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Revenant

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Journal Entries posted by Revenant

  1. Revenant
    I sat down with my wife earlier in the week and we ordered the gold sovereign. I decided on an NGC Graded MS63 1915 George V Sovereign – A coin struck at the Royal Mint during the Great War. It arrived yesterday. Below are some of the seller’s images.

    I had been holding out to see if eBay would put on a 10% eBay bucks deal heading into Valentine’s day. They put on a 5% deal for president’s day and I decided to go for it. I’ll get about $22.20 in eBay bucks in April that I can use for something else later and I can stop worrying about the gold price going up while I wait – not that that seems too likely lately. Mostly I’m just not wanting to maybe wait another 2 or 3 or 4 weeks hoping for a 8-10% deal.
    I’m sure my wife gets tired of hearing about the gold price with me on these things and lately it seems that my concerns about it going up are consistently, comically misplaced. I was so worried when it was going up when I wanted to buy that 1875 coin in August, and I bought when it was ~$1540/oz – it later dropped below $1500 again. 5 months later I was worried about it spiking up for the coronavirus fears when it was $1570-1580… and instead it’s been very flat for two weeks or so and was still about $1575 when I pulled the trigger on this purchase. It did spike briefly on fears we’d go to war with Iran, but it reversed almost immediately. I’m still laughing about that seller that was trying to build-in a higher premium on an 1875 gold coin 5 months ago because “gold is going up so much every day.” But, anyway – I digress.
    The coin happens to have a silver sticker from WINGS – so I guess they agree that it’s an MS63.

    I don’t necessarily view that as a bonus, but I’ll probably leave the sticker where it is – it certainly can’t hurt the value of the coin from what I can tell. I do and have generally taken a dim view of the things in the past and think they’re a bit unsightly. I’d never pay extra for it, but I guess I’ll leave it alone.
    I’m picking the coin up for about $75 over the current spot price for the coin. The bullion premium would normally be about 3% or about $10-15 but someone paid $30 to NGC to have it graded, paid $12.50 to have it stickered, paid for all that shipping back and forth, and they’re giving me free shipping (~$5?). On top of all that I’ll be getting ~$22 in eBay bucks later and $5 in cashback on the credit card so it seems like a good deal for me overall.
    I could have picked up a 1925 in NGC MS65 for basically the same price (within $5) but I decided to go this route. I’d rather have a coin that’s legitimately 105 years old than a coin that was probably struck after WWII. Part of what intrigues me about most of these European gold coins I’ve been trying to pick up in the last few years is that they’re all late 19th and early 20th century – pre-WWI. Part of the reason why that’s interesting to me is that I really feel like that was just such a different time and a different world and that those two wars changed so much about the world. A post-WWII re-strike just isn’t as interesting in that context.
    600
  2. Revenant
    Sam is now 1 year old!

    He’s still not crawling or walking, but he’s sitting up on his own. He managed that skill at 11 months, which is very good for a 29-week preemie that had a grade 4 IVH which was then complicated by hydrocephalus. His PT, neurologist, neurosurgeon, ophthalmologist, and pediatrician are quite happy with him. Side note – an infant should not have so many doctors, but I digress.
    PT thinks he’ll soon be army crawling. The main hold up for that and sitting up on his own seems to be that he’s weak on the right side, which is likely a direct result of the brain bleed.
    He’s also behind on speech and some fine motor skills but we’re working with him on that along with everything else – Shandy stays quite busy with him. The OT evaluator thinks he probably does have some of the fine motor skills but he’s too busy focusing on gross motor control to show them off – an odd paradox in a way.
    One of the first things we had to work with him on was getting him to track and follow objects with his eyes and head and to reach for things. We found out about five months ago that part of the problem is he’s extremely far sighted, even for a baby and his eyes were crossing,
    We got him glasses, but they also recommend bright objects, things that light up and thing that flash and which are, therefore, easier to see. As it happens, infants share an affinity for shiny objects with cats.

    If I hold up a coin, he’ll consistently look at it take it from me. He seems to quite like them. If I give him just one, he’ll take it and switch it between his hands, work it between his fingers and manipulate it with both hands. It seems like this should be good for fine motor development and he seems to find them interesting. They also seem like a good shape for making him practice a pincer grasp, which is something OT says he needs to work on. If he gets one in each hand, he’ll bang them together.

    My wife watches all this and says, “He’s definitely yours.”
    I’m the only one that gives him coins. She, meanwhile, insists on being boring, and gives him baby toys.
    Here are some of his 1st birthday and cake smash photos:
    '
     Nope. I don’t like the little bugger at all. 😊
  3. Revenant
    A few months ago I gave a technical presentation for the local section of my professional organization. Speakers for these events usually get little gift bags as a “thank you.” Such is the state of my life with kids and everything that I never got around to looking in the bag until just recently (a sad waste of candy, to be sure). One of the things in the bag was particularly interesting to me as a coin collector.

    The local section was founded in 1942. I don’t know what possessed them to found it in the middle of WWII, it seems like that would have been a bad time to try to start something up, less than a year after Pearl Harbor, but that’s when it happened. So, in 2017 we had our 75th anniversary – Our Diamond Jubilee.
    I did not get active in the organization at the time and so I didn’t attend the dinner and I didn’t get any of the swag associated with it, but apparently they had leftovers and some of it has been used in some of these gift bags. One of these items was a 1942 penny in a little holder with a sticker on it celebrating the Diamond Jubilee. It’s just an old, brown, circulated cent. Nothing special, but still an interesting and funny thing.


    I’m wondering how they went about getting enough 1942 pennies to fill these things. I don’t know how many of these were made but I’m guessing it was at least 75-100. I’m both amused by the thought and having a hard time believing that they searched rolls or did something similar until they had enough. I’m tempted to ask the Treasurer about it since she made the goodie bag and she was involved when this was being done.
    It's also amusing to me to think that, having started the organization in 1942, we only just barely missed needing ’43 Steel pennies for these things.
    Maybe I’m a stinker, maybe I’m a bit of a coin snob, but I’m half-tempted to open it up, take out the circulated, brown penny and replace it with a mint state, red, cent.
    We’re also coming up on Sam’s first birthday. I was at a meeting for this group the night Sam was born. I only got home about 15 minutes before things started going south and we headed for the hospital.
     
