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Revenant

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Journal Entries posted by Revenant

  1. Revenant
    I was really excited to collect the presidential dollar series in 2007 and 2008 when they were just starting out. The US History buff in me loved the idea of the set even though they were mostly a naked effort by the US Congress and the US Mint to keep the music playing as the statehood quarters series was winding down (which they did with the America the beautiful quarters). Then, of course, the effort got promptly dropped but not quite entirely forgotten in 2009 when I had to start getting ready to graduate from undergrad and start grad school.
    I’ve been thinking about getting back to this set for about the last year mostly because I’m a father now and I really want to be able to share these with my kids and use them to talk about US history. This is pretty much exactly the attitude the Mint and the Congress were hoping people would have, but… Yeah, it doesn’t have to be a unique motivation for building it, it just happens to be what motivates me.
    Having completed the first 2 years of the set over 10 years ago I have a lot of the “big” ones, the founding fathers that live forever – Washington, Jefferson, and Adams – and a couple of other important historical figures that helped shape the country – like Monroe and Jackson. But by not continuing the set I missed out on some important ones – like Lincoln, Polk, the Roosevelts, Grant, and some others. Grant in particular has a soft spot for me because in the 5th grade when we were all getting assigned different presidents to write research papers on I got Grant – also, he’s just kind of a cool looking dude. Gotta love that beard, right?
    Yes, my wife is laughing at me for the fact that I’m talking about the kids one day taking these as a show and tell for school for their reports on presidents. But I don’t care. It’ll be fun. She can roll her eyes all she wants. She always does anyway.
    Truth be told I also just think it’d be fun and feel good to get to go back and “finish” one of those old, long idle projects from my early 20s. Sometimes I have an embarrassingly bad track record with long term collecting projects / goals. In this case, "finished" might be a bit subjective because I've noticed that the registry set includes some reverse proof coins and I don't think I'm going to bother trying to get those, so when I'm "finished" the set may not be 100% filled per the registry.
    The “plan” I’ve been considering was to try to finish the proof set and not really worry about the business strike P & D coins for now. Finishing the proof set in PF69 would give me one coin for each president to show my kids and use as conversation pieces and I’ve been assuming that would be cheaper and easier than trying to build out the rest of the business strike set 10 years after the fact. Back in ‘08/’09 I was getting PF69s because I just didn’t and still don’t personally see the incremental value of going for the PF70s for this set. I’m not looking at this as an investment in any way (and their price performance over the last 10 years would suggest that that was a wise position to take… yeesh). It’s meant to be something for me and my kids as they grow. The 69s do that just as well as the 70s. I also don’t care enough about this set to make it worth the money to make this a #1 ranked PF70 set. I’m not even sure I can call this a “coin collecting” project at this point. It’s a “dad” project now.
  2. Revenant
    Well, when I made the last entry I was really leaning towards the MS66. By the time I went to bed on Saturday I had pretty much convinced myself that the MS66 was the way to go and that I should bid aggressively to make sure I got that coin.
    So then why am I writing this, saying that I bid on and won the MS65 tonight and why am I so stinkin’ happy about it that my wife is snickering about it at my expense?
    Well, my basis for thinking that the MS66 was the way to go was thinking it looked better in the pictures. But that’s in the pictures. The person that took photos of the MS66 seems to have known what they were doing. The lighting and everything else about the pictures of the MS65 is comparatively lousy, and I think the coin probably looks just fine in person. That undermined the rationale for going with the MS66 for me.
    Sunday night I was running some back-ups of personal files and cleaning up some old things that I don’t want or need to keep anymore. In the course of this I found my last “family photo” of the 6 coins I had, including the three in the old fatty holders (the 1876, 1879, and 1887). This really got me thinking again about how that MS65 would fit with the rest of my existing set. This also got me thinking again about the fact that some of the serial numbers were the same out to three digits and it got me wondering just how similar they were, so I pulled them out and looked.
    The serial numbers for the coins in the fatties are:
    1876: 195949-XXX
    1877: 195945-XXX
    1879: 195974-XXX
    1887: 196363-XXX
    … And there you have it. That coin’s invoice number had 5 digits in common with my 1876 and 4 digits in common with my 1879. There’s only a difference of 4 between two of the invoice #s and a span of less than 30 for all three of them. There’s a very good chance to my mind that the 1876 and 1877 were at NGC together getting graded at the same time, and maybe the 1879 too, maybe 15 or 20 years ago (I don’t know exactly when that holder and those numbers were in use – maybe others would know better?).
    I may never know what that story is, but I have to think there’s a story there and a shared history. That’s something I just can’t pass up. I just love the thought of that and the possibilities. I told my wife about this. She just laughed and said, “you are such a coin collector.” The MS66, in a current gen holder, was probably graded in the last 6-12 months, and it just isn't part of that same story. In the context of the set, that’s worth a lot.
    Initially I’d been thinking that the MS65 should go for less than $300, but I could see chasing it up to $325. After I saw all of this and got thinking about it, I fell in love with the idea that I decided I was willing to pay up to $350 just to get to bring the three coins, bought at different times, I think from 3 different merchants, back together. It turns out my prior research and watching of the market was about right in the first place I won the coin at $290.

