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Revenant

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Journal Entries posted by Revenant

  1. Revenant

    It is 100%, for sure FOR SURE, someone else is submitting these too…

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwean Coins and Currency
    So today saw another census update and another big increase in the Zcoin population.
    Last week we saw an increase from 33 to 41. Today we saw an increase to 57. At the start of the year I think it was only 29 total - including 12 NCLT S$10 coins.
    The MS population increased from 9, to 17, to, now, 33.
    Interestingly, looking again, I actually don’t think the update last week included my coins like I thought and I think this week's update does - especially based on the dates and the fact that this update includes some bond coins.
    That’s what I get for trying to get information by trying to interpret the bones and the tea-leaves of the census. However, based on what I’m seeing today I think my Bond Coins did pretty darn good overall. I think I pulled an MS67RD, 3 MS67s and an MS66. I THINK. I think I think I think… still nothing official and this morning is teaching me the error of assuming I’m the only one crazy enough to grade these is me so an increase in the pop reports has to be mine.
    That said, if I’m correct this time, the grades aren’t that different. They’re mostly the same. A coin I thought was a 64 might be a 65, a coin I thought was a 64 based on last week might be a 63. A coin I thought was an AU55 may have gotten an AU58. The big loss if I’m right is two coins that I thought last week might have gotten MS62/MS63 might both be AU58s… Which, honestly, makes a lot more sense. I was worried about those, really suspicious that they’d come back as AU when I sent them in but sent them in because I had grading credits and for the heck of it. I was a bit shocked / surprised by MS grades on those and the AUs just make more sense. - Assuming any of these are mine, but, surely there aren’t 3 people submitting all of these right now?? Surely. SURELY. What would be the odds of that?!?
    Still…. There is something VERY interesting in this.
    In order for those to have ticked the pop reports higher just last week, that suggests that someone else must have submitted some of these for grading within a week or two of me sending mine in, right around the time I was writing a bunch of journals about doing this. That is a very interesting coincidence of timing.
    On the PMG side there’s someone that’s been smacking me upside the head in almost every category from P-1 to P-105 for about 10 months now and I’m about 95-99% confident this person reads my journals over there at a minimum and I did reference expanding into coinage in those journals too.
    I’m really wondering if there’s another type set of Zimbabwe coins that is about to pop up and if it is going to belong to this person… I am REALLY curious about this.
    Should I be offended or flattered if this person really is just determined to come for my scalp in every area they can for some reason?
    A saner, smarter, person might look at this and wonder if they should shut up and keep their plans to themselves… but I’m not that person! Come at me, Bro! This whole thing just got soooo much more interesting. I think I’m actually more excited now.
    A couple of months ago I’d written a set description for my Z coin set saying that set would have 70% of the NGC Graded MS coins in the world in it. At the time, if I’d been the only one grading, I’d have been right. Now, it’s going to be about 45%. Still rather high if we’re being honest,
    This also puts my joking post about a cute, dopey, derpy set of top pops in a fair bit of peril. It may still happen just because some of the coins that I submitted have different dates than the coins this other person submitted. So they may still be marked as TOP POP for now even though there is another, higher graded coin of that type.
     
    Can't close this out without saying, Sam is doing sooo much better now. Talking again more. Walking around again more. Smiling, playing, bein happy again. He woke up smiling and happy today and we didn't have to give him Tylenol and wait for him to come back alive again. He's doing well. He's going to be home all week and he needs to test negative for Covid before he can go back to daycare. I'm taking him to the pediatrician today for a post-hospital follow-up. 
  2. Revenant

    Venezuela returns to gold, at least in part.

    By Revenant,


    Venezuelan Coins and Currency
    I don’t know if I’ve discussed this here, in the NGC journal specifically, but those that follow my PMG writings will know I’ve been building a set of Venezuelan Hyper-Bolivars (Bolivares Fuerte, Bolivares Soberano and now Bolivares Digital) as a kind of sister set to the Zimbabwe Hyperinflation set, and I’ve been trying to follow what’s going on with that. And so. the other day an interesting article from Bloomberg popped up for me.
    In 2008/2009 the Zimbabwean economy “dollarized” even before they suspended the currency - meaning they were mostly using the US dollar and not the domestic currency, but the US dollar was just the dominant currency in a “multi-currency system” that included yuan, euros, South African Rand, and currency from neighboring Botswana.
    We’re currently seeing something very similar with Venezuela with the Mexican Peso, Brazilian Reais and Euros being used instead of Bolivares - but predominantly the US Dollar.
    But Venezuela and Zimbabwe have something else in common - they’re both gold-producing countries. And there something very interesting has apparently started happening in some of the more remote areas. People have started paying for things in grams of gold and using gold flakes as currency.
    It sounds like something out of a Gold Rush town in California in the 1850s.
    In this Bloomberg article it talks about people paying for haircuts with fractions of a gram of gold using very accurate digital scales.

    There’s something almost funny about the 500 Bolivar note being used as a wrapper for the gold flakes.
    On an unrelated note, I’ve been starting to look into Venezuelan coins in relation to the 1 Bolivar Digital coin coming out. I’ll probably have more to say on this later when and if  it produces something, but one thing that caught my attention were some early 20th Century gold 10 and 20 Bolivar coins that are basically the same size as the European gold coins, I’ve been trying to collect from the same time period. I think I’m going to add this to the list with the 20 Kroner and Swiss 20 Francs to the list of these gold coins I want to add to that set / collection. You don’t really get this kind of thing with Zimbabwe because, even when the country was Rhodesia, they just used British coinage until after WWI (issuance of Rhodesian coins started in 1932), and so you don’t really see even Rhodesian gold coins. While Zimbabwe issued some silver NCLT in 1996, I don’t think Zimbabwe has ever produced a single gold coin under the name “Zimbabwe.” Certainly, none I’m currently aware of.
    Adrian123456 has some really nice sets of coins from the reigns of George V and George VI that are worth checking out - unlike with one of my sets they don’t punish you with a lot of long-winded drivel. That might be a plus or not depending on your feelings on my drivel. But I have digressed on this enough - for now. 

    As part of starting to think about Venezuelan coins I recently went digging in my binder because I thought I had at least one coin from that country, and I did find it - a 1986-dated (birthyear! Woot!) 5 centimos coin. I think this was probably a pocket-change pick-up for me or a family member back in the day. It was made too late to be one of the coins my grandfather brought back. Living in Texas, you get things in your change sometimes from countries south of the border. It’s mostly stuff from Mexico from someone’s weekend trip through Brownsville but sometimes you get things from Venezuela, Colombia, Honduras, etc. I always used to keep these when I found them but I hardly ever get pocket change now. 

  3. Revenant

    The Old Man…

    By Revenant,


    Random Nonsense
    Yesterday Sam was finally feeling better – he is back at daycare today and we’re enjoying our 1 child-free work from home day of the week – so we got to go out with my in-laws so we could have a birthday celebration with them, and they could give me their present for me… and I finally got to find out what the big mystery was that my wife has been keeping.

