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Revenant

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Journal Entries posted by Revenant

  1. Revenant

    The Australs set coming together...

    By Revenant,


    Random Nonsense
    I am now happy to say that pictures are up for both the Austral coins and the Peso Convertible coins. 
    I'm very happy with how these came out...

    But I'm thrilled to say I have a banner image now:
     

    I always try to be mindful of how these look on the PC and my phone...
    One thing that was important to me was having a prominent placement for the obverse of the 10C coin, which features the national Coat of Arms.
    I've even gotten my historical write-ups done for 2 of the 8 coins - which I honestly consider the hardest and most mentally demanding of the tasks I've set for myself this month. The photos and the banner images are mentally much easier. The pictures in particular are mostly just a mechanical process of hammering through the shots and then applying basically the same processing to every shot at this point. Not a very mentally demanding task anymore.
    I've also gotten banners done for two other sets that needed them - the 10 Lire set (Finaly!) and a new competitive set that one of my new turtle coins can go into (more on this one later probably - that Colombian turtle coin is really rather impressive).

    At this point, my list of things I still want to do is shorter than my list of what I've done - always a proud place to be.
    The main thing is just that writing to be done.
    The rest of the turtle coins have had pictures of them taken but I haven't edited them yet. I'll probably use that as a mental break and reward for after a couple more of the write-ups are done.
     
     
  2. Revenant

    This is where the fun begins…

    By Revenant,


    Random Nonsense
    Be honest – how many of you remember that line from the start of Star Wars: Episode 3?
    I have bemoaned several times over the last few months that it is hard to get excited or get motivated about building a registry set when you… don’t… have coins… But! I find that it is much easier to get excited about researching and writing about coins for a registry set when you… have coins… and have pictures to go with "da wordy bits."
    I also gotta say - even feeling slightly disappointed at some of the grades - there’s a special joy and magic to an unboxing and it’s fun to have coins come home. In spite of that initial disappointment, I was very happy and noticed myself smiling when I opened that box Monday night.
     
    My wife also snuck this gem while I was in bed Tuesday night, working on getting the first images edited and posted to sets.

    I decided to start with the low-hanging fruit, hitting the 500L coins and the other coins where I just needed to do images for 1-6 coins to “complete” existing sets, before launching into the Argentinian coins and turtle coins, which are 7-8 coin groups for completely new sets. The part that does make these slightly more complicated though is trying to make sure that the images for the new coins match reasonably well with the old images of the coins that have been in the set a year or two, because I want consistency, but I don’t want to rei-image the entire Zimbabwe set (23 coins) because I’m replacing 1 coin. I don’t want to re-image the 11 older coins in the 500L set, just because I’m filling the last 3 holes.
    I will also admit to just wanting to be able to show off a completed 500L set to my wife. 
    The images are up now. I’d encourage anyone that follows these sets to look at the Zimbabwe type set, the Venezuelan type set, and the Italian 500L set. The new descriptions are up to, and all three sets are now 100% complete (not that that’s new for Zimbabwe anyway).
    A fun image I’ll call out is the Reverse shot for the 50 Bolivars, which shows a reverse struck with a die with a shocking degree of wear that I’m just not used to seeing in modern US coins. Yeah – the coin graded MS66, and it has some scratches, clearly, but look at all those signs of die deterioration around the 5 and 0 in 50, around the outer rim of the legend and around the inner ring around the core design. Personally, I just find that very interesting and cool to look at.
     
    Side note: But the image she snuck of me on the computer is what it looks like when I’m just working on the laptop in bed at night. When I’m up in my office and taking the coins, the set-up is a little nicer. When I replaced my old laptop about a year ago I got a new one that is the same brand as my work laptop, so it can dock into the same docking cube as my work laptop and I can use the same monitor and speaker set-up without multiple docking stations or monitor switching. It makes the home office situation more enjoyable and fun.
     
    The images aren’t ready to go yet but I’ve taken images of the Argentinian coins today, again, finding myself just very excited and happy to get to snap those shots. I’ve gone ahead and gotten the images shot for Austral coins and Peso Convertible coins in 1 go. I’ll just be starting the editing with the Austral coins.
    There will probably be another one of these posts soon as the Austral and then Peso Convertible images go up. I do have a feeling that the Peso Convertible images will be edited before I hit the historical write-ups for the Austral set, just because 1) it's easier to cross that one off and 2) Again... pictures are fun. It's shocking - You would never expect a photographer to hold this opinion. I know.
     
    So, where does this leave me? … Since I also keep finding new things that need to be done or that I want to get done before November 1st, and some of these are smaller (images on 1-2 coins) than others (making new banner images for sets that I’ve apparently been neglecting).
    1) Getting the coins programmed in and in the slots, (Except for the Austral coins)
    2) Getting my pre-written descriptions posted on the coins (for the new $10 Zimbabwe coin, 500L set, Argentinian Set, and Venezuelan coins)
    3) Getting pictures taken of the 500 Lire coins and getting those posted
    3b) Getting pictures of the new 2003 $10 coin for the Zimbabwe set.
    3c) Getting pictures of the new 1983 5L and 1984 10L coins for those Italian sets..
    3d) Getting pictures of our 1977 5L and 1984 5L coins for the 5L set since I apparently never did that… 
    4) Getting pictures on the new Venezuelan coins to maintain the quality of the presentation on that set,
    5) Getting the Austral coins imaged and
    6) Getting my historical write-ups for the Austral Set ready.
    7) Making a banner / set image for the Austral set – which I haven’t made a banner image for this one yet as I usually use images of the graded coins, which
    8) Making a banner / set image for the Italian 10L set since I apparently never did that… 
    9) Getting the Peso Convertible Coins imaged and posted
    10 Getting the turtle coins imaged and..
    11) Starting to build some kind of signature set around that???? – More on this later but this is going to be mostly a pure signature set play... but I'm also finding some glimmers of where there might be potential for competitive set off-shoots.
     
  3. Revenant

    Coins with turtles

    By Revenant,


    Turtle Coins
    So.... This is long delayed, but I've been far busier at work than usual and we're having a lot of difficulties with Sam's health the last couple of weeks and months and so the journaling and the coin research is suffering.
    Sam has been in decline since June. We think he has Slit Ventricle System (SVS) and he's dealing with almost daily debilitating headaches that are making him cranky and, in some cases, frankly, violent. Which just makes things hard. We're probably going to have to cancel a family vacation in October to have him hospitalized for weeks and in the meantime, we're stuck with pain management strategies that don't seem to be doing much good. That too, may tank any plans of actually making some of this work for this year, but, if it does, it does.
    I also have a bad habit of making the perfect the enemy of the good enough and I've been letting that get in the way of just getting some pictures of these turtle coins I'm starting to work on imaged. But yesterday I just decided to make something happen and say, "good enough."
    So, a quick update on the submission with about 35 coins I sent in:
    7/5 - Shipped
    7/10 - Delivered
    7/27 - Showed as Received
    8/3 - Payment Acknowledged
    8/7 - Scheduled for Grading
    The estimated times on this when I sent it in and when they acknowledged it suggest the submission will be finished around Mid-September to Early October. I'm mostly hoping that they just get home before November 1st so I can rush out some photos for the Argentine sets I'm planning, and the Venezuelan Set and the 500 Lire set I want to have more or less "finished."
    The submission includes examples of the coins in the pictures that follow. These coins are ones that lost out to the ones I submitted so these are still home in flips while the ones we thought were the best are hopefully going to come back with some nice grades:
    Colombia - 1000 Pesos

    Cabo Verde - 1 Escudo. Sorry! These didn't come out good.

    Tokelau - 1 Cent  - check out those die cracks on Queen Elizabeth's face! That die was tired!

    Cayman Islands -

    Congo - 1 Franc

    1 Seniti 

    I'm working on buying some more raw coins with stylized turtles on them. You'll almost never see me admit to shopping for something here until I've already bought it so I'm not talking yet.  
    I tried showing these to Ben and he acted kind of interested and said they were cool but he was over it pretty fast. I don't think this moves the needle for him much. Maybe one day he'll think they're cool. Maybe they'll be show and tell ammo down the line.
     
  4. Revenant

    The Gold Bolivars and the New Argentine Set

    By Revenant,


    Venezuelan Coins and Currency
    I thought I'd post an update on the recent journal on the 20 Bolivar coin.
    I did ultimately decide to buy an MS65 1930 10 Bolivar coin to go with it and I got the coins imaged a while ago when I had them both in hand.
    The nice thing about these two is that they slot into that Reform coinage type set that ends at 2005, along with my pre-BsF Venezuelan coins. So I didn't have to make separate sets for one or both of these like I have for so many other small European gold coins I've collected. Adding these also moved me from 25th place, briefly to 9th, before going down to 10th. So not quite as low there anymroe.
    '

