Revenant

So, counting the post yesterday on the PMG side this'll be three posts in three days but I guess things are finally starting to settle and I'm starting to de-stress and I feel like talking / writing again. The good news on the tax return front, other developments in the political sphere that I've referenced before, and the recent dip in gold prices have me optimistic that, in the near future, I'll get to knock a coin off my wish list, and I think its going to be an Italian 20 Lire. The more I think about it I'm increasingly liking the idea of making a small display with a Sovereign and the 20 Lire since my wife lived in those countries growing up (I brought this up in the "5 Years" post in January). Having discussed it with her I think see likes the idea too. This led to a bit of dreaming and browsing on Amazon and sharing some images / ideas with her, which she also seems to like. I really like the idea of combining this hobby of mine with a bit of her family history and something she loves and thinks of fondly for something we can look at and enjoy together. Another idea that has some appeal to me though would be getting something a little bigger and including one of the Netherlands 10G coins, a Swiss 10 or 20 Franc, a French 20 Franc and maybe (eventually) a Prussian 20 Mark. This idea would be somewhat aspirational in nature too though in that she want's to return to Italy with me for a vacation one day and I think she's wanting to visit other places in Europe together over time because she just loves travel - she's very experienced based in her thinking and not at all really a collector or a "stuff" kind of person. Makes me wonder why she married a hording homebody like me but I probably shouldn't question it much. But (and this is just more of me musing and dreaming) if I ever manage to complete a 10-coin date set of Willem III 10G coins I'd love to get either two of these or something that could display 10 coins and make a really cool display of that set. If I somehow manage to finish that set after like 15 years and get them all in pretty new-gen holders that match I have to find some fun and cool way to display that set. I just have to. I'd love to have them all in 1 case but I've only seen options with up to 8 coins displayed at a time. So if I want 10 I think I may need to find a custom option or get 2 of these 5 coin ones... If I'm dumb enough to get the 1879/7 variety and make it an 11-coin set I may be very SOL. Maybe I could put the 10 coin date set together and put the 9/7 in with the multi-currency displayed above. I wonder if anyone else here has experience with these things, owns some or use them to display anything? I see a lot of them for "challenge coins" too. Oh my... me and my big dreams. I used to laugh and roll my eyes at my mother for all of her big plans and big projects that never came to fruition and I still laugh at my wife for all of her day dreaming about things (like winning the lottery and going off on her millionth vacation idea) and here I am doing the same .Her favorite dream and point of discussion is possibly buying a home near her parents soon and moving away from this house. Talking about all of this got her asking me about what my favorite coin(s) is / are. In response to my answers I got a "I love my coin nerd," and a "I would love to go to a show with you and be bored to tears just wandering about and holding your hand." I have this in writing in Messenger so there's proof and she can't call me a liar later! On a slightly random note on the 10G set, I almost never see anything over an MS66 graded by NGC but I have several times now seen PCGS graded coins at a MS67 or MS68 come up for sale - especially at Heritage and similar places. There's only two theories I can come up with on this - either 1) PCGS just grades higher / looser on these than NGC does or 2) all the REALLY high grade examples have gone to PCGS and not to NGC for grading because that was the preference of the owners / submitters at the time. I'm worried that it might be number 1 given what I've heard with regard to PCGS world coin grading but I simply have not seen enough PCGS graded examples in-hand. All I can say is that I think the NGC MS66s I have look as nice or nicer to me than my 1875 MS67, which PCGS graded. But I'm not a grader, and I don't claim to be able to grade these (or anything) in that grade range where small nicks and differences count for so much. A lot of this has just continued to dim any hopes I had with regard to perhaps one day crossing that PCGS coin at the same grade and further convince me that getting the NGC graded 1875 to go with the NGC registry set instead was probably the way to go. I don't want to give up that MS67 on the slab if it ever comes time to resell (but I like the coin and I'm not in a huge rush to sell) but I also like the idea of having a full NGC-graded matched set one day. That's all for now. I may have more soon though, either here or on the PMG side.