    I laughed so hard and this and got a real kick out of it. I’m normally not very effusive when getting gifts but they said they think this is the best response I’ve had to a gift in 7 years of knowing me.
    So here is the story on this thing:
    You all know I like Pawn Stars if you’ve read some prior entries. Yes, I know it isn’t real. It is still entertaining IMO.
    I love the old man, as many people do / did. When I was growing up my mother always said I was like a grumpy, curmudgeonly old man and that I was “18 going on 80.” She’s called me her grumpy old man for nearly 20 years. To this day my wife points out that I “can be so curmudgeonly some days.” So, I enjoyed this man, always did.
    Something made me think of these the other week and I went online to see what they were going for and the asking prices on eBay were insane. I screen-capped it and sent it to my wife and I was just like, I really like these, but I just can’t see ever paying that much for one.
    My mother-in-law – who was given me proof silver eagles the last couple of years, one of which she bought at the mint in Philadelphia a few years back when she visited New York – wanted something new / different to give me and my wife suggested this. She then was able to find a way to buy it directly and get a much better price on it than what I was seeing – I don’t know what, but I’m assured they didn’t pay the $125+ prices I was seeing on eBay and that they stayed in their normal budget. So, I’ll believe her. 

    I love that they got one of the ones in an NGC holder.
    It makes a great gift for a birthday like 35 for someone born in October that’s a father of 2 sons. Lol

    I think this is one of those things you have to be given as a gift. It works so much better than just buying it for yourself.
    Forgot to mention this in my last entry but Ben is apparently convinced that my favorite color is gold and he thought I’d want gold-colored icing on my birthday cake this week. I don’t know why he thinks this. If you look at my office, you’d more likely come to the conclusion that my favorite color is cherry-colored wood. Other than my coins that actually are gold, my wedding ring and my class ring, I don’t think I own a single thing that is gold or gold-plated or anything like that and he doesn’t even see the actual gold coin except for very very rarely. Honestly, after him calling that small silver bar a gold bar I’m wondering if he even really knows what “gold” is and looks like or if he thinks silver is gold. I actually DO like silver and “gunmetal” / “gunmetal grey” on things.
  4. Revenant

    A charming looking group of coins, I think.

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwean Coins and Currency
    The Zimbabwe coin submission has arrived back from NGC.
    So, you people trying to ninja my brain and make me fret can just chill out. (Lookin at you, Mike! ) That said, I have been having an internal dialogue on this and “declared value” along the lines of “I’m wondering if I’m doing this wrong, which may bear further discussion.
    It is the last of the submissions mailed from the old house, the last of the submissions I had mailed back to my in-laws because of the move. So hopefully no more getting the attention of my father-in-law and having him snicker about me “spending money on money.” This also means I expect the planned 2022 Z coin submission to be the first one mailed from and shipped back to the new house.
    The night my in-laws brought the box over after work unexpectedly was a night I had to work / have a professional meeting until 7:00 PM and so by the time we were done putting the kids down and getting ready for school the next day I was just going to put them in my office and open the box the next day, but Shandy poked me to go ahead and open them. She later admitted that, after hearing about these so much for so long, she wanted to be there and see me open them.
    You know that scene from the office when they chant / sing, “Fashion Show. Fashion Show. Fashion Show at Lunch!” ? It was like that. They had to come out of the box one at a time, she had to get to look at each one in turn as I took them out and then they were set down next to the others. She and my mother are convinced that I’m pleased with this and the outcome… based on something…


    I think it’s a charming looking group - making allowances for the lower than ideal grades of some of the coins . I’m glad that the MS65 10C coin I bought previously is in a newer-gen pronged holder, so it matches very well with its fellows well. Otherwise, I might have had to consider a re-holder down the road like I did for the 10G set. The physical presentation of these main / pet project sets for me is as important to me as the digital presentation in the group. I want to be able to lay them out and have them look good together and look good as a set – Even if I’m the only one that ever looks at them like that.

    I’ve even rejected cheap sets of presidential dollars because the label didn’t match what I have for the rest of the set. I just know that would bug me… forever! Yes, yes, buy the coin, not the label, but that would drive me positively insane. 

    Now that I have them it’ll be a high priority to get close-up, well-lit shots of my own and then photoshop those to complete the set banner image I’ve been trying to plan out for a while. I want to add the water buffalo, the sunrise and the flame lily wreath into the image. I did get a little time to play and try with a camera yesterday, and I did manage to get some nice shots of some of them but on some others I'm going to have to try again - and remember to wipe them down and have the slabs clean for the shot. They still had some stuff on them transferred from the shipping box last time and that severely uglied up some of my shots.




    Small aside, but, NGC recently (a few weeks ago now?) announced they were switching from “Corporation” to “Company.” I’ve seen some posts from NGC recently showing prominent coins showing a label with “Company,” but my new slabs still say “Corporation.” I wouldn’t be surprised if the 2022 coins end up saying “Company,” introducing another, perhaps subtle, distinction between the two submissions / groups within the set, that would also make it easy to remember which coins were graded at what time.
    I’ve been giving some thought to what I see the ultimate goal being here and I think I’m going to try to pick up one of the Volterra 24-coin cases with three 8-coin panels like what Coinbuf has for some of his year sets.

    The full Zimbabwean type set (as of 2021) has 23 coins so that at 24-coin case is almost perfect for the job – I don’t think Zimbabwe will give me a $5 “bond coin” at this point and even if they did it wouldn’t be a bond coin anymore and wouldn’t say “Bond Coin” like these others do. If we get more coins, I think I’ll be dealing with a brand-new set / series of coins and a return-to-form with the “Zimbabwe bird” dominating the obverse. If that happens, they’d just have to go into something else.
    Making it even better - the 16 pre-hyperinflation types can perfectly fill the first two panels with the first panel mostly being the original-from-1980, copper-nickel and brass types and the 2nd panel being the mostly steel-clad types with the mid-hyperinflation, 2003-dated, $10 and $25 issues. Then the 3rd panel is just the Bond Coins. Since there are 2 years of issue for the 50C and $1 Bond coins I could just have both of those years represented for one of those, but not both – probably the 50C at this point since, so far, I don’t have any 2016 $1 coins.

    With what I have now and what I have planned / in-hand to submit in 2022 I could pretty well fill the 2nd and 3rd panels, but the 1st panel is a bit of a problem, just as those coins are proving to be a bit of a challenge for the type set itself. But I also don’t really see that case as a high-level priority – more a down the road dream for how I’d love to be able to show this set off, and I think I might actually be able to do that since it … won’t be super valuable, shall we say, if I’m right. Not like trying to display gold coins.
    It would be funny to show up to a show with that to show off.
    The nice thing about this is I feel like this set actually CAN be displayed in a physical form in a nice, appealing, approachable way. The note set… Can’t. It almost defeats itself with its size.
    I had a brief exchange with someone on reddit some time ago where they said they wanted to get a collection of Zimbabwean banknotes – maybe even graded – and put them all up in a wall display. I told him I wasn’t sure how that was going to work out. Even without the extra area required for graded note holders, even if just displaying the 3rd dollars and not the whole thing from P-1 to P-98/105… that’s a lot of wall space… it could maybe even cover most of a wall.
    That said, could you imagine a long room, like in a museum or something, with display cases lining the side and all 100+ notes of that series laid out from P-1 to P-105 and walking through and looking at it all as you walk along? An interesting thing to dream about. It’s a similar concept to what Texas A&M has done with their display of class rings from all the different 100+ class years at the Association of Former Students building – a very cool exhibit BTW, in part because their interior designers are more imaginative than I am.
    In other news, Ben finally got a Red-Eyes Black Dragon, the one he wanted, not the “Metal” or “Malefic” versions, with the original art seen on the show – a 1st edition gold holo of it no less. I found someone offering it for a pretty reasonably price at long last. He’s pretty happy about this, I think.

    Sam is... home sick again this week. I spent a fair bit of my birthday with him sleeping on me, but he's caught another virus that he's working through. We're still very much in that phase when he's going to daycare for the first time in his life after largely being isolated and kept away from other kids and their germs for a year so his immune system has some learning to do and needs to cut its teeth on some things. Fortunately, so far, I think he's beating this one on his own. 



