Revenant

12 hours ago, deposito said:

yeah I've seen that thing.  3 is about perfect, 2 could make sense, and 5 or 6 would be a topping off point for a nice little gift set or breakout collection I think.  The wall case?  Maybe to fill with nonsense tokens as burglar bait but not for anything you actually like.  Important to have a bunch of gold and silver electroplated bars and coins somewhere that will get found easily, can't beat this display to get them on the right path

For me the appeal of more would be having similar size gold coins from about the same period from a bunch of different European powers from the turn of the 19th/20th century - Pre-WWI basically. Because this would basically be what I'm building with these coins and what I'd like to represent down the road as a custom set. What's amazing to me is that there were a bunch of these essentially interchangeable European gold coins circulating around that time where the Swiss 20F, the French 20F, and the Italian 20L all had about 0.1867 toz of gold in them and then the British sovereign and the Prussian 20 Mark were a little beefier at about 0.23 toz. But, with those countries where a Franc and a Lire were essentially equivalent in this period you had a de facto international unified currency, through gold, 100 years before the Euro. And that makes these coins very very cool and interesting to me, but more on this later.

44 minutes ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

I tend to think gold will continue to trend down, don't know if it will fall as far as 1,400 but that's my trigger to loosen the purse strings. That being said, I have purchased some gold coins over the past year + and if the right coin comes around spot price be damned. 

I think Moody's and most of the miners are assuming $1500 as the price it settles at for the "new normal," but even if they are right it'll move around and you may see a 14-handle. I guess we'll all see. If we see $1400 my gold stocks in Robinhood will be hurting but I may be happy regardless.

I'm not buying much, but, as my recent posts indicate, I am buying and I do see this current pullback as a possible near-term opportunity. I haven't really bought much gold in the last year, I think since around Feb or March 2020, because of the spike up in prices until my anniversary present and now the 20 Lire. Even with the dip in prices its a bit rough to be buying any gold out there because premiums on things that are near melt have spiked.

I don't know if gold is currently bottoming as some think or if it is going to keep going down. I do think, long term, it will be higher, but that's just my 2 cents. 

And, of course, we both use old gold coins for avatar images.  

On 3/1/2021 at 2:10 PM, deposito said:

Any 3 gold coins ought to look good together! 

Of course, now I find this and I'm very intrigued. It's a lot like a small shot glass cabinet my wife gave me several years ago. But I'm worried it might be too much / over kill. I agree that a small display with a few coins on a theme would be really great, and that was my original idea. Other than NCLT I'm not sure I have enough slabbed coins with a common theme to make something like this big cabinet work and I think the size and number of coins might actually make it lose "punch."

Of course, my wife tells me she thinks it is overkill and she doesn't like it! I think that means. "it's dead, Jim."

1 hour ago, coinsandmedals said:

Hopefully they can get the work done quickly, and kiddos can have their play area back soon. 

Today marks 2 weeks hence and we still have a hole in the ceiling. Hoping they'll get back out and fix it soon but the insurance / adjuster is slowing things down. With the latest cold spell I'm not looking forward to the gas bill after having this hole in our insulation for so long but what can ya do? We're gonna be fine soon enough - just mildly inconvenienced in the long run. Thanks!

1 hour ago, deposito said:

I've been looking at this kind of stuff too, considering kinds of 2-3 coin sets that could look good together in a nice box or frame.  I saw those 3 slab wood boxes for about $30 on ebay, haven't committed yet.  Any 3 gold coins ought to look good together!  Put up a picture if you actually get one of these and put the slabs in it.  I got one 3-part one last year, foam not wood, that doesn't fit PCGS, only NGC slabs.  I think most other items selling now out there found a way to fit both and they say so in the description. 

I'd say it's almost guaranteed to happen at this point. It's more an issue of timing. Part of this is that I want the 20 L coin to be part of whatever form this takes as well.

1 hour ago, deposito said:

Glad you survived your ordeal with some sense of humor too.  That whole Texas thing has really added to the growing pile of things making me really want to move out to somewhere I can own a generator and store more stuff 

I survived having a premie in the NICU for 2 months, so it's going to take more than a few cold days without power to fully strip my sense of humor on a more long-term basis.  

On 2/18/2021 at 6:25 PM, coinsbygary said:

Lighting is a key aspect of photography, but the good news is that it is one of the least expensive tools used in photography.

It can be - but there are also $2,000 a piece studio strobes used in portraiture that I'd love to own. I find that strobes can be expensive but always-on lighting (often called "hot lights") tend to be cheaper. You probably use hot lights more for coin photos - as do I - because it's easy to get a good image of a coin when you can actually see the lighting and luster you're gonna get. Strobes tend to suck for coins.