  3. Revenant
    Well, I managed to convince myself to stay patient, wait, keep my money in my pocket and wait to see if an 1877 Netherlands 10G would show up... and now 2 have!
    One is an MS65 in an old Fat NGC slab. One is in one of the new, nifty, pretty edge-view holders, graded MS66. The MS65 ends in 3 days. The MS66 ends in 9 days....
    This is quite the choice... If the MS65 is ending at a good price do I go for it? Or wait, hold out, and go for the MS66....
    The holders are an interesting angle on this as well in some ways. Several of the earlier coins in the set are old fat slabs with 9-digit serial numbers that start in 195 or 196, like this 1877 MS65...
    Again, points wise, the MS66 would be the better addition for the registry and for points, but my 1876 and 1879 are old fat slabs with 195 serials, just like the one that's on sale right now, and those three could make quite a group together.
    Granted, the 1888 is in one of the new edge view holders and, if I ever get around to crossing it, the 1875 would be in one too. Really, to make the whole set match I'd need to either re-holder all/most of them or swap out some coins for ones in old fattys...
    Boy, this is a choice that has me stumped at the moment though.
    Although... depending on what the final sale prices are... I could try to get both... Would that be crazy? Probably, yes. But being sane is over-rated. I've thought that for a long time.
    The more I look at the pictures (such as they are), the more I think the MS66 is probably the better-looking coin. The real question I think I'm going to have to answer is: Do I have the guts to pass on the MS65 and go after the MS66, knowing that if I don't win it I'm going to have to wait for the next coin to come around, and knowing that these are the first ones I've seen in 9 months (other than an MS64, which I just didn't want. I'll take an MS64 for a rarer, more key-date coin like the 1887, but not one of the more common dates in the series)?
  4. Revenant
    My wife and I found out a couple of weeks ago that we're expecting our second child in the middle of next year. Most people don't know yet but we'll get around to that when we're further along in the process and we know a little more. We won't have the first doctor's appointment for another 3 weeks.
    When my son was born I picked up a quarter oz gold American Eagle in MS70 for his birth year. I'll be looking to do that again with the new baby.  I'm also hoping I might be able to talk my wife into letting me pick up the 1/10 oz Eagles for 2016 and 2019 and maybe grab the Silvers in MS 70 as well. I haven't kept up with the Silver Eagles like I'd like the last few years between paying my way through grad school and being unemployed for over a year for a while there but I'd like to get back into them at some point.
    At some point, I'm also going to be looking into the 1986 gold eagles in MS69. That was the first year of issue and happens to be the birthyear for my wife and myself and that just makes all of this the perfect group of coins for what I want to do here with the birth years.
    One of these days 1920 and 1924 $20 gold pieces will also be on the radar for the birth years of my grand parents. I lost my grandmother in 2016 a couple of weeks before Harvey hit and I'd like to get those for their years. No idea what I'd do in a similar vein for my parents in 1955/56 since the US wasn't really messing with gold in that period. I have zero clue when the budget will let me get away with those double eagles but I'm hopeful that I'll get a good bonus in early 2019 a little before the birth that'll let me get some of the other birth year pieces I want. I'll just have to wait and see what the situation is at the time.
    I'm not really up to anything else collecting-wise at the moment other than building some sets of the Queen's Beast coins.
  5. Revenant

    Half way there

    By Revenant,

    Well, today was my much-anticipated day off because of my 9/80 schedule. The dealer shipped out the coin very promptly and I went to bed last night knowing that it was in town and due to be delivered on a day when I could be home to wait and sign for it – very useful with the seller requires a signature for delivery. I can’t say I blame him for it but I hate making trips to the post office for packages and this new post office we have has already lost one package for me in the 2 months since we moved here.
    I had plenty of things to keep me busy and distracted while I waited. I needed to get laundry done, hang some pictures to work on making the house more “homey” and set-up a new printer. I don’t care how easy a printer company tries to make it – and they did a good job of that in this case – you will be busy for a while when you have to physically set the thing up out of the box and install it on 4 computers and a smartphone. But I think I scored some points with my wife for getting it set-up on her laptop, which is important too.
    The coin arrived with a ring of the doorbell around 11:30 so I had it before lunch and it looks gorgeous.
    I pleasantly surprised myself by not immediately dropping all of my housework to run to the computer and add it to my sets. I did take a minute to look at it and admire it before setting it back down and getting busy again. There will be plenty of time for that later. I’m going to have a lot of alone time this weekend while the wife is busy hauling the kid off to things and I get president’s day off, which she doesn’t. I find myself writing this now while I wait on some laundry to finish.
    It’s really nice to get this coin at this point in my progress with the set. This coin is a major tipping point. Not only is it the lowest mintage year and the rarest coin with the possible exception of the 1877/9 but adding this coin to the set brings the set to over 50% complete. Officially, per the registry, the set is 45% complete, but my PCGS MS67 1875 would make it 54%.
    I’m excited by NGC’s decision to make a membership tier available for ~$25 that allows for submissions. I’m hoping that will give me a workable means of getting that 1875 crossed at some point and that will let it join the rest of the set.
    Gherrmann44 recently referenced that it took him 7 years to finish his Wilhelmina set and that made me think a bit. I think I bought the first coin for this set about 8 or 9 years ago. I'd have to go back and check. I just know it seems, feels and effectively was ages ago. I started it in my early 20s and chronically single and now find myself in my early 30s, married, with a son... and it's now half finished.
    To be sure, it's not like I've been avidly hunting for an 11 coin set for nearly a decade. I've been away from it for years at a time while I've had other collecting priorities and just other priorities in life in general. The last coin for the set was purchased 20 months ago. I got laid off 3 months after that and spent the next 12 months jobless, generally happy to just not have to sell any of them, though I think this set would be one of the last things I sold if I had to.
    It has been and will be a long road to finish this. But I have big plans and big dreams for this set - most of which I'm sure will make my wife of 2 years roll her eyes. But, hey, this project is older than the marriage and she knew I was a freak about this stuff before she said "I do."

  6. Revenant

    Wrapping up 2016...