    A feature of these that I find quite interesting is that they do not say 10 Bolivars or 20 Bolivars. They give the weight of the coin and the purity of the gold. This goes nicely in line with the theme and my thinking on this unofficial type set I've been building - these coins come from a time, barely a century ago, when gold was the one true currency of the world, and all other currencies where just different ways of expressing weights of gold / agw.
    I've been told that an Argentinian type set that I asked for will be created soon, and I've been slowly working on building out a submission to send it that will hopefully lead to the first competitive sets in 2 Argentinian categories - one made for my request. And these two sets are going to form the two parts of my new project "Brought forth with pain," which are going to focus on the Argentinian battles with debt that have taken them through 8-9 defaults (depending on who you ask/what source you use) and about 5-6 currencies since about 1807. My collection and my project is going to focus on the last 2 of these currencies - the ones relevant to my lifespan and which are the easiest to collect - the Austral (1985-1991), Peso Convertible (1992-Date).
    My rough plan for now is for the Austral set to discuss the three older periods of debt crisis / currency crisis, and for the Peso Convertible set to deal with just the more recent troubles including the debt crisis that started around 2001, which has continued with related ups and downs for the last 20 years.
    Like with "Gradually, then Suddenly," there's a quote here that's going to be the theme of the set essentially -
    “Debts are like children – begot with pleasure but brought forth with pain.” - Moliere
    Argentina has, at least with what I've seen so far, generally been a country with a lot of resources and a lot going for it, but they'll get into debt in good times - begot in pleasure - and then the debt becomes supportable in bad times - when a war starts or when global commodity prices tank, or both.
    It's also interesting to me that, while Argentina is a former Spanish colony, it is actually their interactions with the UK and the United States, as the holders of the global reserve currencies, and the banks in those countries, that have bedeviled the country the most.
    But I'm getting ahead of myself. I think it'll be an interesting story to read more about and find a way to write about and structure a narrative around the coins.
    While there is absolutely not a 1:1 correlation, you can see how historically a debt crisis lead to an inflationary crisis that lead to the death of the currency and a new national currency. The Real survived the default in 1827. The Peso Moneda Nacional survived the defaults in 1890, 1951, and 1956. But you see the default in 1982 followed by a new currency in 1983 and 1985 and the default in 1989 helped crash the Austral, leading to the Peso Convertible, which, after 20 years of trouble, seems to be enterign a bit of a death spiral.
    List of Defaults:
    ·       1827
    ·       1890
    ·       1951
    ·       1956
    ·       1982
    ·       1989
    ·       2001
    ·       2014
    ·       2019-23
    List of Currencies:
    ·       Real (1813-1881)
    ·       Peso Moneda Nacional (1881-1969)
    ·       Peso Argentino (1983-1985)
    ·       Austral (1985-1991)
    ·       Peso Convertible (1992-Date)
     
    I guess I need to stop using Venezuela going forward and make a new category for posts about Argentina. 
  5. Revenant
    Are only mint state coins worth grading? Or do coins become worth grading once they reach a certain set value?
    Unlike many of you, I'm barely launched on this journey. I've been trying to learn as much as I could over the last year but there's one question I've been running into increasingly often. When is a coin worth grading? Obviously the modern coins are only really worth grading if a high MS grade can be obtained but what about older coins? Do they necessarily have to be MS and worth hundreds or thousands of dollars to be worth grading or can lesser coins be worth getting slabbed and graded. I'm 20, almost 21. I don't really get to spend $100+ to buy a single coin very often so most of the older coins I have aren't exactly mint state, but some of them are still pretty darn nice if you ask me (maybe my standards are too low?). For now my small but growing Silver American Eagle collection remains my only group of graded coins. I'm reluctant to even consider submitting coins for grading unless I'm reasonably sure it'd be worth the money and effort.
    Gig'em! (I'm a Texas Aggie)

  6. Revenant

    Well, that happened.

    By Revenant,


    Family
    A number of months ago, when surprised, I just said, "Well, that happened," and Ben latched onto it and started using the phrase. Sometimes he would look to me when something happened and say, "Was that a thing that happened?" "Yup."
    We live in Houston as most of you who read this know and apparently, from my coworkers, news of our misery the week of President's day has been a topic even in the UK and Europe.
    Our water was in and out from Monday to about Thursday the 18th - but even when we got it back we were under a boil water notice until about the 22nd or 23rd (hard to remember now). We lost power around midnight on Tuesday the 16th. It was out for 22 hours. We got it back for 4 hours, lost it again, and didn't have it again. We brought the boys into our bed for warmth (and a miserable night for us) and bundled up under 4 or 5 layers to stay warm.

    Our ceiling caved in around 5 PM Tuesday. A pipe burst in two places. Shandy rushed in to try to poke holes and drain the water and was rewarded with sheetrock and insulation falling on her head.
    Shortly before all that happened we'd been camping out in the back end of our fully gassed-up mini-van just to be in a warm place for a while - but we were smart enough to no do this with the car in the garage.
    The pipe that burst was uninsulated copper pipe. With no insulation, no heat, and water cutting in and out I'm just not sure what we could have done to stop this.
    One of the worst things about all of this is that we had a 9000 Watt generator and a 1500 Watt heater that could have kept us with heat in 1 room and some lights - we could have been a lot more comfortable, but we didn't buy enough gas to keep the generator running very long because we were not expecting it to be this bad. The warnings they gave before the storm were about lines coming down for a while - not power plants failing and day long blackouts. I'm not going to make that mistake again. Over the weekend we bought 4 more 5 gallon gas tanks and the next time this comes we're going to have enough gas to run the heaters, the refrigerator, the and the freezer (all that food ruined...) for 2-3 days straight. I've taken my lumps and I'm going to be better equipped next time.


    Shandy was crying... I came in, looked at this, and just laughed. Shandy didn't appreciate that much but it was just too ridiculous at that point.
    We left the house early Wednesday to go somewhere warmer and dryer.
    The landlady got a plumber out on Thursday of last week and I returned to supervise and to dry things out and clean up as best I could since we had power back at that point.
    A clean-up company then came out on Saturday to rip out the ceiling and start working on drying out the ceiling / attic. There's still a massive hole in the roof but we've been back in the House since Saturday. We still have the biggest hole in the ceiling I think I've ever seen and the room is unusable as a result with plastic sheeting everywhere but we're doing better than many / most.
    We've been working on our renter's insurance claim and had adjusters out. Nothing tooo terrible lost and we can replace all of it - mostly baby books and baby toys.
    In slightly better news, we're working on wrapping up our taxes and things are looking good there. Some of that money is probably going to have to be used to offset the insurance deductible but I'm still hopeful I can talk my wife into letting me get away with something small, yellow, and shiny in a plastic housing. It might be a good time to do it with the dive Gold is taking this week.
    No news on performance evals, raises or bonuses this year - I'm honestly not optimistic on that front for facilitating a shiny purchase but stranger things have happened and I'm mostly just grateful to continue to have a job after the 2020 many others had.
    Barring a timely gold purchase the next "coin & currency" buy is going to be a currency / pseudo currency buy.
    Speaking of Ben - he is increasingly showing interest in collections and collecting things, but the things he wants to collect are 1) Beyblades, 2) Bakugan and 3) [now] pokemon cards apparently. 
  7. Revenant

    The persistence of half cents and half pennies.

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwean Coins and Currency
    I always thought of the half cent as something of the distant past. The United States didn’t produce any after 1857.

    However, I’m increasingly aware of the fact that other countries have made half cents and half pennies of and on until relatively recently.
    I have a set of Rhodesian pennies and half pennies from the 1950s and 1960s.

    Finding out that these half pennies existed was surprising but when I think about it I can understand it. For a long time there the UK pound was worth at least or about twice as much as the US dollar. It looks like in the 1950s it might have been about 3:1. So having a 3 gram bronze coin that was worth maybe a little more than a US cent makes a fair bit of sense.
    And this same logic can probably be applied equally to the later Rhodesian half cents of the 1970s that came after the UDI - same weight overall but smaller, and without the hole.

    What I still can’t wrap my head around are things like the Argentinian half cents of 1985, released with the issuance of a new currency after their latest debt and currency crisis at the time. They only made them for 1 year, but, still, they made them – a half centavo. That 1985 date almost brings them into my lifetime.

    I’m not sure what the newest / last example of a half cent or half penny to be made was – and we may yet see new ones in the future but it would appear that I was long wrong to view them as relics of the past, now gone.
    I’ve been thinking about this and wanting to post about it for a while, but then my wife surprised me with my Valentine’s Day present a little bit early and she shocked me with an MS67RD 1955 Rhodesian Half Penny. A coin I was really happy to get as it leaves me needing just the 1956 for both the penny and the half penny sets from the Federation period. This also has me tempted to continue / expand into the 1970s post-UDI copper and keep building out a solid, more complete set of Rhodesian copper.

    I was really thrilled to get this as it opens up making that half penny set competitive for the top spot this year, maybe joining the penny set and the Zimbabwea type set in winning this year?? Maybe? 
    It does definitely nix the idea of grading that raw 1955 I showed pictures of in my last post. That other one looks nice but it is not an MS67RD and i cannot compete with this one. This one is gorgeous.
  8. Revenant

    Finally Ordered That 20 Bolivar Coin Last Night.

