Revenant

Thanks for all the information. It had been my assumption that these wouldn't have stayed in circulation long with the high / hyperinflation but I hadn't found anything to confirm this - and precious little on the coins in general. All of the information I'd seen on the Digital Bolivar only showed the 1 Bolivar coin and I'd seen no indication about the fractional coins. Mike and I would have guessed Russia on the blanks probably, much as with the paper and the notes for the currency. There's probably more I don't know about these than I do know as this is still a very early project for me and I'm still just learning what's out there and what it looks like.

I already have a few German hyperinflation notes (circulated) that someone here on the boards gave me. I think "High Grade" is pretty subjective here. I still think an MS65 is a very well preserved, near pristine coin but it can become a "junk," "low" grade with moderns in the age and area of registry competition. It's easy with moderns where you actually can find MS67s and MS68s, but a 65 is still darn high. So if someone chooses to be happy with 65s it could be easier than for someone that needs that 68. But we'll see what I can scrape together in the end. With Zimbabwe and Venezuela, a solid set of 65+ coins could make me pretty happy without the incrementally large expense of going for the all 68s, that you may never get.

When I started down this road and started planning this entry in my head, I didn’t think I’d be posting this coming off a win with the Zimbabwe coin set, but... The thing you generally don't see with a hyperinflation collection is coins. Which is probably why it surprised and excited me so much when I realized that, with the release of the digital bolivar and the 3rd Venezuelan redenomination, they were releasing a 1 Bolivar coin with the 5 new banknotes. Then, when I went looking to see if any had hit eBay, I found something else: Venezuela released new coins in both 2007 (7 denominations) with the release of the Bolivar Fuerte and 2018 (2 denominations) with the release of the Bolivar Soberano. So, there are coins associated with all of the different Bolivares and throughout the hyperinflation period. Which is a bit funny and a bit awkward for me given the argument made in my Zimbabwe note and coin sets, - that coins are the “First Casualties of Hyperinflation” and that if you want to see hyperinflation, you have to look at notes. Because it seems to be increasingly clear that you can see high inflation / hyperinflation in coins, if you collect Venezuela. The 2007 coins are a little less surprising - at the time of the first redenomination they weren't in hyperinflation and wouldn't be for about 6 more years. They just had persistent, double-digit, high inflation. The 2018 Soberano coins were vastly more surprising. At that point the country was well into a hyperinflationary situation and the 2nd redenomination took off 5 zeros instead of 3. But they do exist - and they were released! And not held back, delayed and repurposed - unlike the 2003-dated Zimbabwe coins, the release of which was delayed 5 years. And I didn't know they existed! Never even thought about it in a year and a half of collecting the notes. There are even registry sets for these things! - never knew, never noticed. But there’s at least one user with a solid PMG note set and a solid NGC coin set for Venezuela and it isn’t me. But with these collections and situations the banknotes with the big numbers get all the attention. And in Zimbabwe they didn't exist! They had notes with circles! No coins struck from 2003 to 2014! So, I didn't look for what I assumed wasn't there. And you don't know what you don't know. Having found out about them I wanted some though, so I've been working on getting some. I was able to get 5 sets of the 7 denominations from 2007 from a dealer in Turkey - another country seeing its national currency reduced to a memory. Later on, I was able to pick up 10 pairs of the 2018 50C and 1B coins from a seller in Costa Rica for not much more than what some people were asking for just 1 pair. A fair bit later - because I've been doing this slowly since the last post I made here on Venezuela months ago while also doing other things - it takes a while for coins to arrive from overseas - I picked up five of the Franklin Mint sets for Venezuela with coins mostly from the late 1980s and broke them up. This was mostly to extend the collection of type coins into the original bolivar - something I've been very reluctant to do on the PMG / note side. This gave me a pretty solid start to a Venezuelan coin collection for about $80. I subsequently found out that there were other coins, pre-2007, with denominations of 10, 20, 50, 100 and 500 Bolivares and was able to acquire 5 sets of those, dated 2002-2004, from the same seller in Ukraine that sold me some of my Zimbabwean bond coins. There were also some coins from around 2016 (after the first redenomination but before the 2nd) with denominations of 10 and 100 Bolivares Fuertes, which that Ukrainian seller also had. The came paired with some 50 cent coins from 2009 that I didn’t really need but I got the 3-coin sets with the 10-500 Bolivar sets because that was the best price I could get on those 10 and 100 Bolivar coins, which I wanted / needed and I wanted to get all of them and combine shipping. Small aside on those three coin lots - they advertised them as having 10, 50, and 100 Bolivar coins. They actually contained 50 cent coins. As it turns out, there is a 50 Bolivar coin from 2016, and I'll probably have to track some of those down down the line... So, now about $125 later, I have quite a set of raw Venezuelan coins with denominations and designs spanning several orders of magnitude, about 3 decades and 3 of the 4 national currencies Venezuela has had so far. The main challenge so far, the thing I haven’t been able to add yet, is the thing that got me started on this in the first place – I can’t find anyone selling the new 1 Bolivar Digital coin for what feels like a reasonable price. Possibly buying more 7-coin sets from another dealer to cover bases and sample around and buying more 3-coin sets that actually have the 50 Bolivar coin my run me another $50 or so. Still, not an expensive project so far at any rate. I'm obviously back to buying multiples in the hopes of getting 1 or 2 really nice ones and it seems to be working in that regard. I will likely submit some of these down the road to build a registry set and display around these to compliment the note set. The goal is very much to turn the Venezuela set into another cross registry, mixed note and coin set, similar to the Zimbabwe set, though the Zimbabwe set has been far more… “successful” at this point. I suspect because the Venezuela set so far has tended to come in looking like a tugboat next to a 120-note, 14-coin (Soon 23), dreadnought. In my head for a while there last year as this was starting to happen and form in my head, this was going to be the next big project after the Zimbabwean coins, but then the 500 Lire set happened and these temporarily lost priority. I started showing some of these to Shandy as they started to trickle in, and she started getting out a light - wanting to know if we were looking for the best or the two best. I just said that for now we were just enjoying the designs. We'll look at them again and pick the ones we want to submit when that gets a little closer. But that was then, with the Zimbabwe set’s win, this will probably be my next major NGC project – turning the Venezuela set into a cross-registry collection and presentation just like the Zimbabwe Set. Shandy has been away in Florida on a work trip all week. She got back late last night. With all of these / most of these in hand, flipped and labeled, I think it’ll be time to start picking the winners / coins for a possible future submission, which I need to try to get out by late March or April if I want to make something happen this year I think – Shopping for one new coin release turned into quite a project, quite a journey. I'll have to follow this up later with another post with pictures and comments on the individual coins. I feel this one is long enough and should end here.

