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Revenant

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Journal Entries posted by Revenant

  1. Revenant
    The more I think about this the more sure I become of it.
    There seems to be an ever-increasing number of colored or painted coins coming out of certain countries the last few years. At first I thought they were potentially neat but the more I've thought about it the more I've grown to dislike the basic concept.
    One of the things that always made me love coins (especially silver ones) is that they are metal and they are SHINY. Plastics and other materials will never hold the same sense of strength and awe that metals do. Putting paint on it just ruins this IMO. It just doesn't feel like a coin anymore once you do that. Yes, the colors can help the details and the design "pop" more, but a good design shouldn't need it. I also tend to resent the colorized coins because they seem to have opened the door to other things that I find simply gimmicky, like putting gem-stones into the "coin." When you do that it's not a coin anymore, it's a gem mount. These things do not deserve to be called coins, they are simply novelty items.
    This tends to get really disappointing too because there are some coin designs that I love and would like to own, but they only come in colorized versions. The idea of buying that makes me cringe. I'm left torn between wanting the coin for the design, the symbolism and the history, and not wanting to have painted coins in my sets.
    I think it's worth drawing a distinction between the colorized coins (which have non-metallic materials added to the surface) and the Canadian hologram coins. The Canadian holograms use micro-scale manipulation of the coin's surface to change the refractive-index of the metal. The surface of the coin is still metallic however. This doesn't bother me. (Actually, as a chemical engineering major I find it fascinating from the viewpoint of materials science.) I only object to things that challenge the concept that a coin should be made of metal; no ifs. ands, or buts.
    As certain countries like Australia increasingly issue colorized coins, I may find myself increasingly locked out of the market for certain fun issues because of this self-imposed prohibition. I may ultimately fold and buy a couple of these things, but for now, I really don't want to.

  2. Revenant

    Reverse Journal Entry

    By Revenant,

    The difference between what I say and what I do...
    Sometimes I think I need to start making "Reverse Journal Entries." It would be kinda like reverse psychology except with journals. I look back at my old entries and I realize just how often what I say I want to do is the exact opposite of what I end up doing. Almost no goal that I set forth in a journal actually comes to pass, unless it's such a near term goal that it's already all but done.
    Sure, I always have my reasons for changing my mind, and I think that decision making should be dynamic, but this suggests that I have an awful lot of flawed ideas if I re-think so many of them.
    So, maybe I just need to start saying I'm going to do the opposite of what I'm planning to do. It might improve the accuracy of my journal planning.
    I said I would collect civil war tokens and moderns last year. I focused on my signature set. (way more fun)
    I said "it's panda time" and ended up buying kiwis and libertads, and britannias, and well... mostly anything but pandas... (I was finding good deals...)
    I don't regret the collecting choices I've made in the last year. Quite the opposite, I just wonder why my mouth and my eyes (& wallet) are always in such different places.
    Oh well...
    -Revenant
    Has anyone ever tried to collect quarters like this? Think it would work?

  3. Revenant
    If it's not one thing it's another.
    I find the time and the energy to try and image some new coins, and, after setting up my camera, I find that the rechargable battery is dead, and I don't have any other batteries, and I can't find the charger... That really just doesn't seem particularly fair. I really need to find that battery charger...
    Everyone has hopefully had great holidays. December was a wild ride over here as some of you are already partially aware. December 10th was the registry deadline. 4 Days after that I took my last final. 5 days after that I graduated. 6 days after that it was Christmas. 6 days after that it was New Years Eve! Yesterday I finally got some "thank you" notes written for graduation presents but I still need to make out address labels. I can't wait for my diploma to come back from framing (another week or two to wait on that front I think). Now that all of that is over it's time to get back to work! (Yay?) A new year; A new decade; No rest for the wicked, right? I can't complain much though. I got to see a lot of my brother and my two year old niece.
    I'll probably be making my next coin purchase(s) in about 2 weeks. I'm waiting on a few things to happen before I buy anything else. It looks like I may end up taking classes at the local community college this Spring while I'm waiting to see if I can start grad school. I'm going to try and use the opportunity to earn an Associates of the Arts in Visual Arts. I've always enjoyed art, which is probably why I like coins so much. I know I'm not good enough to make a decent living off of it, but it does make me very qualified to critique designs and layout decisions. I'm hoping that a minor degree could grant some formal recognition to the non-technically minded side of my personality. Looking at artwork, even a coin, from the perspective of an artist can change how you see and appreciate the piece.
    I'm eagerly awaiting the announcement of the registry awards in 6 days. A 1932 mint set that my step father and I built in 2008 is going to be the finest set in its category for 2 years running. If we can make it another year we'll match the 3 year run of the set that we took the #1 spot from. The competition in that category has gotten a bit tougher though so we may have to consider 1 or 2 possible upgrades to stay in the lead. It stayed in the lead all through 2009 without a single modification though. I'm really hoping that that set in particular will remain a #1 set for several years, in part because of what it is and why it was made. That is one of the very few places where being #1 does matter to me.
    Maybe in a few months I'll have the money, time and opportunity come together to let me renew my membership and send off some coins for grading. But that will be quite a ways down the road.
  4. Revenant
    Half a troy pound of silver and some plastic
    As I was approaching graduation day earlier in this month, another collector's society member was nice enough to offer me an MS69 kookaburra for my collection as a graduation present and even offered me my choice from the years he had available. He had several MS69s left over after upgrading his set to MS70s. I decided to take things one step further and offered to buy the others from him. It would allow him to get rid of some extras and allow me to make substantial progress on a set I like. He agreed and shipped them out to me and I sent him a check. He sent 6 coins and I got to pay him for 5. It was a very nice deal for me because some of the coins he had don't show up on eBay very often and that's where I usually have to go to find them.
    One of the things that has always amazed me about this place is the trust and generousity of the members of this site. With most other venues, you have to wait until payment is not only received, but has cleared, before they'll ship the item. Here, I've had several cases where the other party in the deal shipped the item before they had received any money or even had any proof that funds were on the way, other than my word of course. Where there is trust and honor among people, it's a good place to be.
    The coins arrived today, 1 day after Christmas and 1 week after graduation. I was thrilled to get the coins and enter them into my competitive and signature sets. This took my Kookaburra collection from 8 coins to 14, and I only have 7 left to go. After this big step forward, I think I may prioritize getting the remaining 7 coins to finish up the set. Since most of the coins I have left are later years (and, thus, more available and cheap), I may try to get some or all of them as MS70s. I don't really care about having a full MS70 set and I almost never upgrade an MS69 to an MS70, but having a few 70s helps to break up the monotony and improves the ranking of the set just a bit.
    I also recently acquired a really nice MS64RB Civil War Token. I'll probably image it when I image the new Kookas and share images in another post. I love those tokens but I so rarely find one that I like, in a condition I like, for a price I can tolerate.
    We're about 12 to 13 days away from the awards being posted, depending on how you look at it. I look forward to it. Invariably some sets get selected for awards that I've never seen before and it brings some really cool sets to the attention of the society at large. It should be neat to see what rises to the top this time.
    I'm including a picture of a really nice non-cent from about 150 years ago.