    But... Yeah. I'm now 35. I was ~20 when I joined the registry.
    Edited to add: The census update this week didn't include any more new Zimbabwean coins... All silent at the moment.  More to come on what I'm planning to drop in 2022.
  5. Revenant

    A (dirty?) 1980 Z Cent

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwean Coins and Currency
    So, it's a Sunday, morning at the time. Ben has had a friend over all weekend and the bickering has been constant all morning and we're both just short of the point of sending the kid home to just get some peace because they're driving us insane and we're tired.
    About a week prior I'd seen a 1980 Zimbabwean cent up for auction in "Mint State" with a $2.99 starting bid with $1.50 shipping. The seller's pictures weren't the best, but it looked promising at first glance.
    1980-1989 cents from before they went steel-clad are harder to get and you mostly see 1997-1999. So, this had me curious.
    But looking at the pictures closer, it looked like there might be some unappealing junk on one half the coin - both faces.

    So, at that point I ruled it out - I unwatched it on eBay and wasn’t going to bid - but I had still been thinking about it...
    I got a push notification on my phone about it when it was 15 min from ending and I looked at my phone and saw it with 3 minutes to go an no bids on it. At that point, just on an impulse, I bid $2.99.
    I just decided I'd put $4.50 down to see it in person. I can easily afford the loss if it was a dog. I was even telling Shandy I'd be open to maybe paying NCS $15-20 to clean it if I couldn't find nicer pre-1990 examples – and so far I haven’t.
    I was grumpy and tired from harassment… bad ideas are born in this way.
    This may seem silly - the idea of maybe paying for conservation on one of these - but this set is 100% a losing venture. It being a good investment is a complete non-issue. The whole escapade is a complete waste of money in the name of fun, and I honestly think that's one of the best things about it as a focus in a hobby. It means I just don't have to care much as long as I'm not just willfully getting myself fleeced paying $15 for coins, I could get for $1. I feel like I maybe sound like I’m contradicting myself with this but what I’m getting at here is, I don’t mind that this whole set is a waste, but I want to pay close to market-bearing prices for things and not over-inflated prices based on false hype.
    And it's a 1980 - first year of issue. I'm not saying that's a goal, but it could be cool to have a full 1980 set. I already have the 10C in MS65...
    So now I have it... In person it is a very pretty coin IMO but there is something on it. The darker spots I was seeing in their pictures that concerned me appear to actually be gaps in this film / covering material where the metal surface is showing through:
    Here are my shots.

    The coin looks very pretty in hand, and it has solid luster all over, but the pattern of those spots and the bits of dirt elsewhere has me wondering if someone tried to clean this and I’m more than a little afraid of what NGC will think if I send it in, as pretty as it looks. I’m trying to decide if I’m willing to put $18-30 into finding out and then maybe seeing what NCS would make of it.
    In any case, I own one now, even if it isn’t graded, and, for the cost of $4.50, it’s an option I have the freedom to explore later.
    I think I will indeed be sweating things out with the Tuesday morning census updates and watching for new sets or additions by Xan for most of the next ~49 days to see if my set holds on to the top spot for this year.
  6. Revenant

    Well, Xan gave me my answer... or part of it anyway. lol

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwean Coins and Currency
    Xan Chamberlain must have gotten a box in the mail yesterday.

    This set popped up last night with just one coin and now the other 7 coins from that submission that got added to the census about 2 weeks ago have been added. It also looks like he has a $2 coin that popped up in the census the following week when my coins were added.But I'm not seeing in his set (yet, anyway) a 1999 10C in MS64 or an older-type $1 coin that popped up in the census the same week as my coins and that $2 coin. What I'm seeing in our two sets only accounts for 22 of the 25-27 MS coins that I think have been added to the Zimbabwe census in about the last 6 months. And if I remember right, some of the others were $5 coins and it wouldn't really make sense to me for him to send in two of those in such a short span of time - again, not saying that he didn't. I don't have nearly all the facts. I'm just thinking with my gut here. Add in the fact that there were MS graded coins out there before April 2021 and someone submitted the MS65 10C that I have... there's someone else, out there, right?
    So, I think there is still some mystery to dig into in that I think there's a third person getting these graded. It's either that, or Xan submitted another 2-coin submission a while back (or a submission with 2 Z coins) and then got 2-3 more graded about a week after this coin going group and those coins hit the census with mine, and then there was a 1 coin submission that hit the census on 10/5 with a single 1983 cent. I'm not saying it is impossible but it would be odd to me to see someone send in 3 small submissions in the space of a month and about 4 in about 6 months for the same country.
    I guess I'll see if a 1999 10C coin, a 1983 Cent, or one of these other new-to-the census coins hit Xan's set in the next couple of weeks and if the census keeps going up.
    So there is officially a little competition and a little life in that category now.

    I wonder if he used part of his 2020 grading credit to do this just like I did.
    Especially given the timing, I wonder if he got the idea for this from me and I'm wondering if he'll read this...
    It's always funny to think about.
    I wonder if he'll chime in or drop me a line / a message and shed some light on it for me.
    He collects some older Rhodesian Coins but I don't see that he participates on the PMG side with the notes. 
    I wonder what brings him into it and why he decided to go down this road. I wonder if there could be some fun chats about it.
    But, I think the same thing about Adrian123456, and he seems to prefer to watch in silence too.
    Adrian has a fantastic, nearly complete variety set of the 2003 Emergency Bearer Checks (P-21 to P-23) that I think is one of the more impressive sets in the PMG Zimbabwe Registry - getting all of those varieties is not easy and he's had to compromise on grade on some of the type-a's even though the notes themselves still look quite nice in his scans - or maybe he uses PMG's scans. I'm not sure there.
    I wonder if Adrian could be submitter #3, but I think he'd list / register his if he were... 
    You guys should talk to me. This could be fun. Just talk to Mike. He can attest - I'm not crazy!  
  7. Revenant

    I don't really NEED all those but at that price I'll take them...

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwean Coins and Currency
    I've referenced in previous entries that I've been having trouble sourcing some $1 Bond Coins at a reasonable price.
    All the other sellers I found offering the $1 coin were calling it "rare" (nonsense!) and asking $10-15 each for them. I've been trying to acquire multiples of all of these - usually 3-5 of each denomination - to have a better chance of getting a really nice one. But $10-15 each felt... rough. $6-7 is about the max I'll pay for these raw right now.

    But the other week I found a seller that had 5-coin sets that included the 5C, 10C, 25C, 50C and $1 bond coins for $7 w/ free shipping. If you bought 4+ sets you'd get them for $5.60. That would get me 5 sets, 25 coins, 5 $1 coins, for $28.
    The listing said the coins were pulled from bags the seller got on a visit to Harare and that the 5C, 10C and $1 coins were uncirculated but the 50C and 25C were mostly circulated - some only XF. But some may be uncirculated.
    At that price, already having coins of the other denominations that I like, if the $1 coins were good, it would be worth it. Even if the other 20 coins were "trash," it's still cheaper than just buying $1 coins anywhere else on eBay right now. So, I went for it - 25 more bond coins!
    I now have the coins in. The 5Cs, 10Cs and most importantly the $1 look great - as good as what I got from the other seller. I was very happy with the decision to go for these when I saw those $1 coins. I was happily pointing to them with Shandy before even really looking at anything else.

