Revenant

So, I’ve received the new 10-coin sets of Zimbabwean coins and I’m torn between being very happy and more than a little frustrated. I haven’t closely examined all of these yet, but these new 10-coin sets are just significantly better than what I got last time buying from the other dealer. The 5C, 10C, $2, and even the $5 coins are vastly better even at first glance – Shandy even commented on how stark the contrast is. The ones from the new sets in some cases just straight up make the ones from the first dealer look sick. One or two of these “lightly circulated” $5 coins I think are uncirculated and will get MS63-MS65 grades, and I think they even look better than some other $5 coins I bought for about $7 a piece (after I was so disgusted by what I got in the original sets). Just for fun, here’s a comparison of my shots of the AU58 1999 recently returned from NGC, under very high and unflattering magnification, vs the new 1997s from these sets. I feel it is worth saying that the AU58 1999 is a nice-looking coin in hand IMO but with this magnification and in this lighting it does look rough. The “lightly circulated” $10 and $25 coins are basically on-par with what I got from the last dealer, but that’s okay - I knew what I was being offered this time. Though there is maybe one $10 coin that might be nicer than the others and might get a mint state grade - maybe a MS63/64 I think. I am glad I have been snapping up 1980-dated Z cents though because all 5 of the coins I got in this group are 1997 dated. There’s something about 1997 for these 1 C coins. I’ve gotten eight 1C coins and they’re all 1997. I’ve seen multiple eBay auctions for 1997 cents and very little else. I’ve even seen someone offering a bag of 100 uncirculated Zimbabwe cents – but they’re all 1997. There is something about 1997… maybe one day I’ll figure out what that is! Lol But 1980 seems common enough too for one reason or another – I’ve seen 2 dealers now offering lots of 25 uncirculated 1980s for $15-25 ($0.60-1.00 each). I’m guessing 1980s were hoarded back in the day for being the first year of issue for coins from a new country / currency. The 1997s seem stranger – they were not the last year of issue. 1999 was – but maybe they weren’t producing many by that point after producing a ton in 1997. Zimbabwe did not produce every denomination every year and only made cents in about 12 of 20 years. But that’s 1980 and 1997. I’ve seen some from 1983 and 1988. Getting coins from 1986? 1989? 1991? 1994? 1999? Good luck… I have not seen them. The 1C coins are otherwise similar to what I’ve gotten before - there are a couple of 1Cs that I think could do about as well as the MS65 I just got back from the first set. I don’t know if I’ll take the shot and see how the best of these can do in grading. Maybe, maybe not – depends on how much over budget I’m running at the time, I guess. There was one sad coin that had a nice reverse, and then I flipped it over to see a huge, ugly scratch. Oof! … Sad times. Sad Times. “’Tis but a scratch.” “’A scratch?’ Your arm’s off.” “Just a flesh wound.” Where things are a little extra interesting - the 10C coins I got are from 1999, the last year of the Km-3a, before the switch to clad. So, these coins would be competition for the MS65 1980 coin I have, not the 2001 MS61 that is the coin I’d really want to upgrade, but I may submit the nicest of these anyway to add a 1999 to a possible future custom set with more coins & dates. More interesting stuff (to me) - The fact that all of these were 1999 10Cs and all of the 5Cs were from 1997 and all the 1Cs were 1997 - which matches the dates of the coins that were part of a certain submission that went through NGC recently - has me wondering if this seller is also where someone else bought their coins. Am I once again sourcing my material from the same places as my main competition? The 20C, 50C and $1 coins are a bit more mixed. Some of them have promise in the choice-but-not-gem-uncirculated range. I’ll look at these more closely later alongside the graded ones and decide if I feel strongly enough that these could do better to try sending 1 or 2 to NGC next year. Looking at these, it’s hard to not feel a little like getting the others and then not just returning them and looking elsewhere was a mistake. But I don’t know that I can call it a complete misfire. I did get the MS65RD cent out of it. And it was a start, and a reasonable start at that. And I do still feel good about the way the grades largely lined up with what I’d expected in sending them in, suggesting that I am learning some things, even as my eyes have gotten worse with age and corneal scarring. All of this buying of different lots is also giving me an increasing variety of dates, which may come into play later if I go beyond just a type set, and, I’ve just been enjoying getting to buy all these and put them in flips. I’ve enjoyed looking at all of them, and showing them to Shandy, and talking about them with her. I’ve gotten to enjoy the hunt and the chase with these in a way that I haven’t in a while and which you don’t get to have or enjoy in the same way when just buying pre-graded coins. I ran out of flips while trying to take these out of the shipping container, forcing me to double up some of them in the flips – this was even after I had some coins I knew I didn’t want to submit (AU-looking $10 and $25 coins) skip the “flip” stage and go right into stapled 2x2s for long term storage in the binder. I’ve ordered more flips and I should get them soon. When each coin is in its own flip, I’ll try to sit down with Shandy to try to pick the best ones for sending in, hopefully with her help, input and buy-in. My moment of Zen: I think she caught me grinning. So maybe that’s the sign that the joy is winning out over the frustration.