  5. Revenant
    As long as there's more than 3 competitors.
    As a small addendum to my previous post, I found out that my team was awarded 3rd place in the competition between the 10 senior plant design teams. We will supposedly receive a small monetary award that will be divided among the 4 members of the team. I might get $60 out of it but that's not really the point to me. I am just very proud that three industry representatives felt that my team did better than 7 groups of our peers. That's pretty good in my book.
    I've been thinking that it would be fun to get a "Graduation coin" to mark 1) the third place win, 2) graduating magna laude (which I should) and 3) the fact that it's finally over... Thank God.
    I'm not entirely sure what that coin should be. I'd want it to be good/special without completely breaking my bank (account). I'm open to suggestions if the rest of you guys have any ideas. I had initially been thinking along the lines of Pre-1933 US gold in low mint-state (MS61-MS63), hopefully something near melt value.
    Just for fun I'm trying to see if I can pick up a nice Civil War Token for a low price. You remember the civil war tokens? The things I initially thought were going to be a major focus for my collecting this last year? Yeah... I don't know what happened there either.
    -William
    Masquerading as a man with a reason
    My charade is the event of the season
    And if I claim to be a wise man but
    It surely means that I don't know
    On a stormy sea of moving emotion
    Tossed about I'm like a ship on the ocean
    I set a course for winds of fortune
    But I hear the voices say
    Carry on my wayward son
    There'll be peace when you are done
    Lay your weary head to rest
    Don't you cry no more,
    Carry on, you will always remember
    Carry on, nothing equals the splendor
    Now your life's no longer empty
    Surely heaven waits for you
    -Kansas, 1977
  6. Revenant

    Standing in the Doorway

    By Revenant,

    Here we are. This is it.
    Today marks a very significant event, both here on the registry and in my personal life.
    The senior chemical engineering majors gave our final project presentations today to our teacher, industry representatives and any faculty that wanted to come. After that was the exit interview. We were asked about our time here, what we liked, what we thought could have been better, and would we have done it again knowing what we know now. For a surprising number of us, that answer was no. Personally though, I've enjoyed it and I hope to continue on to grander accomplishments.
    Then came the real moment though; disolution of the teams. After 4 or 5 years and so many hours working together, today was our last cooperative effort. There may be some study groups for the next few days, but for the most part, this was it. We'll be going our separate ways now and some will start moving into new cities within a week. And so ends another of life's chapters.
    I wish that I could have spent more time working with my coins, but I'm very proud of how this semester went and what's been accomplished. It still remains to be seen if this is the worst semester GPA I've ever gotten but I don't think it will be. Based on what I know currently, I think I will meet my GPA goal with relative ease. And now I'm going to use this to get signed up for another 4 years of low pay, high work load, and delayed gratification on some things. I am going to miss the others though... some of them anyway.
    Good luck to everyone as these final minutes tick away. In about 100 minutes from now, we start over with a blank slate, on coins anyway.
    -Revenant
  7. Revenant
    Some days I just don't do anything right...
    Some days I wonder how I keep track of my own head.
    Last week I was thinking all week about this auction for a coin that I wanted that was looking like it would go for a good price. The day of the auction (Saturday) I was feeling bad and I completely forgot about it until 90 minutes after it ended. I just wanted to smack myself for the stupidity of it. No, I don't use automatic bidding programs like "bidnapper." It just doesn't sit well with me to allow a blithering piece of software to make bids on my behalf. I don't care how it's set-up, the potential for that to go badly boggles the mind. So that's how this week started on the coin collecting side of things.
    My 2003 kookaburra did arrive in the mail that same day though. When I went to enter it in the cert# didn't work in my Kookaburra set (even though the cert# was valid and in the NGC database. The ever-diligent NGC team fixed the problem Monday afternoon (which I consider to be a phenomenal response given that it's a relatively minor issue). The coin is in the competitive set, though I think I forgot to enter it into my signature set (der!) so I'm going to have to take care of that before I give myself another chance to forget.
    Though, the thing that has me feeling classically stupid though is what I found today. I logged into the forums for the first time in maybe 3 weeks. There were three messages waiting for me that were all 1 to 2 weeks old. 2 were offers to sell me a good coin for my signature set that I'm sure has been sold to someone else by now, and one was a question about a set from a buddy. This really bugged me, and not because I missed out on the coin. Even when I'm not interested in an offer I respond to it because I don't want the other person (many of whom I deal with more than once on multiple coins) to feel like their being snubbed. I feel like things like that just make me look like a jerk, especially when they took time out to contact me instead of just posting about it in the marketplace or putting the coin on eBay. And on the other front? I just don't think it should take a week for someone to hear back from me.
    Graduation is in 11 days now. I'll be continuing with my current job as I finish out the application process and try to transition to Grad School. I have to say that I just never really anticipated the sense of apathy that has just overtaken everything and everyone in my class. It's not just about Senioritis. It's like we're all just waiting for it to be over. Most of us don't even care about commencement. We're just going for our families. It just seems like an odd way to finish and receive an honor you've been working 4 or 5 years for. I'm no different. This feels like limbo, more akin to torture than a "victory lap." It isn't the work or being here that bothers me. It's the sense of feeling stuck. We all know that we're going to graduate, almost nothing can stop that now, but we can't move on until it's done.
    Wow; I'm really getting negative. I wish it would warm up; Texas just isn't supposed to be this cold.
    -Revenant
    I'm attaching a picture I found online a while ago with the seemingly contradictory title of "Useless Pennies." It seems that someone found something to do with them.