    By Revenant,

    Didn't quite go how I'd hoped but it could have been a lot worse.
    Tragically in mid-September the downturn in the price of oil hit home and I got laid off with about a dozen other people at the company I worked with. The company had about 90 employees so in context laying off a dozen people is a pretty big deal. It wasn't the end of the world. We'd known for a while that it could happen so we'd been reducing expenses and trying to build savings and there's always unemployment while that lasts so we haven't had to worry too much about paying bills but it put an immediate stop to all coin buying.
    I worry that I sound like I'm whining, especially excessively in that I haven't had to sell anything and probably won't, but it was frustrating to realize that all my plans and goals for building certain sets just weren't going to happen -- at least for a while. Man, first the doctorate leaving me no time and no money and now unemployment and a kid leaving me with no money and no time. Does it ever feel like it's just never going to be easy? Ah well. As I said, it could be a lot worse and I'm well aware of it. I am.
    It hasn't been all bad though. My wife started looking for work again the same day I was laid off and she's landed her dream job, working in her desired field for the first time since getting her masters. It'll be with a larger system with lots of advancement potential for her in the next 3-7 years and she's excited to hit the ground running and build the career she's always wanted. I'm glad that she's going to have that but I'll admit that I wish it hadn't been timed like this because I was laid off. We both wanted her to get a little more time to stay home with our son.
    I've mostly avoided this place for the last 4 months because I usually don't like teasing or tempting myself with things I know I can't indulge in for the time being, but I like checking to see who won the best presented set, journal authors and such so I decided to come back.
    I'm happy to see that I managed to stay in the top spot in a couple of important sets to me even though I wasn't able to build them the way I wanted and there's always hope for 2017, once I'm back to work.
    In the meantime I've gotten a lot of time with my son, seen him start to crawl, and a few more milestones. I've continued my weight loss efforts as a form of self-improvement project. I was down about 30 pounds from my start (40 from my highest) when I was laid off. Now I'm down about 65 pounds from my starting point after a little less than 7 months. I've gone from wearing tight 2XL shorts and shirts to wearing larges as I raid clearance bins for nice looking tshirts that I can score for under $10 so I don't always walk around wearing old shirts that are starting to look like man-dresses.
    On a collecting note though, one of the few things I have gotten away with buying lately (using some money I was given as a Christmas and birthday present): I'm working on building some sets of the new Queen's Beast series -- the silver ones; I'd love to collect the gold coins but even before I was laid off I didn't have that much disposable income. I'm hoping to build 5 sets of the 2 ounce silver coins -- one for me, one for my wife, and one for each of the 3 children we're hoping to have in the end. I've managed to pick up 5 lions (2016). I have 2 griffins (2017). I'm not in a hurry on the griffins because I know the mint will keep producing them to meet demand until they start making the 2018 coin in November, so no need to rush. I really like the look of this series and I'm really excited to see all the designs when they're done. I am wondering though what's going to happen to the obverse if the queen dies before 2025 (seems likely). Anyone have an answer on that front? I haven't been able to find an answer anywhere. It'd be so odd to have the QB series end with her son or grandson on the reverse when the whole series is about Elizabeth II.
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  7. Revenant
    Six ounces, one month and 10 lbs.
    My wife finally convinced me to start going to the gym with her and dieting to try to diminish the size of my spare tire while she tries to lose the rest of her baby weight. This is something I've wanted to do for years but I just never made myself do it during grad school.
    We agreed that we'd both treat ourselves in some way when we'd been good for a month. She wanted a pedicure. I wanted coins.
    I gave some thought to what I wanted. I wanted to get something that would be unique and stand out in my collection. I didn't want something that would just be a part of a larger set or a widget that looks like 10 other things in my safe. Then I remembered these two ounce Ultra-High Relief privateer rounds that I'd thought were really cool and I'd wanted to get back in the day. I looked around and JMBullion still had the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th coins in the series for about $50 each.
    2.5 weeks into the month my wife agreed that I could go ahead and order the three coins so I'd have them because I didn't want to risk JMB selling out of one or more of them. The condition was that she wouldn't let me open the box until I'd been tracking calories for 30 days.
    Well, today was the 30th day I'd been dieting and the end of my 5th week at the gym. I'm down 10 pounds in the last 28 days since I started weighing myself regularly, and she gave me the box to open after lunch.
    She was actually going to give me the box to open last night because she was so proud of me for sticking with it and I told her no and she could give it to me today after we went to the gym - specifically after the gym. We'd said 30 days and I was sticking to that. But now they're officially mine to stare at.
    I need to find a place that sells air-tights for these thick two ounce rounds now.
    She is also getting her pedicure today.
    At some point I'll have to hit eBay to get the first coin in the series so I'll have all 4. Maybe I'll make that a reward for 2 months.

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  8. Revenant
    for my niece and nephew.
    A few weeks ago I met my brother and his kids during their annual visit from Washington. I decided that it was finally time to give my brother the P&D Jefferson Dollars that I'd been keeping to give to my niece at some point. The coins were released from the mint within a week of her birth years ago because they're First Day of Issues.
    She isn't old enough yet to have them. She's only about 9. Still. I thought I'd give them to my brother and let him decide when to let her have it. I think he'll be in a better place to decide when they're old enough to get to keep them.
    My brother also had a son about 5 and a half years ago. I wasn't collecting at the time so I didn't do anything comparable for him, but I did have a couple of extra Washington dollars. I decided to give those to my brother for my nephew as he gets older. Not quite the same as with my niece but they're still nice and I hope he'll like them when he's old enough. With both of them living in Washington I doubt I'll get many opportunities to help them get the coin collecting bug but we'll see. They may find the hobby yet. I'll probably be able to do a little more in that regard to my own son.
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  9. Revenant

    Father's Day Newp.

