Revenant

I am probably paperless 95% of the time, but my wife likes cash, my son gets his allowance in cash, and I still keep cash for Hurricanes. Try using Bitcoin to pay when even the cell network is down. Try using cash or credit after a hurricane. Try paying a 5 year old his allowance with a digital wallet. lol. Try explaining Crypto to a 5 year old.

Unless they are going to say you get XX bitcoin / Satoshi a year then these people are still having salaries spec'd in dollars and therefore, to me, the dollar is still king. And they are not going to want to state it in bitcoin and not dollars - not the city and not the employees - because bitcoin is not stable enough. The ability to have your pay "go up" 50% in a month does not make up for the chance it goes down 50% in a month.

I actually had the exact opposite problem for a while. The thumbnail would show the new image and the full size was the old one. The set banner images also weren't updating right for a while.

What's the matter, Kurt? Did the pimple faced kid spit in your coffee?

I don't know on that one... Based on some articles that popped up a year or so ago NGC has fired and sued at least one company for bptching this stuff. We'll see. I wouldn't be surprised if things get bad enough or they can't fix the issue they can just revert to a prior state. We had a software update a while back that added a new feature with a bug that it took the software engineer weeks to isolate and reproduce after I found it. I don't think I was his favorite person that month.

I find that it mostly works okay if I just log-out completely and log back in frequently. Mostly. With pictures in the registry it seems to help to be mindful of file size since it doesn't seem to be kicking back when you try to upload a file that is too large. It just doesn't change the image and doesn't tell you why. I know they're having other issues with this too but I find that smaller files at least help. Hopefully this is a sign of some cool new stuff they're working on.

Never mind. I take it back. I think I see what happened now. New set built in a new category because apparently I can't compete in the old one anymore.

Apparently on 10/8 and 10/11 all of my Mint State presidential dollars were removed from my set. Every coin has been removed. It is not showing that I can re-add them. Did I miss something? Are these moved to a different set now for some reason??

Glad to see you join / share. Always glad to hear that what I'm doing is enjoyed and maybe inspiring others, whether that's to build up their presentations more, start new sets, or start a journal - though I do also wonder if these posts and writings will ever give my sons insights into who I was at this time in my life. That said - do you, share what you want to share and write and do what you enjoy. My joking / silliness in a recent entry encouraging others to speak up and participate aside, do what feels right to you. As others pointed out, there are other considerations in what we share here and I do understand that. Enjoy the journey. Looking forward to it.

So, it's a Sunday, morning at the time. Ben has had a friend over all weekend and the bickering has been constant all morning and we're both just short of the point of sending the kid home to just get some peace because they're driving us insane and we're tired. About a week prior I'd seen a 1980 Zimbabwean cent up for auction in "Mint State" with a $2.99 starting bid with $1.50 shipping. The seller's pictures weren't the best, but it looked promising at first glance. 1980-1989 cents from before they went steel-clad are harder to get and you mostly see 1997-1999. So, this had me curious. But looking at the pictures closer, it looked like there might be some unappealing junk on one half the coin - both faces. So, at that point I ruled it out - I unwatched it on eBay and wasn’t going to bid - but I had still been thinking about it... I got a push notification on my phone about it when it was 15 min from ending and I looked at my phone and saw it with 3 minutes to go an no bids on it. At that point, just on an impulse, I bid $2.99. I just decided I'd put $4.50 down to see it in person. I can easily afford the loss if it was a dog. I was even telling Shandy I'd be open to maybe paying NCS $15-20 to clean it if I couldn't find nicer pre-1990 examples – and so far I haven’t. I was grumpy and tired from harassment… bad ideas are born in this way. This may seem silly - the idea of maybe paying for conservation on one of these - but this set is 100% a losing venture. It being a good investment is a complete non-issue. The whole escapade is a complete waste of money in the name of fun, and I honestly think that's one of the best things about it as a focus in a hobby. It means I just don't have to care much as long as I'm not just willfully getting myself fleeced paying $15 for coins, I could get for $1. I feel like I maybe sound like I’m contradicting myself with this but what I’m getting at here is, I don’t mind that this whole set is a waste, but I want to pay close to market-bearing prices for things and not over-inflated prices based on false hype. And it's a 1980 - first year of issue. I'm not saying that's a goal, but it could be cool to have a full 1980 set. I already have the 10C in MS65... So now I have it... In person it is a very pretty coin IMO but there is something on it. The darker spots I was seeing in their pictures that concerned me appear to actually be gaps in this film / covering material where the metal surface is showing through: Here are my shots. The coin looks very pretty in hand, and it has solid luster all over, but the pattern of those spots and the bits of dirt elsewhere has me wondering if someone tried to clean this and I’m more than a little afraid of what NGC will think if I send it in, as pretty as it looks. I’m trying to decide if I’m willing to put $18-30 into finding out and then maybe seeing what NCS would make of it. In any case, I own one now, even if it isn’t graded, and, for the cost of $4.50, it’s an option I have the freedom to explore later. I think I will indeed be sweating things out with the Tuesday morning census updates and watching for new sets or additions by Xan for most of the next ~49 days to see if my set holds on to the top spot for this year.