  8. Revenant
    Trying to go out with a bit of a bang.
    It just kind of hit me today that I hadn't bought a coin or really even gone looking for anything in over a month. My last purchase was on October 26th and after that I just barely had time to think about coin collecting. I had some work to get done and that doesn't really bother me, but it would bother me to let this collecting year (which I see as beginning and ending on December 10th) end without me making some kind of final purchase or final collecting effort.
    Sometimes, taking a small step forward is also a way of reaffirming a decision and recommitting yourself to the task.
    So, today I decided it would be nice to pick up something for my signature set. It couldn't be anything major so I wasn't looking to hunt down one of the kiwis I still need or a Panda. I did find out though that a seller I've dealt with many times before had recently listed a number of newly-graded Australian Kookaburras from years that I don't often find available pre-graded from US sellers, mostly from the first part of this decade. Seeing this, and feeling that the price was reasonable, I decided to pick up one of them, a 2003. I would have liked to have bought the other 3 dates I was seeing but I didn't want to go nuts. There's a reason I haven't bought anything in over a month and I need to remember that. In 3 or 4 weeks if the other dates are still available I'll be able to know better if I can get away with those purchases.
    With any luck, that coin will arrive in the next week and I'll be able to enter it in before we hit the deadline. I've said before that there's a lot more that I wish I could have done this year, but sometimes you have to settle for what you can actually accomplish. I'll settle for getting my B.S. in 20 more days.

  9. Revenant

    The path is clear.

    By Revenant,

    Graduation is in 28 days.
    This was a fun week. I haven't posted in about 4 weeks. After my last post the senior design project kicked into high gear. I was getting to the computer lab at 8 AM and not leaving except for lunch and dinner until 9 PM every day, even on the weekend. Things got so bad that one of my teammates started having nightmares about the project on a nightly basis. My team finally got it done though. We turned in our report at 9:00 AM on Tuesday 11/17, 7 hours before the submission deadline. We were the 2nd team to deliver the project and our report was a very reasonable 257 pages long. Most of the other seniors had a test on Wednesday night to cram for, but after that about a third of the seniors in the department went out to a bar together and decided to get royally trashed (myself included). Thursday, admittedly, was partially spent recovering from Wednesday. I woke up for the first time asking myself, "why does my head hurt?" Haha.
    But it's done. At this point I have very little left between me and graduating on December 19th. I was so thrilled to check my degree evaluation and have it say, under "Total Requirements Met," Yes. As long as I get a "C" or better on everything this semester I will walk. My classes are mostly wrapping up. The grades look good though and I should make my goal of graduating with high honors.
    Unfortunately, spending the 13 hours a day in lab working on the project and going to class and doing work for my job, etc hasn't left time for coins. I suppose this has been for the best. I haven't been able to work much so my income took a hit. I couldn't really buy anything even if I had time to look. It has also meant that I just haven't had time to read the other journals and that has been frustrating. I feel like I've been "out of the loop." I also don't know if I have the energy or the endurance to go back and look through the back-log of what I missed. I can just say that I hope everyone else has been scooping up those killer deals I haven't been able to look for.
    I returned to the site to find a rather ominous timer. It's cool looking, don't get me wrong, but it's just no fun to be reminded that the deadline is less than 20 days away and I haven't been able to tweek and improve my sets in quite a while. I look at some of the holes in my signature set and know that I have the coins to fill them, but the coins are raw and I haven't been able to get them submitted. There are so many things I would have liked to have done, but practical concerns have won the day. Looking forward, I need to do one more minor project and get cracking on Grad school applications, not writing coin descriptons, though one is decidedly more fun than the other.
    I did add a 1991 MS69 kookaburra to my collection a couple of weeks ago, at least. I think this happened after my last post anyway. It's hard to remember really. I ordered it just before the project got really crazy and it arrived during the peak of things. I think it speaks for how crazy things were that, where I normally rush to entire new cert #s, I didn't get around to entering a 10-digit number into a dialog box until 4 days after it arrived. I also just realized today that I never left eBay feedback for the purchase, and it's been nearly a month. The seller must have wondered what the heck happened.
    This has definitely been a case of coins (and fun) being crowded out by life.
    Maybe I'll get lucky and get some monetary gifts for graduation. Maybe then I'll be able to get away with buying something nice to mark the event; maybe I'll send in some of the coins I need to get graded; or maybe I'll have to start making rent and loan payments.
    -Proudest member of the fighting Texas Aggie class of 2009! Whoop!

  10. Revenant
    Sometimes when we feel we're getting smacked around, that just means we're doing better than we thought.
    It always seems a bit funny to me to see the surprises life hands us. When we feel like we're taking a beating, we usually win our greatest victories.
    I noted a couple of weeks ago that I had taken the GRE. I had all the scaled scores except the Analytical Writing, which I honestly didn't expect to be all that great. I hadn't had to write a timed analytical essay in quite a while and I didn't feel I had done well. The official scores arrived yesterday though and, to my great surprise, I scored a 6.0 on the Analytical Writing. That's the highest score possible and it's described as "outstanding." This came as a great surprise and it has been a great boost to my confidence for this week. Today I took the first of three tests I'll be taking over the next few days. I think I did well and I expect to do well on the one scheduled for tomorrow.
    I'll turn 23 on the 19th and on that day I'll be exactly 2 months from my expected graduation date... Time just seems to be flying right now.
    I'm going to be ordering two (IMO) nice coins in the next couple of days (possibly tonight or tomorrow evening). For me, those coins will be a mixture of celebrating my birthday, the good outcome on the GRE, and being mostly past this latest round of tests. One will be a MS70 2010P Koala, which will return me to the top of the rankings for that series before we reach the 12/10 deadline. (I can't believe we're at the end of the year, again, already!) The other will be a MS70 Australian Lunar "Year of the Tiger" coin. I was born in the year of the Tiger (1986) so this just seems like a fun coin to be picking up right around my birthday (though it would probably be more appropriate if I bought it a year from now when I turn 24). I've been trying to pick up gold coins for my birthday the last couple of years, but that really just isn't in the budget right now. That seems like an odd conclusion for me to come to when I'm currently holding more cash than I have either of the last two years, but I'm trying hard to keep a solid cash reserve. I'm not sure what's coming 6 months down the road and that worries me. I have to be at least somewhat ready for what could be rough going. It would be nice to move out and become more independent, but I may end up living with my parents for a bit longer.
    My biggest present for this birthday will be coming from my parents. They're giving me a new computer since the one I'm posting from now is 4.25 years old and starting to enter its final days (I've used it hard and it's showing). One of the honor societies I'm a member of gives me a discount (7%) on the purchase of a Dell. I guess good grades do help after all. So soon I'll be getting to surf the registry with a much better system than this one (which is crashing with increasing frequency).
    I guess I should end this by offering Rick a pic. Truth be told, I'm a little disappointed with the new 2010P Koalas. They appear to have given up the textured, sparkling fields that have been seen the last three years. I loved that look and how it made the series seem so unique among the other silver bullion issues, but I guess others got tired of it... sadness... but it still looks great.