    I've set aside the 2 best $1 and $2 coins - Shandy looked at them with me!  That was fun! Those will form the start of a new 2022 submission, hopefully.
    Adding an extra wrinkle to this, the seller advertised having a mix of 2014 and 2017 50C coins... All 5 of the ones I got were 2017s! The ones I had before were all 2014s. Two were clearly circulated, but the other three look pretty good. One of them in particular looks nice enough to maybe send in to have a 2014 and a 2017 graded for my set. But, if I go that route, I'll have to make a signature set in the registry to list them together in 1 set.
    The 25C coins... yeah... those were no good - circulated. They look XF. Not worth bothering with in any case but especially with the one I graded coming back as an MS67.
  8. Revenant

    Not sure when or how, but the grades have posted at long last…

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwean Coins and Currency
    I was checking last night, and these still showed as being in quality control.
    This afternoon I opened my laptop, and the submission tracker page was open in a tab I left open last night when I shut the laptop. It auto updated / refreshed, and I saw “shipped” flash across my field of view as I was closing the tab, and then I frantically re-loaded the page, wondering if I had finally gone crazy.
    I’m guessing this is the result of some back-office people in the shipping department working on the weekends and working long hours to get things out faster. That being the case, they have my thanks for that. I have whined… and vented… at length, but I know they’re working hard, and they have my Thanks for this one.
    So here are the grades, at long last (I was totally right about the grades... the 2nd time...):
     
    2863257-001; 1997 1C
    MS65RD (Top Pop, Pop of 3 with 2 in grade)
    2863257-002; 1999 5C
    AU58 (Top Pop, only one of this year graded, but there are Mint State examples from other years as of a week or two ago.)
    2863257-003; 2001 10C
    MS61 (Top Pop, only one from this year graded, but there are better mint state examples from other years as of the other week.)
    2863257-004; 2002 20C
    MS62 (Top Pop, 2 in grade now / for now)
    2863257-005; 2002 50C
    MS63 (Top Pop, w 2 in grade I think).
    2863257-006; 2002 $1
    MS63 (Top Pop, but there are better mint state - MS64 - examples from other years now)
    2863257-007; 2003 $10
    AU58 (Top Pop. Solo Finest. Total Pop 3, 2 others in AU55)
    2863257-008; 2003 S25
    AU58 (The only coin in the set not considered a Top Pop, because there are mint state examples in this year.lol)
    2863257-009; 2014 1C
    MS67RD (Top Pop, Pop of 1)
    2863257-010; 2014 5C
    MS67 (Top Pop, Pop of 1)
    2863257-011; 2014 10C
    MS67 (Top Pop, Pop of 1)
    2863257-012; 2014 25C
    MS67 (Top Pop, Pop of 1)
    2863257-013; 2014 50C
    MS66 (Top Pop, Pop of 1)
    13 of 14 are considered TOP POPs, even though some feel like technicalities. My prediction / post about "A cute, dopey, derpy, set of top pop coins" is made manifest - for now.
     
    While, yeah, you always hope for mint states, I can’t really call the AU58s a disappointment. I knew those were very unlikely to grade well and there was a good chance they could come back with AU50-55 grades. So in that respect the AU58 is a “coulda been worse.” All three of those probably wouldn’t have been graded were it not for the fact that I just had some credit and I decided to just roll the dice with what I had - a shot in the dark hoping for a 61 or 62 - and fill in some gaps. If nothing else they fill in some holes for this year and, if I can find some better examples soon, I’ll get upgrades / new coins in those slots later. The 10C coin was also in this category but that “shot in the dark” paid off with a MS61 - but obviously I’ll still be looking to improve on that later. 
    As funny as it is, two of the 3 AU58s are still considered top pops in spite of the grade because there are no other coins of that type from that year graded. There are higher graded 5C coins but not from this year, and the $10 coin narrowly beat a couple of AU55s to claim the honor (for now) of sole Top Pop.
    As hoped / expected, the Bond coins come out like rock stars (IMO anyway) with 4 of 5 scoring MS67 grades that I am very happy with, and the laggard still scored a 66.  Some might only be celebrating if they got 68s, but, seriously, I’m thrilled that they did this well. Not even one 65 or lower from that group. As horrible as this may sound, the last time I sent in a group of coins with my step-father with high hopes in 2009 I was shocked by how bad they did, so this was a nice change - lots of 63s and 64s.. Maybe I’ve learned a little. The fact that I was also right in my feelings about those AU58s supports this too. 
    I’m also thrilled with the MS65 on the 1997 cent , tying the other MS65 that had been graded before and beating the MS64 that someone graded that popped up last week in the census.
    As far as the others, its about the same - they did about as well as I’d expected, mostly with 62/63 grades. I knew these weren’t gems, but I don’t know how easy it will be to find gems, they’re the best I have for now, and I’ll build from this base as I’m able. 
    You've endured enough of my complaints about this submission. You will hear no more. The set will soon "go live" with all the descriptions I've been researching and writing for 3 months. I’ll use NGC’s images - which they graciously auto-insert into the set in the new registry - until I can take my own. I have to wait for NGC to populate scores for the Bond coins as those slots haven’t been fully built out yet. Once the whole set can be entered I’ll paste in my descriptions from my word file.
    I hope it's worth the wait. I hope those that follow this enjoy the latest arm of my now 3-year effort to build and present one of the better and most complete Zimbabwean coin and currency collections. Try to be kind.
    I am still very curious about the other person grading these. I wonder if the other person grading these is going to make a set. I wonder if we'll see it soon or if a new set is going to pop up around 11/30, just before the cut-off.
    Someone out there has a bunch of proofs graded that they don't list in the registry, but, somehow, I doubt this is the same person. The timing feels too suspect. Whoever has those proofs has had them for a while and hasn't listed them. But, if it is the same person, we'll probably never see those coins registered and never know who it was / is.
    I’m still wondering who originally graded the MS65 1980 I bought a year ago was and were the rest of that submission went since my coin is a -004.
    I'm going to just have to hope that my 13-coin submission and my 14-coin set holds up against what they bring this year if they do, and bolster it next year with my next submission (or two). For this year I'm just already out of time. Never thought I'd say that at this time of the year, but there's no dealer stock to snap up, and anything sent in after about late July isn't going to be finished in time to be used for this year's competition.
    I wonder what this other person might have in the pipeline already ... I have a feeling I'll be watching and waiting nervously for the next ~60 days. Especially after what happened to the 1932 set last year.
    But I'm going to post my set, display it proudly and hopefully let it shine. I'm not going to hide my hand.
    It will be both funny and mildly infuriating  if, after all this, again, I can't hold onto or reclaim the top spot against someone that I might have inspired to build a set in the first place. But, if I did encourage the participation of someone else, that is its own victory and compliment. 
    Since there is now more than one registered coin, and the scores of everything might actually matter, if they don’t do so automatically when adding the Bond Coins, I will see if NGC will look at and update the scores on everything before the deadline / score freeze. I don’t care about the absolute point values, but it doesn’t make sense to me that an AU58 $25 coin gets 67 points and a 1980 MS65 10C gets 16, especially given that older pre-switch-to-steel-clad coins are much harder to find. That 67 points doesn’t make sense when a 1997 1C in MS65RD only gets 28 points. I have not run across anything that would make me think that the $25 coin is that much more desirable or rare than the lower denominations.
    If I do pick up a last-minute competitor, I think I’ll feel better if I lose if the scoring feels reasonably fair and consistent. And… this $25 coin having an out-sized point value would be very bad for me if the MS62 graded a week before mine lands and snags 94 points. Lol That coin / slot is one of two coins (with the 5C) where the other submitter got a much better grade / coin than I did (3-4 grades better) and having that on the coin with the highest scores in the set is potentially very damaging for me. 
    Sorry this entry ended up being so long. Thanks for hanging with me if you did.
    Thank you, NGC! I’ll shut up for now… at least about this submission. I’m just getting started talking about this series / this set.
     