On 2/18/2021 at 9:18 AM, coinsbygary said:

I always use the registry and point system to compete with myself. I can't compete with expensive registry sets, but I can always strive to make my sets the best they can be. The registry and the points assigned to the coins in the registry help me to improve the quality of my collection. In the end, I may not have all the top pops...

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't you still curb-stomping the competition in the Wilhelmina 10G category? Seriously love that set. Makes me jealous but I'm not touching Wilhelmina until I get finished with Papa's set and get a few more type coins I want.

Seriously, Gary, I know you don't do this to "compete" per se but I think you do just fine in some areas. 👍 

5 hours ago, coinsbygary said:

@coinsandmedalsIf you can learn to work in layers you will know a lot of the power of this software. 2019 is the version I have. I don't upgrade it every year but use it for as long as Adobe supports it. I am doing an editing demo by ZOOM for my coin club on March 10. After that, if you want, I can do a ZOOM demo for you. Send me a message through NGC if you are interested. The most important tip is this, Elements can't make a poorly taken picture look good, it can only make a good picture look spectacular! Gary 

I use Photoshop creative cloud for editing all my photos - my portraiture of family and my wife, my mini / macro shooting and my coins. It has more power for general use than elements but it costs me $10.81/month after tax and I don't know that I'd give up elements if I could have it without a monthly fee.

I can sometimes save a photo with photoshop but it's usually better and easier to just take a good photo in the first place. With coin photography,  it seems that either the detail and the luster is there or it isn't. Very little in between.

On 2/26/2021 at 5:55 PM, coinsbygary said:

I am sorry for your losses, but I am thankful that its all stuff that can be replaced. We had a cold snap of below zero nights for 11 straight days. However, this is Wisconsin and this kind of stuff happens every year. I have a number of other friends and relatives living in Texas that have managed the kind of week you had. I felt so sorry for everyone living in Texas that week. 

Thanks. We're getting through though. It has been stressful and I want my children to have their play area back but we've been very fortunate in it. We were the first ones on our street to pile up trash on the street for collection but we're getting plenty of company now as people get back in and get workers in to do the demo work. I think they're estimating the economic losses in Texas at 129 Billion or something else crazy.

2 hours ago, ColonialCoinsUK said:

A friend here was flooded out (we tend to get floods rather than burst pipes although we had -13oC/9oF a few weeks ago) and they had to move out for 6 months as it took that long to dry the place out - cool and damp here in the north of the UK so hopefully when the weather returns to normal it will not take that long in Texas!

My wife has decided that, as her parents now have solar and all the utilites bills have just gone up, moving our off-grid plans forward is now a good idea.

I think you all insulate your pipes and such much better than we do however. The pipes that burst were all uninsulated. We don't invest much into insulating pipes here because we almost never have hard freezes that last more than a few hours.

I honestly think the most hateful thing about all of this was having highs in the 70s (F) less than a week after it was in the teens!

We're taking our lessons and we'll be strengthening our preparedness - more portable heaters, a portable AC unit, more gas cans / gasoline storage capacity, siphon pumps for emergencies, emergency radio (with rechargeable battery, hand crank and mini solar panel for charging it). All of this coming after buying the generator this summer. We'll be much better prepared for the next hurricane season anyway.

On 2/14/2021 at 2:22 PM, thisistheshow said:

I don't have any gold, let alone graded gold, but I've been inspired by your posting on this topic and may put it on the bucket list. 

I mostly just find it interesting to think that we are still within 100 years of a time when all currencies were backed by gold (and convertible to each other based on gold weight and not floating exchange rates) and when (reasonably affluent) people might have actually had real gold in their pockets and paid for things with actual gold coins - not the manganese brass of the "golden" dollar coins of the 21st century. I also think it's interesting that some 75 years ago it was illegal in the United States to own gold that wasn't coins of "historic significance" or jewelry. I also think it's interesting that it was global wars and government spending on those wars that largely brought the era of gold coinage to an end.

The playroom upgrades have already and continue to pay off in big ways.

8 hours ago, zadok said:

best part probably creates new regulations on short sellers where they cant over short

I think selling naked shorts is and always has been illegal.

5 hours ago, ColonialCoinsUK said:

Although unlikely, part of me hoped to see a rapid rise to >$50 as I could have sold my bullion silver for a very good profit and released funds for more numismatic items  - it would have generated plenty of space too!

Babylon 5

If it spikes to $50+ because of these shenanigans I will likely face pressure from my wife to liquidate some of what I bought at $20 and wait for the squeeze to pass.

33 minutes ago, coinsandmedals said:

That said, the app idea is entirely new to me and very cool! Is this a larger outfit? 

They definitely seem decently big. I'm not sure how big but big.

