Revenant

Lol, so how many of that 5000 are you? 😆 You'd need something more / better than a view count though because looking at something doesn't mean you liked what you saw or thought it award worthy. I look at sets I'm competing with sometimes just to see what they have - with their non-existent pictures and comments.

We have gotten take-out once in 4 months - but we've been more extreme to protect the baby. My company was kicking in the 20% to the furloughed people to keep them at 100% pay.

I'm sure you're still seeing some impact from not going out to eat as much and not traveling as much. All the guys I work with are in Aberdeen and they've canceled trips and none of them are eating out and we're all spending less on gas. Since my wife stayed home with the kids before this there also hasn't really been any unusual uptick in our home electric use beyond the normal summer increase.

I think part of the thing driving the market right now is that everyone got $1200+ checks. Because we have 2 kids my wife and I got $3,400! - in addition to our tax return! Coin collectors - especially people that collect higher end, older coins - tend to be people of means (white collar) and retirees. These are the people who are probably the least adversely effected by the current difficulties and lay-offs vs the minimum wage crowd - who I don't think generally collect 100+ year old European coins. With everyone staying home more you also have less money going to other things. Before all of this my wife and I tended to spend $150-200 per month on gas. The last four months we usually spend less than $50. Before all this my wife and I tended to spend $150-200 a month on eating out. The last 4 months that's been a big, fat $0. You also have the forbearance on all student loan interest and payments until the end of September - so anyone that has student loan debt has "extra money" in their budget right now - and people are stuck at home and bored and they are spending!

Oh... You're terrible! The comic collectors are no better! I'm not convinced the coin collectors are much better, just older! I got a bit of a chuckle out of this because I have several boxes of various collectable card games from when I was younger - Mostly Magic the Gathering and Battletech (very short lived MtG derivative put out by Wizards of the Coast based on an IP I've loved since I was 11). Nothing valuable or rare enough to want something like this service but It was interesting to see. I could see a lot of people with an old Alpha or Beta Black Lotus that could want to go for something like this. Is it horrible that my 2nd thought when seeing this was, "So when do we get a collectable card registry and registry sets? When do I get to request a category for "Battletech's" "Fire for Effect" Set?" Yes. I am a nerd! And dang proud of it most days.

Yeah, we're quite the obsessive bunch, aren't we? My Lunar 1 and partial Lunar 2 set are a mix of 69s and 70s. Mostly 69s but I picked up a couple of 70s along the way when it meant something to me or I caught a deal. I don't let such things bug me in part because I like 70s when I can get them but I'm just not willing to pay much of a premium for it usually.

Yeah... I have to admit; grading SAEs by the Monster Box load would sound like a special kind of living hell. Props to whoever gets stuck with it. I hope they get to listen to some fun music or podcasts while they work.

Yup. I've made the comment to my wife several times in years past that I'd love to get the whole set re-holdered to match each other as a complete set. The only things that had me on the fence with it are that 1) several of them are in old fatty holders, and, to some, that ups the value, and 2) I'm still missing 2 coins / dates. If I get this done now I'm not guaranteed to have the last two coins in the same holder, but that would still be way more consistent in appearance than what I have now. BTW, on the nerf guns, what is that line from Game of Thrones? "I wish you luck in the wars that are to come."

I completely agree. Because of some of your recent posts I'm considering using some of the $500 credit I got to get my whole 10G set (8 coins) put in scratch resistant holders. I think that would be awesome.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's somewhat disrupted by Covid - what hasn't been? But they'll do anything they can to hold on to Aug 2021 for the first awards Since they will auto populate it with the NGC registry they basically just need to have it up by April or May to have a bit of a lag for the sake of checking boxes and having the normal cut-offs. All just me guessing.

Thanks! When I first started looking there were no MS70 NGC graded Pigs out there, then this seller came out with some and they were Early Releases on top of it all, and I like ER labels for my premie. We have quite a collection now too with three big drum / clip loaders, two single-shot rifles and two little one-shot pistols. I was hoping to get at least 1 more big gun and some revolving barrel handguns.

Around the time I ordered that Lunar Monkey coin for Ben's birthyear I saw that a seller had listed 5 2019 Lunar 2 Pig coins that had the Early Release label. That was pretty much exactly what I wanted for Sam's year as an equivalent piece. One of the five sold almost immediately but there were four left and I felt pretty safe with that and I decided to wait and see if I could hold out for a 5% eBay bucks deal - always nice if you can pick up some cashback on things, right? About a week later 2 other coins sold in rapid succession and, at that point, I decided to stop waiting and pick up one of the last two - $2 in eBay bucks wasn't worth possibly missing out on what I wanted. Shortly after I bought mine - within a few days anyway - the seller listed 5 more of them for sale, but increased the price from $50 to $55. The price increase is more than twice what I was hoping I might be able to snag in eBay bucks for next month. So I got lucky this time, but holding out and hoping I could game things very nearly cost me an extra $5. I don't know if it's supply chain disruptions or production disruptions because of Covid-19, or everyone spending their Stimulus and bonus unemployment, or what, but it feels like a lot of the things I want to try to pick up for fun for us and Ben & Sam are sold out lately. Target has sold out of the nerf guns we got recently and now they sold out of the smaller nerf pistols I was looking at. They've sold out of the water guns we got before - I was going to get more of both so more of us could all play together with the grandparents and uncles. Amazon is out of the baby shark toys like what my mother got Sam (which they were fighting over) - all three colors of it… I don’t know that I’ve ever seen this before.

