Revenant

I think this will probably work better all things considered.

I was wanting and hoping to make a new Banner / Set image fo r my 10G set that would take advantage of the effort and money / credit that when into getting all 8 of these reholdered in pretty, scratch-resistant holders that all have matching labels. I had this idea, setting them up on little easels and having them on NGC coin boxes... The problem I'm running into is how this actually looks on the site and how the ratio for the image is very different on the computer screen vs my phone. What I see on the computer: What I see on my phone: Having that Rank 1 banner almost perfectly covering one of the coins on my phone kinda kills me... All that empty space on the computer view also seems less than ideal... I'm wondering if I'd be better served by a more square image...

Thanks. Keep posting yourself. It's nice to see you and Coinsandmedals posting this year and I see you both as being in the running if NGC decides to continue the Journal Award this year..

I'm starting to work on digging into the Zimbabwe coins more to try to build out a nice group of descriptions for that set once the coins clear grading. I am clearly not excited about those coins / getting them back graded or anything. Clearly. I am just front-running working on descriptions for coins I will not get back for a month and a half. Anyway... I finally found out what the KM numbers for all of them were. And found out I was wrong about several of them - some that I thought got new numbers in the 6-11 range were sub-types of other KM#s because the designs did not change. KM6 through KM11 are actually 1996-dated NCLT issues that I have little interest in at the moment and which aren't part of the registry type set I want to build / complete. I also found that I was right in thinking the differences in some of these type coins was the composition of the coins and not the designs. The coins from 1980-1999 were mostly copper, brass and copper-nickel where the later ones are copper-plated, nickel-plated or brass-plated steel. I had thought this would be the case given that the value of the currency was in decline even in the 1980s and 1990s. It made sense that they would have switched to steel plating to save money (before things got bad and they abandoned the coinage all together. The first coin to switch to steel was, predictably, the cent, in 1989 - when I was still only 2-3 years old. Some of this might seem a bit backwards - learning some of this after having bought and submitted the coins, but I cannot say that getting counterfeits was all that high of a concern for me with these - so buying raw in ignorance & counterfeit detection was not something that worried me much. I guess we will see if NGC delivers a surprise there. I also discovered there were two coins I was previously unaware of - a $1 and $2 bond coin. Somehow, I missed that completely when I was shopping for sets of Bond Coins to buy a few months back. I think there were a few things that contributed to me missing them. For 1, NGC does not currently list them / have slots for them. 2 - and this may be why #1 is true - they are later issues from 2016-2018. The 1 cent, 5 cent, 10 cent, 25 cent and 50-cent were all 2014-dated issues released mostly in 2015. So, the 2014 fractional denominations are often sold as 5-coin sets, without the later issues, and I think I was even searching for "2014" bond coins in my search. So, I completely missed these later issues. There is at least one seller I see offering 7-coin sets on eBay though. Now that I know it exists the $1 coin does not surprise me. There were $1 Zimbabwean coins back to the beginning in 1980. Originally their notes started at $2. And, when the bond notes issued in 2016, they also started at $2 - the $1 coins came out with those. The $1 notes of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th dollars are the exceptions to me. So, the $1 coins make sense and fit. The $2 bond coin though - that surprised me. Because they also issued the $2 bond notes in 2016 (P-99) and the new $2 notes in 2019 (P-101). So, this $2 coin - which is the same size as the $1 coin but made of nicer metals and looks flipped vs the $1 with the bronze on the inside - seems really out of place / weird / odd. I guess I am going to have to do some searching and reading and try to figure out the story there... In the 2nd series of the 1st dollar (1994-2004) there was no $2 note. With the release of that series, they retired the original $2 note (P-1) and introduced the first $2 coins. I'm wondering if the $2 bond coins were intended to replace the $2 bond notes when the planned $10 and $20 bond notes rolled out but then they abandoned the while bond coin/note thing and released the new dollars in 2019. In a side bit of happy news, I have an order in for 2 $5 coins that I am hoping will look better than the three I got before - no corrosion this time please - and 5 of the $2 Bond Coins - from the same person that sold me the other, gorgeous, 2014 bond coins so I'm optimistic and excited about these! I've identified a seller with some $1 bond coins that look nice but their asking price is a bit higher than I consider ideal... so I'm going to hold off on those for now. Based on the pictures I don't know exactly how these will look in hand or how they'll grade but that looks so much better than what I have and at least this might not get body-bagged / details graded for environmental damage... If NGC does not add them on their own, I will eventually request new slots for the $1 and $2 bond coins, but I am in no rush. I will have the $2 coin soon but probably will not submit until 2022. I have used my credits so I have no time-pressure from the expiring, and I want to try to get together a good group that can maybe take care of most of the ~9 coins I will still need - and maybe take a 2nd stab at any in the current group that come back with bad grades - I am worried about how the 5-cent coin in particular will do.