    Edited to add:
    NGC is on it today with the coin queue and the Bond Coins are in the set now:

    So there it is - the dopey set of 13 Top Pops. It is nice to be able to hide the empty slots and focus on the  coins I do have.  
  9. Revenant
    Sam though quite recovered is serving out the last days of his quarantine because we have to go by 10 days from his positive test even though I'm pretty sure he'd been fighting it for a while at that point and he probably stopped being contagious days ago.
    As sometimes happens, he rediscovered some replica Morgans and Silver Eagles that another member here gave me for them, which he and his brother like to play with on occasion. At that point, for the next half hour or so at least a couple of them had to stay with him and be carried throughout the house, sitting next to him as he watched TV/videos on the laptops.



    Children, like cats, have an affinity for shiny objects.
    There was another recent episode where Ben rediscovered them and wanted to know if they were dollars. I suspect he wanted to know if he could use them to get more beyblades... I just said, "Yeah, I guess, they would be if they weren't fake." His was response was to shout, "They're FAKE?!?!" and throw one on the ground.  
    Ben also recently found a small silver bar and later wanted to see it again and called it my "gold bar." "It's not a gold bar, and please don't call it that... or speak about it at all near other people."
    Oh.... At some point I'm going to have to explain the concept of armed robbery and home invasion to this child... and then deal with the nightmares...

     
  10. Revenant
    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.
  11. Revenant

    The New Journal Features

    By Revenant,


    Random Nonsense
    Having joined the Collector's Society and started this Journal in mid-2007 I definitely feel like I've witnessed the site and the journal feature of the site "evolve" over time but I've been enjoying 1 new feature lately now that I'm gaining an understanding of how it works... the new Category feature.
    When I first rejoined / became active again around 2016/2017 I had to get used to the new system but I very much remember being disappointed by the fact that the new system only let me have 1 journal - I wanted to have one specially about the 10G set and one for other things. The category feature actually fixes this. Now I can have a "Gold" category and a "Family" category and, my favorite, my "Random Nonsense" category and I click and see just my posts in that category.
    I loved this so much I went back a while ago and added category labels to a bunch of old posts that didn't have them as far back as I could.
    Another feature I've become aware of over time - it seems that after 1 year you can no longer go back and edit entries, just hide them. This one us a bit bittersweet as I has typos!!! So many typos. When I see them I will often try to fix them. Now, past the one year threshold, I see that is quite impossible. Sadness...
    I've known for a while that I couldn't edit the legacy journals from. The old system for a while now but hadn't realized the old ones locked up after a year.
    Of course, in my ignorance of the categories and how they work I've made quite a mess for myself on my PMG journal which I will now need to try to fix at some point while I still can... but, fortunately, that one is much smaller than this one.
  12. Revenant
    When I shipped my box of 10G coins (and a few others) last week I was pretty happy/ content to fork over an extra $26 for Registered mail. The box in question was worth about $5,000-6,000 dollars and contained 12 years of a collecting journey. I would have a hard time finding another 1880, 1887 and 1888 in Gem or near gem grades. I do not want to lose those.
    However, I'm hoping to queue up 2 more submissions soon - one to NGC and one to PMG, both related to my Zimbabwe collection, that are going to have a total value of $20-50 each. It's hard to justify paying an extra $26 to protect against the loss of things that are so casually replaceable. Increasingly find that I don't even really consider insurance much once the cost of the insurance starts to exceed about 10% of the cost of the item - including and especially these service / warranty plans that Amazon keeps trying to sell me on electronics.
    Anyway, it's just a funny thing to think about - for me anyway.
    I'm hoping to belt out these next couple of submissions within the next couple of months - I'm hoping I don't let it drag into another 8 month ordeal of trying to convince myself to deal with it. With the 10Gs just the idea of how best to package and pad them was a very big deal for me, but I can tell already I'm just going to be a lot less worried about a Z-coin submission on a bunch of levels. But I guess that makes sense when the value and effort involved is 0.5-1.0% that of the first box. With the last box I ended up stealing some of my wife's more sad-looking hair-ties because I couldn't find rubber bands. Well... "stealing..." I did ask her if it was okay first... For the first one anyway.  
    The big things that are going to hold these up for now is that I need to order the coins from a domestic dealer that actually has and sells them - it has been surprisingly hard to find US-based sellers for the Zimbabwe coin sets - and included in that coin order will be a couple more notes I need for filling holes. I don't think I want to make my notes / traveller check submission and then have to submit these other notes (like a P-40 and P-45) separately. I'd like to just knock them all out together. 
    Side note but tracking says the box with the 10G coins was delivered today. It got to Sarasota on Monday. For all the noise that gets made about Registered Mail slowing things down a lot - and with even USPS saying it can slow shipping by 6-10 days - that got to Florida pretty quickly - even with the supposed high package volume that is supposedly slowing USPS down.
    The box also contains a 1975 Bahama's gold coin - the only raw gold coin that I own - that I decided to get graded because... why not? And a couple of old raw civil war tokens. I wanted to add those to the 4 graded ones I have and maybe one of these days I'll get back into collecting those more seriously again. The ones I have are some of my favorite diversions in my collection / collecting. I really enjoy this history of them. but then, I really enjoy the history of a lot of coins, including my growing set of "golden nickels."
  13. Revenant
    Well, I got the notice from NGC/NCS today that they're recommending sending the 1975 Tobacco Dove coin to NCS to remove Residue... No idea how that happened unless it got on there from the OMP back in the day.  Anyway... I went ahead and told them to remove it and then try for a grade again. I suspect I'm going to end up regretting sending that in at all unless it comes back as a MS70 by some miracle.
    I got the Zimbabwe Bond Coins opened up and into flips. This process was more interesting than I'd originally expected because I wasn't expecting them to be in then plastic pocketed sheets held together by staples, of all things. I'm excited about these though because they look shiny and clean and some of them look pretty darn good. I'll pick the 5 best - one of each denomination - and set those aside to send in once I get and pick through some 10-coin sets of the older coins.
    I wanted them all in individual flips to give them a better look over.
    The cost of submitting 15 modern coins is going to exceed the remaining balance of the grading credit I got so this will probably cost me about $50-60 + return shipping to do, but I think it will be nice and fun to have this and add this NGC-arm to my PMG Zimbabwe notes project.


    Edited for "Here's the update that may be longer than the original entry."
    Shortly after I posted this earlier I got an email that the seller I wanted to buy the other Zimbabwe coins from was running that 10% off sale - I knew I wouldn't be waiting long.
    Except... when I went to order, it wasn't taking the coupon code. I tried live chatting with them and they couldn't resolve the issue immediately so I had to just log off and I'll try again later.
    My plan at this point in time is to get the following:
    3x 10 coin sets, which may contain examples of KM-1 to KM-15 - I would be really nice to get at least one of all from KM-1 to KM-15 but we'll see.
    1x P-40 Zimbabwe 2nd Dollar Bearer Check
    1x P-45 Zimbabwe 2nd Dollar Bearer Check
    1x P-46 Zimbabwe 2nd Dollar Bearer Check
    2x Different PMG graded world bank notes that feature turtles.
    This will accomplish 3 things for me.
    1) With the coins I think I'll be able to get a complete or nearly complete type set of Zimbabwean coins. Since I won't have enough of the Registry Award Grading credit left to cover grading 19 modern coins, I'm not going to submit any examples of the early dime design if I get them. I have an MS-65 example of that already so submitting that makes no sense to me.
    2) Grading the 3 Bearer Checks will give me a 100% COMPLETE set of PMG graded 2nd dollar checks. That will feel really really good. I was literally going to make myself print the label and mall off the traveller's checks today, but since this came up I'm going to wait so I can ship them all there together, have them shipped back together, and hopefully save on some shipping charges.
    3) Start buidling up the thematic turtle set that I wanted to build for Ben more - something he will probably never care about, but it sounds fun if it can be done on the cheap - these two PMG graded 66 EPQ notes will cost about $12 each, less than the cost of grading. I'm very okay with that for gem uncirc notes.
     