Try collecting 21st century banknotes. It's all online! You just have to contend with Paywalls! Hats off you! That's work. It'll be quite something when you're finished though.

It kind of depends on what you're dealing with. Mike and I have used it to avoid each other in auctions a few times I think. But what we overlap on isn't rare so it's easy to just wait for the next one in most cases

Yup... I saw all that... it's unfortunate that that is so often how it seems to be, and honestly, Reading between the lines, I don't think it would be much different here. But it is a shame that it's that way.

A lot of it for me anyway is powered by slow periods at work. I get much less active when and if I catch a big project. Since I work from home I save time on commutes and get to sneak in the odd chore and laundry. And sometimes it's just good for the kids to play independently- I'm not a helicopter parent. I draft many of my journals on my phone's notepad - extra typos! Other than that it happens when the kids are in bed, during naps and at night - I stay up too late trying to belong to myself for a while. Right now I'm on my phone on the floor while Sam falls asleep in his crib for afternoon nap.

For coins I've always heard cotton recommended. They're soft and they don't have the powders and chemicals on them that latex gloves do. I also don't know if latex gloves use the same plasticizers that make pvc so bad for coins.

Keeping a supply of flips or 2x2s is probably always a good idea. White cotton gloves are nice too. I had a coin come in recently where the 2x2 was in bad shape and I just immediately took it out to get a better look at it.

There's a store near my office that has a small display of ancients but all their stuff is graded so I don't think you'd be game. Lol

Personally I think chatting with you has made the last year of working on the Zimbabwean note set much more enjoyable and I think more participation and a greater sense of community could be great, but I am largely resigned to what is. I don't expect things to change. But I'm still going to poke them.

I didn't say it was unusual. I just think it'd be fun to have a conversation. That bit about the z coins being part of large submissions I had considered, but I still think that explanation lends itself more to more people and / or dealers submitting.

Xan Chamberlain must have gotten a box in the mail yesterday. This set popped up last night with just one coin and now the other 7 coins from that submission that got added to the census about 2 weeks ago have been added. It also looks like he has a $2 coin that popped up in the census the following week when my coins were added.But I'm not seeing in his set (yet, anyway) a 1999 10C in MS64 or an older-type $1 coin that popped up in the census the same week as my coins and that $2 coin. What I'm seeing in our two sets only accounts for 22 of the 25-27 MS coins that I think have been added to the Zimbabwe census in about the last 6 months. And if I remember right, some of the others were $5 coins and it wouldn't really make sense to me for him to send in two of those in such a short span of time - again, not saying that he didn't. I don't have nearly all the facts. I'm just thinking with my gut here. Add in the fact that there were MS graded coins out there before April 2021 and someone submitted the MS65 10C that I have... there's someone else, out there, right? So, I think there is still some mystery to dig into in that I think there's a third person getting these graded. It's either that, or Xan submitted another 2-coin submission a while back (or a submission with 2 Z coins) and then got 2-3 more graded about a week after this coin going group and those coins hit the census with mine, and then there was a 1 coin submission that hit the census on 10/5 with a single 1983 cent. I'm not saying it is impossible but it would be odd to me to see someone send in 3 small submissions in the space of a month and about 4 in about 6 months for the same country. I guess I'll see if a 1999 10C coin, a 1983 Cent, or one of these other new-to-the census coins hit Xan's set in the next couple of weeks and if the census keeps going up. So there is officially a little competition and a little life in that category now. I wonder if he used part of his 2020 grading credit to do this just like I did. Especially given the timing, I wonder if he got the idea for this from me and I'm wondering if he'll read this... It's always funny to think about. I wonder if he'll chime in or drop me a line / a message and shed some light on it for me. He collects some older Rhodesian Coins but I don't see that he participates on the PMG side with the notes. I wonder what brings him into it and why he decided to go down this road. I wonder if there could be some fun chats about it. But, I think the same thing about Adrian123456, and he seems to prefer to watch in silence too. Adrian has a fantastic, nearly complete variety set of the 2003 Emergency Bearer Checks (P-21 to P-23) that I think is one of the more impressive sets in the PMG Zimbabwe Registry - getting all of those varieties is not easy and he's had to compromise on grade on some of the type-a's even though the notes themselves still look quite nice in his scans - or maybe he uses PMG's scans. I'm not sure there. I wonder if Adrian could be submitter #3, but I think he'd list / register his if he were... You guys should talk to me. This could be fun. Just talk to Mike. He can attest - I'm not crazy!

The proprietary software my company uses to do most of our work gets usually 1-2 major updates a year with new features and such. It tends to get better over time and the new features are nice, but sometimes weird bugs pop up that we mostly resolve in beta. The unfortunate thing here is that we're all unofficial beta testers.

I have the same problems. This place is probably in near constant Flux as they work on underlying stuff to improve the site and add new features. Sometimes you accidentally break things and that seems to be what may have happened here. I'm sure they'll get to patched at some point. It's annoying in the mean time but maybe something good is coming down the pipe.

"Indebted" I think is the word you want here.

I think it was Canada that made some huge gold coin as a 1-off or 2-off design that was a literal museum piece from the start and they sold 1 more of them to a private party. Odd stuff...