Yeah. Even illnesses that weren't as controversial have never generated commemorative coins. You don't see Spanish Flu commems. I don't expect to ever see a SARS or MERS commemorative. Though it could be nice to see a commem for Dr Salk and the landmark work he did with testing the polio vaccine, control groups, and double blind studies

So, I'm a bit late to this party but this comes from some recent discussions between me and Mike on the PMG side. I would love it if one day we could have cross-platform sets that let us have PMG-graded notes AND NGC graded coins displayed together in one place. I would love this with what I'm working on with extending my Zimbabwe note set into coins. I'd love to make one, unified, set with the coins and the notes together. Is it practical / readily doable? No idea. Probably not. But I have to think there would be interest and demand out there. I can't be the only person that collects coins and currency from one country or as part of one thematic collection and would love to do this as some kind of custom set.

Nothing about that sounds fun to me, Bob.

Just don't play that game. I get it. I've had some recent painful experience with this. Someone has been repeatedly thumping me in the skull / pounding me into the dirt on the PMG side. It's not fun. But you only win that fight by not playing - by building the set you want to build and enjoying it and taking.pride it what you made and just letting them enjoy collecting icons. It doesn't hurt them for you to be miserable because you can't keep up with them. It sounds like you aren't playing the game anyway though.

1. I hope you get one - maybe even this year. I think you've done some great stuff. Yours is a name I look to see / look for in January - I did in 2020 and I'll be looking again in 2021. 2. As someone who has been fortunate enough to take 2 over the years- one from NGC and one from PMG - they really are just an awesome recognition of a labor of love. Between the Best Presenteds and the Sig Set awards and the journal awards and now the "Best New" awards I do think NGC does a lot to reward people that don't have "moon money" but who show love for what they collect and who contribute to this community. For context, the 1932 set I built with my step-father is only 6 coins and "only" cost about $6,000-7,000. That is definitely not cheap by any stretch of the imagination but I think it's very reasonable being in the mid-4-figure range. It is not a $100,000 or even a $10,000 set. My Zimbabwe note set at the time I won had only cost me about $2,500 - and literally hundreds of hours of research and writing and editing and searching - that I continue to this day. But, in terms of out of pocket cost, that set was a shockingly cheap, low-budget, award winner. The grading credit they gave me was more than 20% of what I'd spent building it. I am amazingly proud of that set as much as anything because it was and is 100% heart and it's "claim to fame" is not the rarity of the set or how many Benjamins I was willing to put down for it.

I looked today and my 13 coin Zimbabwe submission is now fully entered in the system and "scheduled for grading." This has me hopeful that I could maybe see grades by the end of this month - maybe 2-3 weeks sooner than I'd been expecting based on the turnaround times listed at about 49 days... but I'm basing this on how quickly other things - not world moderns - have gone from scheduled to in grading. So that hope may be dangerous. I could just in in for 3-4 weeks of them sitting as "Scheduled." I guess we'll see. So far NGC and PMG have done better/ beaten their estimates for me. I'd love to see another beat here. It's funny - as much as people have complained about turnarounds lately the crush of boxes / mail doesn't seem to have stopped in Florida - turnaround for world modern is STILL listing at 49 business days. US Economy is listing at 51 days. This potentially has some interesting implications for the 2021 awards. Anything not at NGC by early October may not be graded in time for the cert #s to be valid before the cut-off in early December. And if you want images in the system that you made yourself you need them back in hand by late November.

