Revenant

I think you're right in that a lot of us make mistakes early on but I also think there might be a little more to it than just making mistakes. Life, collecting, this hobby are a journey and there's a self-discovery aspect to that as well. I wouldn't be surprised if most of us, after 10-20 years of collecting, aren't collecting what we were collecting when we started out, partially just because, as we grew and aged, we discovered what we really liked and what really spoke to us as a collector. I think the biggest mistake I made in 2007-2009 was starting too many things that were interesting and seemed fun without stopping to think about what I'd actually have the time and money to be able to really pursue and do well. I didn't take the time to consider what I had the ability to realistically do and then ask myself what I wanted to do the most, what I would enjoy the most, and only do that to the extent that I could. That has left me with a number of half-finished projects that subsequently lost steam as I moved on to other things. I still have those sets / coins for the most part. I suppose I regret them to some degree but only because I think I would be in a place I'm happier with now if I'd maintained my focus better. I keep them around as much as anything now as a reminder to pick my battles and focus.

16 minutes ago, Mohawk said:

It sounds like you've made some good decisions with what to pursue next as well.  I'm not a fan of the French Angel coin or anything that contains angels or anything else religious.

Normally, I'm not either, but that coin has really intrigued me ever since I saw it. Small spoiler: the designer was inspired by neo-classical art and was around during the French revolution. Neo-classical artists often depicted "freedom" as a winged male figure.

3 hours ago, thisistheshow said:

That's pretty neat-meeting up face to face. I just joined here, but I have been on other forums for a short while. I have not yet done that. But I would like to in the future. 

I am in the DFW area. I have been to Houston a few times to go to the Brazilian embassy, but never had a chance to check out the city. 

I have been perusing the older journal entries. It seems like a great feature of this site, and one I might just have to take advantage of soon. I see that you are quite active writing. I have enjoyed your few entries I read. Looking forward to more. 

Take care. 

Are you from Brazil originally then? If so, I wonder what brought you to Texas? In grad school most of our South American students were from Columbia because of a relationship that our school and our center had with some universities there. Texas is a very big place (albeit still less than 1/10th the size of Brazil), and the trip between Houston and DFW is quite a drive, but it's too short to make flying worth the effort.

The Journals have been one of my favorite aspects of the site since I joined in 2007, but I've been mostly away from the community for the last 8 or 9 years while I've gone through some changes in life. Especially as I've gotten older, I try to write only when I feel like I have something to say that others might find interesting. So thank you - it's always nice to hear that people like what I share. Hopefully you'll find you have something to share in that regard.

3 minutes ago, silver1320 said:

Which are your favorite one ounce silver bullion coins, from a design point of view?  

Purely on the basis of the designs, of the ones I have collected, I'd say the Kookaburras.

28 minutes ago, silver1320 said:

I love the Koala's.  The hardest for me to find was the f12, and the 2013 chinese privy.  Good luck on your set.  I am not sure how long I want to hang on to my set.  

I don't really mess with the gilt versions, the proofs, or the privies. I think that's a way to go broke and die penniless. I enjoy the designs and getting them in Mint State.

24 minutes ago, Six Mile Rick said:

NERD ---- 

By the time you earn a Ph.D. you have long since given up arguing about whether or not you're a nerd.

43 minutes ago, CaptBrian said:

Very curious.  What grade is your 77 $10?  

I don't own an 1877 (US) $10 coin. The coin I referred to is my 1877 Netherlands Wilhelm III 10 Guilden (10G) coin, which is graded MS65. 

Yeah, you always hate it when the side stuff goes missing. The focus is on the coin and all the side stuff that was promised with it is an afterthought that often gets lost it seems.

Unfortunately I didn't buy anything from these auctions so I can't help you there, but I hope you do find it. I'm sure that would frustrate me.

7 hours ago, jgenn said:

I wonder what her blog said about that?

Well, she doesn't have a blog, and she doesn't blog. She has Facebook groups for expectant mothers, but no blog.

I showed her this entry before it was posted. She got a laugh out of it and told me to post it, but she's been wanting to know what all the comments on it have been. I told her about your comment and she said that she freely admits that I knocked it out of the park.

8 hours ago, Mohawk said:

Hey Revenant......

I can see how this could be a problem for many of us.  However, it's not a problem in my house.....my fiancee is a collector too!  

 

Oh, I know! A previous comment you'd made is one of the main reasons why I stuck the word "usually" into the title of this post. 

23 hours ago, coin928 said:

That said, books, supplies or tools of the trade can be pretty nice it you've specified your interests in something like an Amazon wish list.

9 hours ago, ColonialCoinsUK said:

decided that coin books, as coin928 has suggested, was a safer bet (though from a provided list). Even these are getting expensive so a gift now...