I can't imagine it helps. I'll waste money on worthless coins I like (Zimbabwe) or which my wife connects to (500 L) and not care about them being bad "investments," but even I feel no such inclination for ugly coins.

I was scrutinizing the coin perhaps a bit more than you were because I wanted to make sure that the coin matched the label and that it was a 20 Kr and not a 10 Kr, because I've gotten excited in the past thinking I've found a coin at a nice price only to realize that the coin is a smaller denomination (but from the same era with a very similar design) than the one I wanted and therefore the price is less attractive than I first thought. So I look at dates and denominations and that spot is right between the date and the denom. Then I really got into the weeds of looking at it and the NGC pictures to make sure it matched up. That does sound like it could have been an interesting SGDE. I like the SGDE, more for the eagle than for the Obverse. I think it's a pretty eagle. I do think that some European coinage from the time is better looking though and arguably more interesting (and, on the whole, better values). I would love to have SGDEs from my Grandparent's birthyears though and those are bucket coins. That said, I'll take a coin with that SGDE design over a Ukrainian coin.

In Italy, 500 Lire, 1982-2001, Circulation Issue, the set skips from 1989 to 1991. I think there should be a slot for 1990 - I've actually sent off a 1990 for grading that has the same reverse as the coins listed, so I think the 1990 belongs in this set even though it looks like the set excludes some of the circulating commemoratives like the 1996, and the 1997.