Honestly, and I've said this before, I think it's hard to get a good, consistent scoring of coins across a single set. I've long said it's almost impossible to have consistent, "fair" scoring across everything - which is why I've tended to always considered the overall rankings to be mostly meaningless. A type set requires that kind of consistent-across-everything scoring, that I don't think you can realistically get. Are YOU competing for rank or are you building a set that you like and enjoy and giving it a presentation you like and that you're proud of? If you're trying to win certificates, do what they're doing - look at the scoring and play the game with them. Buy the MS65 that is cheaper than your rare AU58. If you're just building the set you want, do that, take fantastic pictures and give them fantastic descriptions. Maybe you'll win a "Best Presented" and a $500 grading credit, and then who cares who got the certificate? You're happy. You had fun. You did want you wanted and what made you happy, and maybe you come out better than them in the end anyway.

Yeah… I don't get it either. Every other 3rd dollar note is common as sand on the beach in uncirc condition and you can get a 66 EPQ or a 68 EPQ for $15-30. For that one note they're hard to find and you have people asking $270-500 for a 66 EPQ. I'm far from ignorant about that set or that series but I've never run across anything that would tell me why that 1 note is so dang hard to get. Interestingly, both of the two small images on that note are unique to that note and are not repeated anywhere else in that series, where most of the other ones are re-used several times. If I don't see a Venezuelan P-104, P-112, P-113, and/or P-114 pop up soon and I stock up some spending money I might try to talk myself into holding my nose closed and biting that bullet just to have my 3rd dollar set complete... With my 1st dollar set soon to be 100%, my 2nd dollar set 100%, my 4th dollar at 100% and my new dollars at 100%, I feel like it's going to be getting harder to ignore that 96% on the 3rd dollars...

My wife's new MAC only has 2 thunderbolt (micro-USB-C) ports. Not one full USB port and no optical Bay My last couple of laptops have had only 2-3 USB ports and no optical Bay. One did come with a CD reader that plugs into a USB and I use that when I need to read off a disk. PCs still have them, but I haven't bought a desktop/ tower in 12 years.

Even a coin fresh from the mint isn't promised an MS67. Even if one came right off the dies and was handled with care and didn't go in a bag or hopper, 1) it doesn't mean the coin survived the next 100 years in near perfect condition and 2) it doesn't mean those coins have been sent in for grading.

"Blackstone seeks to develop CCG's digital presence, add employees, and branch CCG's geographic reach." That "digital presence" sounds like that could get the new Registry for NGC finished - with Custom sets again - and get a new PMG registry up and out there and maybe more. I'm not sure how I feel about this yet. My own small employer was bought 80% by a larger company that has subsequently been sold/ remerged with another group. At my level it has made little difference and we carry on. I hope that will be the case here - they get resources but get left alone.

Probably would be given how lean the demand is for that series as graded items.

