Revenant

23 hours ago, Iceman said:

Nice score on the coins....Congrat's. My grandson must have a dozen or so nerf guns from small pistols to canon looking things....if there is ever a war fought with nerf's he sure will be the winner.

Thanks! When I first started looking there were no MS70 NGC graded Pigs out there, then this seller came out with some and they were Early Releases on top of it all, and I like ER labels for my premie.

We have quite a collection now too with three big drum / clip loaders, two single-shot rifles and two little one-shot pistols. I was hoping to get at least 1 more big gun and some revolving barrel handguns.

4 hours ago, deposito said:

How many years between these, which seem to be mid 90's, and the hyper-inflation trillion dollar notes we've seen?  

What a shame that it's so easy to make very attractive colorful banknotes, but another thing entirely to back up their value

The first several are from 1994-1997.

The $500 and $1,000 ones are from 2001-2004.

The 4 notes denominated from $10 trillion to $100 Trillion hit around Dec 2008 or Jan 2009. I'm not sure exactly when they hit the street in Harare. 

So... I guess to answer your actual question, 14 years for the oldest ones?

3 minutes ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

Three beauties!

Going through my own Got To Have It moment on the Bay now. All auction, all end at 1:30AM. Going to be a long night, a long expensive night .... Maybe 🙏 🤞.

Congrats.

Will you be crossing them?

That's when you put in your best bid, cross your fingers and go to bed. But then... I have a four year old. I can't stay up watching eBay. I would suffer. 

Good luck with your auctions tonight! I have one ending just after midnight.

4 hours ago, Kkathyl0 said:

Nothing should shock you Bob your just like the rest of us old Geeks.  I’m glad to find this because I was looking at ring lights but missed picking one up.  I agree the luster is better the old way.  I guess for faces it’s fine but coins, not so much. 

Well, I thought he was amused by my obvious attempt at humor and so he was laughing and not shocked.

Anyway... I'm glad this was helpful for someone.

Don't we all do this though? Isn't it in the nature of collecting?

I've been on a real streak the last 3 months on my first dollars - varieties I need and want just keep coming up with a couple of sellers.

Those look great, but since they're already graded I guess we won't be treated to another submission post involving them.

22 minutes ago, Iceman said:

Dude....You have a very beautiful  looking wife.....You lucky son of a #^&@......   You rock.... 

Yup.  

20 hours ago, deposito said:

Legos are a collection, in fairness

True, but he never called them that before, and I normally refer to my "sets."

4 minutes ago, Iceman said:

I just got a bunch of flips in the mail yesterday.... the problem is that I didn't realize that they contain PVC after I hit the Confirm Order button...... now I have to send them back..... 

I really don't know why they even make them with PVC anymore. You'd think that someone would have gotten that memo by now.

Congrats on some very good grades!

I finally ordered some flips as a first step on the road to submitting some randoms.

8 hours ago, Just Bob said:

At the very least, you need to take some pictures and post them so we can see what they look like. If they turn out great, you may just have to order a third light.

Hopefully / maybe I'll get a chance this weekend. It's going to take a little set-up work to run it the way I want to.

I've definitely seen some things lately where I wanted an item but the seller was listing it at a price that seemed divorced from reality and common sense. There are some things I've been watching literally for years that have not sold at the asked price, and, now that things are harder and people are cutting back, it's hard to imagine those things selling at those prices any time soon. But, as life goes, the seller / dealer owns it and can ask whatever they want and sit on it and pay listing fees on it until doomsday if that's really what they want... When in doubt, if it doesn't feel right, just don't do it. There will be more opportunities and maybe better opportunities down the road and there is something to be said about the uncertainty of the times. In 2016 I spent about $100-150 on some silver rounds about a week before I got laid off. The box came after I lost my job. I felt rather stupid for it at the time.

32 minutes ago, JTO said:

I wonder if you might have missed a decimal point on the $122.00.  By my math $122.00 in cents is 122 X 100 = 12,200 coins.  A roll or stack of 50 Lincoln cents is ~ three inches in length or height.  I would not contest that you made a stack of that number of Lincoln cents but I think that if you did it was a bit taller than 19.5 inches.

When you make a stack using a triple interlocking ring arrangement with about 19 pennies to each layer it makes for a shorter but more stable stack - only way I could get it that tall without it falling over.

16 hours ago, Iceman said:

I understand that feeling of coming close to competition and then completing the series that gives me a good feeling but then a touch of sadness that stir my soul right to the core as if I don't want it to ever end...I know I'm a bit dramatic about it. I think I'm a bit obsessive about my collection always searching for a higher grade coin....So I guess my Icelandic collection will never be complete ...........    

I think there's that bittersweet element to finishing and ending anything. But, as you said / implied or, what can be inferred from reading here, if you're willing to go far enough down the rabbit hole, almost any project can be made endless / unending. It reminds me of that line from "Rose Red" - "It's finished, when you say it's finished."