  4. Revenant
    My wife was having a hard time deciding what to get me for our anniversary (1/15) so I suggested we could go back to that coin shop she was in about a month ago, look around together and see if we saw anything.
    As I told her when we were driving there, I wasn’t necessarily committed to getting anything. It would just depend on if anything stuck out at me that was reasonably close to the appropriate price range we set for the occasion but I was going to be looking for something different that would stand out a little in my collection..
    Ben was in daycare; Sam was along for the ride – but Sam is a lot easier to contain and manage than Ben. We have this chest-harness kind of thing that lets Shandy essentially wear the baby on her chest or her back so she carried him around like that while I looked at coins. She looked at some of the Jewelry they have there and I think sometimes she watched me.
    I spent a while looking around at some things just to see if anything popped out at me and a few things kind of did. There was a 1936 S Buffalo nickel in an old fatty holder with an MS65 on it and there were a couple of 1834 50 cent pieces in VF20 and VF30 that I took a good look at. I was seriously tempted but wasn’t quire sold on them – though I actually thought the VF20 was nicer looking than the VF30 with the 1834’s.
    I probably would have gone for either the VF20 or that Buffalo nickel but then I saw some Type 3 Standing Liberty quarters that they had, mostly in the range of XF45 to AU58. Three of them in particular were AU58s for $80 each – a 1925, a 1929 S and a 1930. I asked to look at those three and one of the nicer looking XF45s. The 1930 looked really promising on the obverse but then I didn’t really like the Reverse when I saw it.
    When I looked at the 1925 I cracked a smile and really liked it – and my wife could tell I really liked it so she encouraged me to go for it, so I did. It was the clear choice over the 1929 S in my opinion in terms of overall look and detail.
    I have a raw Standing liberty quarter that I got about 12 years ago. It isn’t in nearly as nice a shape as this one and the standing liberty quarter is a design I like that I had wanted to get a better example of.
    I think it's interesting that these, like the Peace Dollars, use the Latin U's (V's) for the mottos on both sides of the coin.


    Edited on 1/30/2020 to add photos of the old raw coin I had, just for fun.


  5. Revenant
    I’ve known for a while that finishing the 10G set might require buying some raw coins and submitting them to NGC for grading myself.
    The grading credit that NGC just gave me for winning the journal awards seemingly makes this a good time / year to go for it – buy a raw 1880, 1885, and 1886 dated coin and send them in. The set would finally be complete at that point except for the 1879/7 but I’ve never felt especially committed to that variety anyway. Even the way NGC defines the set, including that variety, I’d be at 90% - good outcome for the set after 10 or 11 years of work and luck.
    The problem I think I’m going to have is I can’t even seem to find examples of these things raw – in the United States anyway. There are examples that I can find for sale – if I’m willing to buy them through market places I’ve never shopped from before and get them from sellers I’ve never bought from before, some of whom may or may not speak English from what I can tell.
    This wouldn’t be quite so potentially worrisome to me if it weren’t for the fact that these things are going to be about $350 each to buy and it’s not going to be easy or cheap to return one if I find out once I have it in hand that it’s ugly – shipping just to get it to me is going to be about $25 in some cases, or about 1/14th the price / value of the coin. I can only assume that won’t be refundable and I’ll have to pay return shipping if I get the thing in hand and I hate it.
    Some of the pictures I see use are just ugly pictures or they make the coin look weird – which is concerning. When I’m buying a graded coin, bad pictures worry me a lot a less and I’m willing to roll dice sometimes but it’s harder to justify when the coin is raw. I’d much rather buy the coins AFTER seeing them in hand, but I don’t think I’m going to find many, if any, of these in shops locally. Recent developments at the Houston Money show may make this situation a little better but I’ll have to wait and see. ColonialCoinsUK also suggested contacting some Dutch and German auction houses, which seems a lot more promising than something like ma shops.
    I’m going to have to think through whether it’s worth the risk. Because it does worry me, but I feel like not using this grading credit to try to fill in holes in that set would be a massive missed opportunity If I do manage to get the coins and get them graded – hopefully actually graded and not details graded at that point – I may still not have the grades I’d want in the long term, but it would fill out the set and I could try to upgrade from there over time.
    The thought has occurred to me to resubmit some of the old MS65s I have in fatty holders and see if I might be able to bump them to MS66, padding my lead in the category a little and getting the coins into newer gen holders – which I think look nicer and which fit into the boxes I have easier. I could even take this as a relatively risk-free opportunity to try to cross my 1875 PCGS MS67. I’m also wondering if the grading credit could be applied to just re-holdering some of the coins to get the full set into the same generation holder, maybe with “Pittman Family Collection” on them so they make for a much better physical display when this is all over.
    Of course, the idea of buying three or four additional gold coins this year is probably going to at least partially hinge on me getting a decent bonus this year. I'm hopeful on that front but I'm not going to get my hopes too high. If that falls through I could probably make 1 or 2 happen but maybe not all three and not until closer to the end of the year. I suppose I could forego the Sovereign I'm hoping to buy soon and put the money towards this instead, but I'd rather keep that separate from this and that just goes to some of the at times slightly odd ways my head works. That's more about treating myself after a big raise, so I want that to be it's own thing and I don't necessarily want that subjugated to this set / project.
    Good news for me this week though: While the Dow took a beating on Monday and Friday the price of gold mostly stayed put and was only up about 1% week-over-week, just need to wait about 1 more week and hope for an eBay bucks deal maybe.
  6. Revenant

    Thanks, NGC!