I have a saved search still on eBay for "ngc Netherlands 10G," so I get notified when one pops up without having to search myself all the time. I continue to hope an 1885 or 1886 will pop up one day to help me complete that set. But... 90% of the time I get an email and it's an 1875... or an 1877. I just got an email for my 10G search and it's an AU55 in a new holder, and I just can't help but shake my head and think, someone was REALLY disappointed when that posted the grade results. The 1875 accounts for over half the total mintage of the Willem III 10Gs with over 4.1 million made. It is insanely common. You can almost always find 2-3 in gem uncirc grades, already graded by NGC, for little premium attached to the grade/ the coin being graded. In that context, an AU55 is sad. It shouldn't have been graded. The coin is established as genuine, but will carry no premium over melt. And you know how this probably happened. Someone saw this thing, thought it had nice, clean fields and few marks and thought it would probably get a 65 or 66... and they missed the rub in the high points... and there's about $40 they'll never get back out of that coin. Alternatively someone just thought a 145 year old European gold coin had to be rare and valuable and worth grading! Totally! For sure! - Not so much. On a similar / related note I've been seeing a lot of Venezuelan and Zimbabwe notes popping up lately in the 55 to 65 range. As more of these things get graded however it's increasingly clear that anything below 66 is just junk that shouldn't have been graded. And it feels weird to say that - because it feels strange to say that a 65 is effectively junk. But the 66s, and 67s and 68s are so common and that makes the 65s so undesirable that they actually sell for less than the discounted bulk grading fees - a complete disaster for someone submitting to resell. There are exceptions, of course. Like for the traveller's checks I recently graded a 63-65 is pretty solid and a 66 is a top pop. But for a 2nd or 3rd Zimbabwe dollar note a 65 is an instant, guaranteed loss - just like that AU55 1875 10G. I suppose the P72 is one exception I shouldn't ignore though.

I'd rather be destroyed in an auction than have buyers remorse. It just came to my attention that a seller has a couple of rare notes that I want that he's had off market that he's willing to maybe sell to me but I'm waiting on him to state a price and I'm hopeful but afraid I won't like it one bit. 😱😰 I haven't been bidding in many auctions lately though - mostly focusing on my submissions and waiting. The Venezuelan and Zimbabwean notes / currency I've been focusing on are not going crazy for the most part - I can still get 67 and 68 EPQs for barely more than grading fees- but anything that's a little more on the uncommon side is starting to do crazy stuff - like a couple of notes I would have put in the $50-60 range getting $105-120.

You need to go to "Collection Manager" at the top of the Collector's Society Page, find the coin you want, and hit "edit." That gets you back to the old page.

Yeah… I've thought about doing things like that in the past but I just don't like the idea of loading up on a bunch of coins I don't particularly care about and wouldn't necessarily want / buy otherwise just to compete for awards here. As Coinbuf kind of alludes to it works well until someone else comes along and decides to thump you in the skull. And if that happens then you're just stuck being #2 (then #3, then #4) in a category with a bunch of coins you didn't want that much in the first place. That's my reasoning anyway. if you actually like and want to collect Austrian shillings then more power to ya. I've had this happen recently in my Zimbabwe competitive sets with someone with deep pockets stomping me in a big way, but my set still "wins" on the basis of presentation and attention to varieties and sub-types IMO ("I reject your reality and substitute my own!" lol). I keep expecting someone to come up and give me a hard time with the 10G set, but, as a set of gold coins, and the 1888 in my set, at least beating that set isn't a trivial task. To quote the immortal words of Homer Simpson, "De fault! De fault! De fault! The two sweetest words in the English language!" Yeah. It's fun. It doesn't do much other than to just show that you can't take all of this too seriously the way some do. I don't know what this will look like yet but I'm hoping to build that set out to have nice descriptions and discussions and have it be a nice addition to my overall Zimbabwe collection / supplement to the note collection in the Registry. It had occurred to me that I was giving up the chance to see how long that Zimbabwe coin set could continue winning awards with its 16-point lonesome self, but I'd rather build out this set to compliment the notes the way it was meant to.