It is often the case that I have a few Gold coins with BIN listings in my Watch List on eBay. These are usually examples of the next type coins I want to add to my type-set of late-19th and early 20th century gold coins from different nations - what I call my Golden Nickels. This is a particular point of interest to me around this time of year when I'm hoping a Bonus or a good tax return will convince Shandy to let me buy one. One thing I'd been looking at for a long time was a MS64+ 20 Kroner from 1916 - 1916 being one of the higher mintage years for this coin. The NGC population includes about 120 coins with about 22 MS63s, about 25 MS64s, this one MS64+, 56 being MS65, and 1 being MS66. So this coin was close to the middle of the population, but the population is crushed at the top with all the coins above it (currently) only being marginally above it (MS64+ vs MS65) and only one in existence currently graded over 65 by NGC. The seller had it listed at $615, which I honestly thought was pretty reasonable in its own right, I just wasn't ready to pull the trigger. Then, Monday night, the seller sends me an offer - for $550. I screen capped this and sent it to Shandy like, "I'm not going to lie, that seems like a good price to me." - the coin has about 0.25 toz of gold in it and it had a melt value right around $474, so that price was only about $75 over melt, about 16% over melt, for a coin that is graded and almost got a Gem Uncirc grade. To my surprise, Shandy also thought it was a good price, and she likes the look of the coin, so she encouraged me to just go ahead and go for it - we had the cash, even if I don't end up getting a bonus or we don't get a great return. So I slept on it, then sat down while things were quiet and slow, I looked at the pictures, looked at the seller's feedback, did the Cert# verification and looked at the NGC picks vs the seller's images. Everything looked good, right down to the copper spot near the 2 on the reverse, and I decided to take it. Yeah, I probably could have gotten an MS65 if I'd waited, but I think the premium would have been higher, I like the look of this coin, and I liked the price, and I think I'm unlikely to regret getting this down the road. Going back to a conversation with Mike not long ago in discussing MS65 and MS66 coins that have marks that just happen to be in very unappealing locations, I think if that copper spot near the 2 on the reverse was in the middle of the coin or on Christian's cheek I probably wouldn't like it. With it off in the legend by the two, I actually kind of like it for the character it gives the coin from being 106 years old. I think the coin holds up very well under these fairly high magnifications and I'm looking forward to seeing it in hand soon. Going back to the idea of getting this coin vs an MS65, I suspect there are many MS65 graded examples out there of those ~56 that I'd find less attractive and less appealing than I find this one.

Depending on the category you pick it could be monumental - the Morgan dollars, the Lincoln pennies... Some of those... 😱

Well, if you know in 2 weeks, or even 3, that's still a heck of a lot better than 4 months (or 6, or 8...). And when you factor in waiting for it to reach them it's really more like knowing in 2 weeks from when you mailed it off vs 3. So you're paying to know faster, and you're going to know a lot faster. So, I'd say you're still getting what you're paying for - you're still moving to the front of the line and finding out months sooner. Trust me, I wasn't happy about this when it was me either, and there's plenty to complain about, but not sending things in and waiting for this to pass isn't going to help if you want something graded before 2023 or 2024. And I've known too many people that worked in Customer Service roles to not be as nice as I can bring myself to be to those folks. The "what's the rush" thing was more just joking about the fact that I don't think I'd ever be able to convince myself to pay that much more for a service that, as you say, already isn't cheap, to get something faster, unless I had a strong, compelling need for that thing to be graded. I'm just too cheap for that.

As they are quick to point out, these are estimates - and sometimes they're quite bad estimates. I had a World modern sub that I sent in with a ~44 day estimate and it took about 85 days (by my count anyways...). While they have gone on the record several times saying that this turnaround is estimated based on when the box is delivered to the facility by USPS, this forum is full in threads where they quote a number of days as how long something has been there that is closer to / apparently based on when the box was opened and entered in, not when it was marked as delivered by USPS or their tracker said it was in the building. I've also gotten similar treatments from their replies to emails IIRC. This apparent inconsistency has been pointed out several times and I haven't seen a very clear response on it so far. So... If you don't mind me asking, what has you in such a rush? Is one of the coins a valentine's present or a birthday present, or something? At least, for the moment, there's no awards deadline hanging over us like the sword of Damocles. It stinks, but I do think they're trying their best, and I think the only way to deal with it right now is just to try to build-in at least a 2x factor on their advertised turnaround as a buffer for if you have any make-or-break or critical deadline.

That... would stink... that's right up there with realizing you didn't put the paperwork in the box.

If you have them there already i'd say you'll most likely have them in time for December. Anything sent in after maybe Mid-April I'd consider a real gamble on if it is back for December. Anything after June I don't think I'd hold my breath on.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "better." Yeah, I might have my coins at NGC for less time but at least doing it now they're "in line" and I will get them back this year. If I wait, how long will this last? How long will it before I send them and when (what year?) will I get to finally grade these and finish that set the way I want? I'd rather do it now and endure the wait this way.

NGC will always give you a better answer straight from them if you ask the service email or ask in the ASK NGC/NCS forum like I did and linked to above. But my understanding is that they do so much high value business with USPS that they have a little satellite PO with postal workers in their building for NGC/NCS/PMG/the rest of the alphabet soup.