Thanks. We're getting through though. It has been stressful and I want my children to have their play area back but we've been very fortunate in it. We were the first ones on our street to pile up trash on the street for collection but we're getting plenty of company now as people get back in and get workers in to do the demo work. I think they're estimating the economic losses in Texas at 129 Billion or something else crazy. I think you all insulate your pipes and such much better than we do however. The pipes that burst were all uninsulated. We don't invest much into insulating pipes here because we almost never have hard freezes that last more than a few hours. I honestly think the most hateful thing about all of this was having highs in the 70s (F) less than a week after it was in the teens! We're taking our lessons and we'll be strengthening our preparedness - more portable heaters, a portable AC unit, more gas cans / gasoline storage capacity, siphon pumps for emergencies, emergency radio (with rechargeable battery, hand crank and mini solar panel for charging it). All of this coming after buying the generator this summer. We'll be much better prepared for the next hurricane season anyway.

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.

I mostly just find it interesting to think that we are still within 100 years of a time when all currencies were backed by gold (and convertible to each other based on gold weight and not floating exchange rates) and when (reasonably affluent) people might have actually had real gold in their pockets and paid for things with actual gold coins - not the manganese brass of the "golden" dollar coins of the 21st century. I also think it's interesting that some 75 years ago it was illegal in the United States to own gold that wasn't coins of "historic significance" or jewelry. I also think it's interesting that it was global wars and government spending on those wars that largely brought the era of gold coinage to an end. The playroom upgrades have already and continue to pay off in big ways.

This might be a bit rambling but I will get to a point, I swear. My wife and I got that 2nd stimulus check a few weeks ago and we set about spending the majority of it on 1) redoing and improving our kids playroom to make it more comfortable and fun for the boys ($500 that has made life sooo much easier for Shandy) 2) allowing us to spend more than we normally would have on anniversary presents and 3) planning a weekend AirBnB get away to celebrate Ben’s Bday since he will once again not be getting a party with friends. I was joking with my wife last week that, if this $1400 third round gets passed (which, who knows what that will be for a family of 4 this time - IF something gets passed - IF we're elligible) I'd love to pick up a couple of the small gold coins on my list that I'd like to get- including an Italian 20L and / or a Swiss 20F. She said she was maybe open to that but the other high priority thing is that Sam has an intensive, 3 week therapy session coming up in March and she was wanting to use the check, if we got one, to minimize the impact on our savings. We've been waiting for them to run it on insurance (we have great insurance) but we've been worried that this might be a $3,000-5,000 hit for us, but it's something we both feel Sam will benefit from. Anyway... we found out that - in part because of the way they bill and the way the insurance treats it - we may only be out $1,250. We already have this set aside to pay medical costs / his deductible for this year. So I'm thinking the coin budget might be saved / beefed up a little if 1) we get a third check, 2) I get a bonus, or 3) our tax bill is less than the ~$4,500 I have set aside for it. Of course, this usually involves making some concessions to Shandy too. Last year she was supposed to get a spa day which she never got because of CoVID and it is still owed to her. I still have no clue when she'll feel safe enough to do that. Maybe in Q3 when / if most people are vaccinated and we are too hopefully. Seems like the reddit silver squeeze attempt is fizzling and not sizzling for now so I'm hoping prices will be mostly reasonable when the time comes, if the time comes. We'll see if any of this day dreaming amounts to anything but it's fun for now either way.

I think selling naked shorts is and always has been illegal.

If it spikes to $50+ because of these shenanigans I will likely face pressure from my wife to liquidate some of what I bought at $20 and wait for the squeeze to pass.

They definitely seem decently big. I'm not sure how big but big.

I'm still seeing a lot of dedicated websites and I've seen a trend towards dealers making their own sites to leave eBay. I buy a lot of my currency from a company that developed their their own app that I have on my phone that can give me push notifications when they run a "10% off your whole order" sale. So I'd say it's a mixed bag.