Yeah, I agree - coin books are fun. It's a shame that they are so expensive sometimes. I really need to get more of them as time goes on but it can be hard enough just to fund the hobby and I haven't gotten to do much collecting the last 10 years or so, so the coin book buying has really suffered.

9 hours ago, coin928 said:

Even if they somehow manage to pick that perfect item, there's always the issue of eye appeal.

With more classic coins I agree with you. I collect a fair number of modern series that are pretty generic. You don't have to worry too much about eye-appeal with an MS70 or MS69 bullion issue and those do make up a solid chunk of my collection.

37 minutes ago, Mohawk said:

Hi Revenant,

First off, I'd like to send my best wishes to you and your wife as you guys get through what is sounding like a difficult pregnancy.  My fiancee and I do not have any children and we've decided to adopt when we do, so I cannot imagine how hard it can be.  However, I do know how it is when someone you love is going through a major health issue.  In the past couple of years, my fiancee's father has been treated for prostate cancer (he's cancer free now), my mom was diagnosed with Hashimoto's Thyroiditis (a very nasty autoimmune disease, but she's doing well now) and my sister had major gallbladder problems which led to her having her gallbladder out (thankfully, she too is doing well now also).  It's scary stuff, but I know you guys will get through it.  I'm sending good vibes your way!

Thanks for the kind words on my unexpected win as well (I actually finished that set years ago!).  And congratulations to you on a well-deserved win for your journals and on the acceptance of your paper!  I'm in academia myself (I'm writing my dissertation for my Doctor of Education degree currently), so I know how big of a deal that is.  I'm planning on publishing my work once my dissertation is completed and accepted.  I changed fields from history to education (more opportunities and better pay), so I'm not as accomplished as you are in the publishing area but someday, I hope to be!

It sounds like you have good goals for 2019 going forward.  As for me, I'm going to use my NGC grading credit from my win to work towards expanding the little coin sales venture that my fiancee and I have been working on for the past four or so years......I can undertake some experiments with grading different things for resale with that, something I'm looking forward to.  We'd like to expand out into doing more World coins, and the grading credit will help us grade some things that have been sitting around for a bit, waiting for the right moment.  As for collecting, I think I'm going to keep working on my paper money collection and possibly trying to hunt up the pieces I need to finish my other Ottoman Nickel Para collections.  I want them in Mint State though, so that's going to be a very slow go!

Congrats again on the well deserved win, and on the upcoming new addition to your family!

Cheers!

~Tom

 

Thanks all around on that. I don't know if your program is the same on this front but we were required to get two first-author peer-reviewed publications before we were allowed to graduate with our Ph.D.s Conference papers weren't good enough. Being 2nd author or lower wasn't good enough. So that provided quite an incentive to publish. I've written a lot of technical papers but writing my dissertation was one of the hardest things I ever did. It took months. It wasn't even that it took that much time - it's just mentally and emotionally draining and the lead up to the defense is a stressful time. Good luck with it. I'm sure you'll do great.

My 2011 win was similar - I hadn't changed anything with that set for 2-3 years when I won. There's a lot of competition for those sets with the 12,000+ members and I'm sure they have to work their way "down the list" sometimes. I honestly don't even know how they approach it every year given the thousands of sets out there. I know any set that isn't at least 50% complete isn't considered and I'm sure they have screens in place based on what percentage of the coins have images and descriptions... but that still has to leave a lot of sets.

I've mostly known lack-luster to poor performance on grading my own coins in the past so if you're reasonably good at it you earn my respect there. Good luck with your efforts.

6 hours ago, Six Mile Rick said:

An upgraded coin is much better than a low grade hole filler.

It might not be a hole filler though. I agree that a hole filler would be a mistake, but if I have a choice between filling a hole with a coin that I like in a grade that I like for the hole vs upgrading something I'm probably going to fill the hole. Of course, this partially assumes that the coin that would be getting the upgrade is a coin that I'm happy with and not a hole filler itself.

But I usually don't buy hole fillers and I rarely do upgrades. The two are probably linked.

Well, I suppose if you upgraded a coin you could sell the coin it's bumping out and buy something new? I guess it depends on what you're buying and selling though.

Glad you're still hanging in and finding ways to entertain yourself. Assuming the picture you included is a current one of the new car, it doesn't look too rough from the outside but I know under the hood cam be a different story.

13 hours ago, Just Bob said:

If I may go back to subject of the original post:

I wish you and your wife the best of luck with your pregnancy, and upcoming birth. The most important thing is the health of your wife and new child, and your family will be in my thoughts and prayers.