  11. Revenant
    It's not much of a mystery IMO really.
    It seems like every couple of months I see a post that discusses how a person has lost rank when their point total didn't go down (or even when it went up). There seems to be a general frustration among members that the number of points required to obtain a given rank keeps going up. The simplest (and seemingly most common) explanation for this seems to be that the users directly below them are adding more coins and passing them in rank. This is likely true, at least in part, but I feel it misses the heart of the issue.
    NGC is constantly slabbing more coins, including freshly minted ones. New sets and new slabs are always being added for new and old series. As this process continues, the number of points that are available to be claimed in the registry constantly increases. Every new slab created also serves as an advertisement, showing NGC's name and (if I remember right) the web address for NGC's homepage. Some of these slabs end up on the Home Shopping Network or even on Amazon.com. This must inevitably lead to more people learning of and joining the registry. The end result of this must be an increase in the number of users and, by extension, an increase in the number of users with a given point total.
    Even then, there's still more to this. The point value associated with a given coin in a given grade is not a fixed quantity. NGC's ability to change these point values has also become a mechanism for point totals to inflate. While it's true that these point values can be adjusted up or down, I would argue that the overall trend is one of increasing values. Many of these scores are not adjusted unless one or more users send in requests for a correction. People will frequently do so when they feel one of their coins is clearly undervalued. I would expect score change requests to be far less common when a coin is thought to be overvalued. People don't tend to ask for points to be taken away from them. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but it is human nature. This seems to hold regardless of whether we're talking single value changes or re-evaluating an entire set. While some coins go down in value, the overall trend is towards increasing point values.
    I don't view either of these trends to be a problem, but the results haven't been surprising. Back in the middle July of 2007, I had a total of 1374 points shortly after joining. This earned me a rank of 2557th out of 3220 registry users (percentile 79.4). Today, that same score would allow someone to rank 4195th out of a current 5343 registry users (percentile 78.5). Yes, that score would have slid back 1600+ places in rank, but that's all a function of the growth of the registry. In terms of the percentile rank, that score has moved less than 1%. Sure, that one data point doesn't prove my case, but it is rather interesting.
    To all of you out there who grow chagrined at the increasing difficulty of being in the top 500, the people already in the registry aren't necessarily your problem; it's the progressive growth of the overall registry at work against you.
    Hopefully this didn't bore everyone too much. I'm not sure why I try and take a technical view of a perfectly non-technical problem, but it's just in my nature. Direct all complaints and disagreements to my inbox. I won't change but I'm willing to let people complain.
    -Revenant
  12. Revenant
    I'm finally getting to post this...
    It has been a really crazy week. Every time I tried to post something happened. I've had to deal with taking the GRE (Verbal:610; Quantitative: 790; WHOOP!), getting test scores back (100 FTW!), meeting due-dates for assignments, purging computer viruses, tolerating stupid roommates, and now getting sick... stupid roommate, getting sick and giving it to me. What kind of disgusting insufficiently_thoughtful_person spits up phlegm in the same sink we brush our teeth at? I'm looking forward to the weekend. Sheesh...
    The last week or so has had one fun factor though. I've gotten to talk to one of my professors who's considering moving into precious metals (esp. gold) because he's near retirement and afraid of inflation. With me this involves discussion of my coin collection which has about 100 ounces of silver and some gold. So I've gotten to talk to him about how I store it and where I go to buy it.
    He's thinking of getting a safe and having it set into the foundation of his house. I admire the attempt at security but that's not really something I specialize in. I also can't claim to have dealt with purchases of the size he's considering. What I have been able to give him though are links to places where he can order what he wants without having to travel or pay exorbitant prices and places where he can find articles related to the subject. He wants coins as opposed to bars because it's more divisible and easier to spend out a little at a time. To that end I suggested silver since these days it's a little like having a $20 bill (one of the most common in use). Gold conversely is hard to have in an amount that's less than a $50-100 value. I don't know if he was convinced or not. He shares the common hang-up that silver is "bulky." I really just don't see it that way though. A large dollar value of silver can take up a surprisingly small amount of space. Most of the bulk of my collection has more to do with the manner in which I store it, not what's being stored.
    He's generally just viewing it as an investment but I have gotten to talk about the collecting element of it that I enjoy (gave him a link to the registry too). Those that have seen my signature set know that I don't let it bother me that a coin is considered a bullion "investment" item; I collect it anyway because I like it. I've had only limited success in getting him interested in the collecting dynamic, but as we all know, that's just not for everyone. In the mean time, it's just been fun to talk about coins and collecting with another engineer that doesn't seem to think I'm a little nuts. Well, maybe that's not fair. The other seniors tend to respect me; they just think my hobby is lame... That hasn't stopped me yet though!
    On a side note, if any of you guys out there one day have kids in college, don't freak out when they admit to you that they're at a bar when you call them at 10:30 PM. You should certainly never proceed to tell the child's 80+ year old grandparent and older siblings, and then laugh about it. Seriously folks, this is why we don't tell you things... familial ridicule over drinking two beers with friends is just not fair to a 22 year old. Again; Sheesh...