I'm still seeing a lot of dedicated websites and I've seen a trend towards dealers making their own sites to leave eBay. I buy a lot of my currency from a company that developed their their  own app that I have on my phone that can give me push notifications when they run a "10% off your whole order" sale. So I'd say it's a mixed bag.

13 minutes ago, STU GORE said:

#2. I own silver en masse. I buy/bought more than I sell. If the price goes to the Moon and stays in orbit, then that's fine.

It's not silver or the value of my assets I'm concerned about in this particular. I'm concerned about the impacts that this might have on the hobby and the population of some currently common and low value coins - we've seen mass meltings before. I don't think the $70 Billion silver market going to $300 Billion is going to change that much in terms of global finance. But I am deeply saddened and disturbed by this bizarre, "burn it all down" mentality I seem to be seeing more and more.

11 hours ago, thisistheshow said:

That's interesting. My wife is a teacher (High School, Spanish) and she occasionally records things for instructional purposes. I don't hear everything she does but hearing a recent recording I can tell that she sounds.....different, even better, more relaxed.  My point being I can hear the  positive difference from when she first started. 

My wife actually gives English lessons to kids in China in the mornings and uses a headset for hers. They (the host platform) records the lessons and makes highlight videos periodically. They're funny to watch. She says she's basically a clown performing for young children and hopefully they learn English in the process. Very over the top behavior, over pronouncing the words, lots of hand gestures.... It's a different way of talking and not just normal conversation. It's funny sometimes when she'll break out with one of her hand signals when talking to me or one of our boys.  

On 1/23/2021 at 3:18 PM, coinsandmedals said:

Oh yes, my wife often jokes about me getting a “big boy” job. I can’t complain as I often teased her while she was working on her graduate degree. 

Always have to be careful in marriage - come-uppance will come.  

I feel your pain on keeping yourself busy in other forums. I used to be more active in Silverbugs, Papercurrency and some other subreddits on reddit but I find that it's hard to be consistently active in more than a couple of places with the time that is left to me with work and children and other competing interests.

22 hours ago, coinsandmedals said:

Congratulations on reaching such an impressive milestone! Your journal hits pretty close to home, especially the part about graduate school. In the last year of my Ph.D. program, I am all too familiar with the monthly stipend way of life. Coming from a very low socioeconomic background and being a first-generation student to graduate high school, much less obtain my Ph.D., I truly have a lot to be thankful for. That said, I am eager to transition to the postgraduate version of myself with a full-time job and a little more financial freedom to pursue my numismatic interests. Your journey helps bring hope to realizing that goal. Thank you for sharing! 

I don't know your age or if you went straight into the PhD program after undergrad like I did, but grad school gets criticized sometimes for "delaying adulthood." My wife joked about me finally getting "a big boy job." It's quite a transition and feels very freeing in many ways.

In a 6 month period my income doubled when I took a full time job with the school and then doubled again when I left to start a job with a consulting firm.

Good luck with the defense. Writing my dissertation took about 2-3 months and, while I love writing and write often, writing that document was one of the most emotionally trying and stressful things I think I've ever done - but you will be so happy when it is done.

2 hours ago, gherrmann44 said:

Watch out! There's enough gold coins in your picture to give you gold fever! I got gold fever as a youth and still I have not been cured of it. This in spite of being retired with very little money to spend on it. The good thing is, I saw this coming a number of years ago and went on somewhat of a binge. While this has helped to lesson the severity of the symptoms, it has not cured me! There's just something about precious metals used in circulation that captivates my imagination! Good luck on the second box, I hope you don't have to wait 13 years to fill it! Gary

These days my list of most desired coins is all gold. So I think I already have it. So... too late!

1. 1920 double eagle

2. 1924 double eagle

3. Complete sets of the 1986, 2016 and 2019 Gold American Eagles

4. An Italian 20 Lire

5.  A Swiss 20 Franc.

6 hours ago, gherrmann44 said:

Congratulations! I can tell from your writings and photos that you are really happy together. I wish you many more anniversaries together! All the best! BTW, Nice gifts! The coin could not be anything else but a 70! Gary 

Thanks!

Congrats on starting your third row BTW! 😆 

3 hours ago, ColonialCoinsUK said:

Many congratulations!

You have a much better choice of gifts - our 5th 'wood' anniversary was a pile of planks for a new fence

If we owned the house and didn't rent I might redo our crappy old fence with all the broken planks.

A couple of better shots of her in the dress - wearing the blue shoes she bought to wear at our wedding which she's rarely worn since. The dress was blue for the sapphire jewelry but it matching the old blue heels 👠  was a nice bonus.

6 hours ago, jgenn said:

"But she's the real MS70" 

Aww, how sweet!

Actually got her to tear up with that one when she read it so I'm calling it a win.