    By Revenant,


    Venezuelan Coins and Currency
    Back in October I mentioned that I was getting the green light to order another of my small Gold coins because of a mixture of money coming in from a bit of OT and a few other sources and I said at the time that I’d probably order a Venezuelan Gold 20 Bolivar from the early 20th century / pre-WWI era.
    Well… 5 months later, I finally ordered it.
    I was holding off for the longest time because we were simultaneously spending a fair bit of money on things we needed for the house, we were spending a lot on Christmas, and we also had some medical costs and upcoming Vacation costs. We got past most of that, and then my wife changed jobs and got a big raise, so I was finally feeling very happy with the finances as we came out the other side of all that spending… and then it was time for us to go on our vacation, and I didn’t want to order the coin in the run-up to the trip because I didn’t want an expensive coin arriving while we were on a trip. We just went on the trip and got back on the 5th.
    So… having waited a few more days, waiting for the billing cycle on the credit card to close and therefore locking the CC company into giving me a free 30 day loan, I pulled the trigger on the coin.
    Our personal finances and making sure that we always maintain very healthy cash levels was only part of it. I’m being honest the coin was a little more on the expensive side – usually I’m buying things more in the $550-600 range and this one was $675. So I had been hoping that maybe another seller would list a similar coin to the 1911 MS64 I was looking at for a better price. I’d also looked into other coins and other options, trying to see if there was something else I wanted in the form of a small world gold coin that I felt was priced somewhat more favorably. But… it had been 5 months, and the price hadn’t come down, no others had come up for sale at comparable grades from reputable / established sellers, and I hadn’t seen or come up with anything else I’d rather get… So I decided to pull the trigger on it.
    If I’m being honest, I decided it was time in at least in small part because my wife had turned it into a running gag whereby every time it came up she’d poke fun at me and imply that I was just going to waffle forever and talk about it forever and never actually buy the thing. When the wife is actively poking fun of and ridiculing your inaction, I guess it’s time to do something to shut her up.
    I sat down in bed with the laptop and ordered it right in front of her while she faked protests about how I was ruining the joke and now she’d have to find something new to tease me about. “Exactly! That’s the whole point!”
    In the course of looking for this, I had looked at and also seriously considered getting one of the 1930 Gold 10 Bolivar coins. I had considered getting that and one other small thing and having two smaller gold coins – maybe to pair with my Swiss 10 Franc – instead of 1 slightly larger one. But, clearly I decided against that.
    However, in the course of looking at that I was curious about the fact that I was ONLY seeing the 10 Bolivar from 1930 and I wasn’t seeing it from any other dates like I had the 20 Bolivar.
    After looking into it, the 10 Bolivar was a 1-year coin that was minted to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Death of Simon Bolivar – his death, not his birth. It was a 1-year circulating commemorative of which only 500,000 were made and only 10% of these were released to the public. The other 450,000 were kept in the Central Bank’s Reserves and partially released to investors. However, because it was a “circulating commemorative” and not a “commemorative” or a bullion issue, and because mintage of the 20 Bolivar stopped in 1912 – before / at the start of the first World War – I think this makes the Gold 10 Bolivar the last gold coin that Venezuela struck for circulation.
    I stopped spending most of my hobby money and stopped looking at eBay for the most part around October or November because I didn’t want to spoil any surprises from my wife. I’m glad I did. However, this means I have been hoarding my collecting budget for several months and I have bit of a wad – which is more than enough to pick up a MS65 10 Bolivar to go with the 20 Bolivar, and I may well do just that.
    Where they exist (because they don’t for Zimbabwe, at least, not when it was called Zimbabwe), I like having these old gold coins to hold next to the more modern coins from the same country. This ties back to my interest in collections on Hyperinflation and currency debasement and devaluation. I think it’s very cool to be able to hold up an Italian Gold 20 Lire from 1885 and a Brass Italian 200 Lire from 1986 and think about how the currency, it’s value, and its representation changed it 100 years. It’s fun to be able to hold and look at a Venezuelan Gold 20 Bolivar or a 10 Bolivar from 1930 from 1911 next to a steel-core 10 Bolivar from 2004, just before the first redenomination (and the switch to the Bolivar Fuerte) in 2007. Pairing them together can just make for some awesome tangible expressions of the change and what was lost in that 100 years and I hope to be able to show and talk to Ben and Sam about these things in the years to come.
    In my recent silence I feel like a duck on the pond - you're not seeing much from me right now, but my feet are working under the surface. I hope to have more to share soon, but this entry is enough for today.

  9. Revenant
    Sam was finally allowed to go home last night. We had a follow-up with his pediatrician today and he should get to go back to school and ease back into normal activity on Monday. Ben is still, somewhat comically, trying to get his new front teeth in.
    It was very difficult getting out of there. I have rarely wanted to call a nurse a insufficiently_thoughtful_person to her face so badly. They tried to give him 2 vaccines in his two thighs at the same time and didn't restrain his hands while I held his legs so he tried to grab their hands and the syringe and could have broken the needle in his thigh.

    We got to go home the day after spending my birthday in the hospital. I would have been just as happy to ignore the day and celebrate at a different time, but Ben had been having a hard time and clearly needed to mark the day and spend some time as a family more than I did so we made it happen.




    I was more than a bit surprised to look here yesterday and see the timer counting down about 12 days to the awards cut off. I’d completely forgotten a while ago that the deadline was moved up this year.

    With November no longer available and the last two weeks lost to a void of fatigue and stress, I have two sets that would need a lot of work to get them ready and I think I’m going to have to choose between the Rhodesian Pennies and the Venezuelan Set for getting something mostly ready for the cut-off. And I think it’s going to be the Rhodesian Pennies.

    I think I can maybe get pictures up for both and I might even be able to get a banner image up for both. I can maybe even get descriptions in for the Venezuelan coins about how they were bought and such. But I’d hoped to have a lot of information about that set about the history of the coins and the country, the timeline of events and such and I just do not have the time or the energy to research that and put that together at this point. I want that set to be an equal companion to the notes set and the Zimbabwean sets, and that just takes a lot of time and a lot of work, and I haven’t been able to do it up to now and now we’re at the end, at least for this year.
    Fortunately, I was able to take pictures of the new 500 Lire coins that came back - pictures that match up pretty well visually with what was there before - and that set is pretty ready to go. I’m happy with that one and I’m proud of what I built for Shandy. So that one at least I don’t have to worry about.
    Who knows? Maybe I’ll just bust my butt this weekend and next and surprise myself?
    The birthday present ended up lining up with the circumstances better than I would have imagined. The Zimbabwean note set is so closely associated for me with Sam and Sam’s birth and now this set, which expands upon it, takes a big step forward on a birthday I spent in the hospital with him.
    Maybe I just need to abandon the whole damn thing and, if I do, he’ll stop having to go back to the hospital? Anyone think I’m that lucky? Nah. I think I'm just stuck with the hobby as my stress relief.

    Following up on some recent points:
    I got that 2010 25C Venezuelan Independence Commemorative from that seller and liked how the one looked so I ordered 4 more, bringing the total to 5, consistent with what I’ve been doing, and I’ll be sending the best of the 5 in to fill that slot in that set later. (Seller's images but the coins look good in hand)

    I’ve also gotten in the new three-coin sets with the 50 Bolivar coins from 2016, though I haven’t had a chance to look at those yet. However, these coins do mean that, if the Venezuelan set isn’t really ready for primetime this year, it should be nearly complete and firing on all cylinders for next year. I need to try to cut those loose from the paper holder he shipped them in and get them into flips. This is perhaps a petty complaint given the first half of this post but I absolutely hate seeing coins arrive packed like this... because, yes, those are staples separating the coins between sheets of 20-pound paper.

    The day before we went to the hospital, I got an offer from a seller offering me an old 1965 Venezuelan 1 Bolivar coin – the last year they were made of 0.832 silver. They offered it to me for $29. On Tuesday 10/11 I looked at it on my phone and saw the offer was expiring in like 10 minutes and I just took it. It arrived about a week later. In that price, at that grade, it felt reasonable enough and I just felt like it, so took it. It hadn’t been my plan to try to mess with extending the coins in this set back to the “silver age” but sometimes opportunities come up. (Again, seller's images)

    One of my eBay saved searched also flagged up to me this morning that one of my favorite notes dealers has, at long last, started listing PMG-graded examples of the new Digital Bolivar notes from 2021. So, I may be expanding the Venezuela Note set to include those in the near future. It's a little funny and amusing that the persion that had been thumping me rather badly on the PMG side and buying all the high-end notes for ZImbabwe and Venezuela seems to have lost interest for now. They haven't been buying, adding or competing for recent new releases when they come up in high grades. I'm wondering if Mike is seeing the same thing in Ukraine.

    My in-laws had my car through most of the last 2 weeks so they could have car-seats to help with Ben, so they got together and detailed / cleaned the 6-year-old car and it looks quite nice now. I'll have to try to treat the car a little better and try to keep it a little cleaner and nicer this time. This is something Shandy and I had been wanting and planning to do since we paid it off and then they decided to do it for my birthday. Shandy is now offering, since that now didn’t come out of our budget, to let me go out and use a roughly equivalent amount for some nice coin or something else I couldn’t normally ask for from family for a gift. So I’ll have to give some thought to what I might want to use that for. I have no major leads or thoughts at the moment. I had considered going for a Gold 20 Bolivar from around 1930 but I'm not really seeing anything like that at a price I like at the moment. 
    So, there is the rambling, multi-front update.
  10. Revenant

    My Thanks, Again!