  13. Revenant

    A Fun New Addition

    By Revenant,

    A coin struck under the authority of a sovereign Indian tribe.
    I ran across a new coin for my signature set kind of randomly. It was a "Battle of Point Pleasant" commemorative issue made for the Shawnee Indian tribe with a mintage limited to 50,000. I hadn't realized that a couple of the sovereign Indian tribes within the United States had started to make these 1 Oz silver issues in the last decade (the Shawnee started in 2002, followed by another tribe in 2004). I may try to collect the rest of the set, though I'm not 100% sure of what the timing will be for that. In the interim I'm looking forward to researching the historical context of the Battle the coin refers to. The seller of the coin turned out to be another collector's society member and he has some signature sets for them. Check them out if you're so inclined. His user name is JOHN ZABECKI.
    I also just ordered graduation announcements at my mother's insistence. I can't believe that 50 personalized announcements and envelopes to put them in cost nearly $100. For crying out loud, it's paper! I'm still trying to workout how and when to order the Cap&Gown. The graduation countdown is down to about 85 days.
    I've attached the seller's image so you can get a feel for what the coin looks like.

  14. Revenant
    Lots of Plans... Waiting for funding...
    I always seem to find myself in situations like this. I come up with these big ideas for what I want to do, blow through my funding (and then some) and then have to wait for a couple of weeks while my budget catches up with my ideas (which it never really seems to do). Just working on what I have planned for my signature set pretty effectively taxes my finances.
    About a week ago I went a bit overboard and now I'm (predictably) paying the price for it. My sig set purchases aren't terribly high ticket items so I usually can get away with fairly frequent purchases, as long as I don't go nuts and buy a whole bunch of stuff all at once. When I do that I have to wait several weeks and suffer withdrawal from this wonderful form of metallic crack that we all seem so stuck on.
    If I can show enough restraint and not buy anything for about a week I'll probably allow myself a small treat. Then in about 3 weeks I'll finally have enough cash to fund a couple of additions I've really been wanting. That basically means that I'll be happy for about 3 days and then I should be broke again. Well, it's probably not fair to say that I'm broke. I just have certain amounts of cash that I like to have in reserve just in case. Even college students don't like to be completely strapped. I'm not doing a very good job of maintaining that reserve though. My eyes are just too big for my wallet.
    I, like a few others, received a package from Australia a few days ago with some metal birds in it. The kookaburras are in sig set with some stand-in pictures for the time being. I've been telling myself repeatedly that Pandas would be a focus this semester. I've been all over the place though with Maple Leafs, Libertads, Britannias, and Kiwis (oh boy, was that a budget killer, but totally worth it). Maybe now I'll actually mean it and buy a few more pandas... maybe not. We'll see. The pandas are definitely fun but so are a few of the other coins I have my sites on.
    ... I need to learn to pace my purchases better, I really do...
    Well, I should have some help keeping my mind off my coin collection for the next couple of days. Now that projects and homework are over it's time to study for final exams. I also need to get some things taken care of at work. My job involves risk analysis and today was the research group meeting. The discussions around the table always get a little interesting at times like this. A group of safety engineers, process engineers, research scientists, and college students have a discussion about whether or not a disease is dangerous based on past data and probabilistic outcomes.
    I'm really hoping for a couple of solid exam grades in the next 10 days. This semester will largely determine whether or not I have a shot at graduating Magna Laude in December. Since I'm taking the required 15 hours I might be able to make Dean's list (finally! after averaging almost a 3.8 for 4 years).
    Ah! Darn it! I'm rambling again!
    (Random but fun pick provided showing bills I can never keep in my wallet)