    By Revenant,

    The “Best in Category” certificates from NGC arrived a few weeks ago (Thanks for that, NGC). That was great to get, also a relief. I lost track of how many times I had double checked the spelling on the address in my account after I’d updated it earlier in the year. I was paranoid that something would go to the wrong place because I forgot to update something or typed something in wrong. So it was great to have that confirmation that it really was right. 
     
    Sunday (4/14) I got a call from my Aunt. She lives in the house that used to belong to my grandmother until she passed away in 2017. That was the house I grew up in and the house I was living in when I joined this site. She said I package arrived for me, which is strange given that, after having been moved out for nearly 10 years, I’d updated my address pretty much everywhere. When these things come, she tends to call me fast just in case it’s important or urgent. She starts describing the package to me and she says it’s from NGC (not that she has any clue what that means). There’s only about one thing that could be – the new Journal Award plaque. 
     
    I tell her I’m pretty sure I know what it is and that, while I’m (honestly) surprised that it showed up there, it’s nothing problematic to worry about - just hand it over to my parents the next time she has a chance. I live about 50 miles away from her / that house now. It’s not easy for her to get to me or for me to get to her, but if she gives it to my parents it’ll get to me the next time I see them – which shouldn’t be a long wait with Sam having come home now. 
     
    She got the package to my parents on 4/24. They opened it with my blessing and confirmed that it was the plaque.  
     
     
     
    I’ll finally get my hands on it when I see my parents next weekend on Saturday the 4th to see Sam and Ben. At that point It’ll get to join the other two in the place of honor they’ve long gotten to enjoy on the corner of my desk hutch. 
     

     
    For anyone that’s curious: The print is an open edition print of an image called “Ascendant” by Lawrence A Williams – it was featured art at a convention I went to years ago and I’ve always liked the image. The little robots are game pieces for a table-top war game I used to play for years when I was in High School – my main hobby for about 4 years I think and set in a universe I’ve read books for and been in love with since I was 11 (over 20 years now). The unopened bottle of Scotch is a 12-year Scotch that I bought when Shandy and I went to Aberdeen in late 2017. I got it as a memento of the trip. I haven’t decided when yet but that’ll only get opened for a special occasion one day. A little out of frame there's a few pictures of Ben in a frame. The opposite wall of the office has all 5 of the degrees Shandy and I have earned between the two of us. In context, that gathering of stuff says a lot about me, where I've been and what I've enjoyed / taken pride in along the way. My wife essentially controls the bedroom but this little office is my space.
     
    I’m also going to use that meeting with the parents as a chance to give the 1932 coins and Texas commemoratives back to Choya now that they’ve been re-imaged, and maybe have him bring me over some of the other coins / sets so I can start working on making new photos for those. 
  7. Revenant
    So one of my stocking stuffers on Christmas morning was a small pocket magnifier that has a light built-in. I saw this and asked my wife, jokingly, “So is this because I’m slowly going blind?” She said, “No! It’s for your coins!” “… and the fact that I’m slowly going blind?”
    In early 2016, right around the time Ben was born, I got a 5 mm corneal abrasion right in the middle of my right cornea – it almost split the cornea in half. I was lucky enough that it didn’t cost me use of the eye, but it did cost me a lot of the finer vision in it. There was a fair bit of scarring afterwards in the middle of the cornea. I went from barely ever needing glasses for 20/30-ish vision to getting 20/60 in that eye with my glasses. I’ve noticed the last couple of year that I now have a much harder time making out fine details – and sometimes dates and mint marks on small coins like dark old brown pennies.
    This is something that will make you a bigger fan of larger coins, brighter coins. I really had dreams of building a set of civil war tokens one day but I’m starting to question how well that might go for me.
    This has caused some sad times over the last 3 years as I realize that I am getting older and things aren’t always going to work as well perhaps… When do you start realizing that you’re not going to last forever? Anyway…
    I also got 5 new notes to add to my Zimbabwe 2nd dollar sets and the seller was giving out UV lights for checking / seeing the UV features of notes. The Zimbabwe notes have features that show under UV light but I’ll have to test and see if the light / these features can be seen under / through the PMG holders. I know lots of otherwise transparent plastics can block and absorb UV light, so it might not be possible to use this light or see the UV active security features on graded and encapsulated notes.
    I also finally got to take a look at my Zimbabwean dime and was pleasantly surprised. I took a bit of a risk on it as the sellers photos didn’t make the coin look nice / had me thinking there might be some problem areas. The coin looks much better in-hand and shines quite nicely.
    My wife took pictures of me opening it. I decided to ham it up a bit for fun.



    Of course, this is what most of the morning was really about:
     
    See the train table / playset in the background? Guess who was putting that together at 10:30 PM the night prior, after that same 3 year old came in and woke me up at 5:15 that morning because he wanted to go downstairs, watch his tablet and play with all his old toys, that are not getting a 2nd look now that there are new toys that are now his favorite.
    This is what you get when you tell a 3 year old that there are presents with his name on it and he can't open them yet. Bare in mind, he'd already gotten to open all the presents at his house and we were at grannie's house.  
  8. Revenant
    This was my wife’s question to me shortly after we went to the coin shop on our anniversary.
    When I got a big raise in October my wife agreed to buying the $10 gold Eagle for Sam’s birthyear but said she considered that more a purchase for Sam and that I should get something that was more “for me.”
    The answer to her question was basically, “when these other bills are paid off and I feel comfortable enough with the finances to drop $450-500 on something unnecessary.”
    I got the coin for Sam, but I’ve been putting the 2nd coin off for a few months because I wanted to finish off some medical bills and get past Christmas. I also saw some parallels between this approach and what happened in 2017/2018 when I got the job in the first place. I got the job in October and picked up the 1888 coin for my 10G set in February.
    Having taken care of Christmas, taken care of that $300 holdover bill from Sam’s birth, Ben’s pre-school for the semester AND the flood insurance, I talked to her about 2 or 3 days ago about the fact that I’m about to finally be ready to pick something up. Hobbies are great but they always need to take a back-seat to bills and I never take on debt or pay interest for a non-essential purchase.
    I’ll be ready to pick the thing up / order it the 2nd week of February. I’m just going to hope the price of gold doesn’t go up too aggressively the next couple of days with earnings reporting this week and the 2019 Coronavirus fears - currently up to about $1580 as I'm writing this, so up a little from everyone getting jittery but only about 1-2%.
    The leading contender is going to be an NGC-graded George V Sovereign in a Mint State grade. I’ve always wanted one for my collection – a Sovereign, not so much a George V specifically. I’ve always been a fan of the image of Saint George killing the Dragon ever since I was a kid, but I’ve never owned one.
  9. Revenant
    Over the weekend I got a package with 4 of the Yale coins. Back in December I finished picking up the rest of the Falcons that I needed. So that gives me all of the coins I need for the first 6 issues and 2/3rd of the total I need for the 7th issue – so I’m almost 70% of the way there now and I’m only about 1-ish issue behind.