    By Revenant,

    First Father's Day and a new coin.
    Thought I'd share a post today about this new acquisition I got in the mail about a week ago. 2016 ¼ Oz Gold American Eagle, made around the same time my son was born +/- 3 months. I thought it'd be a fun way to mark the birth and hopefully he'll find it cool when he gets older. It's also the 30th anniversary year for the series. The first year of issue (1986) is the birth year for both my wife and myself. The coin came pretty much the day of my wife's 30th birthday.
    One of these days, if I can swing the expense, I'd love to get 1920 and 1924 double eagles in around an MS63 grade for my grandparents' birth years, a 1986 1 oz gold AGE and a 1 oz gold AGE for the birthyear of each of my children. Right now I don't have anywhere near the cash to swing that but I'll content myself for now with the 1/4th ounce coins and a dream. To round things out I'd love to do something for my parents' birth years but I don't think anything interesting was going on with gold coinage in 1955 or 1956 in the US. We'll see. My step father's vision was birthyear mint sets for every member of the family. I like the idea of the large gold coins (and in some cases they're actually cheaper and a lot easier than trying to run down mint sets).

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  10. Revenant

    Fun new pick-up...

    By Revenant,

    While I'm continuing to mull over the fate of the 1875...
    In the midst of trying to decide what I want to do with the PCGS-graded 1875 Netherlands 10 Guilden, I found an 1887 for sale on eBay. It's only an MS64 where I mostly like to stick with MS65 or higher but this coin doesn't come up for sale very often in any grade. Only about 40,000 were minted originally and only about 50 have been graded by NGC, and this one was graded by NGC so it works for the registry set. The icing on the cake was that the seller had it listed for $370 -- not a terrible price for a coin that's 130 years old, rare and that has a melt value around $250 at current prices.
    Not to be wasteful though I contacted the seller through their website and arranged to buy the coin off eBay and get it for $350.
    I was really thrilled to get this coin. It has the second lowest mintage of any coin in the series. The lowest is the 1888 with a mintage of about 35,585 -- but none of the coins from the 1880s are easy to come by and the most common of them have mintages in the range of 50,000. It's an odd set to collect in that respect. The 1875 had a mintage of over 4,000,000. The 1876, 1877, and 1879 have mintages of about 1.5 million, 1 million, and 0.5 million. The 1889 is rare relative to those but still pretty common relative to the rest of the 1880s -- it has a mintage of about 200,000.
    If you look at the registry sets for that category they're all made up of sets with coins from the 1870s and the 1889. You don't see any sets with the 1880, 1885, 1886, 1887, or 1888. The rarer years just don't show up for the most part. So getting this 1887 feels like a big win.
    I'd really love to get an 1877 to at least have all of the common dates but I'd rather have this 1887 MS64 than an 1877 MS66 (40,754 minted vs 1,108,149).
    I am also loving the fact that it is another coin in the set (3 so far) that are in old fatty holders with 9 digit serial numbers. That seems to be becoming a trend in this set.

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  11. Revenant
    The coin that can no longer function as part of the registry set.
    When I started looking at my collection again recently, trying to decide where I might want to try to start working on it again I knew I wanted to just focus on one, maybe two things for now and try to make that set pretty awesome (to the extent my time and budget allows).
    I thought it would be fun to try to finish my 1875-1889 Netherlands 10G set since it's classic gold and I wanted to work on a gold set, but I quickly realized that something was missing from my registry set: my MS67 1875 -- which happens to be a PCGS graded coin. Apparently it got bumped by a rules change 4 years ago. If that coin was still in my set I'd have been beating the current #1 set for the last 4 years... kind of a bummer, but, oh well, them's the breaks sometimes. Life has kept me too busy to pay attention or care the last few years.
    I've been trying to decide what I want to do about the situation and the coin. I'm not sure if I should try to send it in for cross grading, sell it and buy an NGC graded MS67 -- probably taking a bit of a loss in the process, or just keep it and buy a new NGC graded 1875 at some point.
    It's a pretty coin, and one of the first ones I bought for the set and I find that I'm loathe to give it up. At the same time, I'm not sure it's worth it to me to re-up my membership for this one coin to be cross graded since I don't submit very often. But I'm worried I'd take that much or more of a loss trying to sell the coin and buy a replacement -- assuming I can even find an MS67 NGC graded coin and not have to settle for an MS66. I'd also considered finding a local shop that could cross-grade it for me, but I don't know of any at the moment that could or world.
    Simply buying another coin would be pretty easy - even if it meant not getting another MS67. NGC graded 1875s in MS65 and sometimes MS66 are frequently for sale on eBay for mostly reasonable prices. The 1875 is easily the most common coin in the series with over 4 million made that year - some of the other dates in the set had a mintage of less than 50,000.
    I'm not really in a rush to make a decision or a move on it. I'm going to continue finding coins to fill other holes in the set right now and improving the overall set while I can -- like getting a really nice 1877 when I can find a coin and swing the price. I at least have a solid 1875 in my set for the time being, even if I can't have it in my registry.
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  12. Revenant
    Not often that I sell a coin I sent off for grading myself.
    I've never been one to make a lot of coin submissions. Generally I'm happier to just buy the coin already graded. I'm sure that cuts me out of some potential steals and great deals but it's just what's worked best for me. I've never been much of a risk taker and ultimately there are elements of risk in every coin submission, not all of which are the ones you suspect. One of the few times I sent in a submission the postal service was nice enough to completely ruin the shipping box to such a degree that they had to hand it over to NGC held together by shrink-wrap and positive thinking.
    When I was working on a signature set based around world bullion coins the other year though I ran into a problem. I wanted a NGC graded Mexican Libertad and there weren't very many out there at the time. I can see from the population reports and eBay auctions that people are grading the Libertads a lot more now but that picked up a couple of years after I was looking to get one -- so I decided to submit a couple of my own. I submitted two 2008 Libertads and one got an MS69. To this day it remains one of 6 NGC MS69s for that year.
    I really wasn't looking to create a condition rarity at that time but there you go, there it was -- and since then it has sat in the safe with the other coins for most of the last 5 years. I wasn't anticipating that 2-3 years later people would start grading these coins by the hundreds, and there'd be hundreds of MS69s for the last few years on eBay for $50 or less. If I had I probably wouldn't have submitted those 2008s. I would have just waited and maybe submitted something else instead.
    I think I sell coins less often than I grade them. Recently though I got a message from someone with a much more complete and higher ranking Libertad set that was hoping I'd be willing to sell the MS69.
    It was surprising getting the offer, but after thinking about it I decided to sell the coin. I can pick up another MS69 Libertad from another year pretty easy. He wanted to pick it up for his set, was willing to give a fair price for it and I think it'll make him happier than it was making me (which does mean something). That, and I think it amuses me on some level to think of that Libertad that I got graded sitting in a #1 ranked set -- which, as of today, it is.
    ... and, of course, the money is going towards getting me a coin that I'm going to be a lot happier to own, one that doesn't come up for sale very often either and one that I'm hoping will make one of my sets finally the top in its category for the NGC registry.
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  13. Revenant
    The various forms and opinions on precious metal obsession.
    So I've referenced previously that I've been picking up some silver bullion lately to complement the government issued graded bullion I amassing before (and probably will again soon). At this point I think the horde of silver bars (below) outweighs all the graded silver in terms of silver weight. Which group is more valuable I guess would be a matter for some debate.
    I've spent some time recently in the "Silverbugs" reddit -- I found it in part because my wife is obsessed with reddit - and a lot of people over there seem to heap hate on "graded bullion." I think I've seen the word "stupid" waved around a lot. But it's become apparent to me that some people attach a value and a preference to slabbed modern government issued bullion and some people really really don't.
    I don't see it stopping me. Never does never has. I just won't be sharing any pictures with them.
    Still, it's interesting to see all the different takes on collecting, coins, and precious metals.
    Of course, our spouses can have an entirely different perspective on the whole thing.
    My wife is a little harder to ignore though. She finds my obsession with shiny metal ridiculous in a profoundly hilarious way. She likes to call me her "dragon" and jokes that I'm related to Smaug when we watch the hobbit. It's all good-natured and in fun (and I find humor in it too) but she refuses to listen to me when I point out that dragons generally emphasize gold and I'm obsessed with silver. According to her it still counts. This doesn't seem right to me.
    I took the photo right after I got one of the decoder lenses for the Sunshine mint bars and rounds. I'd been wanting one for a while. I'd wanted to see how/if that security feature worked. Really really neat as it happens.