It's not silver or the value of my assets I'm concerned about in this particular. I'm concerned about the impacts that this might have on the hobby and the population of some currently common and low value coins - we've seen mass meltings before. I don't think the $70 Billion silver market going to $300 Billion is going to change that much in terms of global finance. But I am deeply saddened and disturbed by this bizarre, "burn it all down" mentality I seem to be seeing more and more.

So, it would appear that the group of redditors that have been playing games with Gamestop and AMC stock (among others) are now plotting a short squeeze on SLV and the silver futures market, which is driving up spot a little (but not insanely much so far). It's also causing a crush of orders to hit the dealers, causing the dealers to limit or stop taking orders and it's causing the prices of / premiums on physical metal to spike and getting physical metal is staring to cost $35+/ounce now. One of them has apparently argued that they could send the price of silver up to $75 in the near term by demanding physical delivery. I don't really see that happening because, from what I've read, a lot of these contracts allow for them to be filled with the cash value and not with physical silver in the event of a force majeure where they can't get the physical metal. Still, I don't see how this doesn't impact the price of current and future mint prices. The prices of US Mint and other NCLT bullion issues has already spiked painfully in the last year or so and this is just going to make it so much worse. And I like buying these things when I'm not busy chasing hyperinflation notes. I've referenced before the fact that I spend some time on reddit and I've spent some time looking at these threads. These people are nihilists and arsonists. So many of them are just bragging about just being determined to hit "Wallstreet" and how they don't care how much they lose or if they lose it all if it hurts some nameless hedge fund guy who they don't know, who doesn't know them, and who they will never meet. Never mind that 1) it's pension funds and 401K accounts that own some of these hedge funds (maybe even theirs) and 2) if you lose everything it probably means that someone else got it and if it wasn't you it was probably them. This whole thing seems definitionally insane. These people are either liars or lunatics and I don't know what's worse. I'm reminded of a line from Babylon 5 - one of my favorite shows of all time - "You forgot the first rule of the fanatic. When you become obsessed with the enemy, you become the enemy." Only the preservation of life deserves to be held paramount. Letting someone live in your head rent-free while you hate them and allowing the desire to hurt someone you don't even know to override all other considerations can never end well. Fortunately I'm not having anymore kids and so I don't have to worry about 2021 birth year sets or anything else that would screw me over later on if this causes problems for coin supplies or anything else down the road so I'm probably just going to sit this one out and hope it passes. I just hope a lot of pretty old coins don't get melted in the process because a bunch of financial arsonists want to play a game to make a quick buck - consequences be damned. Just as a disclaimer - I don't own any of these stocks, but I do own silver. I'm not touching that other craziness with a 10 foot pole if I can avoid it. If anything I do own starts getting involved in any of this screwy-ness I'm out as fast as I can get out.

I had to run an errand today and I found a penny in the parking lot on the way to my car. I stopped and picked it up like I have always tended to do ever since I was a small child, as I was encouraged to do. I remember always being taught the rhyme, "Find a penny? Pick it up! And all the day you'll have good luck!" Some years ago now I had a supervisor at work whose husband took this rather seriously and got upset when he found out that their child had found a penny on the ground and later given it to someone else! "No! Don't do that! Those are your good luck pennies! Don't give away your good luck." She got quite a laugh at that. It seems to be a recurring theme of life - wives laughing at their husbands. Of course, when I was growing up some people always said that if the penny was "face-up" / obverse showing you should pick it up for good luck but if it was "face down" / reverse showing you should not pick it up because that was bad luck. Thinking about that got me thinking about 2020 and pennies from 2020. I looked - while new and shiny looking the penny I found was from 2013. I'm wondering if finding and picking up a penny from 2020 will somehow come to be seen as bad luck. If coins from 2020 could ever be seen as a bad omen from a bad time. It's all silly - I know - superstitious nonsense, the lot of it. But it was amusing think about for a minute as I climbed in the car, tossed that penny in the cup holder and took a pump of my hand-sanitizer. I don't really believe in luck. I believe in being careful and prepared. "Fortune favors the prepared" has been my approach to life for a long time now.

