... But then, Mike came to the rescue and made me an offer - He'd gotten another 7-coin set and was offering me the whole set if I wanted it - wasn't even asking / wanting anything in return for it. He'd gotten it to give to his niece and nephew, and he just wanted to help me out. But just taking that didn't sit right with me and I offered to send him the 7-coin set I had - complete with the coin we now jokingly call "scarface," for his niece and nephew to trash. Mike had offered that set up very quickly when I told him privately in a chat about what had happened and the scratched $2 coin, but I had him hold off on mailing it until the search attempt fell through and the other 1997-dated sets the seller had listed were officially "lost." I did mail the set to him, along with some other Z coins and bond coins in flips, because, why not? And... wouldn’t you know it? The post office seems to have eaten it. They say it was delivered... he can’t find it. So... So much for that. Now I guess all 3 of those coin sets are officially lost to the ether and the sands of time... I find it very annoying that they were lost. But neither of us feels attached enough to them or mad enough on principle to aggressively pursue it – at some point I guess you just have to decide how aggressively you’re willing to try to recover a ~$30 loss in common coins. And, with as overwhelmed as USPS is and, given that tracking says it was delivered, I just have a hard time believing that rattling cages will turn much up. I had several incidents at my old house where a small package was put in the wrong box for the wrong house. Fortunately, in all of those instances I had honest neighbors that just turned the box over to me within 24-48 hrs. So… a moment of silence for “Scarface” and his humble fellowship – lost to the void. I think "Scarface" would have gotten a 61/62. Mike had thought his might get a 65-67. With the benefit of seeing it out of that old plastic, I think it's a 64-66 (I’ll look again and make a final, official guess later). I don't think it'll snag a 67. But, so far, the finest example NGC has graded is an XF45. And most of these that I see are UGLY. So, I'll take a 64-65 if I can get it for now. Interestingly, a while after I got the set from Mike and had already sacrificed it to the scissors, about a month after I'd received the box with the wrong mix of sets, the seller finally got another set with 1997-dated coins, and they offered me first refusal on it. I decided to pass though. I've already bought so many of these things and spent so much on buying these lots. I have a large lot of very solid coins - about 30 now - to send in to NGC in a new 2022 submission. But I will be culling the current group down at least a bit before it goes off. As I’ve gone along, every time I opened up / cut-apart a new set Shandy has wanted to be present to watch me cut it up, put them in flips and then we look at them together – She doesn’t even want to miss being there when the sets meet the scissors. When we already had one of a certain coin in our group to submit, we’d have the “old” / “reigning” coin go head-to-head with the new one and we’d pick the one we’d like best – see if the new coin could beat the champ. So, this has been a process of continuous comparison, substitution, culling and iterative refinement of our group set aside to send in. I feel like I've hit a point of diminishing returns on buying more lots sight-unseen and trying to dig through hoping for incrementally nicer coins. I have a ton of these raw now and I have some to give away if I want or if I find an interested young would-be collector. It would be different if I was continuing to get a mix of different and new dates but it's all 1980, 1997, 1999 and 2002/2003 for the most part. I think I'm ready to go with what I have, send these in in January and move on to focus on something else for a while. I’m not going to completely close the door on the idea of continuing to look for new sources of raw coins or looking for high grade examples, especially for any type coin slots where I only have grades under 65/66 after this next submission... and I STILL need to find a way to upgrade and get a nicer $25 coin than that AU58 I have... but I’m just not feeling too in a rush to do that... Who knows? Maybe finding some new, nice $25 coins down the road will be my push to start another drive to find more coins to look through for possible upgrades? Maybe it’ll be stiff registry competition. But, I guess I’m closing out this one and accepting that there will be a 3rd submission with Z coins down the line. I am very happy with and grateful to the seller for their resolution and communication and they will probably get more business from me after this - I think I'm just done with Zimbabwean coins for now – for now. The hero of the story is Mike though, who continues to show he's a great buddy to have on a collecting journey. Mike has told me / showed me that he got his nieces and nephews some of those Franklin Mint cards for Zimbabwe. He seems to be trying to give me a hard time in about 10-20 years when those kids are old enough to collect more seriously on their own. It would be funny if one of those kids ended up taking shots at me in the Zimbabwe registry in 2040, even if it is unlikely, if the registry is even still a thing in 20 years. Who knows what the future holds, really? Shandy and I are starting to enter our grade guesses for the Zimbabwe coins. I have a piece of paper and I'm noting the guesses. I'll look, give the coin to her, write my guess and cover it, and let her see my guess after she says hers. The grades are still coming out very similar as we go though. She's more pessimistic than I am though. The results of this effort are showing that we're far more optimistic about the prospects of some coins than others which are going to be eligible for the same slots in the type set. SO I'm thinking I might use the results of this to trim down the submissions and make this a bit more budget friendly. I had thought it would be fun to maybe include more dates and maybe work on date sets in some denominations, but, if the coins don't grade well they are just a waste of money that I'd want to improve on down the line with a better coin if I did build a date set. The other thing about this is that the case Shandy got me is nearly perfect for displaying this type set, but it can't display a bunch of extras, and I feel like that is going to hurt the desirability of "extras." Especially since i think cost recovery on this set will forever be impossible if I ever resell these, even if they grade really well... We've been having the graded examples I already have out and using those to help inform our estimates on how these will do. We started with the smaller denomination coins so the MS65 1997 1C and the MS65 1980 10C were crucial points of reference for us on NGC's grading standards.