    By Revenant,


    Family
    Well, NGC and PMG announced the awards today around lunch time.
    Let me first say Congrats to Mike. I was happy to see so many familiar names, but I was most happy to see his name pop up on both the NGC and PMG side.
    Also congrats to many of the others I've often seen on the forums: The Welsh Dragon, ChrisInJesup, Physics-fan3.14, libertad1998, lehigh96, Ray USMC,... Hopefully I'm not missing anyone there but, gosh, it is a long list these days. NGC is increasingly generous on that front. But, in saying that, please don't think I'm marginalizing the accomplishment - there's like 13,000 users and they give out about 45-50 plaques a year and I think only 1-2% of users have ever gotten a major award in the ~20 year history of the awards. So, Congrats! It's a cool thing.  
    I am very happy to get a New Best Presented Award for my Venezuela set! 
    I really was not thinking that would get a Best Presented this year. I thought If I got a Best Presented it might be for the 500 Lire set. I thought if that Venezuela set would get something it would be a Best New Set. - Don't ever think I have a crystal ball, I'm often wrong.  However, the 500 Lire set did not win this year, so Mike's crystal ball also clearly is not perfect either, at least this year.  
    And, now, instead of waiting until my membership renews in June, I need to get on getting the rest of the coins for that set ready to go in.  Or... I might end up waiting until June anyway and spending the Reward Credit and the Membership Renewal Credit at the same time. Time to finish that set and have a set so nice and dominant it sits on the top spot for the next 10 years, right?  
    The judges got me chuckling a bit this year with the comment about "Revenant documents the circuitous ways in which he built his collection."
    I mean, admittedly, I do drone on about how these sets were built in the coin descriptions. I do often wonder if I drone on and belabor this a bit too much and it might lead to audience tune-out . At the same time, the lengths that I have gone through to build these sets (Zimbabwe and Venezuela) are the main reason why I think they might not have a serious challenger for the top spot in the category for a long time - at least on the NGC side. On the PMG side, thanks to certain specific dealers, there's enough graded material to make those much more approachable. But, on the coins side, if you want to build these sets out, you can't just open your wallet. You have to do the work - at least for now. This may change in the future.
    You haven't heard from me much lately because December was full of, among other things, kids being home sick all day with colds and such. But, I'm also shifting to a lower gear for now on the coin and note collecting side. Part of this is just because I've mostly finished most of my main projects for now - I just need to send in some coins to fill some holes in the 500 Lire and Venezuela sets. But, I don't know that I'm going to have a lot to talk about until and unless I find some cool new thing to build out in some epic way and add written and photographic flourishes to.
    I do have a few ideas...
    Shandy did surprise me on the 25th however with 2 new Rhodesian Half Pennies. That's a nice little set to build but emphasis is on little - it's only 5 dates / 5 coins and I now have 3 of them. But I may be emphasizing trying to get the last 3 coins to finish a half penny and a penny set from that last period where Zimbabwe was still part of the Commonwealth of Nations.
    I'm also considering messing around with ~1970s era Rhodesian cents from the Civil War era - the civil war lasted like 15 years... which sounds... hideous.
    Another contender might be spinning off from those Dancing Elephants (Rhodesian Pennies) and building an Elephant themed set. I recently rain across a 1941 Liberian Cent design with an elephant on it. From what I was seeing (haven't confirmed) I think it might have been struck in the US, at the PA mint, which immediately made me think Coin928's set / collection.
  11. Revenant

    People just make it hard to be nice...

    By Revenant,


    Venezuelan Coins and Currency
    One of my wife's favorite reasons to laugh and roll her eyes at me (other than my nerdy coin-collecting ways) is that she thinks I'm far too polite to people that come to the door trying to sell solar panels and telemarketers... It's how I was raised.
    I try to be nice and civil and give people soft but firm nos. I try to respect the fact that they're just trying to earn a paycheck and a living, and I try never to abuse or be rude to them. And yet, lately, I find these people testing my patience.
    Around the time Sam got out of the hospital someone must have sold their contact list, including my number, because I have been getting absurd numbers of calls from coin and bullion companies trying to sell me things and these people are obnoxiously pushy. I'm not going to buy from them.
    1) I don't buy from cold calls for companies I haven't done business with.
    2) I'm not buying bullion right now.
    3) anyone trying to sell me PCGS coins doesn't know me as a collector.
    4) even to the extent that I'm buying numismatics right now I'm making myself happy in an extremely niche world modern area that they are not going to be equipped to sell to.
    And yet... all the pushy BS and aggressive, borderline condescending responses... I've been just hanging up on them more and more. Increasingly, once I've told them I'm not interested politely, I've met the standard of civility. If they choose not to respect that at that point, and try some aggressive pitch, then they're the one in breach of social norms and I'm good to just let them hear a "click." But these salespeople are just so obnoxious.
    These are the calls I answer out of concern that its work or kid related. My phone is also getting flooded with calls flagged as "Scam Likely" that I just don't even answer.
    I wish I knew who gave them the number. I'd probably never buy from them again.
     
    In more positive news, after I got those 2010 25C 200th Independence Anniversary coins that I liked the condition of, I saw the same seller had some of the 50C coins made to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the BCV (Central Bank of Venezuela), so I picked up a bunch of those and I've been similarly pleased with the coins I got. So now I have everything except the 2011 25C commemorative, and I'm well set up to send in some coins in 2023 that will pretty much finish that Venezuelan type set.

    It has been about a month since my wife greenlit a new gold coin purchase and, while I have something in mind, I haven't pulled the trigger because I've been waiting to see the fall-out from the hospital stay and a minor car fender-bender to play out before making any large, unnecessary purchases, no matter how secure I'm felling overall. But I have gotten her anniversary present ordered... Now I just have to figure out a Christmas present for her. She already has the kids pretty well planned out and taken care of.
  12. Revenant
    For the first time in about 2 years, I’ve received a grading credit from NGC, and I’m actually faced with thinking about how I wanted to use it.
    A couple of years ago I knew I wanted to reholder the 10G set and I immediately saw that credit as a chance to build a graded set of Zimbabwe coins for a registry set.
    Last year I knew before I even finished the Zimbabwe set that the next thing I wanted to do was Venezuela – and I even went out-of-pocket on most of that because I’d already used the credit finishing Zimbabwe.
    This year, though, I was thinking it’d probably be a smaller, lower-key year, of just using the $150 credit from the membership to try to fill out most of the rest of the Venezuela 2007-Date set and the last three coins of the 500 Lire set. $150 - $10 for an invoice fee leaves you with $140 which will pay for about 7.5 coins, which then just leaves you paying like $12 + Shipping for 8 coins, and 8 coins would have finished the 500 Lire set and left me with only 1 hole (a coin I still don’t have even in a raw state) for the Venezuela set.
    1) VEN 2010 25 CENTIMOS - INDEPENDENCE ANNIVERSARY
    2) VEN 2010 50 CENTIMOS - BANCO CENTRAL - 70TH ANNIVERSARY
    3) VEN 2016 10 BOLIVARES
    4) VEN 2016 50 BOLIVARES
    5) VEN 2016 100 BOLIVARES
    6) ITALY 1995 500 Lire
    7) ITALY 2000 500 Lire
    8) ITALY 2001 500 Lire
     
    But when you add in the $500 credit it starts to look more like this…
    1) VEN 2010 25 CENTIMOS - INDEPENDENCE ANNIVERSARY
    2) VEN 2010 50 CENTIMOS - BANCO CENTRAL - 70TH ANNIVERSARY
    3) VEN 2016 10 BOLIVARES
    4) VEN 2016 50 BOLIVARES
    5) VEN 2016 100 BOLIVARES
    6) ITALY 1995 500 Lire
    7) ITALY 2000 500 Lire
    8) ITALY 2001 500 Lire
    9) ZIM 2003 $10 (If I can find one that seems worth sending in…)
    10) ZIM 2003 $25 (If I can find one that seems worth sending in…)
    11) VEN 2011 25 CENTIMOS - INDEPENDENCE ANNIVERSARY (If I can find a good one, which I think I can)
    12)
    …
    25)
     
    And with the $150 credit…
    26)
    …
    33)
     
    There was this Raw / ungraded 1955 Rhodesian Half Penny that looked good for $6 on eBay and I’d been considering buying it and sending it in to get to 4/5 (80%) on that Half Penny Set. If it graded well, it could even put me in the running fort the top spot in the category. I’d been looking at that and when I found out about winning the award I just went online and got it. I hadn’t considered at the time but because it is from the mid-1950s and not mid-1960s it would have to go in under economy ($23) and incur its own $10 invoice fee, so the incremental cost of that coin would be $33 and not $19, but it could still be worth it if the coin looks like it would grade well when it comes in. So that could eliminate basically 2 of the blank spots above – if it looks good enough – but that doesn’t really solve “the problem” of those potentially 22-25 blank spots in that list.
    Now, don’t get me wrong – this is a fantastic “problem” to have, but for the first time in 2 years, I’m going to have to think about how I want to use this.
    Before the announcement was made and the question became “real,” I’d toyed with the idea of looking through some of the Italian coins I have in my binder and see if there are some 5 Lire, 10 Lire, 50 Lire, 100 Lire and / or 200 Lire coins I could send in and possibly add those two and strengthen those Lire sets. But the more I think about it the more I’m not sure that idea appeals to me.
    The reason being that I don’t think I’ll get much of the normal “fun” I get out of these sets by doing this. The best part of these sets for me usually is researching them, researching the design elements and the history of the different coins and designs and the historical context and building the presentation of what have now become 2 “Best Presented” sets.
    As you might imagine, I think the reason why those sets “work” is that I have really enjoyed making them and building them out on the registry and that part is usually what I get the most personal “value” from in spending my hobby money.
    And I think that’s an area where the 5, 10, 50 and 100 lire sets fail – because they’re 50 year runs of the same design. So, there’s not nearly as much there to look into and a lot of that work is ready done and built into those sets. So, I don’t think there’s enough meat on those bones for me to sink my teeth into. Those side sets work as fun side projects to buy some new coins for here and there where they come up but I’m not convinced they’d hold my interest and keep me happy as a main focus for a year or two like the Zimbabwe and Venezuelan Sets have.
    The 500 Lire and 200 Lire circulating commemorative sets hold a little more promise in this regard with some fun designs to research and comment on, but these things do not hold up well and trying to find them in high grade, looking good, for not much money, can be a bit of a difficult thing. But… the other thing about those sets is, if I’m being honest, I’m hoping that certain dealers will continue to enable my laziness on those.
    The other thing about that is that we’re talking about 22-25 coins. The first Zimbabwe submission – the one that won the award – was only 14 coins. The Venezuelan submission – that didn’t even fully feed into the 2007-date set – was only about 26 coins. A submission of that size just calls out to me to use it to build “the next set” - the next big research project, the next great adventure of buying hundreds of raw coins and filling another binder with pages and flips…
    But… what set is that going to be?
    An obvious standout for me has been Turkey – they’ve been going through a pretty major long term inflationary crisis that has gotten much worse in the last few years and it could be a great new project, continuing my theme from the last two.
    Another one that could be a great continuation of my recent theme is Argentina… There could be some fun here with just snickering about the gap between the official inflation rate and what the apparent actual inflation rate is.