  15. Revenant
    I decided to do some looking around on "the bay" and found something I didn't expect...
    For one reason or another it just makes me chuckle to call eBay, "the bay." I come from a town with "Bay" in the name and we call it "Home of the Dirty Bay" (don't swim in it, don't drink from it, and don't eat anything you caught in it). But anyway...
    I had decided to look around and see if there might be something in a nice price range that I might be able to add to my signature set. I still hadn't purchased several of the 2009 coins that I need and they remain relatively cheap so I thought that might be a nice way to go.
    While looking at 2009 Pandas I noticed that some of them had this special "30th anniversary" label. At first I thought this was just another labeling scheme. I figured the coin was exactly the same, just the piece of paper was different. In the little thumbnail pictures I saw it looked like the designs were the same. A while later though something strange caught my eye and I decided to take a closer look. Only then did I see a ring of text along the rim of the "30th anniversary" coin. That realization left me a little dumbstruck for a minute. I hadn't realized that this special issue had been made. I don't know if it came up before or after I had to stop paying attention around July, but I hadn't heard anything about it.
    I don't normally buy the special-issues of the Pandas. I don't have a full date set yet and they seem a little "frilly" when you don't even have the regular set. These issues can also tend to be a little pricey. These "30th anniversary" coins seem to be more common than most of the others though and they're cheap in a nice MS69 grade (which is usually what I'm aiming for since I don't like huge MS70 premiums). So, in what's kind of an unusual move for me, I decided to buy both the regular 2009 panda and the 2009 "30th anniversary coin" for my sig set.
    Those out there that hate eBay with such ardor (I used a GRE word in a sentence, yay me!) may be pleased to know that I did not actually buy the coins from eBay. This is not because I bear the site the same animosity that others do, but, rather, because better offers were avaiable. A dealer that I've purchased coins from before had the coins at a better price and with more favorable shipping terms. Since his shipping charge does not increase until the cost of the order exceeds $100, I decided to toss in a 2009 Lunar Ox in addition to the 2 pandas. The net result was about a $15 savings for me over eBay. I would have liked to have gone ahead and picked up a 2009 kookaburra as well, but none were available.
    Slots have been added to my signature set for the first time in about 2 months and I'll be adding the coins once they arrive and I have the cert #s.
    -Revenant
    "Where you find quality, you will find a craftsman, not a quality-control expert." ~Robert Brault
  16. Revenant
    I'm still around believe it or not.
    For over a year there I tried to read every journal entry that was posted. I'd check in at least once a day to see what was going on. I have to admit I haven't been doing that lately. I haven't really been on much at all since I made my last journal almost 2 months ago. A quick browsing of the titles and teasers tells me that not much changed and confirms that some discussions will never die, no matter how many times you beat the dead horse. In some ways that sense of continuity is both depressing and reassuring.
    I'm still working at my process safety research job and trying to finish off my degree. I'm taking my last 11 hours, not even considered a full load but it will feel like it with Plant Design. Lord willing, I'll receive my Bachelors of Science in Chemical Engineering on December 19, 2009, graduating magna laude ("with high honors"). I have a 3.77 GPA and I need a 3.7 for magna laude, so I need a 3.00 or better for the semester to get it. I keep bringing this up and I expect to be congratulated if I make it through this semester without shooting myself (odds are good that I will).
    That on it's own would be fairly hectic. I also have to figure out what comes next however; I can't just wait until graduation day and then start planning. That course of action never seems to work out well. I went to a career fair today and fewer companies were in attendance than there has been in years and more than half of the ones I saw weren't even hiring full-time. That's making a second option all the more appealing. I'm thinking of trying to get my Ph.D. and I'll be taking the GRE in a couple of weeks so I can fill out grad school applications. I have a good relationship with some of my professors. If I stayed I would have a job, and my tuition would be covered. I wouldn't be rich but I'd be taken care of. That's not to say though that I consider it only as a fall-back. Part of me really would like to have the higher degree.
    At times of transition I always find myself caught up in a sense of self-doubt and uncertanty. The correct path forward just never seems clear.
    I haven't been doing much coin collecting in all of this. I've been dealing with a monetary crunch just trying to work with my parents to meet fees this semester. That's finally letting up, but I still don't have much time and energy to go hunting. Though, I will admit that I have been taking advantage of saved searches to have eBay do some of the looking for me. There's a coin that's ending in a couple of days (right when I should be getting some cash from parents and some back-pay for work) that I'm really tempted to try to buy. It's a bit expensive but my birthday is in about a month... maybe I could call it an early present to myself? (This coin doesn't become available in this grade very often you see... and it's shiney. )
    "Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must." ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
    -Rev
  17. Revenant
    Something to consider? Would they compete or build on each other?
    I?ve been playing around with an idea recently. I wonder if it?s really possible to have more than one hobby.
    Most of us aren?t and probably never will be super rich. Our hobbies have to compete with the rest of our lives for our time, money, and energy. Two hobbies would invariably end up fighting with each other for the same limited set of resources. It seems reasonable that both would suffer as a result.
    I?ve had several hobbies over time. When two of them overlapped, invariably one of two patterns developed. I usually gave the bulk of my attention to, and the other would be mostly neglected, receiving attention only when I had a lot of time and money or I was temporarily bored with the other. Other cases would mostly be a move between pastimes; a new interest would receive more and more of my time while an older one received gradually less.
    Of course, the more expensive or the more demanding the hobby is, the bigger the conflicts get, sometimes even within the hobby. How many people have commented on the need to focus, or choose one set over another, even just within the scope of coin collecting? Our sets compete with each other. Then try to expand into comics or some totally unrelated area as some do?
    Coin collecting isn?t really my only hobby even at the moment. I?ve had a few projects and goals that I?ve been putting off in order to run-amuck with my coins. Right now I?m finding myself wanting to go back and finish some projects after a long wait. While I haven?t lost interest in my sets, I also find I?m more than happy to be cooling my jets just a bit.
    Does the ability to fall back on one hobby keep the other from getting too stale or frustrating? Probably. So in the end, do competing interests do more to help each other or hurt each other?
    As always, few firm conclusions; I seem to ramble and hope that something coherent leaks out in the process?
  18. Revenant
    ... will continue...
    Wheew... June was a crazy month. Much like Neverman I was involved a summer course over the last month. I think I eeked out a low A but I'll know later.
    In the last month what money I've felt like spending on non-necessities has gone into a few non-coin related projects. I finally made something happen that I've wanted to do for over 2 years, but it cost over $400 to do it. Now, looking forward, I don't think I'm going to have too much of a coin budget between now and the end of the year.
    My student research job, which I've been in for a year, is going to end in late August. I don't know if the department will want to keep me on after that or not. I'm going to be cutting back on my "fun" spending and starting to build up my cash reserves, just in case I'm out of a job in September. If the job does end in August, I'm probably not going to look for other part-time work. Next semester should be my last and I should graduate in mid-December. I've reached the point that I need to start looking for full-time employment as a Engineer, rather than another part-time student job. My life is really going to change in the next 6 months. It's always funny to reach this point. We spend years trying to get out, but many college students get to the point of being "done" and a certain fear sets in. A fear of actually going out and joining the rest of the world. School's over.
    I shouldn't need to sell anything, I just can't buy much anymore. Once I get through the coming chaos my collection is still going to be there for me to pick up where I left off. Heck, once I start earning a real income I might be able to do a bit more with an improved budget... I can dream, right?
    Not much to do really other than to hope and pray that I come through this and find myself in 2010 with 2 feet once again firmly on solid ground.
  19. Revenant

