Revenant

I'd rather be destroyed in an auction than have buyers remorse.

It just came to my attention that a seller has a couple of rare notes that I want that he's had off market that he's willing to maybe sell to me but I'm waiting on him to state a price and I'm hopeful but afraid I won't like it one bit. 😱😰

I haven't been bidding in many auctions lately though - mostly focusing on my submissions and waiting.

The Venezuelan and Zimbabwean notes / currency I've been focusing on are not going crazy for the most part - I can still get 67 and 68 EPQs for barely more than grading fees- but anything that's a little more on the uncommon side is starting to do crazy stuff - like a couple of notes I would have put in the $50-60 range getting $105-120.

1 hour ago, Crawtomatic said:

That's awesome! Finding new pieces for my Buffalo Nickel set slowed down so last year I decided to search through the Registry sets and find smaller ones without much activity that wouldn't be difficult to complete.  I was thinking, if anything I can put together a set for display and in best case scenario I can win a best new set award.  Last year it was the Austria 2 Schilling, 1928-1937, Circulation Issue set.  Thought I'd be done in one year but having difficult tracking down a Mozart that doesn't look circulated.

Anyhow, it's super satisfying to see the Top Pop icon next to a coin so if you get a set with all of them - that's even cooler.

Yeah… I've thought about doing things like that in the past but I just don't like the idea of loading up on a bunch of coins I don't particularly care about and wouldn't necessarily want / buy otherwise just to compete for awards here. As Coinbuf kind of alludes to it works well until someone else comes along and decides to thump you in the skull. And if that happens then you're just stuck being #2 (then #3, then #4) in a category with a bunch of coins you didn't want that much in the first place. That's my reasoning anyway. if you actually like and want to collect Austrian shillings then more power to ya. 

I've had this happen recently in my Zimbabwe competitive sets with someone with deep pockets stomping me in a big way, but my set still "wins" on the basis of presentation and attention to varieties and sub-types IMO ("I reject your reality and substitute my own!" lol). I keep expecting someone to come up and give me a hard time with the 10G set, but, as a set of gold coins, and the 1888 in my set, at least beating that set isn't a trivial task.

7 minutes ago, Coinbuf said:

"winning by default"    I can totally relate to this.  While I did not win any financial awards I have 4 best in category awards for a set that had (still has) one coin in the set but to my surprise nobody else had or put together a set for several years.   It was a very cheap win and fun in its own way for the time it lasted. 

To quote the immortal words of Homer Simpson, "De fault! De fault! De fault! The two sweetest words in the English language!"

Yeah. It's fun. It doesn't do much other than to just show that you can't take all of this too seriously the way some do. I don't know what this will look like yet but I'm hoping to build that set out to have nice descriptions and discussions and have it be a nice addition to my overall Zimbabwe collection / supplement to the note collection in the Registry.

It had occurred to me that I was giving up the chance to see how long that Zimbabwe coin set could continue winning awards with its 16-point lonesome self, but I'd rather build out this set to compliment the notes the way it was meant to.

16 hours ago, Coinbuf said:

So I think that the number of pocket change or low grade coins that are being sent in by unknowledgeable folks be they the youtube get rich quick type or the clueless to coins inheritance types has been one of many significant factors in clogging up the grading pipeline.

And then you have people like me, Submitting a group of Zimbabwean coins, not because I have any dream of making money, but because I have a grading credit and I simply want to do it to make a coin counterpart to my note set.

1 hour ago, Alex in PA. said:

Very nice gifts.  Volterra is nice; I have a four slab plus an album in red.  Happy father's day.

I love the magnetic closure on the lid!

36 minutes ago, coinsandmedals said:

It might be worth giving NGC a call. The last time I spoke with someone from accounting they mentioned that they can roll these awards to the following year. 

They usually have them expire after a year. I thought about asking about it last year / as it was expiring if they could roll it over, but, honestly, I'm the one that let it expire and they were giving me new $500 credits for NGC and PMG from New awards, so I decided I just needed to take my lumps on that one.

1 hour ago, zadok said:

i would guess ngc knows where their bottlenecks r n most likely addressing the same...im sure the learning curve to become a qualified grader is not a short period of time....u could ask ngc to provide a comparative analysis of now verses pre pandemic on the ratio of individual new submitters vs previous submitters increasing number of coins submitted ?....would tell u if more individuals entering the hobby/marketplace or just increase in volume?...i for one submitted 400% more coins in past 18 months than the prior 18 months.....

I think I read a while back about them re-tasking people to help with de-bottlenecking and they're trying to hire more and expand but what I was talking about here was more, what is going on in the market that is causing them to need to expand and de-bottleneck.

While I'm sure they're able to do that or have it already, I don't think they'd likely find it in their interest to release that data / analysis publicly.

40 minutes ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

Hmm, I guess it could be as simple as demand for slabs is up and that the # of submitters hasn't necessarily changed but their total # of coins submitted has. Probably a combination of all scenarios. 

With the pandemic pushing more sales online and away from shows I think that could well have upped the desirability of grading some coins that would have sold raw before.

16 minutes ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

My feeling is a lot of people stayed home, got board, looked at there change, thought they hit the jackpot, submitted coins and got shot down. The other scenario that I think might be playing out is a lot of people think they might hit it big with selling 70 bullion and are submitting ASEs, Kooks, Libertads, (insert random world bullion here), etc.. and are clogging up NGC.

Yeah. Based on the newbie forum, the YouTube dreck and some other things it wouldn't surprise me if both of those are contributing.

4 minutes ago, Eagles Nest said:

.

I hate the wait but the anticipation is all part of the game. 