I was pretty stoked a while back for the 300th entry in my 14 year old journal.

Putting Window dressing on my lonely libertad. Edited to add, and my one graded Shawnee coin, that I'm waiting the slot scores to be populated for. I've had the coin for years. Only recently realized they added a competitive category for it!

Another one up: Maybe one of these days I'll have them all.

Pre covid it was pretty easy to get sub 10% premium over spot. Now it's crazy.

I feel like this one could be a journal all to itself. I love these coins, and I'm proud of this little set, but these coins are hard to image.

In fairness, with it being November 10th and with Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up I wouldn't have too much hope for getting a submission mailed to them today back before 2022 under normal conditions.

My latest one, since I couldn't stop myself from trying to set up the camera and bust out shots of 5 coins really quick at the end of the afternoon today: Continuing to tweak it some as I look at it more:

When it comes to building out registry sets, I find that I'm very much one of those people that needs to "begin with the end in mind." I find that when I don't have a clear vision for a set and an idea of what the finished project will look like I have a hard time making anything I'm happy with and I have a hard time making progress or even really starting. I've been wanting to build out the 1986 mint set for over a year and I just could never come up with an idea for how to build it out that actually excited me... and now I finally have! I'm going to build it out by talking about some of the things that happened that year and how many of them are relevant to my life or my wife's. Things like Studio Ghibli releasing their first film in August of that year. The Phantom of the Opera debuting in London - my wife loves that story/ play. The first official discovery of Mad Cow disease. The launching of Mir, Challenger. And the Chernobyl disaster. An odd list - and all 1986 apparently. My wife has looked at the work in progress on it and called it, "kind of a love note to us." I'm good with that - although, as love notes go, it’s an old one when a love note talks about the Challenger Disaster and Chernobyl, but, ya know… I’m an odd one. Of course... the pictures I'm less than thrilled with, now that I look at them again. I wouldn't call them "bad"... but I don't know that I love them. I think I'd redo them and do them differently now. Funny thing is I remember being at least happy-ish when I re-imaged the set like ~2.6 years ago but... I guess my standards have changed/ gone up. A phone call to Choya later and he's going to try to meet me sometime this month and give them to me, even if it is just at Thanksgiving. Depending on when I get them, I may try to bust out new pictures and a new banner in rapid fashion to redress the set for Dec 1st. We'll see. Just for fun. Do I expect it to win anything? No. Not really. But personal pride has me wanting to put a shine on it and have it looking nice for the cut-off. I don’t know to what extent this is just a natural outcome of the journal writing and / or the fact that the set is one of the oldest in the category, but that 1986 set has more views than any of the other sets in the category. Interestingly, of the 4 sets closest to it in view count, none have pictures, and the current #1 set has no pictures. So, maybe I can make that 1986 set something worth continuing to look at and deserving of that “most viewed” status. Working on this got me looking on eBay. I took an opportunity to get a new 1986-D quarter in MS66, which improves on the MS65 we have (the weakest coin still in the main set) for only $19. I figured at that price I could just call it an impulse buy and it isn’t something I’m likely to regret too much later. I'm also working on improving the visual presentation for some other sets and my wife is calling these set banner images one of my new obsessions - alongside buying lots of raw Zimbabwean coins like a crazy person. I'm not presently involved in researching Zimbabwean or Venezuelan banknotes and culture so... out comes the camera and the Photoshop!' These new images are in part an effort on my part to leave the Collector's Society site, at least for the NGC side, and "live" in the new registry. For the PMG side, Collector's Society is still the only option and that seems unlikely to change... And if they make a new PMG feature and the Signature Sets don't cross over I am going to be crying because that 127 note signature set for Zimbabwe was... a lot of work. Some of those were quick and easy (1932, the Texas Commems). The Zimbabwe banner was a hideous amount of work that took 3 or 4 nights and over a dozen versions. I think it was worth it. I had a vision I needed to nail. All of the banners of the gold coins are made with brand new pictures, some of which are vast improvements on the old ones. I really like the simple Obverse / Reverse on the white background for most of the sets with only 1 design, but I like the collaged approach with the type set. I feel like one of the biggest challenges with these images is accounting for the Rank ribbon and for the fact that the aspect ratio or the image and how the rank banner looks is different on my PC (1:1 square ratio) vs My phone (2:3 ratio). Working on the pictures of my Presidential Dollars Proof set is probably a waste of time if viewed completely from a competitive standpoint, but that’s at least a gratifying waste of time with a set that is closed-ended, not growing by 5 or 10 coins a year anymore, and which is 60% complete, so it doesn’t just mock me with all its emptiness. Lol I’m considering just biting the bullet and getting PF70s on the 2012-2014 coins to finish out the set since the PF69s I’m seeing aren’t much cheaper. But I’m worried that if I do start down that road, I might be tempted to bump some of the others up to 70s later. I’m wondering how far I’ll take this photo / banner upgrade drive and what the next victims will be. The 1986 Proof Set seems like it is ripe for a full re-image and a new banner. Edited on 11/27 to add: I've uploaded new photos to the 1986 set and posted a comment below with some new / old comparisons.