    Of course, building either of those sets in the way that I want would depend on finding large quantities of their coins in good conditions at reasonable prices so I could do what I’ve done with the last 2 sets. So far, with Turkey, it has not been looking good / promising.
    But then, the other question becomes, do I want to stick to theme or go with something else? Is now the time that I decide to build elephant or turtle thematic custom sets for one or both of my boys?
    But if I do that I wonder if I’d be better going for turtles over elephants as a focus.
    The Zimbabwe set (Notes and Coins, making it collectively HUGE) is so strongly linked to Samuel. The Rhodesian Pennies with the association to Zimbabwe and the elephant theme also have a strong link to Sam. If I keep pounding projects like that, I might risk a day in the future when Ben is going to look at me a bit sideways… Even though he is my namesake “William” and therefore the 10G set is something I mentally have going to him one day.
    So maybe it’s time to build a Turtle set?
    The main problem there is I’d be starting from Zero pretty much, and I’m time-limited on getting a group of coins together and ready while the credit is still good.
    In the meantime, I think I'm going to see if I can get some more raw examples of the 1995, 2000, and 2001 500 Lire coins. I have examples of each, but I know they're not going to get super-high grades. So I think I'm going to try to find some better alternatives while I have some time to shop.
  13. Revenant

    Oh no.... Oh this (coin) is horrible. lol

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwean Coins and Currency
    So...
    Saw this... Just wanted to share and laugh and have this to remember this later for the lawls...
    I was looking for a nice 1956 Rhodesian Half Penny... It's the last date I'd need to have a complete set of the Giraffe design from the 1950s and 1960s during the pre-UDI, Federation period (assuming I get the raw 1955 I bought graded).
    I see a new listing that shows a raw coin and says in the title "Collectable Grade."
    And then I look at the pictures... 
    And... O.M.G... That is... special.
    Nope... Sorry. Throw it to the smelter.


    Just for fun... here is the 1955 I bought recently... On the fence on sending it in to fill the hole in the registry set or not. Marketed as UNC with bad pics and bought on a lark for $6 (cheaper than the shipping cost alone of the coin above).


    I need to take good pictures of the three graded ones I have now, both to improve the look of that registry set and to get nice shots as a basis for comparing to this and other raw examples I might get. At this point I have a 65RB, 66RD, and 67RD, which would be the foundation for a grading set, and a scale to compare against.
    On a random note: Shandy accepted a new role in her current company today. And it is going to come with a nice pay bump, and so we might soon be giving our spending money budgets a bump up... which might be more money for my misadventures...  
    What it really means, more seriously, though is we'll probably be getting very aggressive about paying down her student loans... assuming the government decides it's going to get things in order and start asking for payment again.  
     
  14. Revenant
    The problem with collecting modern coins in type sets with many countries is that the coins look rather the same across the board.
    South Africa for example:

    Russia (I think this is Russian coinage anyway... if I remember right)

    Uruguay:

    Mexico:

    Others:



    Interestingly, when I've posted images in the past of the Zimbabwean Bond Coins and had people point out that they look like arcade tokens or make similar disparaging remarks, I've pointed out that the rest of the world (the US included) doesn't seem to be doing much better these days.
    I also find it interesting in that the Franklin mint sets (and my own writings) have called out the relative lack of variety in the designs of Venezuelan coinage, but, other countries have also allowed their coinage to become extremely homogenized in the last few decades. Poland is an interesting example with their coins from the 1990s looking basically the same as their coins from 2017.
    The problem I feel this creates is that, if you want to look to create a story and weave a narrative around the set in a registry presentation, you need to look beyond the coinage and the designs and what's featured on them. With the Venezuelan note set I actually got to have a lot of fun researching the people and the animals and places on the notes... at least until they stopped changing the designs or putting in any effort on them. But when all the coins are essentially identical, if you want to tell a story, you have to start trying to put the coins into a historical narrative.
    And, while someone looking for a country with really pretty, artistic, varied modern coinage might have a hard time in that pursuit, someone looking to study economic and societal collapse through the lens of coinage and coin collecting seems to have their pick of options these days...
    In addition to Zimbabwe and Venezuela, which I have now looked at and written on extensively, we also have extreme and growing economic and social stress in Argentina, Turkey, Cuba, Sri Lanka, Peru, and a few other places.
    Although, I couldn't help but think the other day that it could be interesting to do a large, multi-country set looking at Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Armenia, and the other post-soviet states. Possibly looking at that to examine the growing tensions in the area as we enter a kind of post-Russia era with Armenia and Azerbaijan's fragile peace (previously held together by Russian peace-keepers) starting to fall apart as Moscow's influence fades.
    At this point I'm petty sure what my next big project is going to be - I have an order in with one of the dealers that was big help in putting together the Venezuela set and now they're going to be my primary source for coins from a new country.
    My wife commented the other day about the amount of reading, research and writing - the amount of time and effort that goes into building out one of these projects - as I begin to think about ramping up for a new one. And... yeah. It's a lot, but it's a lot of fun and learning.
  15. Revenant

    Constructing a Set and Narrative and Learning More as I go.

    By Revenant,


    Venezuelan Coins and Currency
    So, after many delays prompted by sickness and other things - in the 2nd half of this week is was my “turn” to be sick - and putting these on hold to look at 500 Lire coins, I’m finally starting to look at the Venezuelan coins to maybe pick out some for a submission and building out a registry set.
    But the thing that normally makes all the difference for me in building these sets is building a narrative around the set. Building out these descriptions, the research and the writing often consumes more time than anything else and is what has consumed most of my collecting time. With some sets in the past, I’ve put a lot of emphasis on the designs of the coins and the cultural significance of what’s on them. In some sets I’ve put a lot of emphasis on the historical context and what was going on in the country at the time when that coin or bill was introduced. In some sets I’ve emphasized the hunt and the personal journey of building the set - or some mixture of these.
    The Zimbabwe note set leans heavily on the historical context with some information on the cultural importance of the things featured - almost no emphasis on the chase because 100 iterations of “I bought this on eBay" seems a bit boring. The Venezuelan note set has a similar approach but there’s a different ratio / more emphasis is put on the cultural significance of the designs and portraits.
    The Zimbabwe coin set leans roughly equally on the cultural significance of the designs and on the chase / the journey of building the set.
    I’ve been thinking the last few months about what my approach with this set was going to be - how it was going to look, how am I going to present it. I find it’s always best to “Begin with the End in Mind.”
    With these coins I feel like it’s going to be very hard to put much emphasis on the designs and the cultural aspect of what’s on it, for one very important reason. I’m going to quote the information card that came with the sets from the Franklin Mint:
    “Venezuela may hold the present-day record for the sameness of the designs used on its circulation coins. Not only do all denominations bear a signed portrait of Simon Bolivar by Albert Desire Barre, Chief Engraver of the Paris Mint (1855-1878), it is the same portrait that has been used most years since the 1870s. This likewise holds true for the coat of arms.”
    So, from a design standpoint, from coin to coin, there is very little (almost nothing) to talk about here. The dates and the denominations change with the size of the coin but that’s about it. This is actually a pretty stark contrast to what I ran into with the currency side on PMG with the Venezuela set because the bills featured a large number of endangered animals, national parks, and historical figures - until the people designing their bills kind of “gave up” around 2019 and started slapping the same design on everything in different colors.
    So I think this set is going to be more focused on the coins, the historical context behind their introduction, and how what was going on in the country / the inflation made it’s impacts on the coinage.
    I’ve been starting to research the coins more and I’ve been finding a few very interesting things.
    For example, the 1989 coins I got from these Franklin Mint sets I bought were nickel-plated steel coins that were only issued for 2-3 years, and they are almost all using almost exactly the same design or the same design as pure nickel coins that were issued mostly in the 1970s and the earlier 1980s. And these were the last coins issued from the Fourth Republic of Venezuela before the constitutional change in 1999. There were no Venezuelan coins from 1991 to 1999.
    This actually heavily mirrors what happened in Zimbabwe with coins being made out of better / more expensive metals in the 1980s, the switch to steel in the 1990s, a brief halt to production of coinage and then a later re-introduction of new, higher coin denominations. - Zimbabwe was just a lot quicker to abandon coins completely than Venezuela.
    I’m also learning that some of these coins were struck at several different mints, and that in a couple of cases a coin was struck for 3 years and struck at a different mint every one of those three years. And I’m wondering if I’m going to be able to learn about if there was some other reason for that. But some of these coins, because of this, have different design / die pairings and varieties to look for.
    Even more, I’m realizing that I need to take a magnet to some of these early 2000’s coins to figure out what I have - I’m learning that some of these coins were issued in two different compositions in the same years for a couple of years, with Magnetic steel coins and non-magnetic zinc aluminum coins having the same date with weights, diameters, and thicknesses that are also the same.
    And so, this continues to become more complicated.
    Among other things, I already knew there was a 2016 50 bolivar coin that I don’t have any examples of. But I’m also learning that there was a 2005-dated 1,000 bolivar coin that I hadn’t known about, and that was apparently the country’s first bimetallic, before the introduction of the 1 Bolivar Fuertes coin in 2007.
    Shameless plug for the 500L set but remember what I’ve said before about that, in 1982, being the first circulating bi-metallic coin, with the idea being to use this on higher denomination coins to make them harder to counterfeit. So this has Venezuela introducing bimetallics 23 years after Italy pioneered it. Several of the other coins from this period Casa de la Moneda de Venezuela in Maracay, Venezuela (1999-date). This has me wondering if this one was also produced domestically or if they outsourced the production of a more complicated coin to one of the mints in the UK, Canada, and Germany that they’d used previously - or if those mints were even willing to take the order by 2005.
  16. Revenant

    So... 6 next year?