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  14. Revenant
    It's a small world sometimes.
    I don't know if I've ever mentioned/discussed this before -- looking back I don't think I have. If I have I'll apologize to anyone I bore but this came to mind when I was looking through the registry today...
    The 1932 mint set that I built with my step-father, several years ago now, has enjoyed several years at the top of the NGC registry rankings. Before we built our set another set had dominated the category for 3 years. You can still see Penny Man's set in the registry if you're interested - it's a nice one.
    The year we were building the set, (2008, I think) my step-father and I went to a coin show in College Station over the summer to see what we could find. While we were there we met this great old guy that was also shopping around - who just happened to be Penny Man. It was shocking - bordering on bizarre - to go to a coin show and randomly meet the guy that owns the set you were hoping to compete against face-to-face. He seemed like a great old guy and looked to be only somewhat older than my step-father.
    He actually had the quarters that are the backbone of his set with him at the show and let me look at them. This isn't to say he had any interest in selling them but he let me look at them!
    Of course, as gloriously awkward and clumsy as I was at that moment (and honestly still am if I'm being honest) I accidentally dropped one of them when he tried to hand it to me. I think it was the 1932-D quarter. I think we all got a laugh out of that one even though I was horribly embarrassed - The joys of slabbed coins and soft carpet.
    That was the same day we bought the MS66 1932 quarter for our set (from someone else at the show).
    It's such a strange thing to think about now - several years later - and a really cool part of the history that that set that I'm surprised I almost forgot. It's such a small world some days.
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  15. Revenant
    Here's the brief run-down on the last 10 months, and some thoughts on what I've been seeing lately in silver bars.
    I posted in early June 2015, a couple of months away from graduating, still looking for a job, etc. I found out about 6 weeks later that my wife was pregnant in mid-July, still didn't have a job offer at that point.
    As graduation approached I agreed to take a post-doc position for a while and teach a class in the Fall semester. It wasn't really where I wanted to be and while the pay was better it wasn't what I knew I could make, but I needed income and needed to be able to save up some money so I took it.
    I finally got a job offer from a company for I job I thought would be really good for me, but it came three weeks after I committed to teaching the course, so I had to stick it out with the class -- it wouldn't have been right to leave before December at that point. They still took me though with a start date of January 4th. So I spent the Fall of 2015 teaching industrial safety engineering, handed in my notice and spent Christmas technically unemployed for the first time in about 7 years.
    My wife jokes about the fact that when she met me I was a bum grad student that slept until noon half the time, wore pajamas all day when I wanted to and just kind of did what I wanted -- I'm honestly not entirely sure why she found this attractive, but what do I know? Now I have the doctorate and get up at 6 AM every day and go to work in polos and khakis.
    The new job was 85 miles away and my wife was initially staying in her job to keep earning money as long as possible until it was time to go on maternity leave. So the first 2 months of this year were full of driving 3 hours a day to and from work, and moving back to our home city with a pregnant wife. Just when things were calming down I got a corneal abrasion on my right eye and I was effectively blind for a week while I was healing.
    I'm earning enough now that she's able to stay at home with the baby. It means less money for buying shiny things but it's totally worth it for both of us.
    I've been buying 10-30 ounces of silver each month since around August. If I hadn't been expecting a baby I could have racked up more it was important to build up the savings accounts for buying a crib and other baby items. It's been interesting in that she hadn't been with me at a time when I'd been actively trying to collect coins, stack silver or anything else, so she started seeing a different (mildly OCD perhaps) aspect to my personality and having fun teasing me about it - more on that later though.
    I'm amazed by some of the security features that are being incorporated into some of the bullion rounds and bars now, like the UV coatings on Geiger bars or the MintMarkSI feature on the V2 Sunshine Mining bars and rounds. They're making those companies look a little forward-thinking now that fake one ounce bars, rounds and ASEs are starting to show up with increasing frequency. It mirrors the increasing complexity of paper currency. I'm wondering if we're going to see things like this showing up in other brands or even with the government-issued silver coins as they try to defend their products and brands against the counterfeiters. Of course, it seems that right now the counterfeiters are content to target the brands without these features, but if such security features start to become more common I'm sure the counterfeiters will try to rise to the challenge and it'll be endless, just like it has been for the paper currency and even with the NGC and PCGS slabs, which are also in turn becoming more complex over time to fight fakes.
    It would seem that there's no limit to the amount of effort that some people will put into making money by deceiving and cheating the rest of us.
    I'm not worried about my rounds or bullion being fake really because I buy from well-established dealers for the most part, but I'm sure that this is going to make life harder if and when it comes time to sell.
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  16. Revenant
    2 weeks old today.
    So this (picture below) is Benjamin, my first son. I found out that he was coming about 6 weeks after that last journal entry and he completely changed my plans and priorities heading into this year. He was born on the 26th of March weighing 7 lbs 12 ounces, 19.5 inches long. Now he's already over 8 pounds.
    I've been amassing a few 10 ounce silver bars in the last 10 months to build up a little silver bullion independent/apart from my 1 ounce rounds that I love so much. When we'd go to an ultrasound and find out how much he weighed approximately I'd find out about how much that was in troy ounces, hand that to my wife in silver and that let her know about how much weight that really was (numbers can be so abstract). It's been a crazy 10/11 months. I'll try to give an update soon, but, for now, this is my son.
    Never really thought about being a father when I joined here. I think I was 21 at that point. Now I'm 29, which is kind of shocking to think about now that it occurs to me. Now that he's here a lot of things have changed. I'm doing things and collecting things now explicitly thinking about showing them to him and sharing them with him. I guess we'll see what he thinks of his coin-collecting, photographer, engineer, PhD father when he's a little older. It's okay if he thinks I'm a nerd I guess.