You make a good point, but I feel like the emergency production run at least sprang up / the coins were made organically based on economic events - there's some history there. The reverse proofs from their inception were just "let's make this so we can have something new to hype and sell."

The first several are from 1994-1997. The $500 and $1,000 ones are from 2001-2004. The 4 notes denominated from $10 trillion to $100 Trillion hit around Dec 2008 or Jan 2009. I'm not sure exactly when they hit the street in Harare. So... I guess to answer your actual question, 14 years for the oldest ones?

70s should be "perfect." 69s are very close to perfect.

These things are always billed as collectables but they almost never achieve much value or collectability because there's never any chance of them being rare. Rather ironically, things made to be collectables are almost always not very desirable as collectables. They're never truly rare. They just become a box you have to check - "yeah, I got one of those, too." It's the things like the limited-run "Emergency Issue" P-mint Silver Eagles that are interesting and fun to look back on and not the "Special, Enhanced Reverse Proofs."

Well, I got a 5% raise literally a week before the market tanked and a bonus that was equal to about 5% of my annual salary, on top of that we got a bigger refund than we were expecting in April. So We really got flushed with cash and our expenses went down when we almost stopped spending anything on gas and haven't been eating out at all. We are starting to use a little of our disposable income on buying weekends away at pool houses with the in-laws just to get away from the damn house a little and enjoy a little of the summer. So I've definitely gotten to spend more on coins and currency than I would have if life were more normal and I've definitely used all of this to work on catching up on my Queen's Beast coins and building my ZImbabwe set - I'm getting really really close to having that set basically finished. So I'd say what everyone is saying here is definitely true for a lot of people including myself. But I'm also only spending a small part of it all and we're still socking away a lot of cash as a just in case thing. We put a little bit into the stock market when things were still low in March and April but I'm definitely not going all-in there like some people seem to be.

The only set I see in your registry is a Franklin Half Dollar set, so, unless you're planning on adding some non-US sets, you should be good!

Yeah, but these people were probably never really collector's and I wouldn't be surprised if in many cases a representative collects the coin, it goes right into a vault for storage and the person who owns it might be in the same room with it once.

I know quite a few of us that frequent this place are also fathers. Shandy let me sleep in this morning and, when I got up, she had the boys in Star Wars shirts saying "I am your Son" and one for me that says "I am your Father." I mentioned elsewhere that I had an ebay auction ending late last night. I followed my practice of putting in my best number and going to bed. It so happened that, when I put in my best bid, i was winning it but my bid was maxed out and if anyone else had bid I would have lost. I still wasn't willing to stay up to 1 AM biting my nails and I still wasn't willing to up my bid, so I decided to just see in the morning. It turns out I won. The thing I was after? A P-12a note for my Zimbabwe set. The thing that makes this exciting? This was the last note I needed to have a complete variety set of Zimbabwe 1st dollar Series 2 notes. When I get this in the mail I'll have all 11. It feels particularly fitting to score this last note on the morning of Father's Day since it's for a set that I got back into in a big way as a way of coping with stress during the 2nd pregnancy and Sam's NICU stay and everything that came later. I'd always thought it would take me longer and cost me more to get to this point with this set but I've gotten lucky of late - a couple of dealers I buy from have been listing a lot of these lately and I've had some money I could get away with spending so I've, during quarantine, gotten the P-5a, the P-7, the P-9, the P-11a and now the P-12a, moving from being about 50% complete to now having them all. Of course, I'm still not done with the Series 1 varieties. There's 18 varieties in Series 1 and I have 7 of them... but, maybe, one day.

That's when you put in your best bid, cross your fingers and go to bed. But then... I have a four year old. I can't stay up watching eBay. I would suffer. Good luck with your auctions tonight! I have one ending just after midnight.

Well, I thought he was amused by my obvious attempt at humor and so he was laughing and not shocked. Anyway... I'm glad this was helpful for someone.

Don't we all do this though? Isn't it in the nature of collecting? I've been on a real streak the last 3 months on my first dollars - varieties I need and want just keep coming up with a couple of sellers. Those look great, but since they're already graded I guess we won't be treated to another submission post involving them.

I think the time to sell those was back in March. The only things I've bought of a little of (other than through the company's managed 401K) was some gold mining stocks. Those are down some from their highs but I'm still up overall for now and getting dividends so I can't complain too much - I knew I should have sold those share of GOLD when it hit $28 and waited to buy back in later. I just knew it! But I didn't.... Now, my wife, she wanted to buy Carnival stock (CCL). That... has been a whole 'nother adventure. Anyway. There actually are some things I would be / will be interested in once we get another drop but I'm just absolutely not interested right now at these prices with the Dow at ~26,000. It's all the FED and premature hope and nothing else. ANA's not really a surprise though. I'm more surprised that NGC is planning their own event in place of it. I love the attempt to support the hobby and do something nice for the client / customer base but all face-to-face stuff just seems so risky right now. I live in Texas though, so with our virus numbers going up I'm almost afraid of my shadow. We've been self-isolating at home for about 14 weeks now, except for our little pool house excursion. Even then, we were all to ourselves except for her mother coming to join us. That was great fun though.

I'm mostly messing around, and I did acknowledge to older moderns. While they do get moderns like that I'm still pretty sure those are a tiny fraction of what gets submitted under the Modern tier and I'd be surprised if what gets brought to something like this isn't overwhelmingly classic coinage. I understand your frustration, but at the end of the day I think they're just tailoring the event and the incentives to target the people they expect to be interested in it. I can't really blame them there.