    By Revenant,


    Italian Coins
    So, the awards deadline has come and gone, and I made the joke to Shandy along the lines of, "Well, I lost the 50 Lire this year, but I managed to win in 4 Italian categories instead of 2 this year, so that's cool, right?" Her response was, "So, you're going to get me 6 next year, right?" "You planning to up my budget? " More seriously, my quip back to her would be that I'll feel pretty good about it if I manage the defend the title on 2 or 3 of these 4 next year. I seem to be decently good at calling attention to categories and getting more sets created.  
    Can you tell which one was created as a bit of an afterthought that I haven't had a chance to really mess with yet? Seriously.... I thought I'd made and posted a banner for all of these, then I actually looked at the 5 Lire set last night and was like...  "Ooops."

    At some point I'm also wanting to work with an image of the 1994 500L to work on and differentiate the 500 Lire type set banner from the non-circulating commemorative date set. But it works for now. 
    Most of these coins that I haven't bought raw and graded myself have come from 1 dealer in particular and they've had some MS67 1981 200 Lire coins - celebrating the first observation of UN FAO's World Food Day - that I'd been wanting to get and add to the 200 Lire Type set. The only problem was, consistent with their usual, they'd listed the coins at $300 each, which is.... Silly.  
    Just for Lawls, and as a reminder to myself I watched the listing on eBay. The seller then offered me a 15% discount. $255. Which was... Slightly less silly. "Nah. You can still keep it at that price."
    As has tended to be the case, they eventually listed one for $50, which was starting to become more reasonable. I'm pretty okay to let someone recover their grading fees and make a little money if it is a good grade and they're saving me the work of hunting and submitting myself. When they're half-way reasonable on price I like these people. They make my life much easier on these sets, letting me focus more energy in other areas, so I do want them to continue having an incentive to keep submitting and supplying me with coins.
    So, I watched that listing thinking I might pull the trigger on it later. Then the seller offers me another 10% discount, knocking it down to $45. At that point I finally showed it to Shandy, and she was with me on taking it at that price.
    $45 plus shipping - down 85% of the original ask.
    I am still frequently amazed by and in awe of what people will ask for on these rarely-graded, thinly-collected-as-graded-coins, modern condition rarities, frequently bragging up that the coin is Top Pop (for now, but in no way guaranteed to remain such).
    I'm really looking forward to getting this one in, and when I do, I think it's going to be time to look into updating the 200 Lire banner to show off some of the different designs.
    I suspect she'll take this one and add it to her small-but-growing stash. So I may have to steal it for the short term to take the pictures.

    One coin I'd particularly enjoy adding to this set would be the 1980 issue:

    Between the child hugging the woman and the book in her lap I think that's almost a perfect design for my wife.
    Interestingly, this coin also references UN FAO, but unlike with the 1981 coin, I haven't researched this to figure out what the connection to FAO is with this one.
     
  17. Revenant

    You know, it’s really kind of amazing...

    By Revenant,


    2020 Awards
    I told my wife today, “You know, it’s really kind of amazing: You combine antibiotics, with steroids, NSAID pain relievers, expectorants, nasal decongestants, and antihistamines, and a few hours later you feel a lot more comfortable!”
    I’ve had a sinus infection kicking my butt more and more for a week and a half and I finally went to the doctor today to get help being it.
    Drugs! Am I right?
    Yeah… Now that you’re all convinced I’m a pill head…
    I was walking out the front door to go to the pharmacy to get my meds when the FedEx guy got out of the truck and handed me the envelope with this and a 1923, MS64 Peace Dollar – it’ll go great with the Morgan from 2020 and the American Eagle from 2021.

    So, in the last few years I’ve brought you:
    “Gradually, Then Suddenly” (PMG Best Presented Note Set – some of you may not be much aware of this one)
    “The First Casualties (Causalities?) of Hyperinflation”
    And:
    “Turning Pain into Suffering”
     
    I think I can now announce my latest melodramatic working title:
    “Brought Forth with Pain.”
    We return to our roots with “Gradually, then Suddenly,” in that this is a clip from a quote that will be at the core of what I hope the Theme of the new set will be:
    “Debts are like children – begot with pleasure but brought forth with pain.” – Moliere
     
    I think this will be a two-parter, as I’m going to be looking at two currencies that, based on what I’m seeing, will probably be split in the registry into two competitive categories – one of these sets / groups has a competitive category already. One doesn’t seem to, yet – but I’m going to ask for one soon!
     
  18. Revenant

    Joke not funny - needs Punchline.

    By Revenant,


    Venezuelan Coins and Currency
    In looking at the description for my Venezuelan set again it occurred to me that I never really closed the loop and brought it all back the coins and the set, so I ended up adding a paragraph towards the end that brought my discussion back to that set.
    But the whole thing got me thinking about an old routine from Ron White, when he stops, seemingingly in the middle of the joke, with no punchline to wrap things up. It just stopped and he said, "Joke not funny! Need Punchline."
    It was a bit funny making that change, however, to a set that just won an award, and it made me think of a recent conversation where someone asked me if I still work on and add to these sets. And the answer was, of course!
    The Zimbabwean note set has probably had about 20-25 notes added to it since it won an award in 2020.
    The Zimbabwean coin set was only about 14-15 coins at the time when it got its award in 2021 and it still needed several additions to bring it up to a complete 23-coin set.
    As I continued to find more information on them, I also continued to build out my descriptions on both those sets.
    The Venezuelan set is only about 66% complete and I need to add several coins - most of which I already own in raw form - to make it complete, And I want to make it complete.
    I don't know that I'd say I'll always consider these "open." I remain open to upgrading the Zimbabwean coin and note sets in the future if coins and notes come up, but I consider both to be pretty idle and not really active projects anymore. At a minimum I'd say both are on a firm hold until I get an itch to try to improve the few lingering weak points in the coin set or go on a massive overall to push the average grade on the Note set up.
    But I definitely don't just drop these things once they win something.
    I think where that becomes a problem for the person asking me about this is they were wondering if I'd ever consider publishing these things and the writing and research in a physical form, and to do that I think I'd have to reach some kind of final state beyond which further additions and alterations are unlikely. Although I suppose you could open up the idea of editions.
     
    Edited to add: I guess I should visit the main page more often. I just saw the announcement about DW Lange passing. That... is a bummer. He always seemed to have a great sense of humor about things when he posted on the boards and it was always nice that he took the time.
  19. Revenant
    So I made my post a few weeks ago about picking up that 1981 200 Lire and I talked about wanting to get a 1980 because of the design of that coin and how fitting I thought it was for a tribute set to my wife.

    At the time I was hitting up eBay to see if I could find any of the 1981 graded by NGC - most likely from this same seller because this seller seems to be about the only one offering modern Italian issues graded by NGC. But I didn't find any.
    So that had me looking for raw examples to maybe grade myself for this set because, I really liked that design, my wife liked it, and I wanted to get it.
    Sadly... no luck! These things do not seem to age well if they get handled at all. I don't think they do that well wit oxidation and oils from hands and handling. Anyway....
     
    I'd about given up for the time and I was feeling a bit bummed about it, thinking this might just be something that'd require time and patience... and then...!
    I found this:

    I've joked with others that this is one of those moments that gets the paranoid part of your brain going, wondering if the dealers watch the registry and what you post and what the holes in your set are and then the coins you need magically appear! 
    But, then you take a closer look, see the cert#, realize this coin is from the same invoice as the 1981 I bought before, realize that this coin was graded before I ever talked about it.
    My fantasies and delusions of my own influence aside, this had nothing to do with me. The seller is just submitting and grading things and offering them for sale, as always. They just happen to be coins I want.
    So then, why did these magically appear after my post? Well, they probably didn't. They were probably listed and for sale the entire time.
    Why then, did I not see them?
    Well... likely through a copy and paste issue, the seller had them listed as 1000 Lire coins. And this is totally on the seller - NGC correctly labeled them as 200 Lire, and Italy didn't introduce 500 Lire coins until 1982 and 1000 Lire coins until about 1995. There are no 1980 dated 1000 Lire coins that I'm aware of.
    I just got lucky finding these because I did a broad look for "NGC Italy," just to see if anything interesting popped up.
    Since it was around Black Friday, everyone was marking things down, and the seller takes offers, I put in an offer for about 80% of their ask and they accepted.
    I'm going to cross my fingers and hope these folks keep making my life easy for me on this set:

    I gotta say though, the pictures the seller takes of these coins are so unflattering. They look so much shinier and more lustrous and pretty in hand than they do in the seller's images.
    As often seems to be the case with me, I'm finding these type sets with different designs more fun to build than long-run date sets that all have the same design. So, while I had thought that I might try making a play to retake the top in the 50 Lire set, this 200 Lire type set seems to be becoming my secondary Italian focus, having mostly built a solid 500 Lire date set. Although I'm very much also interested in a 500 Lire type set that includes the circulating commemorative years. 

    While I was shopping for these, I was surprised to find that there are 1980-dated coins that use the more "standard," non-circulating commemorative design. So they issued two different 200 Lire designs in 1980. And this has me wondering waht other years this is true for.