My wife actually gives English lessons to kids in China in the mornings and uses a headset for hers. They (the host platform) records the lessons and makes highlight videos periodically. They're funny to watch. She says she's basically a clown performing for young children and hopefully they learn English in the process. Very over the top behavior, over pronouncing the words, lots of hand gestures.... It's a different way of talking and not just normal conversation. It's funny sometimes when she'll break out with one of her hand signals when talking to me or one of our boys.

Always have to be careful in marriage - come-uppance will come.

I feel your pain on keeping yourself busy in other forums. I used to be more active in Silverbugs, Papercurrency and some other subreddits on reddit but I find that it's hard to be consistently active in more than a couple of places with the time that is left to me with work and children and other competing interests.

So, two weeks later I find myself looking at the text of the awards announcement again - in part because I've also been swapping emails with NGC/PMG about mailing addresses and in part because I just really like what they said about my note set - and I notice the video they have and decide to watch it. So... a bit of context but... 2 weeks ago I was tasked at work with recording demo / how-to videos on how to use our software. These are supposed to go on YouTube as a Marketing tool (to show the capabilities of the software) but also has a teaching resource for licensees. When I agreed to make these at first I was supposed to do no audio and they were going to have someone paid to record GOOD audio later. Then I agreed to record audio that they could strip out, explaining as I went along so they could use that as the basis of scripts. Then they decided that they liked what I was doing so I got asked to just record the audio myself. Shoulda seen that trap coming a mile away.... anyway... I got a new $130 gaming headset with a directional boom mic out of the deal. They also asked if I might consider recording my face / myself as I talk to have it inset into the videos. I don't want to do that. I like my soft t shirts too much and I look tired too often. Shirt says, "I used to be a people person. Then people ruined it. Again... Anyway... The point I'm getting to is I was impressed with Rick Montgomery's line delivery. After 2 weeks of recording and listening to my own voice has shown me, getting through 100 seconds of talking / reading from a pre-prepared -script without tripping on your own tongue is a lot harder than you might think.

I don't know your age or if you went straight into the PhD program after undergrad like I did, but grad school gets criticized sometimes for "delaying adulthood." My wife joked about me finally getting "a big boy job." It's quite a transition and feels very freeing in many ways. In a 6 month period my income doubled when I took a full time job with the school and then doubled again when I left to start a job with a consulting firm. Good luck with the defense. Writing my dissertation took about 2-3 months and, while I love writing and write often, writing that document was one of the most emotionally trying and stressful things I think I've ever done - but you will be so happy when it is done.

These days my list of most desired coins is all gold. So I think I already have it. So... too late! 1. 1920 double eagle 2. 1924 double eagle 3. Complete sets of the 1986, 2016 and 2019 Gold American Eagles 4. An Italian 20 Lire 5. A Swiss 20 Franc.

With my anniversary present now in hand I have reached a milestone that I’d thought about a number of times over the years. I bought my first gold coin in 2007 - an MS70 graded 1/4th oz gold eagle - as a way of celebrating my 21st birthday that didn’t involve getting drunk - which didn’t interest me much at the time (or now, really). The idea of “first gold” seems to be special for a lot of people - people will often post about their first gold purchase in the “SilverBugs” subreddit. It is definitely an interesting and cool experience to hold, see and own a gold coin - especially for the first time - especially if it’s old, classic gold and not NCLT (but we’ll leave that argument for other venues and times). For a long time that coin sat in an NGC 20-coin box with a bunch of other, mostly silver coins, and it was just joined by other gold coins as I gradually added a couple more. I always thought in those days that it would be a very long time before I could hope to fill a 20-coin NGC box with just gold coins. When I got up to about 10 coins, I broke them out into their own box - with a lot of empty room in it. I used the extra slots to separate out the NCLT from the 10G coins and other classic gold and had them in pods / groups in the box. And I that point I wondered if I would ever reach a point where the box was full and there were no more gaps or spacers in the box. Turns out the answer to “how long?” would be about 13 years - from Oct 2007 to Jan 2021. The box is now full of graded gold coins. (Yeah. It's 19 to one, which is probably roughly representative of my collection of graded coins as a whole - but... no bias here. ) Granted, most of them are small, with the smallest being about 9% of an ounce. It is not a box full of nothing but double eagles. It is not 20 oz of gold. But, still, it is 20 gold coins - many 100+ years old - which feels like no small accomplishment. Looking at them laid out like that also makes it strike home for me just how fortunate I am in some aspects of my life - in many aspects of my life, really. It will be an accomplishment of a different sort and on its own when and if I ever decide to (and convince my wife to agree to) buy a double eagle or similar, larger gold coin. The largest I have so far is about a quarter of an ounce. The progress towards this goal has definitely been loaded more towards the back end / the last few (~6) years. Even with the costs of raising children and a long stint of unemployment, the version of me that has a PhD and a full-time job has found it easier to afford such luxuries than the version of me that was a graduate student on a monthly stipend.