    I'm still here

    By Revenant,

    Keeping on. Mostly window shopping...
    I've been keeping busy with class and work. I also haven't had much to report on. I've been making a smaller number of bigger purchases lately. Individually, they aren't going to be all that fun to talk about or hear about. There's a chance that I'll have some bragging rights by December but we'll see.
    Thursday I was in the final part of a 250 mile round trip when my car got hit by road debris off a truck. Bye, bye ball joints. Hello repair bill and getting to deal with the insurance company!
    I've been doing a fair bit of "window shopping" lately. I try to stay faithful to my primary projects but every once in a while I get a severe case of "roaming eyes." I start looking at anything and everything coin related for a few days. I'll usually strongly consider a purchase or two but I almost never buy anything. I can be rather particular about what I like, but what I like tends to not be cheap enough to be an impulse buy. At that point it becomes a choice between some random purchase and something I know I really want for a long-term goal. The random purchases tend to always lose those fights. Still, I enjoy looking.
    While I'm looking, I continue to contemplate what's worth going after and what projects I do want to prioritize. A few of the things I'm working on sometimes feel like using rocks against a freight train, but I don't think I'm that much of a lost cause yet.
  20. Revenant
    ... I just think he's a twit for buying them.
    A couple of weeks ago I had an experience that I'm sure many of you have also been subjected to. I was talking to my family on the phone when my mother brought up that she'd talked to one of her fellow teachers about the "Obama coins." The moment I heard those words I was in a bad mood. I indicated that I didn't want to talk about it but she wouldn't listen. It's one of the few times I've really been tempted to hang-up on my mother.
    I hate those coins. I think the person that thought them up should be dragged into the street and shot. The sets should be gathered together and destroyed utterly and completely. The subject matter is irrelevant. It's a POS company cheating stupid and ignorant people out of $20 for $2 in mutilated coins in an ugly, cheap holder that they probably got from China. I even saw a report on the news (God help us when this nonsense counts as newsworthy) where people who bought as many as 4 sets (twits) were shocked to find that the picture of Obama was actually just a sticker that had been placed on the coin! (oh... surprise surprise... the television was selling cheap garbage for the low low price of just $19.99... whodathunkit?) I said as much to my mother and she was shocked (I love my mother but some days...). She decided that she was going to tell her friend about it.
    Well, he bought them anyway... and I'm going to her school tomorrow to help her empty out her classroom for the summer... and he's bringing the coins in their little holder to show me that they aren't stickers...
    Now, after seeing that news report, I'm pretty sure they are stickers. I think he just hasn't taken them out of the case and taken a good look at them. You can make anything look nice if you stick it in a case so the person can't get a really close look at it at all angles. But that's not really the point... Garbage is garbage. I have zero interest in talking to this person about these coins. I don't even want to be in the same room with these things. I see nothing to be gained by talking to someone who thinks that their "piece of history" is a nice collectable. Sometimes you just have to let people think what they want because they can't hear the truth. I told Mom; Mom warned him... and he bought them anyway...
    If this teacher comes to me tomorrow and starts trying to tell me how it is I'm going to be hard pressed to be polite. I have half a mind to bring a couple of things from my collection and let him see what a real collectable looks like. I'd take a nice, mint state, Merc dime over 60 of his Obama coin sets any day... Unless the Merc was worth less than $100... Then I'd cash in the sets and use the cash to buy the dime... and burn the remains of the holders... clean air laws be damned.
    I really don't want to deal with this person or their coins... maybe I'll be lucky and my 1889 Netherlands 10 Gulden will arrive in the mail tomorrow and be waiting at home to cheer me up when I get home.
    I'm sorry guys. I just had to get this rant out of my system.
  21. Revenant
    The craziest logic for selecting a coin/series ever!
    Well, I was looking for a nice coin to pick up to celebrate the end of the year and I got to thinking... I'm working on my 1st degree (my B.S.), I just finished my 8th semester and based on the grades I was expecting I thought I'd have a cumulative GPA of 3.75... and from this, I decided it would be cool to get a gold coin from 1875. Yeah... I'm sure that's perfectly resonable logic, right?
    Well, I went looking but quickly ran into a problem. I wanted a graded coin because I didn't want to deal with any high probability of it being fake, cleaned, or dipped. Decent looking MS gold coins from the US tend to trade at several multiples of melt. I did find this one coin though, just not American. It was an 1875 10 Gulden gold coin graded MS66. The coin was struck during the reign of Wilhelm (William) III and I'm a William. The coin traded at under 2x melt and it just looked like it would be fun to collect. When I looked into it a bit more and realized that these coins were only issued under this monarch for 10 years (with 1 major overdate variety) these seemed like a cool way to make an old gold collection. With under 12 coins I might actually have a shot at making a set of them without intense frustration.
    While swapping notes with gherrman44 he pointed me in the direction of an 1875 PCGS MS67 that looked great from the pictures. It's old enough to have one of the 7 digit numbers. It was still under 2x melt and the seller had it marked 5% down until Saturday. I decided to buy it just for fun. I also won an auction for an 1889 (last year for this series) NGC MS66 (top pop for NGC). I've made a set for them (since NGC recently made competitive sets for them) and I'm hoping to have a little bit of fun with this, both short and long term.

  22. Revenant

    Ended Strong

    By Revenant,

    Final Grades posted... Now's the time to celebrate?
    My final grades have been posted. I actually did just slightly better than I'd hoped. My semester GPA was a 3.571 and the cumulative average managed to fall to just a 3.764. I think this means I'll make the dean's list this semester and it is increasingly likely that I'll manage to graduate with more than a 3.700 and meet the requirements for graduating Magna Laude. As has been the case 7 times before I've been getting plenty of congratulations from my family. Personally though, it can be a bit hard to be truely proud of yourself when the culmulative GPA is still dropping (even if only slightly).
    Even so, I have to admit that I did pretty well (certainly better than most of my classmates) and I usually like to get myself something nice when I meet with success and lately that means {gold} coins. I'm completely Pavlovian in my thinking as I'm sure I've discussed.
    I'm waiting on 2 minor purchases that I made over the weekend to arrive and waiting on Friday (Payday, yay!) and Saturday. Those purchases are the MS69 2009 silver Austrian Philharmonic and the MS69 2004 silver Panda. Very fun coins. After Saturday I'll have all the cash I need to buy the coin I want as a prize/celebration for my grades. I have more than enough cash to buy it now but I still think it's better to wait. I really never want to feel like my finances have been threatened by excessive zeal to buy a coin.
    The coin(s) I have in mind are a significant departure from the main focus of my collection, but it(they) simultaneously satisfies several things I've been wanting to do and offers a nice brake from my sig set. I've really enjoyed working on that set but I think it's time to take a step-back, get a bit of fresh air and approach it again after some more thought. The coin(s) I'm considering are 0.900 gold, foriegn, and over 100 years old. Hey, if you're going to go off on a tangent then make it a good one, right? The set has the added benefit of only including 10 or 11 coins, so if I do decide to build a set of them I don't have to worry about contracting "endless set exhaustion" again. No, I'm not going to name the coin/set until I buy/win it because it's not a sure thing yet.
    Well I'm out until next time. (Resumes the dreaming and drooling about a coins that haven't come in the mail yet... pic included so feel free to join the drooling.)