I have a world modern in and world modern is significantly worse than US modern right now. No clue why.  Maybe NGCs efforts to go beyond the US are paying off. 

18 minutes ago, ChrisInJesup said:

Should have ask if they could make you a label with a picture of a cradle in a kids room and have them put on the extra line "One of the babies!" LOL

Nah... I had at one time thought about getting labels with a special Pedigree on them but it is ultimately spending more to do something that ultimately hurts their value / market appeal if I ever have to or want to sell them. So it just doesn't make sense.  (to me anyway)

1 hour ago, S.TRZEBIATOWSKI said:

Well, you were lucky you weren't trying to use your membership credit.  I sent my medals in in May. NGC received the mail 5/27/21. Still haven't opened the mail. They said they expect to open it between  6/27 and 6/30. My credit expires 6/16 and NGC accounting says too bad but you will lose your credit and have to pay 100% because they are behind on doing their work of entering submissions in the system. How wonderful after years of being a member.

I feel your pain to a degree. I let a $500 award credit expire last year. It's the price we pay for procrastinating sometimes. Lesson learned I'm doing better this year.  

1 hour ago, ChrisInJesup said:

 I just looked over 2 identical coins of the same year (a 69 & 70) under a magnifying glass and it is hard to tell the difference.

Well, given that a 70 is supposed to be perfect under 5x or 10x magnification, you'd expect pretty much exactly that.

On 6/5/2021 at 5:50 AM, Jaggy said:

However, I won't buy a 64 to improve a 63 but I will buy a 65 to improve a 62.

Reading this a few days ago has had me thinking about one of my PMG sets where I have a number of 66s but 67s and 68s have become more common and cheaper in recent years. I find I simply can't get myself excited to replace a 66 with a 67 or a 67 with a 68, but I am sometimes interested in bumping a 65 to a 68.

4 hours ago, coinsandmedals said:

@brg5658 and @Revenant you both are far too kind!

Nah. It's very impressive stuff!

Side note, but I took 8 months to mail in a reholder submission because of CoVID and USPS anxiety. Don't feel too bad about 3 months with a very complex submission.

Wow. Those are quite impressive! The multi holder should be very cool

8 hours ago, Jaggy said:

I have also sold duplicate coins to another collector who is in 'competition' with me on one particular series. 'Beating' him in the rankings is not all that important to me but having a good relationship with another collector is.

There's been an occasion or two where I had a coin that was very good in a slot for a series I wasn't passionate about and a collector that was much more into the series asked to buy it and I let it go where it could be more valued.

25 minutes ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

 

Well, looking back I tried to be realistic and said on 4/6 I was going to try to get these 2nd and 3rd submissions out within the "next couple of months" and the 2nd one mailed out on 6/3. I'll call that a win. 🤣

6 hours ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

Well that's the kick in the rear I needed, I'll be sending my submission in next week.

Trust me, tomorrow is a trap.

I've been really on myself to get things submitted and using some stated goals in these journals and smaller steps as I move along to actually make happen this year and not waste another $500 opportunity.

Granted, 2020 was rough in all sorts of ways.

56 minutes ago, ChrisInJesup said:

I just need to get back to the basics..... so many raw coins. So many proofs from different countries..... hard part is who or what country do I send in? Got quite a few that could use some conservation as well!

As I've discussed here several times, I have a binder full of various raw coins in flips that will never be graded. They don't require it and it would be a bad use of funds. This place is good for some things but it isn't everything.

Yeah… what you're complaining about here isn't really "coin collecting" to me. It's collecting registry points and working / paying to try to win icons and certificates.

Almost everyone here does this to some extent and, as Gary suggests, it's good for NGC and a big part of the reason for why the Registry exists and is free - it makes money for NGC. But I think collectors from 1981 - and most of the rest of the population, including my wife - might look at all of us and think us slightly mad. 

A worthwhile concept to consider here is "value," expressed in this case as enjoyment. Do you really get enough additional "value" / "enjoyment" out of the 70 vs the 69 to justify the incremental cost of it?

On 5/26/2021 at 2:21 PM, coinsandmedals said:

I would greatly appreciate any feedback about how this was presented. I wanted to do something different, but in hindsight, this might have been too difficult to read. Any thoughts?

The font is a bit small for reading on a phone. I'd probably do better on a laptop.

With regard to presentation, I'm not a huge fan of the text wrapping tight with the coin images - especially with the coin in the middle. When you have a more square image it would be better to have that shifted up or down to be next to one paragraph and not having 2 paragraphs that are kind of L-shaped.

Just my 2 cents.

6 hours ago, Just Bob said:

Can you get that in writing?

Probably not but it's just in regards to a note ending tonight that'll probably go for like $30. 🤣

1 hour ago, coinsandmedals said:

Congratulations all around! It seems like you've checked several things off your list in such a short period of time. I look forward to seeing the pictures once you get them done. 

Feels like a lot of mostly small things that are adding up in big ways (but also some big ones like the 20L and 20M). I'm excited to see how these submissions will build up my Zimbabwean note collection and help it achieve some big milestones. 

The house of course is major. My wife jokes and laughs about how little I talk about it here but I don't want to risk giving up the new address.

25 minutes ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

 Yep, but very entertaining.

Did they say it was ungradable or did they assign a grade to the coin before conservation. On some of mine they've assigned a grade prior to conservation and it's interesting to see what the difference is.

Lots of good news today, congratulations on the house and everything else. Life is good!

They did not assign a grade that I saw. So I'm worried that it might have bagged or gotten detailed. I was worried about a 67 after conservation at that point. 

Yup. And the wife is so happy she's telling me I can bid on things when I'm currently out of spending money/coin&note budget. 🤣

Glad to see you achieve that goal. Something like that takes patience.