    After thoroughly failing to keep up with the statehood quarters and the presidential dollars as they were coming out I’d like to actually be able to say that I finished one of these multi-year modern issue series that I start collecting with all the best intentions.
    Part of the problem with this set is that my goal ballooned early on from finishing 2 sets, to three, and then 5 – with a 6th to be given away gradually to my stepfather. I let the scope explode on me a bit and the fact that these coins each have 2 ounces of silver make them not the cheapest modern issues to buy – but they’re cheaper than gold issues. Of course, the fact that I’m also giving them to my stepfather and don’t want to leave him hanging with an incomplete set has also been helping to drive and encourage me to keep going with this. So, there’s a positive side to it too I suppose.
    Now I’m going to need more air-tite capsules before continuing though. 😊
    Here’s a look at the collection / project so far:

    While I was setting up to take this picture my son, Ben, came up the stairs and saw what I was doing. The immediate response was "Woah! That's a lot of coins! What are these? Can I help you, Daddy? How many coins is this? Can I count them, Daddy?"
    How do you say "no" to that? You can also see the Buffalo nickel's slab, which was also out for pictures.

  10. Revenant
    Shandy took the kids to spend the day with her parents in Deer Park and that left me free to go to this show after Naked Angel put me on to it a few days ago.
    I debated not going and just spending the day alone at the house – quiet time alone at the house is a valuable thing. The show, while being the “Houston” Money show was also actually in Conroe and it was a 45 mile, 65 minute drive to get to it, which isn’t a trivial commute. Still, I don’t get opportunities like this a lot and I ultimately decided I didn’t want to waste the opportunity. So after Shandy left, I cleaned some, played a video game a little, ate an early lunch and then headed to the show.
    I’m not one to spend all day at something like this. I ended up spending about 1.5 hours looking around and talking – which is honestly enough for me most of the time.
    The show was about what I had expected. Lots of Morgan dollars, lots of Peace dollars, and other mixed coinage with some currency and bullion. Some of it was graded. A lot of it wasn’t and lots of 2x2 cardboard flips to look through if you’re into that sort of thing. If I was working on a date set of a certain US series I could see having fun looking through some of that but I’m not right now and so it’s not my thing at the moment.

    I struck up a conversation with a dealer from Gilmer that was unusual for a couple of reasons.
    1) He didn’t have any Morgan or Peace dollars for sale
    2) He had a pack-n-play behind his table.
    For those not familiar with the term, a pack n’ play is a baby containment device that doubles as a bed / sleeping space. It turns out his daughter came with him to visit some friends while they were in town and her new baby is about the same age as Sam would have been if he’d been born on his due date (+/- a month).
    That was some fun conversation and I ended up buying a 1938 D Buffalo nickel from him that’s been graded by NGC as MS65. The coin caught my eye and I kept going back to it in my head after I’d initially left his booth to look at the other stuff at the show. When something lingers in my brain like that I know it’s probably a good idea to get it. This is a nice looking example and I’ve been thinking about getting a mint-state buffalo lately. I’d been considering getting a buffalo nickel on my anniversary but that one lost out to the Standing Liberty quarter. I have a 20-coin page of these things in circulated conditions that I got years ago but it’ll be good to have a nice, graded example.
    So, I guess this has turned into a good week for my humble, partial, 20th century type set. I’ve found over time that I get more enjoyment out of some of my type coins – my mercury dime and my walking liberty half have been the prime examples of this. They make fun conversation pieces with non-coin-collecting normies in the family – and my wife too. I'm also going to have a lot of fun showing these type coins to Ben and Sam as they get older.
    I also managed to find one dealer that knew what a Netherlands 10 Guiden piece was and who recognized it when just seeing a picture of the obverse of one. He admittedly just buys and sells them at spot +3% and treats them like bullion coins but that’s not unusual for the series. There’s another show coming up in March that’s much closer to my home. The dealer said he’d see if he had any of the 10G series and anything from the less common years and he’d bring them out to that show in 2 months if he did.
    The nice thing about that being that they were giving out cards to attendees that let you get free admission to that show in March with the card. It’s only a $3 admission fee, but, hey, I’ll take it. 😊

    I also came home to a small box on the doorstep that I wasn't expecting to arrive until Tuesday, but I guess USPS is on the ball this week. More on that next post.
  11. Revenant

    Woohoo! Thank you!

    By Revenant,

    So, first off, thank you to NGC for the journal award!

    When the announcement of what would be given out this year made no mention of the journal awards, I was thinking that meant there would be no journal awards this year - and I don't think I was alone in that assumption. Participation in the journals has dropped aggressively since 2017 and, given that, it certainly could have been an understandable move. I suppose it’s possible that it was their intent to do away with it, but then we pulled out enough participation this year to make them change their minds. Or maybe they were just hedging their bets and not committing. We’ll never know – I doubt they’d ever tell us even if they were considering it.

    In any case, I am happy to be wrong and grateful to get it.

    Of course, that’s not the only happy surprise here – part of the reason why I’m posting this today and not on Friday is I wanted to make sure I was reading the announcement correctly.

    This year, for the first time that I’m aware of, the journal award winners are getting a $500 grading credit, just like the winners in the other categories – another cool thing to be grateful for!