It's not about what we individually think. It's about what they think will encourage the most interest and participation.

Just for fun. I just got a bunch of these in the mail. 25 Zimbabwean cents from 1980 (first year of issue). They were copper until 1990. Looking for a really nice one for grading - hoping for a nice 66-67. So far I've bought and looked at 27 from this year.

If you're #1 ranked at 10Am on 12/1 you'll get a ribbon on your set 1/7 and you'll be able to download a pdf certificate. If you want them to mail you a printed certificate you'll have to request that through your account. I think you usually have to request it by some time in February and then get it March/April. If you win a major award you get the plaque and credit automatically. You don't have to request it.

The seller I got more Bond coins from recently also has some 10-coin sets of the pre-hyperinflation coins for $8, but if you get 4+ they're $6.40 each. I think I had seen these back in April and passed them over - went with coins from a California dealer because he says the $5, $10, and $25 coins he has are "lightly circulated" where the other 7 denominations are uncirculated. Given what I paid for those others ($18 each) and how that turned out with the $2 and $5 brass coins, I feel more than a bit silly now - especially adding in how the $10 and $25 coins did in grading, coming back as AU58. BTW, this was a confusing little image from the seller: They arranged the coins by size from smallest to largest and so the $10 and $25 coins are just mixed in between lower denominations. This confused the heck out of me the first time I looked at it and I wasn’t even sure the set really included the $10 and $25 coins for a few moments until I looked closer. The $5 bi-metallic and the $2 brass coin are just easier to see in a group like this because they’re unique in the group. I'm going to put in an order for 5 sets - another 50 coins - and do some more searching. I'm sure Shandy will be overjoyed! Lol I’ll have to try conning her into helping me look at them and pick the best ones again like we did with the Bond Coins. Maybe I can get her more emotionally invested in my crazy. Probably not, but hope springs eternal. Lol Right now, like in the last post, I think she enjoys my enjoyment / witnessing my joy. But I also think she is interested in sharing this with me. I think she enjoys something of seeing me talk about it. It is going to be interesting and perhaps painful if these sets deliver coins in far better shape than the other ($18) sets I bought. Getting these sets won't help with the $10 or $25 coins that I need to find nicer examples of – although I suppose I could still be surprised by getting nicer examples than what I got from the other peeps - but it may well help me get good 5C, 10C and $2 coins. It could be well worth it if it just gives me $2 coins that won’t get “details” grades for environmental damage. I may also get lucky and score some older coins for the non-steel-clad types I still need - I'm still dealing with several older slots being empty with no representative example even in hand to grade later. Random side note but I recently saw a seller offering these raw 10-coin sets for $49.99! And they’d actually sold 2! – one for $29.99 and one for the full $49.99. That’s crazy to me. All of the coins they offer are the later, steel-clad types, not the older copper-nickels and, while their $10 and $25 coins might be nicer based on the example photo… I don’t think that justifies $50/set. That’s steep. Even on the higher end most dealers are asking more like $25 for the sets. But… Hey… Someone paid it! The sales on these sets on eBay suggest that there is a decent Collector's base for Zimbabwean coins, at least in a raw state. This dealer has sold over 80 of these 10-coin sets. Some people have bought 5 to 10 sets like me - suggesting that people are giving them away or there are other cherry-pickers out there - or both. Normally it wouldn't be my go-to option to buy so many sets sight-unseen and end up with such a soon-to-be vast raw collection of these, but I can't go to a local coin show and look through at a dealers table like I could if these were Buffalo nickels or mercury dimes. Most people don't show up to Texas coin shows looking to buy Zimbabwean coins and so that isn't what the dealers bring. I’m also not at a stage in my life where I feel travelling to California or Florida or Colorado for coin shows is something I can realistically do. With my raw collection of these exceeding 100 coins and growing, I decided to split out these Z coins into a different small binder. I’ve also pulled my US raw coins out from my World coins that are in flips and pages, and I may split my world coins into two smaller binders. Why? Mostly because they were heavy, and I think the weight was going to break that old 3-inch binder. Lol