Yeah.... I had similar concerns and asked on the forums and Lisa clarified that it just needs to be physically in the building by COB on Monday 1/31. But... Yeah. I'd noticed that on the opening boxes thing and I'm thinking their current advertised 71 Business Day turnaround times are going to prove to be a pipe-dream if they are 2 months (~35-40 business days) behind in opening mail if you measure that 71 business days from when the package hits their door - Which Matt has said they do, but repeated comments from Lisa and the CS staff have had them measuring turnaround from the day the package was marked as "Received" in the system and not from the day it was delivered. This makes sense when you consider that they record on the submission when it is entered in and I don't see why they would record on a submission by submission basis when the box arrived because, until this last year, those two dates would have almost always been within a week of each other. The more I look at this situation the more I'm thinking that the May-June time-frame suggested by their current turnaround times is almost certainly going to be an August-September return for the coins I just sent in. On the plus side though, if they don't open the box until March they won't charge my card until March and so I won't have to pay it off on the CC until more like May. Take the wins where they come.

I mailed out that submission to NGC on Jan 14th. It got to the Sarasota distribution center around midnight on Jan 20th, processed through there in about half and hour and was marked as in route to the destination facility. And then... Nothing. Today is the 26th. It has not been scanned in 6 days and about 10 hours. Starting Monday I started sending emails and trying to shake things out because if it isn't at NGC by COB on Monday the 31st the new pricing comes into effect and the cost of the box goes up $32. Well, turns out it has been in a container for 6 days, between the Sarasota distribution hub and the local PO, and they have apparently a line of about 25 containers they're working on, and they've been having delays because of lack of personnel and lack of drivers and... But.. 25 containers. Wow. Talk about bottlenecks. It has been stuck in Sarasota, waiting to be sent to the final destination longer than it was in Transit from my local PO in Texas to the Sarasota distribution hub. I would have thought that 17 days would have been PLENTY of time for something to get there. Normally it takes a week or less. Clearly in this case, absent this one bottleneck at this one leg of the trip, it would have been there in 7 calendar days. Normally this would have been fine. But this isn't normal. The very nice, polite woman at the Sarasota post office that called me (not being sarcastic at all here, she was very nice), was hopeful that it could come through today based on what she was seeing. So I'm just going to cross my fingers that they can make it happen and get it to NGC by Monday. If not, using Registered mail might cost me not just the $13 for Registered, but $32 for the price increase, making that a fairly expensive safety measure. But, if that happens, I'll just let it go. At the end of the day, after all the work that went into those coins, if that box had gone missing I would have gladly given up $32 to get it back., and even if it costs me I still think it was the right choice. $32 won't break me this month. Not even close. It is just very frustrating in the moment. Edited to Add: So... Only about 40 minutes after she called me the first time, the USPS worker I'd talked to called me back again and let me know that it had hit that location / come out of the container and that it would be continuing on today. So, YAY! it should easily get to NGC by Monday. I had nervously run the tracking number a few times this morning and it must have just come out just a few minutes after we talked the first time or something. She said she'd had a list of ones she was watching for / tracking because she apparently has a few people making inquiries that a freaking out or in a near panic. I can't say I don't sympathize with them but hearing that did make me laugh a little. Misery loves company I suppose and it's nice to not be alone in your crazy. Side note but I am increasingly resigned to the fact that these coins are going to be away for... a... VERY. Long. Time. I am just increasingly glad, as the reasons add up (the long turnaround times, the price increase, this shipping delay...) that I did not drag my feet and I just got that box out. I'm increasingly convinced that, if I want to make another submission this year, and have confidence in it getting here by December, then I need to make something happen more in the March / Early April time frame. None of this is harshing NGC - I know they're working hard over there - just stating facts. Nothing is going to be fast this year; we're all going to have to have longer time horizons, and for some things, unless you're planning to pay extra for speed, the effective cut-off for the 2022 award season might be a lot earlier than some of us realize. I wonder if there's ever been a case of someone paying for Walkthrough service on something cheap and/or modern just to get something back super-quick to win something in the Registry. There could be a funny and amusing story out there. Also: It's worth noting that, in discussing this with Shandy, she also very much shared my concerns over this box last night and referred to them as "our coins."

Thanks for the reply. The idea had actually been to have them in flips in the page pockets, but it ultimately sent these out just in flips, rubber banded together in groups of 4-6. So should be good. Thank you again.

Really though? I'm sure it matters what exactly the legend says. I just think they look kinda cool. And the dates use Arabic numerals.