    I have a couple of ideas for how I’m going to put that to use – one is rather likely to happen if I can find a way to make it work. More on that later.

  12. Revenant
    A couple of months ago I took a buffalo silver round out just to play around with. It goes missing in the living room shortly thereafter, never to be seen again, months later.
    The other day Ben wants to have "big big monies," so I get out a fake "copy" silver eagle and give him that to play with. I figure, "Whatever, it's not even silver." Shortly thereafter he looses it in / around the couch and I can't find it. He's all bummed about it so, whatever, I give him another one. He looses it again - no time flat. I even here it drop this time but I still couldn't find it afterwards.
    He's in bed now and I've been digging around with a flashlight and I can't find anything on any of these rounds.
    I'm not going to be able to sell this couch now. When the time comes I'm clearly going to have to gut it and go digging.
    I'm not sure if I should be amused, impressed or annoyed.
    Edit on 1/13/2020:
    Well, I managed to find the two fake silver eagles buy digging down into the guts of the couch with my hand. I also managed to find some tools that my son "borrowed" and the monitor part of our old baby monitor - we had to buy a new one months ago when Ben made that disappear too. Of course, for my trouble, I manage to get my hand caught and I'll probably have a bruise on the back of my hand now... joy. Still no sign of that old Buffalo round.
  13. Revenant

    Odd purchase

    By Revenant,

    Recently (I think it was Thanksgiving), I was at my mother's house for a holiday and my mother came in and showed me a "coin." It was trying to be a 1795 silver dollar but it was a bad fake. It's the kind of thing that you take one look at and you know it isn't real. Didn't feel right and you know pretty much immediately that it isn't silver and the weight is off. I got to thinking about this again today after looking at yet another post wondering if a similar looking 1795 silver dollar was real.
    it turned out she bought it off this website that I think I've talked about here before that is just full of these junk fakes. When you look at the listings on that site there's often a number of people commenting on how these things - fake Morgans, Trade Dollars, etc - are "great additions to my coin collection." It's nearly enough to make you want to scream.
    She seemed rather proud of herself and said she "thought she did good." When I found out she'd paid $4 for it I just scoffed a little and told her she overpaid - at the prices on that site it shouldn't have cost her over $1. That price also pretty well confirmed that it couldn't even be real silver - just an ugly cheap fake.
    The thing I can't wrap my head around is, this is the person that got me excited about coins when I was little by showing me grandpa's old silver dollars - real coins. I would have expected her to have a little more sense and awareness than that. I would have thought she'd have known a little better than to have bought something like that.
    But... my mother isn't a collector. She seemingly just doesn't care if it's real or not. She just seems to think it's neat to look at. She doesn't share my distaste for the thing because she doesn't see it as a dangerous fake / fraud.
    Fortunately, I think that thing just resides in piles of so much random junk and doesn't rate a spot to be stored in the same place as the actual coins.
    I'm just going to really hope she doesn't keep buying the things and I don't find a pile of the junk to deal with when she passes - she's basically a hoarder as it is.
  14. Revenant
    I got a nice "birthday present" from PMG today: They featured one of my Zimbabwe note sets!
    https://www.pmgnotes.com/news/article/7791/PMG-Registry-News/
    Granted, it's not actually my birthday, but it's close, and I don't think my birthday had anything to do with the timing of this, but it's fun none-the-less.
    My actual birthday present also arrived in the mail today, ordered just a few days before I found out this article was coming out - it's a group of new notes for my 2nd dollar set. My wife refuses to let me have them until the actual day, but that won't keep me waiting long. The new notes will include a P-47, a P-48b, a P-51, a P-57 and a P-59.
    I'm going to be getting a P-48a in the mail soon as well. It's one of the rarer varieties in the 2nd dollar series and it'll be a real jewel for that set once it arrives.
     
  15. Revenant
    So over the weekend my wife met a friend for reasons we won’t go into because they’re unpleasant and my wife was there to be a friend but… Let’s just say this was someone we met back in March in the NICU…
    Anyway…
    After a while my wife sends me a message asking me if she can get away with going a little over-budget on my Christmas. I’ve been "pounding the table" so-to-speak on watching the budget. I just told her to do what she wanted but she probably shouldn’t. (Hey, I’m arguing against myself here and I know it!)
    Shortly thereafter she asks me how much Silver Dollars go for and asks me to send pictures of what they look like… my interest and curiosity were rather peaked. I told her $17-20 assuming common dates.
    A little while later she sends me a picture of a graded Franklin Half Dollar asking me if it was a silver dollar. I explained that it was a half dollar and that that’s what the “50C” on the label meant.

    At that point I asked her “where on Earth are you?” And got a picture of a coin shop back as a response. This happens to be a coin shop we’ve been to together a few times that’s a few miles from where she’s meeting her friend. It turns out the friend’s father collects coins too and they’re looking around and doing Christmas shopping.

    A little while later I get a picture of the junk dollar bin and they’re selling them for $18 each. Nice to know I was in range!