My submission of Zimbabwe coins, as of yesterday, is officially “received” at NGC, but it’s that weird new kind of “received” where you cannot click on the invoice number and can’t see any of the line items. They just took them out of the box and put the invoice number in to say, “See! We got it! Now go away and stop bugging us about your box!” Joking! Said with love, folks! Anyway… I have been thinking about my MS65 10C coin, and the fact that it’s a TOP POP - that I got for $21 after it sat unsold for months - because it is literally the only one of those that has been graded. It got me thinking and got me to look at the pop reports… and the population of NGC graded Zimbabwean coins is… insanely small! There are 28 Zimbabwean coins that have been graded by NGC. 28! That is it! Twelve (12) of those 28 - nearly half of them - are S$10, 1996 Wildlife series issues that I’m thinking are NCLT. Seven (7) of those, from what I can see, are proof and proof pattern strikes from 1980. Only Seven (7) that I can see, are circulation strikes - only 25% of that tiny group. There are 2 that are listed in the pop report denomination summary that I can’t find in the detailed breakdown for some reason. Still, only 7-9 NGC graded circulation strike coins. Under 10. And I already own one of those. Of the 13 coins in that submission, 10 are going to be the first and only circulation strike coin of that type that NGC has graded, including all of the 5 2014 Bond Coins I’m submitting. So, assuming no details grades, all 10 of those will automatically be TOP POP as soon as they are in the population just by grace of having no competition, unless someone else has their own coins ahead of mine in line in the pipeline! So, barring that, the set will have AT LEAST 11 TOP POP coins - no matter how terrible those grades come back! The other three coins, the 1C Km-1b, the $10 Km-14 and the $25 Km-15 are all up against 1 graded MS competitor that they have to beat. The $10 coin wins as long as it comes back MS like the seller advertised - it has to beat an AU55. The $25 coin wins as long as it comes back as Choice Uncirc (MS63) or better - it has to beat a MS62. The 1C coin has the hardest job - going against a MS65RD. I think it will get a RD. We’ll see on the 65. It'll be interesting to have a set with such a high concentration of top pops, even if it is mostly a technicality, just because I don't generally own a lot of top pop coins and notes. Most of what I buy is already graded and I'm usually just not willing to pay the incremental premium for a top pop. Many of the top pops I do have are things I graded myself and lucked into - like three Zimbabwe checks I have coming back. My 10G set - one of the prides of my registry - doesn't contain a single top pop coin. This is going to feel like the NGC Registry equivalent of congratulating my 3 year old on his participation trophy in soccer - after I had to force him to put on his cleats and go out for almost every game. Winning by default, folks. That’s how you do it! The whole thing, just looking at and seeing those numbers, just really explains why searching on eBay for NGC graded Z coins always turned up NOTHING, and it honestly makes lucking into that 1 dime in some ways all the more shocking than it was. It really drives home that the only way this set was ever going to get made was if I did the grading myself. Now just to wait to find out the grades. I'm very hopeful for the bond coins and maybe some of the others… I think the non-bond 1C, 20C, and 50C at least will do decently well and grade in the MS range. I’m more worried about the 5C, 10C, $1, $10, and $25.

And then you have people like me, Submitting a group of Zimbabwean coins, not because I have any dream of making money, but because I have a grading credit and I simply want to do it to make a coin counterpart to my note set.

I love the magnetic closure on the lid!

I think you make a solid point there, honestly. If I assume I'm right in my prior conjecture, based on Maribeth's response, I do think it would be reasonable and fair if your rarer variety received the same points in that set and slot as the non-non-competitive (?) coin in that slot. Since there is a competitive option for that slot it seems like, for that slot, your coin should get to compete. Other people without deep pockets are still allowed a chance to compete and complete the set in that case. But that's just my 2 cents.

Oh, Man. I can honestly say NGC/PMG/Whatever 3 letters you want have never cut me a check. I don't know if you have been following the news, but finding a warm body willing to take a job for traditionally low wages for menial labor has been more challenging lately. And it doesn't matter how many warm bodies you have opening boxes if you don't have the bandwidth on the graders to deal with the volume and do the 2-3 checks and the QA/QC, and the graders need to have more vetting than checking for a pulse. I would hope you would demand this given that its their opinion that you're ultimately paying for. They're also working on physically expanding they're facilities, because, for security, you don't want your stuff leaving the building, and you need space for those warm bodies with a pulse to have IN THE BUILDING to open those boxes and then room in the vault / cage / whatever to store the coins. Oh gosh. I wish I made that kind of money instead of designing fire and gas detection systems for a living. Rock on! Have a nice life, my friend.