  14. Revenant
    So we (finally) got an appraisal back on the house. It was supposed to be delivered Tuesday and we were assured it always comes in on or before the due date and... the appraiser missed due date... This ends a 3-week saga that led us to leave the lender we'd been planning to use for someone else local because they were not getting the appraisal scheduled, weren't interested in doing anything to move the process forward and we were in danger of missing our closing date over it.
    We'd been all over everything, getting everything resolved as quickly as possible. The appraisal was the last thing we needed. If not for that we probably would have closed early... but that lender just wouldn't push to find someone and get it done. We were 3 weeks into the process and they didn’t have an appraisal scheduled, couldn’t tell us when they could get one scheduled, couldn’t promise us we would close on time and couldn’t give us the name of the person on the “escalation team” that we’d supposedly been escalated too. Interestingly - within hours of telling the unhelpful person that we were done with him and going somewhere else my wife and I were finally contacted by two other people in the company about the issue… too late!
    Because we acted we'll still get to close on time - still a couple days early maybe I think, by some miracle. Somewhat in the “silver lining” category, this may also end up saving us a few hundred dollars by switching.
    My submission of Traveller's Checks and Bearer checks have reached PMG - at least, they’re at the PO waiting for pick-up. I'm reasonably confident that those will come home before the move since PMG seems less swamped than NGC. But I think that will be the last submission to be set to come to this address.
    I have picked out the Z coins I want to send in to NGC - a 12-14 coin submission that I think will bolster that set nicely, but more on that later hopefully - and I'm planning a new submission to PMG - which should include a P-3 note or two to close a final hole in my 1st dollar set and some gas ration coupons I want to add to my larger set. PMG seems to think they'll be willing to grade them, so, since I'll be sending them with the P-3s, I'll chance it. I think I'll set up the paperwork to have those shipped back to my in-laws address though.
  15. Revenant
    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.
  16. Revenant
    I took Ben to that game store today while Shandy and the baby were napping to kill some time while we were waiting for the sellers to finally vacate the new house - it was the last day of the leaseback and they were clearly unprepared and determined to drag things out all day. We didn't get the keys until 8:30 PM after telling us 5PM and cussed me out and left the house dirty when I challenged him on it, but we won't dwell there. I don't want this to be about that.
    Anyway... There was a bin of cards in there that they had for 25 cents a piece - the card equivalent to the junk bin. After Ben got done asking for $40-100 figures and art pieces that I was not going to buy I started digging in the junk bin.
    Much to my surprise there were several nice cards in there that featured prominently in the show and I started pulling those out and showing them to Ben and me and the owner were talking about the show and Magic Cards and anime.
    It has probably been close to 15 year since I've gotten to just hang out and chat in a cards store while digging and searching - between undergrad, grad school and now parenthood. I was having a lot of fun and could have spent another hour or two happily digging and talking... but that's not how things work with a 5 year old.
    But that is our happy place, right? Digging for gems / gold in the junk bin and chatting about our hobbies?
    Ben by that point had gotten it in his head to buy a booster pack with a blue eyes dragon on it in the hope of getting a blue eyes- because he doesn't yet get how collectable card games really work. The best / worst part is that the cards in those packs are the Japanese cards and they aren't in English and he knows this because he got one with his mother.
    So sensing that my time was up I picked 16 cheap cards for $4 and bought his pack for $3 (7 cards).
    We barely got home and he was wanting to take like a 4th of my cards for himself or to "trade" for them. His mother woke up and he starts telling her about the ones I got. - He did get a really nice card in his pack... but it is in Japanese.
    I just laughed. I knew I had the good stuff. I pretty much knew exactly how it was going to go down. I knew going with cards he'd recognize from the show was the way to go, but he wanted the pack too. But dad knows where it's at.
    I may try to go back with him one more time and dig for more gems in that box before we get fully moved out and over. Just for fun. At 25 cents a piece that's a very fun, cheap, reasonable way to get him some fun cards he'll recognize and enjoy.
    I'll keep working on sharing a love of coins, but I collected pokemon cards some too and I turned out okay, and he enjoys these a lot.
  17. Revenant
    So, if it seems like I am more quiet lately know that it is only because Fenntucky Mike and like 5 other people on the PMG side have gotten to witness a lot of manic babbling about near-worthless hyperinflation novelties - feel free to check that out to be as bored as my dear wife.  
    So, I got grade results back yesterday evening. No stand-out wins and some minor disappointments.
    On the CWTs I had expected like 55-58 but part of me had hoped for a 61-62. I got an XF45 and a AU 55 BN. The 45 is disappointing but not crazy. It is nice to have the F numbers for one of these that I didn't before though. 
     

    On the Tobacco Dove I got a 69. The hope here when submitting was, obviously, a 70 - while expecting a 69. After the residue report I was afraid of a 67 or 68 coming back, which would have killed its value and turned sending it in into a bit of a disaster (albeit good to have removed the residue before anything worse happened). The 69 after cleaning is a good save / recovery. It was worth it to let them clean off the residue.
     

    Of course, the big news here is my golden babies are coming home! The 10Gs are returning in pretty, new, scratch resistant holders, which is going to make that a very charming set. Now that they're finalized you can see images of them in the new holders on the cert look-up tool. Most of these things were previously graded so long ago (25+ years) that there were no images for them. I love that the old cert#s are preserved in the new holders, preserving the history that many of these were graded a long time ago, around the same time, I think around 1993, possibly by the same person. That bit of history and mystery will always make me wonder with these... who submitted these back in the day?. But I think I will be trying to do my own pictures once they come.

    My wife recently referred to my Zimbabwe dollar collection as my “pride and joy” to Ben. I do not know that she’s wrong, but I think they have to share that title with the 10G set… and my wonderful, beautiful sons… clearly. Naturally. My two sons that I do not get frustrated with when they start thumping my 100 trillion note on their knee…
    But then, the REALLY big news... We closed on the house today! And are now homeowners! ... and... thanks to the leaseback... landlords! For 2 months! While still being renters!?! … Life is strange some days...
    I am very happy to know those coins are coming back now and will be with me even if we move sooner than expected. I will be very happy to have my 10Gs back home.
    I am also glad because I'm about to send it the Zimbabwe coins and had kind of wanted to have these shipped home first - I don't even know why. It was just giving me pause to mail off another box when these were not done, even knowing they would probably come back as soon as the Dove cleared NCS which I knew would probably be only 1-2 more weeks. If I had mailed the Zimbabwe coins last week and NGC had shipped these next week like I had expected I probably would have still had the 10Gs before the Z coins were taken out of the box. But I feel like I've been a bit weird about having those 10G coins away from me ever since I had this idea about a year ago.
    I will be trying to get the Z coins mailed within the next few days.