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  17. Revenant

    Still alive

    By Revenant,

    In case anyone still remembers...
    Found myself thinking of this place again recently.
    I defended my PhD a little under a month ago and passed by unanimous vote of my committee. I've been working on getting all my paperwork turned in and getting all of my approvals but everything should be go for graduating in August 2015 and becoming Dr. Pittman.
    Today marks 1 year since I met a wonderful young lady who I see myself staying with. It'll be one year since our first date in about a week. In the few instances where I've dragged something out to show her she's found the coins interesting even though I obviously geek out about it in an embarrassing way, even now, even though I don't think I've gotten a new coin in 5 years. Maybe that'll change soon, but she may be more than a girlfriend at that point. Although I did buy a 10 oz silver bar this weekend when I saw the prices had come down recently and I realized I had a little extra money in the budget.
    I'm hoping that in the next few months I'll be getting a new job that pays better than a graduate student assistanship and I'm hoping at that time there might be time and money for a little coin collecting again. We'll see. (I know I've had these hopes before.)
    5 years down. 5 years of near total job security, just with pay and going to school. Haha. Now the future is looking up. Might be doing very well very soon, but there's a lot of uncertainty.
    I'm not resting my hopes on a teaching position or some other lost cause like that. I'm about to have a PhD in Chemical Engineering with a focus on loss prevention, process safety and risk analysis. I've been getting training and experience with forensic engineering and accident investigation. I'm finally in a position to go out into the industry and get the job I've been wanting for 5 years. I just have to find it.
    I hope you're all happy and healthy.
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  18. Revenant
    14 months...
    It's funny to me that I still think about this place periodically. Wish I could be here like I used to be. I miss you guys.
    Life has been choosing other priorities though. I don't have the luxury of it all anymore.
    Still have my coins. Still moving forward with the Ph.D. Learning so much. 2 relationships later. One was horrible; One, well, we'll see. Kinda funny to me that it was the new girlfriend that made me think of this place again.
    Nice that I'm so predictable with passwords....
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  19. Revenant

    Very Cool.

    By Revenant,

    Got the award in the mail.
    This is way over-due since I got the thing a month ago. I thought it was really cool when I saw that it looked basically the same as the Journal Award from 2008. They match so they look really cool together in my living room. Thanks, again to NGC.
    I keep telling myself this, but if the budget and circumstances allow it I'm going to try to pick up a new coin. We'll see. There's actually a little coin show that comes to town around May. I might try to take advantage of that.
    In the mean time, research continues and I'm putting some of my digital art and photography up in a local artshow. Should be a fun weekend.
    -William

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  20. Revenant

    Nobody wants them...