  23. Revenant
    Moments and Concepts
    I'm often given to wonder why I ended up becoming a coin collector. I only started about 3 years ago but it's something I had always wanted to do. The question became, what put the thought in my head? The answer I ultimately arrived at was that there were many events that occurred throughout my childhood that inclined me towards collecting coins. There weren't many coin collectors in my family really, but my family exhibits certain behaviors and modes of thought that were passed along to me. While my family seems to disagree, coin collecting became the next logical step after being introduced to basic concepts.
    Spending so much time with my mother rolling coins, but not the old ones, presented the concept that old coins were special and that idea was re-enforced many times over the years. Another event, around the time I was 11 helped with this and introduced another important concept to me: the mint mark.
    In the absence of a father, my Uncle used to try and teach us things he felt we needed to know. He'd give us small tasks that were aimed at understanding a core concept: The value of money, the value of work, the value of being clean and organized. Well, one summer he came to me with a task. He had brought over a massive bag filled with change. He'd been putting coins into it for a few years and he wanted me to sort it down and roll the coins with a catch. I had to sort the coins by date and mint mark. Each roll was supposed to have only 1 date and 1 mint mark of that date. I was given about 1 week to do this. I accepted the task... and as soon as he left I turned to my family with a question; "What's a mint mark?"
    I had long understood the dates on the coins but up to this point I had never been curious enough to ask about those seemingly random letters that tended to appear next to the date. I got a little lesson in what they were and what they mint and I was able to set about the task armed with this new knowledge.
    I dragged the bag of coins back to my room. I was 11 and this bag had about $90 in change as it turned out, most of it was pennies. I couldn't really carry it; when I say I dragged the bag back to my room I'm being quite literal. I cleared out a patch of ground in my room and got to work; my grandmother and my sister helped me. When I was done a few days later my Uncle came back. I was told to take all the old coins and hide them away. With him watching they were placed in a somewhat hard to get to nook and they remained there for the next several years; again, you don't get rid of old coins. The others I was told to cash in at the bank and I divided the haul with my sister as instructed.
    At the end of the whole thing I had a little extra money to play with. I also had a new appreciation for how heavy large amounts of coins were and a slightly improved knowledge base regarding coins. It has been about 11 years and I still think back to that experience. Looking back, most of the coins I was told to hide away aren't worth anything and probably weren't worth keeping. But those coins are the most important thing I took away from sorting and counting those coins.
    Having to sort them down in that way, taking a close look at each coin, made me start to think about change a little more and I began to look at change in general a little more. Understanding what the mint marks were gave me a new piece of each coin's story. I still thought the date much more important, and it would take several more years before I began to really consider mint marks in the context of coin collecting, but I had to understand them first.
    Well, hopefully this doesn't read like rambling craziness.
  24. Revenant
    Fun little package.
    I'm finally home, working on research and waiting on grades. I spent most of the day on the road for work (5 hours in the car just can't get any more fun). When I got back to the house though I found a nice little package waiting for me.
    It contained my latest acquisition that I won in an auction on Saturday. It's a Russian 3 Roubles Ballet (yes, that's not a mistake) coin. It's made of 0.900 silver and weighs 34.5 grams (that's on troy ounce of silver in the coin). This adds another country to the list included in my signature set from another part of the world. Armenia and Belarus also issue 1 ounce silver rounds but I haven't gotten around to those yet.
    The coin's dated 1993 but it was slabbed very recently so it's in prongs. The thing that's driving me nuts is that it has just the smallest amount of "wiggle room" in the prongs. Everytime I flip the slab over the coin shifts back and forth in the holder. I'm a little concerned about what this sliding motion means long term for the coin. I like the new holders, but the others that I've seen haven't allowed the coin to move around. I'm really tempted to send it back to NGC with my next sub for a re-holder, but based on what I've heard from the other forum members I'm not sure if that'll solve the problem. This is irritating me to no end. I haven't really been able to stop thinking about it since I realized the problem. I can't really feel enjoy the coin if I'm worried about flipping it over.
    Anyway... I'm trying to derive some enjoyment from looking the coin over. The coin is absolutely mirror-like. You can literally see yourself reflected in it. I've attached the seller's pictures. I'll be imaging several coins for the signature set now that I'm home again (Kiwis, Kookaburras, some Pandas and Libertads, etc).

  25. Revenant
    1 test down...
    Okay... So I said I wouldn't buy anything this week and I didn't. Whoop! I bid on something, but it doesn't end until Saturday evening so that doesn't count.
    Yes, the fact that I didn't acquire anything for 2 weeks doesn't really seem like a bit accomplishment (big display of self-control right?). Well, when what you want is cheap enough to be an "impulse buy," and you're trying to resist that impulse, that gets rough. Those coins can call with greater force than the sirens calling sailors to the rocks.
    To make things better, I woke up Saturday feeling ill. That got worse for a couple of days. Tuesday my fever hit 101 and stayed there most of the day. I finally started to beat it Wednesday though. I still ended up spending the entire week feeling sick and took an exam today which I hadn't felt up to studying for as much as I had intended. Predictably, that didn't go as well as I hoped.... Ah well, that A is pretty well dead... Time to ramp up for Monday, right?
    I spent most of the week just looking at this site and looking into new coins and new ideas for my sig set. The concept for that set keeps getting bigger. I keep finding more coins from more countries and (of course) I'd like to have them all. (Feeling miserable also makes you want to buy the nice shiny thing even more too.) If I wasn't sure that I'd never be able to complete this set before, I am now, but I'll have fun trying. I continue to struggle to define precisely what will or won't be included in the set. There are some coins that inhabit a bit of a gray area with regard to my goals for the set. I want to add them but I don't want to "open the door" on other coins I'm definitely not interested in. I'll probably continue making that decision coin by coin as I go along... In the interim I'll continue to look and learn... and drool... and laugh (have any of you heard about the 50th anniversary 1 ounce silver "Barbie" coins? They're PINK! O_o)
    It's going to be an interesting week... I have to study for 2 tests, survive the tests, pack my stuff up to go home for the summer, get some time critical work done for my job, and take care of a few other things. That sounds doable...
    Never fear though. I will be buying at least one coin to the sig set in the next couple of days. The set is getting pretty close to that psychologically significant landmark: 50 coins. There's already 53 slots, but only 47 of them are filled (I'm still working on those coins).
    As a bit of a random point, there's nothing quite so cool as a bird in flight... too bad we've all but removed the eagle from our coinage...