    With regard to timing, I feel NGC did good. I mailed the coins on 3/30 if I remember right and they arrived at NGC around 4/6. They showed in the system on 4/21 and were shipped back on 5/25. I think they would have shipped home 2 weeks ago but everything has been waiting on the Dove. NCS did quite well. Their turnaround times have been about 22 working days. It has only been 22 calendar days and 16 working days since they sent me the letter about it needing work. Overall, with them coming back about 7 weeks after I mailed them and 6 weeks after they got them - about 30-35 working days for NGC - I would say they held to their turnaround time estimates and did very solid - even with the Dove causing a delay. I am quite pleased.
    I also could have had my other coins back faster if I had not asked NGC to hold them and ship them all back together, which they did, saving me a chunk of cash since the other 3 basically got to hitch back with the 10Gs for free - after having hitched on the way over with the 10Gs for no extra cost.
  18. Revenant

    So much to say…

    By Revenant,


    2020 Awards
    So, this will be long and perhaps rambling, but I have several things to touch on and I don't like making multiple posts too close together, so I just refuse to break this up.
    At a different time in my life this probably would have been posted yesterday but you don't always get time to sit down and write with 2 kids under 5 around in the time of CoVID, and I had cube organizers to build. I snuck in some posting on the boards mostly on my phone, but I wanted to take my time with this more.
    First and foremost, I need to thank NGC for the 3-peat on the Journal award and PMG for the “Best Presented Set” for my Zimbabwe signature set, “Gradually, then Suddenly.”
     
    The journal award continues to be a great, and appreciated, compliment to these writings. I’m glad NGC likes them. I’m always glad to hear others say they enjoy what I write.
    That note set has been a labor of love for 2 years now. I’m super-excited to, next month, when I have a bit more spending money again, buy some raw examples of some notes I need to fill some final gaps and send those in for grading. I may also buy some old fuel coupons, branch into that and add that to the set / display / story of that set. I will probably go into more details on this later in a journal entry on the PMG side.
    I think that’s also going to mostly close the book on that note set for a while. I’m not going to be in any hurry to start any major upgrades on that set for now. I’ve been building it like a man possessed for 2 years now and I’m starting to just feel a little tired and ready to move on to some other project, and I have some other projects / initiatives coming up in my life that are going to demand more of my time for a while. And, given that credit, I want to fill those holes and leave that set feeling more or less “finished” and it a good place, and that credit will let me do that. But, Again, “Thank you” to PMG, both for this award and also the article highlighting my Venezuelan Bolivares Fuertes Set in December. The greatest praise that that set has received however are the other collectors here that have called it out, said it inspired them to start collecting that series / those series (depending on how you look at it) or who say they’ve used to teach their kids something. There have been a lot of kind words sent my way from members and PMG lately, both for my family and about my writing, and it is really appreciated. I was also touched to see the call out to / for Samuel in the awards announcement. Sam is going to be posing with another plaque this year.
    Speaking of Sam… It has become apparent that his shunt was mostly blocked and he was experiencing some ill effects of elevated intracranial pressure for a while – probably 6 months to a year. We had no way of knowing this before the surgery and you make the best decisions you can with what you know then. But, now that the pressure is gone his eyes are crossing less, he’s speaking more, he’s picking up new words faster, he’s getting better at walking faster. He was a Rockstar according to his physical therapists before but he’s accelerating. He’s showing signs of headaches still but those can apparently continue for 2+ weeks after the surgery. The cut meanwhile is healing well and we’re almost done with the period of daily baths that it required to keep him clean.
    I still haven’t mailed those coins in, though I admit that at this point I’m also being given pause by the long back-log of packages they seem to be dealing with and the crush of new 2021 coins they’re getting in bulk submissions now. I’ve been stressing about having the grading credit from 2019 expire, but, now, I may just let it expire and use the 2020 credit again – since my brief reading of the front matter suggests that they’re giving the Journal authors the $500 credit again this year. I really do want to get those 10G coins re-holdered so they’ll all match and be super pretty and I want to get a few other things graded but this winter (year!) has been rough and crazy.
    My wife and I had a little wine together after the kids were in bed. In part because of this, in part because the cube organizer was finally done, and in part because wine is just good.
    The anniversary is coming up and I have part of her present. We'll see if I get the other part before Friday. One of her students yesterday morning told her that her Boyfriend was a lucky guy. 😆 When she showed him the ring, he said that He had an awesome wife. I'll agree with both statements. 😆
  19. Revenant

    It's worth WHAT?

    By Revenant,


    Family
    As part of the planning our home purchase my wife asked me what the value of my coin collection was. I have rarely heard such shock in her voice or seen disbelief on her face when I 1) gave her an honest answer and 2) backed it up with hard numbers. The main driver of it is, of course, one small box of coins that I've recently referenced in another entry.   
    I had to remind Shandy that she let me purchase 2 new gold coins, which added about $1,100 to it, just a month or two ago. And she's seen it all and she's seen me buy a lot of it so I don't know why it shocked her but I guess it has just crept up on her with time and the recent increase in the value of gold and silver.
    Somewhat to my surprise, my one gold coin has gone to QC at NGC already. The 10G coins went to QC first / faster but they're being re-holdered, not graded. The two CW tokens are still just "Scheduled." The entry on one of the tokens in the submission tracker has me scratching my chin and wondering if I'm going to get a nasty or unpleasant surprise. I guess we'll see. 
    I'm still waiting to get a sale / the deal I want on some Zimbabwe coin sets. My bond coins have arrived yesterday but I haven't even gotten to open them yet because this week has been a bit nuts.
  20. Revenant

    The Z Coins away, the 10Gs back home.

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwean Coins and Currency
    I finally took a minute, filled out the rest of the paperwork and printed the shipping label and the Z coins are scheduled for pick-up.
    Doing a bit of a deeper dive on this than I have in previous entries, I am sending in 13 coins:
    KM-1b: 1 cent
    KM-2: 5 Cent
    KM-8: 10 Cent
    KM-9: 20 Cent
    KM-10: 50 Cent
    KM-11: $1
    KM-14: $10
    KM-15: $25
    KM-16: 1 Cent Bond Coin
    KM-17: 5 Cent Bond Coin
    KM-18: 10 Cent Bond Coin
    KM-19: 25 Cent Bond Coin
    KM-20: 50 Cent Bond Coin
    On the 19th I had said 12-14 because I was still working out how much credit I had and weather I felt good enough about a couple of coins to go ahead and send them in. The KM-2, 5-cent, coin made the cut, but the KM-12 did not.
    I am really excited about the Bond Coins that I got and picked - I got 5 sets and selected the nicest of each of the 5 denominations from the 25 coins. I think those will do well - fingers crossed.
    The 10 coin sets I got three of were a bit of a disappointment. There were reviews on them from other supposed customers that were glowing. They said the coins where “great,” which helped convince me to order, but they seem a bit “meh” - maybe I am just more particular than most.
    I am still hoping for some Ch. Uncirc grades in the 63-64 range, but my hopes here are not as high as they are for the bond coins. I think I might get some solid Gem Uncirc grades on the bond coins - again - fingers crossed. I am not going to be terribly surprised if one or two of these “mint” coins come back as AU, but they’ll help me build out the set and use up the grading credit - so I’ll go for it.
    This submission will get me up to having 14 of 21 slots in the Zimbabwe type set filled and give me all the Bond coins and almost all of the coins from the early hyper-inflation era, from just before coins disappeared from Zimbabwean money completely for 11 years. I’ll have to circle back on this one day down the road and try to get KM-1a and KM-4 through 7, 12, and 13.
    The 3 sets I ordered said they could have anything from KM-1a to KM-15, but they were, of course, heavily weighted to the coins from 2001-2003 and there were no KM-1a’s, KM-3s, KM-4s, KM-5s, KM-6s, or KM-7s. Fortunately I already have a KM-3 in MS65 so that one at least was not a problem.
    The coins I got did include some KM-12s and KM-13s, but… wow. Those were disappointing. One of the “mint” KM-13s actually has what really looks like corrosion / environmental damage - “mint” - haha. Submitting these 13 will use up my 2020 grading credit with NGC and I’m just absolutely not willing to spend money out of my own pocket to grade coins for $18 that look… “bleck.” If these things hadn’t been as inexpensive as they were I might have been inclined to ask for a partial refund or to send them back but some of them are quite nice and it is just not worth it to me to fight that battle. For most of the coins, if I had not been hoping to grade them, I would have been quite happy - which has me thinking I am just more particular than the people that were leaving reviews because of my specific wants and needs. But the KM-12s and KM-13s would have been a disappointment regardless.
    I may yet post a review of my own griping about this coin though. I do not care who you are, this is not “mint.”
     