    By Revenant,

    A funny moment at the local Whataburger
    I was in a really bad mood the other weekend and I really just didn't feel like cooking so I went out to a Whataburger that'ss a mile or so from my apartment. After I ordered I was just sitting there waiting, mostly ignoring everything around me when something one of the girls working the registers said caught my attention. I have no idea why this just happened to pierce the fog of my own thoughts floating around my head but it did.
    She said, "instead of dollar bills would you want some of these coins? We're trying to get rid of them." She was talking about the presidential dollars. I couldn't help it; I chuckled under my breath a little when I heard that, but quietly enough that no one else noticed. The popularity of that series dropped like a brick after the first year or two and just hasn't recovered since it seems. For some reason seeing that clerk meekly trying to convince customers to take those coins just to get rid of them made me laugh just a little bit that day.
    I was in a convenience store about 5 years ago when a man paid for 2 beers with 28 mercury and silver roosevelt dimes. I offered the clerk $3 for those and 2 dimes for the register on the spot and made $30 in silver (at the time) easy in the process. This time... yeah... I didn't really want their circulated dollar coins either. Not that type of dollar anyway.
    -Revenant
  21. Revenant
    The problem of even lighting
    Going down this road is probably a mistake... a soul-sucking, time-destroying, horrible mistake. I remember how much time I spent trying to take "good" photos of my coins last time. I don't need to do that again... but I wanted to try...
    In 2007-2009, when I did the bulk of my collecting and coin photography I could never really get pictures I was happy with. This is a problem many of us share. Coins are highly reflective surfaces and you can't just point a light at a coin and take a picture. You'll get a big blown-out white spot in the middle. The slabs make this even harder by putting another reflective surface, often scratched, in front of the coin and adding problems with glare. Photographically, this is hell.
    I never could figure out how to eliminate glare, light the coin evenly and avoid excessive highlights and blowing out details on the coins. I tried all sorts of things but it just never seemed to work. Part of this was limitations in my available lights, 2 100 Watt desk lamps.
    In 2011 I did a complete overhaul of my camera equipment. I won't bore you with the details but my new equipment is a lot better and offers me a lot more control, particularly with lighting. I've also shot about 5000 pictures this year (more than the last 5 years combined) and I've learned a lot in that time. I haven't tried taking a picture of a coin in 2 years, and part of me just really wanted to try it... great way to kill 2 or 3 hours apparently. I wanted to share one of the results.
    I've finally taken a picture with almost perfectly even light over the surface of the coin. I'm not sure this is a "good" thing since I've also killed the contrast on the surface of the coin and the luster that we all normally look for in a coin that "pops" and gives us that "WOW" response, but I managed to light the coin evenly without glare, which counts for something, right?
    Let me know what you guys think. Here's the pictures from the other year: http://coins.www.collectors-society.com/WCM/CoinView.aspx?PeopleSetCoinID=863571
    I'm not sure if it's an improvement or not. The loss of luster in the image kinda bugs me.
    No, I'm not about to re-image my entire-collection. I'm not that much of a glutton for punishment.

  22. Revenant

    Copper lining?

    By Revenant,

    Sometimes you take what you can get, right?
    This happened a couple of months ago but I found myself thinking about it.
    Back in November I lost my Android smartphone. This was an extremely upsetting event and I was very frustrated with myself because I hadn't lost or broken a cellphone in 10 years of owning one. All my old phones were retired when the batteries gave out and I was up for an upgrade. I was ticked with myself for losing it and I knew it was going to cost me a ton of money I didn't want to have to spend to replace it.
    Before I gave up on the phone and got a new one I engaged in more than one rather desperate search of the car. I didn't find the phone but I did find two old Civil War tokens I'd lost nearly 2 years ago when moving out of my parents' house. Yep. Apparently the coins had fallen into a crack and they'd been in the car for 2 years. The tokens were already brown when they went in the car, and they hadn't corroded, so they aren't really any worse for the wear after two years in the car, which is kinda amazing. The joys of already having a protective layer of oxidized metal over the coin, right?
     