Thanks! Congrats on starting your third row BTW! 😆

If we owned the house and didn't rent I might redo our crappy old fence with all the broken planks.

A couple of better shots of her in the dress - wearing the blue shoes she bought to wear at our wedding which she's rarely worn since. The dress was blue for the sapphire jewelry but it matching the old blue heels 👠 was a nice bonus.

Actually got her to tear up with that one when she read it so I'm calling it a win.

So yesterday was our 5th anniversary - we are over 6 years into the relationship. The 5th anniversary is supposed to be “Wood” so my wife had considered getting me a challenge coin / coin holder make of wood with the idea of putting a coin that relates to us / our relationship in it, but I don’t really have a coin that fits that bill - the closest I had was that Standing Liberty half she got me as an anniversary present last year, and, since it is in a slab, it wouldn’t have worked for this. And I did not want to crack it out. We’ve been to England together and she lived there for several years as a child. She also lived in Italy for several years as a kid and wants to go back there with me one day. Maybe one of these days we can put together a display with a British Sovereign and an Italian 20 Lira coin. Maybe in one of those display boxes that holds two graded coins… That would look nice, I think. 😊 After some back-and-forth discussion she decided to get me this: A 2016 $5 GAE in MS70. I’d tried to go in the favor of a 2014 coin - the year we met - and avoid 2016 - which also happens to be Ben’s Birthyear, but she wanted to go with 2016 and I understand that. It’s a $5 face value coin as a 5th anniversary present. Not a bad parallel / coincidence. Before gold prices went up so much in the last year I probably would have tried to stretch for or toss in some of my coin budget to get a 1/4th oz coin, even though I already have one I’m holding to give to Ben one day. This one would be mine to keep! I may try to go for a 1986 coin or another 1/4th oz coin in a few months in the unlikely event that I get a bonus this year - we were profitable in 2020, which is nice, but I don’t know if we were profitable enough for everyone to get a bonus. Of course, I may go for that 20 Lira coin instead if I do… choices… so many options… I still have not decided when exactly that 2016 gold coin is going to transfer to Ben’s possession but it’s going to be after I’m convinced that he’s old enough to make good decisions with it. One of these days, when I win the lotto, I’ll get a 1 oz for 1986 (birth year for both of us) and 2016… and some 1920 and 1924 double eagles. Lol Anyway… I’ll dream more later… I’m good at dreaming. The 5th anniversary can also be marked with Sapphires so that was the direction I went in - blue sapphire necklace and earrings set in sterling silver. The necklace was here in time, but the earrings haven’t shipped yet (supposedly I’ll get them around the 26th). She also got a new blue wrap dress to go with it the necklace and earrings. She seems to like all three (or will like the earrings when they get here based on responses to pictures). My shenanigans with all of this "coins" and "currency" and "photography" stuff all predates the marriage so she can't say she didn't know what she agreed to! But she's the real MS70. I'll have to get a full body shot of her out at the park in some sunlight to do her justice in the dress.

Well, I'd never accuse them of doing that on purpose. 😆