    I adore her for the thought, but it’s probably for the best that she didn’t get anything. I’m not sure I want her in coin shops without me - especially if she doesn't know that a Franklin Half isn't a Silver Dollar.
  16. Revenant
    Well, I just ordered what will be a companion piece to my Zimbabwe note set / the first coin in a related project – I haven’t decided yet.
    The coin is a 1980 Zimbabwe 10 Cent piece, graded MS65 by NGC. The coin happens to be TOP POP. I say “happens to be” because it also happens to be the only one of its kind graded by NGC – hard NOT to be top pop at that point. Anyway… MS65 is a decent, Gem BU, grade.
    I saw this coin come up months ago on eBay and seriously considered buying it, but I just couldn’t convince myself to go for it for about $35. I was trying hard to focus on building out the note set instead, and I just wasn’t convinced that it was worth that. So, I didn’t go for it.
    I saw it again Wednesday and saw that the seller had brought it down to $23.45 + $2.95 shipping. That was more interesting to me, but – more interesting still – they had a “Best Offer” option still. I added it to my watch list. It had 18 days left on the clock. I figured I’d wait a while longer and, if it was still there at the end of the month, offer the seller $20 + shipping and see if they’d take it.
    I woke up Thursday morning and the seller had sent me a private offer for it for $20 + shipping. I seriously considered just taking it at that point, feeling rather amused. But, if they’re making an offer like that, I have to assume at that point that they really just want it gone, and if they’re willing to take that, they may go lower. So, I offered $18 + shipping and they accepted it less than an hour later.
    I had a problem with the idea of paying $35 for it, but I’m happy with $20.95.
    I’ve been thinking for a while that it might be fun to expand the Zimbabwe set to include some of the coins. This will be a first step on that path. I’m not sure if I’m really willing / interested in pursuing that right now, but for $21 I’ll make an impulse buy and lay a foundation.
    All that said, I can’t help but laugh about it being TOP POP – for now. I always see merchants trying to hype up when a coin is the highest of the only one graded, trying to make the things sound rare, when really they just usually don’t get graded, while the seller is asking a silly-high price for it.
    Sometimes TOP POP means a lot less than you might think.
    I had a similar situation go down a while ago with a P-1c note for this set. The seller had been asking $40 for it after shipping for months and it hadn’t sold. They sent me an offer to come down to about $32-35. I offered them $29.50 for it, shipped, and they took it.
    The prices on the Zimbabwe notes have come down considerably in the last 5 years and I don’t necessarily expect them to recover any time soon. A big part of building this set / collection has involved waiting until I could get the pieces for prices that were low enough that I don’t have to feel too bad if I can’t sell them for much or if I lose most / all of the money I put into the set when and if I ever sell.
    I’ve been working hard to build up this set this year in part because I don’t see the prices going much lower from here – I’ve been getting plenty of these notes, already graded, for $8 - 15. I could always be wrong – they can always go lower if it isn’t $0.00, but at least at these prices I feel like I don’t have to care and it can be a spending of “fun money” and wasteful spending on a hobby without regard for future value.
     
    I'd had a completely empty "place holder" set on my registry, just to let me look at what the competitive category for these looked like, and I've deleted that. I'll make it / re-make it when this coin arrives and try to build it into something more than an empty place holder. Now that this set / project is going to have coins and notes in it, I unfortunately don't know that I'll be able to show all of it in one place - it's going to have to be split between both sides of CCG's house, unless I can get some extra certification numbers for notes and use those "dummy" certs to show the coins with the notes in the notes signature set. I guess we'll see there.



  17. Revenant
    So a package ships out from Queens, NY late on a Friday night on 12/13. Tracking says it's due to arrive on 12/16...
    Every day, it updates to say, at midnight that day, that the package is "In Transit to the Destination." It doesn't say where it is. This makes it rather useless as "tracking" information...
    It's been 5 days of basically getting updates saying "it's coming. We promise." No measure of progress.
    Part of me wants to give them the benefit of the doubt - it is mid-December and I'm sure they're dealing with high volume. Still... This is why no one likes USPS.
    Honestly, maybe I shouldn't care as much. It's been decided the thing is going under the tree so I don't get it for another week regardless. Still. I'd like to know they haven't lost it and I'd like the satisfaction of knowing it arrived okay / intact.
    At least it was a small value purchase, made on a lark. If they lose it or steal it, it could have been something much worse or more expensive, or more disappointing.
  18. Revenant
    My wife and I went to Renfest today, childfree, while her parents had our sons.
    While there I found a "penny" on the ground only to find that it was some weird, penny-like token with a Jolly-roger on it. I'll see if I can get pictures of it to share later.
    Later on in the day I was given a 1974 half dollar in change - and I couldn't even tell you the last time that happened. No one ever has half dollars these days. I didn't keep it though. I tossed it into a tip jar later in the day.
    I wonder if anyone here has experience with https://www.ma-shops.com.
    Another user here linked me to some listings there for the 1880,1885, and 1886 10G coins. I've never shopped there before - I've only gone through eBay. I've long since accepted that to finish that set I'll probably have to buy raw and get them graded myself. I've been holding off on doing so while I finished getting the more common dates that I can get already graded, but I think I'm about to have to more seriously look at biting that bullet / taking that leap. I'll probably face a similar problem if I want to truly finish my Zimbabwe note set - there's a handful of notes that just don't seem to be available already graded by PMG - or, if they are out there, the sellers still think people are paying what they were in 2012-2015 for them.
  19. Revenant
    Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Have fun eating yourselves into a stupor tomorrow.
    It's a little funny seeing everyone and their dog putting on a Black Friday sale this week - with many of them extending into next week - even the coin and currency dealers!.
    In the next several days I'll probably place an order with one of my favorite merchants that will probably be one of the last purchases I make for the Zimbabwe set for a while. The notes will be part of my Christmas present this year, so they won't be showing up in any sets for a while, even once they arrive.
    At the start of this year I thought this was going to be the year I revived my Koala and / or Kiwi sets in a big way. Instead it became the year that I took a handful of mostly 3rd dollar notes and turned them into the impressive set I'd always hoped they one day could be. The set isn't finished now but it's much bigger and cooler than I ever would have thought it'd be at this point at the start of the year. It's been a lot of hard work.
    Meanwhile, while I didn't grow the set much this year, my New Zealand Kiwi set looks well-positioned to win its category again for the first time in 10 years. I guess we'll see what the final week of the competitive year holds and if that #1 ranking holds up.
    Getting back on track after that tangent though... while I will be making that purchase I'm going to be trying to save up my coin budget and "keep some powder dry" moving into 2020 and not partaking in most of this sale action for now. As I mentally shift gears and get ready to go "on pause" with the Zimbabwe set I'm not 100% sure what my next focus will be.
    Looking back on my other stated goals of 2020 I didn't do terrible this year. I wanted to get a 19th century French "Winged Genius" type coin and did. I wanted to get that 2019 1/4 oz AGE and I just checked that box last month. And I finally settled on a course of action and resolved my years-long debate over the 1875 10G issue.
    I didn't pull off getting that 1924 double eagle but... I knew that was a long shot going in! Maybe in 2020... if I'm very lucky.
    There's a part of me that very much wants to start keeping and displaying a coin or two at my desk at work but I also question the wisdom of this - I work in one of those Regis / WeWork style shared office spaces and I'd worry about something growing legs. Especially if it was something nice.
  20. Revenant
    I got my big surprise that my wife and her mother have been sitting on for about a month and a half yesterday.