It's a deep, dark blue felt.

Yup! I like it a lot. I just have to get the coins graded and then find a place to keep it. I like how the dark interior will offset the white slabs with the dark rings through the edge-view prongs with the current gen slabs. It should be a darn nice set of coins.

My recent efforts to re-image my 1986 mint set, and some others was done mostly using a ring light on a stand, behind and slightly to the side of the camera, with the coins angled relative to the axis of the lens just a little to get the luster to look nice. I'm pretty darn happy with these, though admittedly some of the final shots are nicer than others and the coin pops more in some than others. But ring lights are cheap, and this is easy to hammer through fast while still getting very solid results IMO.

I used to use 7.1-8 but had problems with parts of the coin looking soft or fuzzy, even with smaller coins, if the coin was angled at all. So I switched to 12-16 like woods, and set the camera up on the table or a tripod to use longer exposure times. Maybe that could help you too. Your mileage may vary though, of course. Edited to add, you of course, don't owe me a response at all, timely or otherwise, especially during the holidays, so thanks for humoring my curiosity.

This year I decided to put some Lighthouse cases on my Christmas list just to try. My interests and wants are pretty narrow these days. And, while I don’t really want a lot of stuff that is just going to collect dust and not mean much to me on a practical level, I don't like others buying me Coins for reasons we all know. I thought it was worth a shot to put some supplies on my list with easy links to what I want. I also put some things like miniature props - mini trees and grass mats for mini photography but it seems like the coin cases and coin supplies won out. My wife got me the 24-coin, 3 panel case that I wanted for the Zimbabwe coin set. She seems to share my determination for elevating this economically-ill-advised set (that will never be worth what I'm about to spend on it) to something with a near mythic level of importance - so now the case for holding the set that we've mostly picked together and which will be almost all self-graded is a Christmas present 🎁. Speaking of "almost all self graded," if I can get an MS64 or better at least 10C out of the coins I'm going to send in - and I think I have that easily - that first coin may get bumped just to have the main set be 100% coins we picked and graded. I DO have some real serious contenders that I think might score in the MS65-67 range from the pre-steel-clad era. So there is a real chance this could happen, including a nice 1980 that would be redundant in the set at first glance, but it would be self-submitted with the same invoice number as many other coins in the set. When I opened the box, I was briefly afraid we might have to return or exchange it. The box showed an image with coins in capsules and capsule panels, not panels for graded coins. But when I opened it the box had the right inserts. I was worried I'd added the wrong thing to the wish list, and it was going to be my fault her surprise got... deflated. But - bullet dodged. I’m thinking the top panel will have the oldest coins, the middle panel will have the Bond Coins, and the base will have most of the steel-clads, so when I pull the panels out and lay them next to each other I can deploy the panels in a pretty, chronological order. Initially I was going to just pop in the coins I have and fill in what I can, but then I stopped and thought it might be more fun to wait a few months, and let it sit empty until I get the 2nd submission back and can fill it all in - see it for the first time in all of its "glory." I do think it will be impressive, if not valuable or a good investment, but, good gosh, I'm strange for building this one and doing this in such an over-the-top way, aren't I? My wife also bought more cotton gloves and a bunch of flips as stocking staffers- but I got them in a wrapped box because the sticking was... too stuffed. More supplies and support for more coin searching! My step-father got my name again (3rd year running) in the name draw and followed up with a 25-coin case that I think will now be the new home for the gold coins - giving me more room again and removing the need to split them into a 2nd box for now. I'd gotten a temporary reprieve on this earlier in the year by pulling 5 out to display at my desk. All of this has given me an idea for a present for my step-father down the line. I think I want to give him one of these that shows/ holds 6 coins for displaying the 1932 set. This year, I got my step-father two coins I found for the 1982 mint set we started years ago. They're not particularly nice grades by the standards for modern coins but they filled some old, stubborn gaps with gem uncirc coins. After sitting on these for weeks, I finally popped them into the 1982 registry set after I gave them to him at dinner last night. In my searching I also found some 1958 coins that would have filled more holes at reasonable prices but I'd already spent my budget. So a few weeks back I quietly linked and referred these to him - just not bringing up the 1982 stuff - and he got them. Then, just a few days prior to Christmas he messaged me to say he'd found and bought a coin that filled the last hole in the 1965 SMS set. So, somewhat accidentally, because of some things I did and set in motion with my Christmas shopping, that's 5 more slots filled across 3 of those sets. None of those sets is likely to ever be in the running for #1, but one of them is now complete and maybe one day the other 2 will be too. The 1958, the 1982 and 1983 remain the hold-outs there. As a final item, my brother got me a copy of the book "When Money Destroys Nations," about the Zimbabwean Hyperinflation.