     
    In other slightly funny news... You know how, back in May, I talked about how someone came along 15 minutes before an auction ended and sniped a 1983 500 Lire out from under me... 
    Well, today, I looked at the one other 500 Lire type set in the registry...  and it has one coin... a 1983... in MS65... that was added in May... right around when I lost that auction to the sniper ...

    But... I guess that means it probably wasn't a shill...
    There will be no mercy. 
  20. Revenant

    Very Pleased with How These Came Out!

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwean Coins and Currency
    Okay... So I was working during naptime and in the evenings over the weekend, and work has been slow the first half of this week - both because the client on my main project isn't answering my questions and I think because they're not putting much on me right now having just gotten back from being at the hospital for two weeks, so I've taken pictures, and edited them and done some writing... but I just really want to show off these Rhodesian Penny photos and these banner images because I'm really proud of how these came out:






     
    Having gotten those made, I took the images for the 1962 - an MS67RD, the highest grade and nicest looking coin in the set - and made this banner image.

    I also made the following for a Venezuelan Bolivar Set. Banner images for sets like this are a little more "interesting" to me because there's more than one design and so there's more that I want to show and highlight. With this one, the things I really wanted to show and pull out are 1) The two (old and new-2021) portraits for Bolivar on the obverse, and 2) the Bimetallic bolivar and 3) the coat of arms, which, other than Bolivar, is the most commonly featured device on the coins.

    Also at this point, all 12 coins in the Venezuelan set have a comment on them. I had to laugh a little bit because, when I opened my old Word file for saving work on this, most of my work had been done on 1) the 1989 coins that are not in this set and 2) the 2016 coins that I ... forgot to submit.  So that pretty much had me starting from scratch except I'd pulled some vital stats on all the coins previously including weight, size, composition, etc. This is still going to be a work in progress as I still want to put in more design commentary and maybe layer in some more context. However, I went really hard on the history and the timeline for this period in my notes set, so I may not do that again for this coin set.
     
    So... Yeah. I took advantage of some slow time to get this done, I'm very happy with what I got, and I wanted to share.
    I took this recently and sent it to my wife saying, "can you tell how I like to relax?"

  21. Revenant
    I have to lead into this with the fact that I’m just very displeased with both USPS and FedEx at the moment.
    First, I go to the mailbox this morning and see a slip of pink paper saying that there was a package requiring a signature – that I’m 90% sure is the coins Shandy ordered – that they “attempted delivery” on late last week.
    We were home all day that day. We have a Ring Doorbell that logs motion events and people ringing the door. They did not attempt to deliver that package. They just left the slip in the box and now we have to go to the Post Office to get it from them in their laziness. I’m 90% sure this must have been a sub because our normal mail guy actually brings things to the door. Ya know – he actually tries to do the job.
    On Sunday I’d gotten a message from FedEx saying I was getting a box from Sarasota, FL that needed a signature on Monday. I check this morning and it says the package is estimated to arrive between 12:30-3:30 PM… Okay. Cool. I run out for literally 15 minutes at 9:45 AM. The package arrives when I’m gone… at 9:55… Nearly 3 hours before the start of their estimated window… Thanks, Guys. That’s… really helpful… when you give an estimate that’s… completely wrong…
    Normally I’d be annoyed because I missed the delivery because they came well outside their estimated window and now, I’d have to go get it… except… they left it… on the front porch. The guy walks up and just leaves the box by the door. No signature. He doesn’t even ring the doorbell. I know this, because, again, my smart doorbell would have logged the ring.
    Way to go, folks! You both stink for different reasons…
    But… I have the Venezuelan and Italian coins back in my possession again! And so tonight will be another shared unboxing event.
     
    We opened the box tonight after the kids are in bed as is our practice. Very happy to have these home.


     




    Somewhat to my surprise, she commented on how many Venezuelan coins there were, including relative to the number of Italian coins, but there's a reason why I pay for this out of my hobby and spending money.
    She has now been given a 2nd Coin box as, with these 6 new ones, all of hers can't fit in the 1 box, and I'm not done working on this and there will be more.  
    I have lots more to say about these coins coming up as I’m already working to integrate them into new and existing sets. I’m just going to try to space it out and try not to dump too much too fast.
    We popped over to the PO to get the other package this morning. I tried to pick it up and Shandy snatched it out of my hand and wouldn't even allow me to touch or hold it while declaring that I can't have it until my birthday, while some older guys in line chuckled. She is still attempting to claim that this package - that came awfully fast and is the only such package to come - is some new Italian coin that she found and bought and not the Rhodesian Pennies... It's all seriously kinda rude. 
  22. Revenant

    Modern Venezuelan (Hyperinflation) Coins

    By Revenant,


    Venezuelan Coins and Currency
    When I started down this road and started planning this entry in my head, I didn’t think I’d be posting this coming off a win with the Zimbabwe coin set, but...
    The thing you generally don't see with a hyperinflation collection is coins. Which is probably why it surprised and excited me so much when I realized that, with the release of the digital bolivar and the 3rd Venezuelan redenomination, they were releasing a 1 Bolivar coin with the 5 new banknotes.

    Then, when I went looking to see if any had hit eBay, I found something else: Venezuela released new coins in both 2007 (7 denominations) with the release of the Bolivar Fuerte and 2018 (2 denominations) with the release of the Bolivar Soberano. So, there are coins associated with all of the different Bolivares and throughout the hyperinflation period.


    Which is a bit funny and a bit awkward for me given the argument made in my Zimbabwe note and coin sets,  - that coins are the “First Casualties of Hyperinflation” and that if you want to see hyperinflation, you have to look at notes. Because it seems to be increasingly clear that you can see high inflation / hyperinflation in coins, if you collect Venezuela.
    The 2007 coins are a little less surprising - at the time of the first redenomination they weren't in hyperinflation and wouldn't be for about 6 more years. They just had persistent, double-digit, high inflation.
    The 2018 Soberano coins were vastly more surprising. At that point the country was well into a hyperinflationary situation and the 2nd redenomination took off 5 zeros instead of 3. But they do exist - and they were released! And not held back, delayed and repurposed - unlike the 2003-dated Zimbabwe coins, the release of which was delayed 5 years.
    And I didn't know they existed! Never even thought about it in a year and a half of collecting the notes. There are even registry sets for these things! - never knew, never noticed. But there’s at least one user with a solid PMG note set and a solid NGC coin set for Venezuela and it isn’t me.
    But with these collections and situations the banknotes with the big numbers get all the attention. And in Zimbabwe they didn't exist! They had notes with circles! No coins struck from 2003 to 2014! So, I didn't look for what I assumed wasn't there. And you don't know what you don't know.
    Having found out about them I wanted some though, so I've been working on getting some.
    I was able to get 5 sets of the 7 denominations from 2007 from a dealer in Turkey - another country seeing its national currency reduced to a memory.

    Later on, I was able to pick up 10 pairs of the 2018 50C and 1B coins from a seller in Costa Rica for not much more than what some people were asking for just 1 pair.

    A fair bit later - because I've been doing this slowly since the last post I made here on Venezuela months ago while also doing other things - it takes a while for coins to arrive from overseas - I picked up five of the Franklin Mint sets for Venezuela with coins mostly from the late 1980s and broke them up. This was mostly to extend the collection of type coins into the original bolivar - something I've been very reluctant to do on the PMG / note side.

    This gave me a pretty solid start to a Venezuelan coin collection for about $80.
    I subsequently found out that there were other coins, pre-2007, with denominations of 10, 20, 50, 100 and 500 Bolivares and was able to acquire 5 sets of those, dated 2002-2004, from the same seller in Ukraine that sold me some of my Zimbabwean bond coins.
    There were also some coins from around 2016 (after the first redenomination but before the 2nd) with denominations of 10 and 100 Bolivares Fuertes, which that Ukrainian seller also had. The came paired with some 50 cent coins from 2009 that I didn’t really need but I got the 3-coin sets with the 10-500 Bolivar sets because that was the best price I could get on those 10 and 100 Bolivar coins, which I wanted / needed and I wanted to get all of them and combine shipping.


    Small aside on those three coin lots - they advertised them as having 10, 50, and 100 Bolivar coins. They actually contained 50 cent coins. As it turns out, there is a 50 Bolivar coin from 2016, and I'll probably have to track some of those down down the line...

    So, now about $125 later, I have quite a set of raw Venezuelan coins with denominations and designs spanning several orders of magnitude, about 3 decades and 3 of the 4 national currencies Venezuela has had so far.