    It would seem that, while in Pennsylvania for work, her mother stopped at the Philadelphia mint, too the tour and these things.
    The Silver Eagle and the birthday set were for me, the coin explorer book was for Ben and the birth year set was for Sam.
    She also got a bag from the mint that’s also pretty cool.

    The book for Ben is pretty neat to look at. I hope he finds interesting later on.

    The 2019 Proof SAE is an interesting addition. I have one from 1986, 2006, and 2007. I had plans at one point to build a set of them in the original mint packaging but I never have enough budget for all of my projects so it didn’t have much in the way of legs 12 years ago. Now that I have a 2019 I’ll definitely be looking to pick up a 2016 for Ben at minimum.

    I love that she got Sam the Birthyear set. If I’d realized they made those at the time I would have bought one for Ben. Apparently when she was there they had them for 2017, 2018, and 2019 but were out of 2016. I went on eBay and they had them for 2014, 2015, and 2017-2019. Of course, no 2016. I made a saved search on my account, just in case one pops up. I’d love to have one for both of them, but, either way, I’ll make sure they both have plenty of things from their birthyear.

    After dinner I was holding Sam and told him, “Your grandma claims she gave you a present. In truth, she has gifted you with a few hours of boredom about 10 or 15 years from now when you have to hear me drone on and on about these things.”
    I was quite pleased. I'd say my mother-in-law hit it out of the park with this.
    The new 2nd dollar sets (except for the P-48a, which just made it through customs in New York) are in the 2nd dollar set on my registry now. The set is now 75% complete.
    I’m headed out of town tomorrow. I’ll be back over the weekend and then flying out again on another week-long trip. So I won’t be imaging the new notes and getting those pictures uploaded immediately, but that’s something I’ll be looking forward too.
    Of course, celebrations don’t last, and it’s never dull: Ben spiked a 103 degree fever today, so that’s had us pretty busy, taking care of him and keeping him separated from Sam.

  21. Revenant
    I know the first rule of collecting in registry-ville is “buy the coin, not the label,” but the coin I got in the mail at the end of this week was all about the label.
    A 2019, 1/4th oz American Gold Eagle, Early Release, Blue label, graded MS70.

    In 2007, I bought a MS70 1/4th oz AGE for my 21st birthday. It was my first ever gold purchase, 2 years before I started the 10G set.

    When Ben was born, I bought a 1/4th oz 2016 AGE in MS70 to celebrate and one day give it to him as his birthyear coin. I bought one with the 30-year anniversary gold label. Why? Because the series started in 1986, the same year Shandy and I were born, and Shandy said she wanted to have our first child before her 30th birthday. Ben arrived 2.5 months before her 30th birthday. So, the 30-year label was significant in that way.

    With Sam, it was important to me that this be an “Early Release” coin, in the blue label. Why? He was born 2.5 months early, so “Early Release” seemed especially appropriate for him. The blue label with the scales, largely matches the gold label with the scales for Ben’s coin. There’s a visual match there that I like.