My point is you get a 10% discount on some of those extras on both tiers. So I wouldn't count and I wouldn't pay for elite to get a discount on a scratch resistant holders upgrade because I'd get that on premium without paying the extra $150. And so that doesn't really alter the parity point.

Both Premium and Elite give a 10% discount on scratch resistant holders and some special labels (ER).

This kind of honesty and advice is one of the main reasons why I've always loved this company. I'm a math nerd, and I like math, so let's have fun: If you do a bit of back of the envelope math, you're paying $150 more for Elite over Premium to get that 10% discount. So You need to spend $1500 on grading fees to save you $150 for that increase in membership level to pay off / break even. So at $18/coin currently on moderns, you have to submit 83 coins to break even. For the $22 economy tier it takes 68 coins. For the $30 gold tier it is 50 coins. For the $38 Early Bird tier it takes 40 coins. If NGC raises prices in the near to mid term this math changes a bit. But you can definitely see where Lisa's 50 coins comes from, especially since not everyone submits exclusively moderns. Edited to add: The funny thing here being that I was literally just talking to my wife about this same topic less than an hour before I saw this, because I'm thinking next year I'm going to probably bump from Associate to Premium before sending in a bunch of stuff, because it basically lets me roll my $20 membership into grading credits, but I don't think I will do enough to justify the elite tier.

I don’t know if I’ve discussed this here, in the NGC journal specifically, but those that follow my PMG writings will know I’ve been building a set of Venezuelan Hyper-Bolivars (Bolivares Fuerte, Bolivares Soberano and now Bolivares Digital) as a kind of sister set to the Zimbabwe Hyperinflation set, and I’ve been trying to follow what’s going on with that. And so. the other day an interesting article from Bloomberg popped up for me. In 2008/2009 the Zimbabwean economy “dollarized” even before they suspended the currency - meaning they were mostly using the US dollar and not the domestic currency, but the US dollar was just the dominant currency in a “multi-currency system” that included yuan, euros, South African Rand, and currency from neighboring Botswana. We’re currently seeing something very similar with Venezuela with the Mexican Peso, Brazilian Reais and Euros being used instead of Bolivares - but predominantly the US Dollar. But Venezuela and Zimbabwe have something else in common - they’re both gold-producing countries. And there something very interesting has apparently started happening in some of the more remote areas. People have started paying for things in grams of gold and using gold flakes as currency. It sounds like something out of a Gold Rush town in California in the 1850s. In this Bloomberg article it talks about people paying for haircuts with fractions of a gram of gold using very accurate digital scales. There’s something almost funny about the 500 Bolivar note being used as a wrapper for the gold flakes. On an unrelated note, I’ve been starting to look into Venezuelan coins in relation to the 1 Bolivar Digital coin coming out. I’ll probably have more to say on this later when and if it produces something, but one thing that caught my attention were some early 20th Century gold 10 and 20 Bolivar coins that are basically the same size as the European gold coins, I’ve been trying to collect from the same time period. I think I’m going to add this to the list with the 20 Kroner and Swiss 20 Francs to the list of these gold coins I want to add to that set / collection. You don’t really get this kind of thing with Zimbabwe because, even when the country was Rhodesia, they just used British coinage until after WWI (issuance of Rhodesian coins started in 1932), and so you don’t really see even Rhodesian gold coins. While Zimbabwe issued some silver NCLT in 1996, I don’t think Zimbabwe has ever produced a single gold coin under the name “Zimbabwe.” Certainly, none I’m currently aware of. Adrian123456 has some really nice sets of coins from the reigns of George V and George VI that are worth checking out - unlike with one of my sets they don’t punish you with a lot of long-winded drivel. That might be a plus or not depending on your feelings on my drivel. But I have digressed on this enough - for now. As part of starting to think about Venezuelan coins I recently went digging in my binder because I thought I had at least one coin from that country, and I did find it - a 1986-dated (birthyear! Woot!) 5 centimos coin. I think this was probably a pocket-change pick-up for me or a family member back in the day. It was made too late to be one of the coins my grandfather brought back. Living in Texas, you get things in your change sometimes from countries south of the border. It’s mostly stuff from Mexico from someone’s weekend trip through Brownsville but sometimes you get things from Venezuela, Colombia, Honduras, etc. I always used to keep these when I found them but I hardly ever get pocket change now.