    The main challenge so far, the thing I haven’t been able to add yet, is the thing that got me started on this in the first place – I can’t find anyone selling the new 1 Bolivar Digital coin for what feels like a reasonable price. Possibly buying more 7-coin sets from another dealer to cover bases and sample around and buying more 3-coin sets that actually have the 50 Bolivar coin my run me another $50 or so. Still, not an expensive project so far at any rate.
    I'm obviously back to buying multiples in the hopes of getting 1 or 2 really nice ones and it seems to be working in that regard. I will likely submit some of these down the road to build a registry set and display around these to compliment the note set. The goal is very much to turn the Venezuela set into another cross registry, mixed note and coin set, similar to the Zimbabwe set, though the Zimbabwe set has been far more… “successful” at this point. I suspect because the Venezuela set so far has tended to come in looking like a tugboat next to a 120-note, 14-coin (Soon 23), dreadnought.
    In my head for a while there last year as this was starting to happen and form in my head, this was going to be the next big project after the Zimbabwean coins, but then the 500 Lire set happened and these temporarily lost priority.
    I started showing some of these to Shandy as they started to trickle in, and she started getting out a light - wanting to know if we were looking for the best or the two best. I just said that for now we were just enjoying the designs. We'll look at them again and pick the ones we want to submit when that gets a little closer. But that was then, with the Zimbabwe set’s win, this will probably be my next major NGC project – turning the Venezuela set into a cross-registry collection and presentation just like the Zimbabwe Set.
    Shandy has been away in Florida on a work trip all week. She got back late last night. With all of these / most of these in hand, flipped and labeled, I think it’ll be time to start picking the winners / coins for a possible future submission, which I need to try to get out by late March or April if I want to make something happen this year I think – Shopping for one new coin release turned into quite a project, quite a journey.
    I'll have to follow this up later with another post with pictures and comments on the individual coins. I feel this one is long enough and should end here.
  23. Revenant

    A Fresh New Hell

    By Revenant,


    Family
    Well, it had been my intent to make a post this week about some progress working on the Venezuelan competitive set - taking some pictures and buying some coins, getting some in the mail, but Monday night Sam had a seizure that would not stop. Which forced us to call an ambulance.
    He's been in the hospital, intubated and under heavy sedation for going on 30 hours now. We're waiting to have some final test results soon but maybe they can bring him back up and take out the tube - EEG has been clean. He has an infection but We're waiting to hear if it's in the brain or ear related or if he'll need surgery to drain fluid.

    So not the update I wanted to make this week. But it's where I'm at.
    After this we'll probably have emergency seizure meds to add to the list of things we carry with us everywhere we go just in case.
    His medical history puts him at increased risk for seizure disorders and fibrular (sp?) seizures so this was always on the list of risks.
    Edited:
    So far no brain infection. Treating for a blood infection that will keep us here several days. Trying to get the tube taken out.
    EDITED:
    Officially no brain infection, but it sounds like we're getting an epilepsy diagnosis.  Also seems like the blood infection has a touch of pneumonia now so breathing tube is probably staying until tomorrow at least.
    10/13: He was extubated around noon and he's doing well. Probably here several more days for IV antibiotics.
  24. Revenant

    Oh no… I have done the dumb.

    By Revenant,


    Venezuelan Coins and Currency
    It is only now, now that I’ve taken the coins from the submission and populated a competitive set that I realize I made a massive boo-boo when I sent these coins in:
    I had 5 examples each of the 10 Bolivar and 100 Bolivar Fuertes coins from 2016… but I forgot to look at them with Shandy, pick one of each out and include them with the submission. I should have submitted 24 Venezuelan coins, not 22.
    I think this happened 1) Because the number of coins and the number of different types with the same denominations kept growing on me and so I forgot about these Bolivar Fuertes coins, remembering instead only the 2004-dated Bolivar coins with the same face value. 2) They were in a page alone together in the back of my binder and I think I grabbed them up with the rest of the BsF coins, trying to get to the BsS coins, and literally flipped past them in my binder.
    So now I’m sitting here, kicking myself, because there’s a massive hole in the set now when there should only be the 1 missing 50 Bolivar coin that I had not managed to acquire… for… reasons…

    Speaking of the 50 Bolivar... I'd found a seller offering 3-coin sets of the 10, 50, and 100 bolivar from 2016. They were priced reasonably at $6 per set but the shipping was $6 per set and they said in the listing that each additional lot was $6... So buying the 3 sets they had would be $18... plus $18 shipping. I emailed the guy like, are you seriously going to charge $18 to ship 9 small coins (that collectively way 52 grams). The response was, that he does combine shipping based on the weight of the box. Just request an invoice at checkout. I'm like, okay, fine! I committed to buy and asked for the invoice... apparently I should have looked at his chart more closely because his combined shipping fee was $16... to ship a box that by his own admission weighs 80 grams, or about 0.2 pounds... I'm more than a little salty about this... but, lesson learned. This will be the first and last time I buy from him. But I'll get at least a few examples of the 50 bolivar coin and a few more examples of the 10 and 100 that may or may not be better than what I have now.
    I'd also found a seller offering the 25C 2010 200th Anniversary coin for $ 6.99 each + $1 shipping, but if you ordered 4+ they'd be $5.59 each. I found this tempting to get one of these circulating commem type coins, but, not having bought from this person before and not 100% sure what I'd get, I wasn't sure I wanted to do my normal and get 4-5 of these to pick through from them on a first purchase. I just added it to my watch list to think about it. The next day they offered me $4.80 + $1 shipping for one of them. At that point I just said, "Sure, I'll spend $6 to get a peek at what you have and see if I want to get more later." So, we'll see how that goes. But if that works out that would leave me only needing the 2011 25C and the 2010 50C to have all the slots in that set filled.
    So… on that note… I go to bang my head on my desk. For more than one reason now.
    I hope you all continue to enjoy the sharing of my crazy and my misadventures... some of which blow up in my face, just a little.
     
  25. Revenant

    Now that I think on it more… this WILL start competitively

    By Revenant,


    Venezuelan Coins and Currency
    So, I’ve talked a fair bit about my plan to make a signature set / custom set around the Venezuelan coins I submitted and just got back… but I think I’m going to table that for now and focus instead on building out two competitive sets:
    Reform Coinage, Type Set, 1879-2005, Circulation Issue Sets | NGC Registry | NGC (ngccoin.com)
    Set Details | NGC Registry | NGC (ngccoin.com)
    Reform Coinage, Type Set, 2007-Date, Circulation Issue Sets | NGC Registry | NGC (ngccoin.com)
    Set Details | NGC Registry | NGC (ngccoin.com)
    In the signature set I’d been debating how to define my slots and what slots to have and here that’s done for me. When I am struggling with slot definitions and descriptions, I find it is rarely a good sign for the set. Recall: Gradually, Then Suddenly was my 2nd attempt at a Zimbabwe Custom Note set. The first one I deleted and metaphorically burned out of frustration.
    Perhaps, more importantly, these competitive sets can live in the New Registry, with the updated presentation style, and pretty set banner images, and they avoid dealing with the laborious old custom set system.  I can focus on the photos and the descriptions for now and worry about tangling with defining my own set boundaries later, when that part of the narrative starts to crystalize in my head more. While I felt awkward and weird about it at first I really have gotten more comfortable and familiar with the new registry format over time. I like how it looks more, and I like being able to add the extra little bit of flare with the banner images.
    It was different when I’d originally (wrongly) gotten it into my head that I’d be stuck with the coins split between 4 different sets, but it looks like I’m going to only have 2, and 1 of those is going to (most likely) collect all off the hyperinflation era coinage that came out in the lead-up to and after the first redenomination. Only the older, coins from before the introduction of the Bolivar Fuerte go in the other set. This lets me build a solid, already mostly complete and filled competitive set with all the Hyperinflation coins that are the part of the set that I enjoy the most and the part of the timeline that I enjoy talking about the most. It doesn’t hurt that all the highest grades I got in the submission – the 3 68’sand the 69 - hit in this set, and that MS62 can be banished to the other set, making for a pretty solid little group overall.  As a random bit of context, what I combine under 1 signature set for "Gradually, Then Suddenly" on the PMG side would be about 8-9 competitive sets, minimum.
    NGC, I’m very happy to realize and say, breaks the set in 2007 with the introduction of the Bolivar Fuertes. PMG, on the other hand, breaks the set at 1999, with the passing of the new constitution and the switch-over to the new government under Chavez. NGC also keeps the Bolivar Fuerte coin in the same set with the Bolivar Soberano coins – possibly for no other reason than to avoid having a Bolivar Soberano category that only has 2 slots / coins. But this is different than what you get with PMG, where each of those currencies get their own category. In fairness to PMG, there are 13 Bolivar Fuerte notes and 14 Soberano notes, so there are enough of each of those to support their own categories, where, for the Soberano coins, there simply isn’t.
    I put in a request to Ali and the team early this week to see if they’ll add slots for the 3 2021-dated Bolivar Digital coins and they added the slots only about 24 hours later. So, I’m going to be really pleased with this set category because it will house almost everything I have and want to show, highlight, and emphasize – for now.
    I do like the idea of later extending this back to the 1960s coins that were the last silver coins and following not just the run up in the denominations, but also the preceding debasement that occurred with the switch from Silver, to predominantly nickel coins, to nickel-clad steel. I think that sounds like a fun set – I just acknowledge that I’m not there yet.
    Unlike with Zimbabwe I’m coming into a slightly more established category. I’m not the 1st ranked set (a set with coins actually listed in it) to be added in the category – mine is / was the 5th created. And there is some solid competition here. FAS_Coins has a 53% complete set. I call him out because I recognize him from the PMG side. His Venezuelan collection extends back to the early days of the country with 19th century coinage. It’s a very impressive Coin & Note combining, PMG/NGC, platform crossing collection. I can come close to matching him in the 21st century stuff but I can’t touch what he’s built with the 19th and 20th century issues. I just wish he uploaded pictures more … because he… doesn’t. He has 1945-dated, P-31 specimen notes (in 67 EPQ!) on the PMG side. No pictures. But, his is far from the only set I can’t come close to competing with on older Venezuelan coins – I’m ranked 24th in the category… so I’m a ways down the list.
    But, as of now, my main personal collecting goals heading into October and November will be getting pictures taken of the 3 new 500L coins, the Rhodesian penny set, and the Venezuelan coins, and photoshopping together banner images for the Rhodesian penny set and the 2007-Date Venezuelan Set.
    I linked my wife to the new Venezuelan set to show it to her. She looks at it and says, “No picture?” (There’s no set banner) “It’s a brand-new set. I’m working on it.” “Somebody’s slacking.” “Thanks, Dear.”