    With Sam, the “MS 70, because he’s perfect” thing seems a bit ironic after everything he’s been through and the scars he bears from the shunt surgery. Even so, he’s showing signs that, as his personality emerges, that he’s going to be a very sweet child, and he seems to match the description, “flawed, but perfect.”
    Acquiring this coin was probably one of the goals that was most important to me at the start of this year. Having had the coin for Ben, it was very important to match it for Sam. In the aftermath of Sam’s birth and the subsequent financial stress it hasn’t been possible but it’s a goal I’ve never lost sight of. The day I found out about the raise my comment to my wife was, “You know this means I get that gold coin, right?”
    It’s also on my agenda, but less pressing, to one day get one of these for 1986. It’ll complete the set of our small family’s birthyears. But I’m not in a huge rush there, and that coin might be an MS69 instead of a 70. I’ll make up my mind on that later. It’s a lot easier (and cheaper) to get MS70s for the current year, however. That’s one of the reasons I’d really wanted to get this before 2019 ended if at all possible.
  22. Revenant
    I finally convinced myself to pick up some more air-tite capsules for the British Queen's Beasts coins, since I've been out of them since I picked up the last of the Black Bulls I needed, and now I've ordered three of the Falcon coins.
    It'll be a while before they arrive because I ordered them with an echeck to keep the costs as low as possible.
    I've been thinking I needed to do this for a while because Christmas will be here before long and I've been giving these to my Step-father as presents because he likes them but doesn't generally buy such things for himself. I've given him the first 5 coins in the series and I want to continue forward with giving him a complete set. I also want to have a complete set or two at least for myself at this point.
    Getting three of these at least gives me one to give to Choya and one each for my sons. I'm still interested in completing all five of the sets I've started in addition to the one I've been giving Choya, but I find myself rather behind in the series, and I don't want to tie up too much cash on just one entry in the series right now given that there's two other designs to catch up on and some other things, like the Zimbabwe note set, that I want to make a little more progress on before the year is over.
    Looking back on it, my distaste for the Falcons has cooled. I don't dislike them anymore but they still don't really impress me.
    The Yule still doesn't do much to excite me.
    The recently released White Lion of Mortimer, at least, is a solid entry in the series and I like it, though I honestly find it inferior to the Lion of England design that kicked off the series. I've always thought it a bit odd and interesting that there'd be two lions in the series. It does do a lot to renew my faith and interest in the series with 2 more designs to go before it's all over.
    A couple of people from my company's home office were in-town this week - one from Scotland and one from England. I brought in and showed them the Unicorn of Scotland and Lion of England rounds, which was fun. Neither of them collects coins, even English issues like these. The Scottish co-worker is a fan of Scottish independence so he's not a fan of anything with Elizabeth II on it, so that was a funny exchange to watch.
  23. Revenant
    Well, after 18 long months of him hitting 20% of his sales target, my former boss, the regional sales manager for North America, was canned about a month ago. In the month that has followed some things have come to light that have left me looking very good. This culminated on Friday in me being informed that I'm finally getting the raise I'd been hoping for in March, and it's actually better than what I'd been hoping for - it's more than a 20% increase over my current rate. I suspect, in some ways, this is in part an apology of 18 months of working 1-on-1 with a self-important looney toon as a supervisor - it's not fun. I also suspect it's partially to make sure I don't want to leave and go elsewhere.
    This drastically changes the path I thought things were going to be on, with my position increasingly safe for the time being and the potential that, in the near future, I could have subordinates of my own.
    This has, as you might imagine, lead to a lot of happiness and celebration over here. It also means that something that I've wanted to do all year has finally been green-lit, something that I've really wanted because it was important to me as a collector and a father - but more on that in the near future.
    More importantly, this means that we'll have a little more breathing room in our budget and be able to start rebuilding some of our savings again and wipe out some debts without having to strip all the fun out of life. So I'm definitely looking forward to that. My plan to finish paying off my loans is also back on, with a plan to finish paying them off before 2020 is over - maybe sooner.
    It has also re-ignited my wife's dreams of taking a cruise in about a year - sooner than we'd thought, even with her working some now. I can't really hold that enthusiasm and joy against her though. We haven't had a vacation in a while now - but that too sometimes comes with the territory of young children that don't travel easy. I guess I don't get to have all the fun in the wake of this news.  
  24. Revenant
    That much discussed and debated 1875 came in the mail Tuesday.
    I over-spent my coin budget a little bit to get it with the agreement that I wouldn’t buy anything for a month or so while my budget caught up with the spending. It’s a deal I’ve made in the past and one I made again because I’ve been worried that the current run-up in the gold price could continue and that could make the coins more expensive to buy in another month or so. Even so, it was a modest over-reach of my budget, just $200 or so.
    Like others I don’t think I’d get away with taking out a loan, a HELOC, or a mortgage for a coin, but I can pretty easily get away with buying something on the first day of a credit card billing cycle and making the bank give me a 50 day interest-free loan, because, why not? Add in the cashback and they're basically paying me to use the card.
    The collecting budget is going to be a little more generous in the final third of the year now that the short-term cash crisis caused by Sam’s birth is resolving - this is in no small part because my wife started a side-hustle that is already paying off in a big way. I'm hoping this might let some projects that are currently tabled to move forward again.
    My wife, ever one to tease me, joked Monday night saying, “So I get to keep it for a month until you’ve paid for it, right?” Like it was a layaway purchase. She does these things specifically to get a reaction out of me, but I usually don’t take the bait and didn’t this time. I just shrugged and said, “sure, if you want to.”
    For me, the important part was securing the coin for the set at a price I was happy paying. But, I’m still the father of two young sons. I don’t usually get hours to sit and look through coins anyway. It’s not uncommon for the coins in this set to spend a month or two in their box and not come out for air. So, the idea of this coin spending a month in a different box just doesn’t illicit a big response from me. Getting the coin in September or October still gives me more than enough time to get it in the registry set and get pictures taken and posted.
    But, it was all just to tease me anyway. She wanted me to take it when it arrived and enjoy it and she had no interest in keeping the thing shoved in her underwear drawer for the next month. So, the coin has joined the rest of the set, physically and electronically.
    The coin itself is quite attractive. I have a feeling I may actually like it more than the PCGS MS67 in overall look and I think the strike and / or die-state might even be nicer. Both this new MS66 and the PCGS MS67 have some die polish lines apparent on some parts of the field.
    I ended up being very happy that I didn’t try to wait and get that other MS66 in the old fatty holder when it was re-listed. Not only is the one I got a very nice coin, but the seller relisted that other one yesterday for $150 more than they were asking for before - $600 for the coin, when I picked up this one for just under $400. That was surprising.
    Sam will be 7 months old in a week. He’s about 13 pounds now - over 4 times his birth weight. He’s lagging behind on some developmental milestones but he’s making progress and getting physical therapy sessions every 2 weeks to track his progress and advise on how to help him  learn. But, he’s a happy baby most days. He slept his way through New York City with his mom last week.
  25. Revenant
    My mother and step-father paid me a visit today to see me and Ben.
    My step-father decided to bring out all of the birth year sets we've built and the Texas Commemorative set with them. This was prompted in part by the fact that I'd been getting the coins one or two boxes at a time to try to re-image some of the sets and get pictures of some of the coins I didn't have pictures of. In the process of this I found that it seemed like a few of the upgraded coins hadn't been inserted with their groups and we had some sorting problems. But this is probably the first time I've seen them all laid out on a table together in nearly 10 years - roughly 160 pieces - and that didn't include some other old random like coins that had been bumped from the set in favor of higher grade examples.
    I really should have snapped a picture of it all laid out with my cell phone but I didn't. Kicking myself for that a little.
    We found everything, swapped some coins out and sorted some down. Everything was there mostly but one 1993 quarter is inexplicably AWOL, probably hiding with some of the spares and the Susan B Anthony dollars that didn't get brought out. Hopefully he'll have no problem tracking that down when he gets home. I left a hole / slot open in that box to pop it in once he finds it. *fingers crossed*
    Just for fun I trotted out the 10G set just to lay it out next to the 1932 set. Those two sets are quite a thing to behold together - 7 and 6 coins respectively and the prides of my collection and my stepfather's respectively. The 1932 is worth more as a collection of coins but the 10G set has a higher melt value, is older, and some of the coins are arguably quite a bit rarer.