I might be slightly sad / find it bittersweet if I ever manage to get to 100% complete on my 10G set but... Holy ****! That'll be a proud moment for me after all these years - assuming it even happens! 

20 minutes ago, ColonialCoinsUK said:

I would agree with this as I have several Napoleon typesets nearly complete - however this is purely from an NGC perspective! For example the dates on the Napoleon 'barehead' issues are either the revolutionary calender (e.g. AN13) or the Gregorian calender (e.g. 1807). As a result my typeset has more slots

Even when complete there is the option of upgrading each entry which is much more likely in a typeset unless you already have the top grade of the key date for each denomination. All my other sets are so far from completion that each new entry still means the sets still have the air of 'impossible' about them, and as my sets tend to be date runs including all of the varieties (I probably have some psychological reason for this) I hope my (great) grandchildren get the satisfaction of completing them!

I very much feel your pain on "from an NGC perspective." I'm definitely crazier than most with the Zimbabwe set and I've continued to get crazier. What started as just getting the Trillions and the higher denom 3rd dollar notes has evolved into an effort to build a complete pick set from P-1 to the end which I think at this point is P-102 and growing. Then I decided to do something really unkind to myself and start buying the varieties - so now I have 3 varieties of the P-1 note - and getting normal and star note varieties of some notes... So much for a simple little set... If I could ever afford and pull off a complete variety set of the 1st series of the 1st dollar I think that would be the holy grail of Zimbabwe note sets - but I'm nowhere close to that and won't be for some time, if ever. I think in the last few months I've expanded my signature set from having about 90-100 slots to having 116 slots now... I just keep making it bigger as I get crazier. 

I can't see myself ever upgrading much of it. Some of my notes are top pop, so there's that, but so much of that set now is 66 EPQ and even 67 EPQ or 68 EPQ. When you have grades like that, yeah, maybe there's a higher grade one out there but... why? Why spend all that money on an upgrade and not on something that just adds something more interesting or novel to your set or your broader collection?

If Muzzer decides to mount a serious challenge to my 3rd dollar set I might be able to convince myself to upgrade some of the 65 EPQ notes in that set to 67 or 68 to try to keep the top spot but that's about the only way I see talking myself into it. Even then, I might feel a bit bad about giving in to putting money into what is nothing more than a registry "you-know-what" contest.  

17 hours ago, CBC said:

Closing in on completing a set can be very satisfying, but soon after filling the last slot, I usually develop a case of upgrade fever.  

Maybe... but it depends on the set. My 10G set is already MS65 or MS66 in old fatty holders. I may submit some of the old MS65 fatties to see if they can pick up a point but, beyond that, I have very little interest in upgrading that set. The only exception to this might be the 1887, which is the only coin in the set below a 65. The Queen's Beast series is raw. It's raw by design and it's staying that way - No grades, no slabs, no upgrading, no competing, just building a set of coins I want.

The Zimbabwe set is the most likely of the three to see upgrades. Even there, I'd probably only consider upgrading the ~10% of the set that is 64 or 65, and maybe some of the 66s where higher grades are common. I just can't see myself being willing to drop big-bucks to upgrade a 67 EPQ to a 68 EPQ. There's a big diminishing returns problem there and I don't expect these to hold value over time as interest in everything except the 100 Trillion note just keeps dropping as we get further in time from 2008.

17 hours ago, CBC said:

One of my sore points with NGC is the way they define "sets"...

This, to me, is one of those things where NGC can never make everyone happy - some want more varieties and some what less, and they can't make a special category for everyone's taste because then there'd be no interesting competition. I'm just happy to remind myself that I'm not required to buy any coin I don't want to buy or collect and I don't have to compete in any category I don't want to.

17 hours ago, CBC said:

Someday I'd like to get some of those Zimbabwe multi-trillion note you are collecting.  I have some seriously devalued Ethiopian money but their inflation has been mild compared to Mugabe's pillaging of his country.  

One of these days I'd like to branch into more hyperinflation notes - Yugoslavia, 1940s Hungary, Venezuela, Argentina...

The Zimbabwe Trillions notes are one of the areas where I think you have to give PMG props on sets because they offer a category with a 4 note short-set for those that just want the 4 "Trillions" notes and who aren't interested in the 21 lower denominations of the 3rd dollar series. Somewhat more oddly, they also have short sets for the Billions and the Millions notes. I have a harder time understanding those as I can't see many / any people wanting to collect just the Billions or especially Just the Millions and not the Trillions - and participation in the different categories seems to support this.

The pillaging continues even though they gave Mugabe his walking papers.

I really have just fallen in love with this set to the point where I feel like my research and descriptions are almost self-indulgent rambling about all this cool stuff about the notes, imagery, economic history... and I've learned a lot about the country in the course of it all. One of these days I may have to plan a vacation there after all of this, just to see it all - like the Chiremba rocks, Victoria Falls, the Kariba dam, the wildlife preserves the Flame of Freedom and the Capital...

2 hours ago, gherrmann44 said:

So... if I have the self discipline of a domestic cat, then I'm not alone.  