    I'd want to quip to the seller, "When you call this 'mint,' I'm not saying you're lying so much as I think you might be over-due for an eye exam."
    I am very happy that I came up with the idea of having these shipped to my in-law’s house instead of mine. The current turnaround for modern world coins is a staggering 49 working days… So… If the coins are picked up tomorrow on the 3rd and get to NGC by around the 8th of June, they would be due to be finished at NGC on August 17th! - The day before Ben starts Kindergarten. In that scenario they would probably hit the doorstep around August 25th! So, we will definitely be out of this house by that time unless something goes very wrong. I suppose that means I could have had the coins shipped to the new house, but there is a chance we could move early, there is always a chance we could move late - and we would probably be crashing with the in-laws for a bit in that case - there is a chance the coins could finish and come home early… So, I think, even with the relatively low value of this submission, I am happier and feel safer just sending them to an address that will be stable during this time-period.
    I could have also waited to send them in until after we move, but I do not want a repeat of what I did last year with letting the grading credits expire and I’d like to have these back before early December, which could be in doubt if I waited until late August to submit, unless the turnaround times come down in the interim, which I’m not comfortable banking on.
    And… the 10G coins arrived back home today, with their stowaways. I have not had a chance to open them up yet… I wonder if I should try for an unboxing video tonight or tomorrow….

    Registered Mail box with a declared value of about $5,000... and they just stick it in the mail box.
  21. Revenant

    So.... WHY are they slammed?

    By Revenant,


    Random Nonsense
    It seems like one of our favorite things to do lately is complain about turnaround times at NGC.
    The popular narrative amongst the unhappy is that this is clearly NGC slipping but NGC says the problem is they're just slammed. They aren't blaming the problems on logistics - like not being able to get enough slab parts or inserts. They're just getting 800+ packages a day and that working 6 days a week, 12 hours a day isn't keeping up. That suggests that they're dealing with double or more the peak volume they're normally equipped to handle.
    But I can't help but wonder WHY they're so slammed.
    Through most of 2020 when there were delays I thought it was probably CoVID related and had to do with pandemic protocols slowing them down, and maybe it did, then. But that's not what they're dealing with now. The CoVID restrictions in many places in the country - including most conservative states like Florida and Texas, are lifted.
    Also interestingly, things seemed to be getting better and turnaround times were getting shorter in the first part of the year.
    They're just getting crushed by strong demand now... but what's driving that?
    I feel the usual temptation to think maybe it's the stimulus checks and people spending time at home instead of out and about so they're looking at and sending in coins, but does that explanation hold water? The stimulus checks were rolling out months ago and people in may places are out and about again. I don't feel like that explains why they'd still be getting crushed with packages in June.
    Maybe all that TPG marketing and CAC marketing is finally paying off and more people are getting into graded coins and grading coins? But that's a pretty rapid increase for a normal, organic increase in interest.
    Some in the forums would blame the "everything bubble" and the financialization of the hobby but I don't know that that would be good enough to explain this sudden up-tick in the last year or so. Especially since I don't think that graded coins are quite as common, "sexy" or in vogue as, say crypto-currencies for most people.
    I do wonder if inflation fears might be renewing interest in old coins and the history of money, but people that are worried about inflation I think are more interested in accumulating metal, not necessarily collecting graded coins. But the two interests are sympathetic and I do see a lot of silverbug posts with graded NCLT...
    So the whole thing, the whole situation, just seems odd to me.
  22. Revenant
    The move has brought us back closer to Shandy's Parents and to mine, but it has also brought me back to being close to an old game store i used to go to as a high schooler, some 16-17 years ago.
    Ben has been missing going to the game store by the old house - we were lucky in that it was only half a mile or so from home - so today I took him to the old card and game store I went to all those years ago. It wasn't like going to the other store used to be - in this case its still 10 miles and a 22 minute drive away but I decided to take him anyway. We won't go there as often as we might have the other place but I'll take him back sometimes.
    He enjoyed it. I got him 3 singles and a couple of boosters.
    I chatted with the kid behind the counter - a 19 year old working a summer job. Basically the same age I was the last time I was in that store.
    It was very strange going back there and seeing the store looking very similar to how it used to and relatively little changed from when I used to come to play.
    It is strange to do these things with Ben, thinking of doing them years ago with my mother, thinking about how like me he is / how like him I was, and smiling thinking that the kid will probably turn out okay, no matter how I spoil him or how he annoys me some days.
    In other news, the Z coin submission is STILL "scheduled for grading" after 5 weeks - and 2 months after I mailed it in. I'm starting to worry it won't be finished in time for August 19th, which was the original estimate, but I still have plenty of time for them to come home before December.
    Showing just how much less slammed / less busy PMG is, my submission of two notes, which was only received a week ago, is now already in "Grading/Encapsulation/Imaging." So I will probably know the results on those P-3 notes I mailed out about 2-3 weeks ago before I know the results on the coins I mailed off over 2 months ago.
    I went ahead and ordered a 2015 S Pf69UC set of Presidential dollars the other week and I'll probably order a 2016 3-coin set soon just to get that set closer to some semblance of completion and closer after 14 years. I'll have moved it from 4 years to 7 years represented - from ~40% to about 70% if you don't count the reverse proofs - something I am not at all sure I care about.  
     
    Edited to add:
    Of course! Not 5 hours later he has to take all three of the singles I bought him in the car with them, puts them in a collapsible cup holder, and they all fall down and are lost in the car. No way of getting them back without taking my car apart. Of course... Because that's how things go with 5 year old kids... on one hand, "it was $5 worth of cards. Whatever." On the other hand... I'm still so annoyed.
  23. 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.
  24. Revenant
    So work did come through with a bonus this year - smaller than last year but still a very nice surprise considering I wasn't expecting anything.
    So rather than making me wait to see what happens in Washington the wife let me order an NGC MS64 1882 20 Lire coin last night.
    I won't post pictures or anything because the seller watermarks their images but I'll be looking forward to getting the coin - hopefully sooner than their shipping estimate suggests - 2 weeks from California to Texas is a bit slow these days.
    If the circus on the Eastern seaboard produces something I might be going for a Prussian 20 Mark soon too... That would be fun!
  25. Revenant
    Following up on my last post, just  for fun.
    I'd left the 2018 American Innovation coin on my dresser. I picked it up and was going to take it to join the other coins.
    Sam was in the room and it caught his eye and he demanded that I hand it over. He proceeded to walk around with it, wave it around and look at it.
    I think this is one of those times when you just have to say "what the heck," and let them have it. Worst case scenario is he manages to break something I couldn't break with a hammer and I'm out about $19.