    I'm not sure why finding $70 in old coins made losing a $500 cellphone better but it kinda did. It was one small "copper lining" on a really crappy week. I really liked those tokens and ones like these that looked this nice have rarely presented themselves to me. I'd been really upset when they were lost. Having them back now is nice.
    For what it's worth (not much), I did eventually find the phone, 2 months later, long after I bought a new one (for $400), in an area of the car where it had no business being. I don't even know how it is physically possible for it to have gotten there. My wild imagination suggests that the thing would have had to go through a worm-hole to get to that location, which I actually checked 2 months earlier and found nothing! It really just doesn't make any sense. Yeah... That or gremlins... probably gremlins... At least I was able to get my pictures back.
    -William
  23. Revenant
    "Best Presented" is not something I would have expected. Thanks, Gary.
    I want to start by saying thanks to gherrmann44. I woke up this morning and checked my Android phone because it was saying I had email. I saw that one of the messages was from a friend at the collector's society that I unfortunately haven't talked to in quite some time. He sent the note to congratulate me, but he actually ended up telling me about the award, that one of my sets had won one of the 2011 Best Presented Awards. This might have been his intent. Gary is a sharp guy and he probably figured that I hadn't been on to check. So, my thanks to him for giving me the "heads up" to say this in a semi-timely fashion. You're a good friend, Gary.
    This is my first journal in 17 months. I don't think I've bought but maybe 1 coin in that time and I haven't even really touched the registry in over a year. I've been in grad school and it hasn't been the easiest thing in the world as you might imagine. I stopped coming in here because I just don't have the time anymore. I've never really believed in being an "also ran" or someone who's "just there." I've always thought that something should be done well or not at all. That applies to coin collecting and I just haven't had that time. I couldn't read the journals anymore and participate in the forums and shop for coins. Oh the coin shopping... oh the hours that used to consume. There are too many other things I'm trying to accomplish in my life right now. There are too many other things I'm trying to learn. I've also been trying to cure what was becoming a crippling isolation. I've been trying to get out a bit more and be with people a bit more and with my computer less. I'm still a young man and I'm realizing that I need to get out and live a bit, rather than writing about sitting in front of a computer watching auction timers run down obsessively. I still have my collection though, it remains a source of some pride, and I don't plan on parting with it any time soon, but it sits and waits in a locked safe.
    Since my last journal, I received my assignment to the Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center. I work there on process safety related projects we get funding for. I'm almost done with formal coursework for my Ph.D. and am hoping to get my experiments off the ground and running very soon. If I succeed, in 2 or 3 years I'll get to be called "Dr." I'll be working with dangerous stuff though so I have to be careful. I want to have all 10 fingers to hold that degree with at the end.
    It's been a rough year in a few other ways. Mom has been dealing with some health issues for over a year now. Stress at work has also continued to build and it has become too much for her. She'll most likely be taking her retirement, at a rather young age, in May after over 20 years of teaching because she just can't do it anymore. My step-father lost his job over a year ago now. They're both battling depression and are being medicated for it.
    So... I'm sorry I've been such a stranger this last year. I've thought about my coin collection, and this place, and some of you that were here when I first came and were such good friends on the journey. You know you've been gone too long when you think... "uhh... what's my user name and password again?" I'm very glad to see some people are still here, especially Jackson and Gary, and a few others like Bully, lehigh96, NAS, and DM Merrill. It's also somewhat refreshing that Paul is... still Paul. I realized after finals were over that I'd missed the deadline for the registry awards. I had been hoping to go back and update and tweak and improve. My camera skills alone have improved vastly and I've upgraded my camera so it'd be nice to take another shot at coin photography... but it just didn't happen. I was disappointed with myself at the time. Maintaining and improving my sets used to be important to me and it just completely slipped my mind for months.
    Anyway... to the original point of this post...
    I would like to offer my sincere thanks and gratitude to NGC for giving my family's 1932 Mint Set one of the 2011 "Best Presented" awards. I don't deserve it, I'm quite sure of that, but I'm not altogether sure it's something that you even can "deserve," not that category. Even so, I do feel a bit of guilt over it as I have not modified that set all year and it was recognized when other sets that improved vastly this year were not. I feel like I won after I quit the competition, or "suspended my campaign" as the politicians like to put it. Even so, Thanks. I know Choya has been really down lately and they've been adjusting meds, which makes it harder, but I think this will make him happy. Mom was surprised.
    I would like to congratulate all of the others that won something, whether it be one of the "big" awards or one of the 1st in category awards. Some of those categories are horribly competitive for the #1 spot and if you won then you worked for it. I would especially congratulate the Journal Award winners. While the other awards are definitely huge, the journal awards are given for sharing a part of yourself and a part of your journey with the rest of us and doing it well. It takes passion and it takes heart. You should be proud of it. 3 years later, my journal award from 2008 still has a prominent place on display in my apartment now that I'm living on my own. It attracts looks and questions every time someone comes to my home. I hope it will be the same for the new winners.
    Before posting this I took the time to look at the journals and forum posts from the last couple of days about the awards. I'm not thrilled with some of what I saw. Was it this bad last year? I wasn't around to check (studying hard for proficiency exams that January). I'm sorry that you have to see this as someone else "winning" while you "lost" or as someone "beating you." Wouldn't it be better to see it just as someone else being recognized for doing well? Not as competition, but just someone receiving praise for a job well done? Guys, these awards are supposed to be about doing something positive; about sharing; about giving back. It's supposed to be about love, and passion, and positive feelings. When everything you do is directed at winning for winning's sake it taints the effort. There's a glow and a warmth to something that is made and done with love that does not exist in something done purely to "win." That warmth of feeling is what most of these awards are trying to recognize, not necessarily just quality or quantity of effort. At least, that's my take. I find that the ones that raise to the top, here and elsewhere, tend to be the ones that are doing what they love because they love it. The award/recognition is just icing on the cake. (And I'm not trying to be a hypocrite here, though some who have been around a while might remember a moment 3 years ago when I was less than graceful in expressing myself.) Note: I'm not trying to re-ignite this discussion and if anyone feels the need to respond to this, realize that it probably won't even be worth my time to read it. I'm too busy and too tired.
    I'm sorry, this was way too long,
  24. Revenant

    What to do...

    By Revenant,

    A bit of a windfall
    I found out recently that, starting next month and continuing for 9 months, I'll be getting a regent's fellowship in addition to my graduate assistantship. After taxes, it's like saying I'm going to have about $600 added onto a $1400 income.
    I can live on the $1400, and that basically makes the $600 gravy. I can do whatever I want with it basically. While I will save some of it to rebuild my cash reserves, I'm not going to save all of it as cash in the bank because that just doesn't seem like a great idea given everything. The question for me then becomes, what do I do with it?
    I have two leading theories at the moment.
    1) I have several signed, limited edition prints I'd love to frame so I can display them better
    2) I'd love to start buying coins again, and start buying 20 coin silver tubes.
    I'm not sure which is better, and I'll probably do a mixture of both given the chance.
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  25. Revenant
    A bit of cross comparison between the NGC, PMG, and CGC registries
    I don't know if the rest of you have ever thought about this, but the NGC registry has 6040 ranked members (and remember that you have to have at least 1 point worth of coins in order to rank). CGC has about 1860 and PMG limps in with about 180 ranked members.
    Is this any indication of the relative popularity of the hobbies? Is it more likely a statement as to which groups are most likely to get their collectables encapsulated and then join the registry? Or is it that the Certified Collectables Group is just much more strongly associated with the NGC brand? I've been looking around a bit and the market for PMG graded notes seems every bit as vibrant as that for NGC graded coins. So why are there 33 members with a coin registered for every 1 member with a note? Why is there 3+ coin collectors on this site for every 1 comic collector?
    I've recently joined those with a foot in 2 camps, but I'm stunned by just how much bigger the coin community is.
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