Congrats, Gary.

For a bit of relevant context, years ago when Ben was young, we used to watch some episodes of “Toddlers and Tiaras” on Hulu for stupid, white trash, entertainment while we were stuck at home being broke parents to a young kid. We used to make fun of the titles the girls would win like "Grand Supreme" and "Ultimate Grand Supreme," and "Mega Ultimate Grand Supreme." Years later we still joke about those titles and joke about "Mega Ultimate Grand Supreme [whatever]." In the course of looking at these coins with Shandy we got into a discussion of grades and the kinds of grades I'm hoping for with the graded set and that got me talking about how 60+ is "Uncirculated," and 63+ is "Choice Uncirculated," and 65+ is "Gem Uncirculated" and 67+ is "Superb Gem Uncirculated." I'm explaining this because I'm explaining that, ideally, I'd like this set to be 65+ or 67+, Gem or better. She hears that last one though and she cracks a joke about "Mega Ultimate Grand Supreme Uncirculated," and laughs. I just looked at her for a second like, "No. That's not cool.” I keep getting wandering eyes with the Italian coins recently - old and pre-euro modern, raw and graded. In many cases they're not even things I especially want or like - not like that flying liberty coin - but I do like collecting coins (hoarding pretty disks of metal). One example being raw examples of the 1000 Lire coin issued from 1997-2001, before the adoption of the Lire. I've seen some and they look interesting but they're not super pretty or anything - they're solidly okay. They're bi-metallic like the 500 Lire and look closely related to the 500 Lire, but they don't have the connection to Shandy because they didn't start issuing these until she'd already been out of the country 3-4 years. Shandy has been good at keeping me focused (in check). I show them to her and she's like, "It's nice, but I want to stay focused on our current set (the 500 L)," and so I let it go. It's almost like she has more discipline than I do or something... slightly annoying. Speaking of Shandy though - She's mentioned a couple of times recently that she misses looking at the coins and picking the best one and discussing the flaws of each. I haven't been doing much of that recently because before we were doing that to pick coins to submit, and I still have to tackle that Zimbabwe submission, and I don't want to get too far... ahead of myself / dig a hole I'll never get out of... but I do like the idea of continuing to buy more lots of cheap raw coins and looking at them. Who knows? At this rate this may be the new focus of my collecting efforts going forward. That could be fun. I may need to invest in more binders, pages, and flips, if it goes that way though. 🤔 Maybe a stronger book case too because those binders are heavy when they’re full. With the idea of keeping the fun going though, she’s agree to take on a challenge with me: Before we send off the Z coin submission we’re going to look at each coin again and write down what we think each one will grade - I will probably also use this as a chance to pick the best of some coins and dates where we have 2 of the same and lean down the submission a little. With those grade estimates written down, we’ll see how close we came when the grades come back. She’ll have her guesses and I’ll have mine. We’ll have the already graded ones nearby to look at to help us make good SWAGs. I may never live it down if she does better than me though. (Edited to add: She confirms. I will not.) And, while I’ve been talking for months about that submission going out in January… it may not. I’m realizing we have something going on almost every weekend in January. One of my cousins is getting married on our Anniversary, so we’re going to share our anniversary with my cousin, and we’ll be at a wedding that evening. So I don’t see it happening that weekend. The weekend after that there’s a coin show in Conroe that I want to go to so I don’t see it happening then. The weekend after that we’re going to be busy again… So, unless I bust this out right after New Years or on the Weekend of the 7th, the odds of me getting the paperwork done and getting these boxed up to go out before February seems to be near zero.

Yeah. I see what you mean now that you mention it. Part of that is probably lighting but you also have me wondering what aperture setting or f/# you're using. A lot of times with my VR macro I'm shooting around f/16 to give myself more depth of field and to make sure the whole coin looks sharp, even if I'm not perfectly at a right angle to it.

Mark's Histogram: Your Histogram Your image is more like what I normally aim for because I don't like seeing the white core of the slab looking so dark when I know it's white, but I like to goose the histogram to get more of a full tonal range. This is something you should be able to do in Elements to a Jpeg (if you like it. You may not, but I think it helps things pop just a bit more).

If you're dialed in with the lighting and the exposure you don't really need RAW and Photoshop to get good images but it does help. I've never seen an image - of a coin or a person - that couldn't benefit from a bit of global editing.

They always come out strong and always fizzle. It's a nice looking quarter though.

Everything in its time and place. I've said before, I like the registry, I like this place and the competition and the awards and all that, but it's not Everything, shouldn't be Everything, and it shouldn't be allowed it get in the way of the fundamental enjoyment of the journey and the experience. Like I said, a lot of this is being done in service of building 2-3 registry sets down the road, but I'm loving the hands on, do it myself approach to this vs buying pre-graded coins.