I think I'd recommend the newbie forum or the US coins forum over the journals for asking for help, since I think you'll get more responses there. I can't personally help on RPMs though. Well, drat. Tricked by an old post and a spam-bot.

I'm obsessive and crazy and have no life. But, yeah, this is my one obsession and my one vice. I joke with my wife that I spend time and money on this but I don't go to bars, I don't golf, I don't like going to sporting events and I don't get much time for photography other than coin photography these days. I also don't just spend a lot of time just sitting around. I'm always doing something. You'd be amazed what you can accomplish when you just keep moving and doing from 6AM to 9PM. You're not finished Stop lying.

So... I've given this some thought this morning and I need to take you to task on this. All those journals on Ukrainian banknotes in the PMG journal and not a peep here on coins. What is up with that?

Fortunately there's not usually a huge difference unless one is modern and one is a much higher tier. World modern has been an exception of late with very long turnarounds. I did partner a reholder with an economy that ended up needing conservation, so those reholder coins were sitting and waiting a while for that tag-along to finish. lol. Worth saving the $25 though.

But very fine grit!! 🤣

It sure isn't Big Hoss! I really think the latest seasons, filmed after his death in 2018, suffer from his absence. I'm thrilled to have one at long last. I think they started making these around 2016/2017 because I feel like it was after Ben's birth that I found out about them but it was before his death in 2018. Funny aside, but I had long suspected the show showed a bias towards / for NGC over PCGS, then they made these things and they started popping up in NGC slabs and not PCGS slabs and I'm pretty sure this confirms that they are Pro-NGC in the battle of the Big Two.

Yesterday Sam was finally feeling better – he is back at daycare today and we’re enjoying our 1 child-free work from home day of the week – so we got to go out with my in-laws so we could have a birthday celebration with them, and they could give me their present for me… and I finally got to find out what the big mystery was that my wife has been keeping. I laughed so hard and this and got a real kick out of it. I’m normally not very effusive when getting gifts but they said they think this is the best response I’ve had to a gift in 7 years of knowing me. So here is the story on this thing: You all know I like Pawn Stars if you’ve read some prior entries. Yes, I know it isn’t real. It is still entertaining IMO. I love the old man, as many people do / did. When I was growing up my mother always said I was like a grumpy, curmudgeonly old man and that I was “18 going on 80.” She’s called me her grumpy old man for nearly 20 years. To this day my wife points out that I “can be so curmudgeonly some days.” So, I enjoyed this man, always did. Something made me think of these the other week and I went online to see what they were going for and the asking prices on eBay were insane. I screen-capped it and sent it to my wife and I was just like, I really like these, but I just can’t see ever paying that much for one. My mother-in-law – who was given me proof silver eagles the last couple of years, one of which she bought at the mint in Philadelphia a few years back when she visited New York – wanted something new / different to give me and my wife suggested this. She then was able to find a way to buy it directly and get a much better price on it than what I was seeing – I don’t know what, but I’m assured they didn’t pay the $125+ prices I was seeing on eBay and that they stayed in their normal budget. So, I’ll believe her. I love that they got one of the ones in an NGC holder. It makes a great gift for a birthday like 35 for someone born in October that’s a father of 2 sons. Lol I think this is one of those things you have to be given as a gift. It works so much better than just buying it for yourself. Forgot to mention this in my last entry but Ben is apparently convinced that my favorite color is gold and he thought I’d want gold-colored icing on my birthday cake this week. I don’t know why he thinks this. If you look at my office, you’d more likely come to the conclusion that my favorite color is cherry-colored wood. Other than my coins that actually are gold, my wedding ring and my class ring, I don’t think I own a single thing that is gold or gold-plated or anything like that and he doesn’t even see the actual gold coin except for very very rarely. Honestly, after him calling that small silver bar a gold bar I’m wondering if he even really knows what “gold” is and looks like or if he thinks silver is gold. I actually DO like silver and “gunmetal” / “gunmetal grey” on things.

Glad to see you post again and glad to hear you've been making it through okay and continuing to enjoy the hobby. Very cool, very old coin. 460+ years.