I opted not to go to the coin show this weekend. It wasn’t a week where I had Friday off and we have a crazy week coming up and I just mentally opted for a quieter weekend of getting chores done and hitting up a birthday party with the kids instead. But I thought I’d sit down and share a bit about my latest ~$20 tangent into the realm of, “well, that looks nifty!” One of the same dealers that I bought several raw Italian coins from also had some circa 1980 Chinese coins going as individual coins or as small lots of three and I decided to try for and win seven of them at a net cost of about $1 per coin. When they came in and I showed them to Shandy she asked if I got them because of her and because I thought she’d find them neat since she’d spent most of the last 2.5 years doing remote English lessons for Chinese children. I was honest in that I thought she might find them interesting for that reason, but I honestly just got them because I thought they looked neat and they worked as a stupid, fun, impulse buy for about what some people spend on a coffee. The funny thing I feel with these is, I’m not sure the coins are actually any more interesting than most other modern coins issued by the US or other countries that I tend to pass on, but they don’t immediately strike me as ugly (looking at you, Ukraine and Swaziland) and they are different enough from what I’m used to to make them interesting to stop and look at. I ended up with a bit of a mix with a 1 fen, 2 fen, three 5 fens, and two 1 Jiao (10 fen), with dates ranging from 1979 to about 1991. Much later - just recently - I decided to place an order from a dealer with a bunch of 1 fen, 2 fen, 5 fen and 1 Jiao coins in a variety of dates - listing most for $1 each with minimal per coin shipping fees if you were buying several coins. I haven’t gotten those in yet but I’m hoping the examples I get will look as nice as what was in the pictures and that the seller was being honest in saying that the coins would be packed to prevent them from damaging each other in shipment. I spent about $15 for 13 coins to broaden out the set a bit and have these fill up a 20-coin page in one of my binders. The seller also had some 5 Jiao coins but the pictures on those specifically left me doubting that the coins would look good in-hand. Those coins have a different metal composition, and the images make them look like they’d been stored or handled poorly. I will admit to having sat on and debated actually pulling the trigger on this purchase for several weeks even though the price and the images looked good just because the seller includes all sorts of language in the listing that I normally consider a red flag - they come off like a whiner and a drama-llama in a major way that has a victim-complex because some of their customers have apparently been mean to them about shipping times and not leaving feedback. Lol Anyway. I decided to take a shot in the dark and decided I was willing to risk $15 and the possibility of a longer wait on low-priority items and MAYBE some drama. We’ll see if, in about 2 weeks, I’m kicking myself for not listening to the warning signs and steering clear. I’m usually not TOO prickly about shipping times as long as it doesn’t seem like the seller dragged their feet shipping it out and I do actually leave feedback, so they shouldn’t end up hating me too much. So just an entry in the “Oh! Neat!” category and coins from another country to bore the kids with as they age. My wife is trying to convince me to start doing cruise reviews that are equal to the work I do on my coin and note sets... I'm not sold. I enjoy this. That sounds like work.

I got into the Zimbabwe notes seriously starting around 2015/2016 thinking it was dead and over and therefore the scope was limited, but, then when they started the bond notes and the new series ~2016 I couldn't not go for it. So now I have an open ended project there. But fortunately they only release 1-2 notes a year now. If we have another hyperinflation period with another 30-50 note year....

And why I threw up my hands and gave up on several some time ago. It becomes a joyless endeavor where-in you almost feel like the mints are just trolling you and laughing at you all the way to the bank.

I think if you're going to do call-outs Mike deserves equal or higher billing for his Ukrainian note collection. It definitely has similarities with coin collecting but it's different. With coins I can see the difference between a 64 and a 68 pretty easily but, with graded notes, I see essentially zero difference between a 64 and a 68. I can make an educated guess at grades with coins but when I submit notes it's shooting blind. NGC and coins places an emphasis on photos and there is a level of skill with photographing coins that you need to win Best Presented. Over on PMG, everyone seems to just use a scanner and we're all happy with that.

Thank you, Lisa! Based on USPS Tracking NGC should be in possession of the box either today or tomorrow. I've said this elsewhere but the price increase is well warranted and I thought quite restrained. I'd really been thinking Moderns might get bumped to an even $20 this year with inflation doing what it has been doing and with you folks having to pay out hiring bonuses, overtime, and paying to expand facilities.

Sorry to hear that. Hope it eases up soon.

Sounds like it'll be interesting when you're done.