Thanks. As I said at the end of my post late yesterday, it's not really going the way we'd prefer so far. The baby is healthy by all indications but the rest of the pregnancy and delivery are likely to be hard on my wife. She should hopefully come out okay in the end though, fortunately. I have to deal with the bad but I'm grateful for the good.

4 hours ago, Fiddlehead said:

My understanding, and experience has been that items that cannot be proved to have been delivered after a reasonable amount of time will be refunded by the seller and if they don't pay, Ebay will pay the buyer and get the money from the seller the hard way.  Sellers need to use insurance.  I certainly do when I sell anything worth enough to worry about.

DUK

Fortunately I've never had to go down the road of getting eBay / PayPal involved yet. Hopefully it stays that way.

5 hours ago, jackson64 said:

I've also been enjoying the Queen's beasts coins. I also have kept mine all raw in capsules. Bought the 2019 Falcon coin so I have all 6 ( but just one set of each)--probably will leave a great amount of my coins to the granddaughter as she is my only grandchild to date and has shown tons more interest in coins than either of my daughters.

Hi there! Nice to see you around! Yeah. Keeping these raw feels like the way to go to me. Good luck with the grand daughter. My son likes to play with a small tube of generic silver rounds I have. He counts them and calls them "my monies."

It looks like these days the Washingtons with the missing edge lettering can be had for about $30 in MS65 if you're a little patient. The others are a little more valuable but more in the $100 range.

For most of these you can pick up a 4-coin year set in PF70 these days for maybe $100-150. The MS69s are $30-35 for the set for the first 5 years and maybe a little more than that (~$60?) for some of the later ones.

The postal worker should (FINALLY) be delivering a package with the 2009 and 2010 coins tomorrow. They were supposed to be here on Thursday of last week but I think they screwed up and sent them to the wrong place initially. I got a little lucky and won the 8 coins for less than $48 after shipping. That'll probably be all the love and attention I pay these for now. That gets me some of my favorite presidents including Polk and Lincoln. Still really want to get the 2011s for Grant and get the Roosevelts too, but I'm not feeling a big rush. It did feel good to move the ball down the field on these.

Definitely good points all around. I find it useful in some respects to make have two or three sets that I'm working on more diligently but keep it limited to no more than that if possible. One of those projects can be like the 10G set where they're rarer and harder to come by. The other set can be easier, where coins are perhaps cheaper and / or more available. One set can function more as a long-term project where the other is more of a near-term thing. I think that helps balance things out. I think it can also work well to pair a smaller, shorter set with a larger, longer set, again to pair long-term goals / projects with short-term projects.

I've gotten lucky enough to find the 1887 and 1888 key-dates for my 10G set along the way but I'm definitely worried that it may stall out for a while now that I have all the common dates and the only things that are left are the rarer dates. Of course, the set is already more complete than I originally hoped it would ever be, so even if it's never finished I don't think I'll ever consider that set a disappointment.

6 hours ago, Numismatic, A.A.S. said:

THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH HALF OR UNCOMPLETED SETS.

I don't have a problem with half or uncomplete sets so much as I sometimes have a problem with WHY the sets are incomplete. A decade ago I started a lot of sets and projects that sounded fun but I didn't have the time or the money to carry them all out and I ended up with a bunch of incomplete projects and none of them had really achieved what I'd wanted them to. If I'd picked one or two and focused on them like I've done with the Netherlands 10G sets one or two of them might have actually turned into something and I'm really wanting to not have that practice continue. At this point I'm really trying to challenge myself to make sure that every purchase actually contributes to a goal I really want to achieve and that I'm not just wildly and randomly chasing shiny things. I'm really challenging myself to be aware of the limits of my resources and scope my projects / goals so that I'm not just spinning my wheels, stacking up slabs but not really accomplishing anything and denying myself the satisfaction of actually achieving a major goal. 

13 minutes ago, Augustus 70 said:

The great thing about collecting is that you can hit ‘pause’ for a few months/years while you sort out other areas of life.

I've definitely done that a few times.

2 hours ago, GermanDave said:

not sure but for me the links did not work.

This post is ~13 years old. The content has been moved since then and the links are no longer valid..

Well, I suspect their name recognition among US collectors is pretty solid at this point and they probably feel like they just don't need to try as hard in this market anymore. I mean, they even did the holders for the Smithsonian collection if I'm remembering that announcement from a few years ago correctly. I don't know if you can buy publicity much better than that in the US market.

I also wouldn't be surprised if in a lot of ways the US market is somewhat tapped-out with the exclusion of moderns, which don't bring in as much money for them, and they need to try to start pulling in more of the world market to keep growing and keep the revenue coming in at the levels they want into the future.

I don't think you have to worry about NGC abandoning the US market and I don't think they have to worry much about collectors not knowing who they are.

Of course, I could be wrong about all of this, but that would be my guess.