Definitely not alone. One of these days I'll get around to buying some new flips and such and then I can start thinking about submitting some civil war tokens and such to use some of that grading credit they gave me 4 months ago.  

I think you'll get more / better response if you post this to the boards / forums proper and not to the journals, if your goal is to generate discussion anyway.

As far as the policy goes... I'm hoping they'll change the policy or open up another means by which sellers can continue to offering these items. If not... Dec 31 2020 will probably be the last time I buy anything on eBay.

If that's going to happen, for me, that's really going to suck as pretty much every coin for my 10G set and a large chunk of my buying for my Zimbabwe note set has been through sellers on eBay.

So.... what you're saying is that you have the attention span and self-discipline of a domestic cat? Good to know!

All kidding aside - awesome pictures of an interesting piece.

7 hours ago, Allen said:

Is the museum even open when you are traveling???????

I don't know when we'd be going but it wouldn't be until later.

1 hour ago, Mokiechan said:

It's always a joy to find something you have been missing or something you forgot you even had, that often happens to me while looking through the stored coins I rarely access. 

Funny how that happens. My recent version of this was realizing that I had more Civil War tokens (graded and ungraded) than I remembered having.

23 hours ago, Discerning eye said:

Crossover at NGC ???? Total waste of money !

If you're looking to make money by doing it you're probably right. It can be hard enough to recover grading fees on resale as it is for some coins. Recovering a 2nd round of fees and shipping can be darn near impossible unless you're dealing with high-end coins. But, I wouldn't call it a waste if he wants it.

One of these days I'm likely to reholder my 10G set and maybe send some of the ones in fatties for review to see if they can pick up a point. Just reholdering these coins would likely cost close to $200 after shipping and fees but I would love to have all the coins in the set in the same generation of holder as I think that would make a great presentation / display for a set I've been working on for 12 years through highs and lows in my life.

It's not all about money. It's a hobby. It should be fun. Sometimes you spend / lose money on a hobby that you never get back.

11 hours ago, Just Bob said:

Do you feel better after venting your frustration in three different threads?

Just one of the reasons why you're great, Bob.

Have you contacted the seller? 49 / 50 is close. I could easily see that being an honest error / mistake. You might be able to just get a 2-5% refund to make up for it.

1 hour ago, MIKE BYRNE said:

Dont you buy these medals.at estate sales? You did nor redack one of your buys. They go for a low price. The goverment espically the Tresurary department makes.these on order of the president or congress. These are not medals for the public. There for the individual they were made for. I so not see any numasitic value in these. 

They'd definitely be more exonumia rather than numismatic items but still very collectable and interesting history. You see stuff like this come up on things like Pawn Stars a lot and I'm sure there are plenty of small museums and the like that might enjoy getting their hands on them. I imagine a lot of this would initially come on the market at estate sales because I think most would keep these until death and then the children / family would sell it, but you do hear some sad stories like the Nobel prize winner that sold his medal to cover medical expenses - which is a crying shame.

You don't get to dedicate large amounts of time to breaking stuff out and doing careful, focused, organized work when you have a 4 year old and a 1 year old. I'm lucky in that I do have a dedicated office space - the only reason I actually get to do my job these days.

59 minutes ago, deposito said:

I got one of the Netherlands Ducats books signed by the author with a little dedication to my kid in it: "You better not sell any of your dad's or grandpa's coins or else they will haunt you."  I bought some 2016 mint stuff when my kid was born, apparently same as one of your kids.  But I haven't gotten anything else since then.  Of course hindsight is 2020, and we both would have done better to buy more 2016 gold in 2016, at least it looks that way presently.  At least you got some.

Interesting idea about quarantining the mail after it arrives.  I don't have the patience for that, especially if I know there's coins inside.  I wipe it with the wipes but that's about it.  I was looking through my ebay purchases of some Thai coins from the end of last year and one padded envelope came to me from, you guessed it, Wuhan China!  In mid November.  Could have been coin zero.

Depending on who you listen to, there could be another deflationary period in the coming months / couple of years that will see gold drop back, maybe even to the $700-1000 level. Other theories are it'll be $2,000 by the end of the year and then it's straight to $5,000-10,000. I guess we'll see. My crystal ball has never been that good.

The virus can live on cardboard for up to 24 hours and can live on plastic and other surfaces for 2-5 days. Depending on how risk averse you are, it makes sense to leave the mail in the garage for a few days as a hedge against a lot of asymptomatic postal workers touching your stuff as it passes through the system. My wife worries about it. I worry about it to some degree. Some days this whole thing makes me feel like a crazy person but... There's nothing I've been ordering that has any kind of time dependency or that I'm that desperate for. I haven't been ordering a lot of super rare of valuable things lately - mostly just common, modern stuff that I'm getting for $15-40 each to fill holes in some sets I'm building. The registry deadline is in December so even for that stuff getting it now or getting it in a week makes little difference. With the kids demanding attention constantly it's not like I get to enjoy any of it anyway.