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. 😊

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. 😊

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.

To NGC and Staff members,
I wanted to get back to you for such a nice write-up you did featuring my Jefferson collection. I've often known I made no mistake selecting this company where the quality service is often the deciding factor. The members who put this together 'Thanks so much' it means alot. This was a very exciting journey for me- so many ways to collect in this series'I wanted to get a little of each type. As much as I'd of loved to complete this collection'due to my health issues-it would be very difficult for me now. However' I will keep checking back to view the new players in the Ngc Registy'- I enjoy reading their journals excited when finding a particular nickel. I wish all at Ngc the very best and I look forward to staying in touch with you. 
 Respectively' James G. Berline
PS: I'd love to hear from my old friends and new' text me when you get the time.
(attachment of my collection-safely secured in safe deposit box)
> My Email:   jb857450@charter.net

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.  

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.

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.

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.

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.
 

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.  

Well I barely got it under the wire but I remembered to utilize my $150 submission credit for my Premium Membership before it expired this year. I decided to use it to just add the final 5 silver $1 coins for my BU Bahamas sets.
The Bahamas BU silver series running from 1966 through 1973 has long been a favorite side-collection of mine. I had already completed the 50c coins with the dancing Marlin and the silver dollar sized $2 coins with the Flamingo couple in front of a setting sun ( both gorgeous designs to my eye) but had not completed the silver $1 series with the Conch shell lying among the coral bed. I guess that I'll go ahead and add the large $5 coins soon ( over 1.2 ASW per coin) since I actually own all of them already from the 2-dozen or so mint sets I have been using to assemble top sets with. Every coin in my 3 completed series/sets has come via my own submissions and crossed-finger grading.
Props to NGC for recognizing the variance in mints, finish and packaging for various years of these Bahamian issues and nailing the appropriate grading criteria. To start, the 1966, 1969 and 1970 coins were minted at The Royal Mint and each year had some packaging issues. The 1966 coins tended to bounce around in their mint-issued snap box and although BU, often have quite a few contact marks and scuffs. The 1969 coins are a bit of a disaster as they were in an ill-fitting, hard-plastic single, flat piece that allowed considerable friction on the coins even though remaining in an unopened mint packaging. The 1970 coins were placed in the snap box and managed to stay in place in their assigned concavity better than the 1966 coins, but the case was lined with that faux-velvet, red flocking which often comes loose of the case and attaches to the coins leaving residue and spots.
To give an idea of how much the variance in just packaging affects grades of the Bahamian Uncirculated Sets: my $1 conch series has grades of: 1969- MS64, 1966- MS65, 1971-MS66, 1973- MS67, 1970 MS68 and 1972- MS69.. I couldn't have done that if I tried.
In 1971 the Bahamas switched to the Franklin Mint for their national coinage and the quality is amazing. First of all, the 1971-73 Uncirculated silver coins were done in a matte finish ( long before the burnished look became in vogue for ASE collectors.) This matte finish truly is stunning with the cartwheel effect it plays in unison with the silver and light dancing around the coin as it's tilted in hand. A slight and often unnoticed design change also occurred on the obverse in 1971- the nation began referring to itself on its coinage as The Commonwealth of The Bahamas instead of the prior coin's inscriptions of "Bahamas Islands. "  On July 10th, 1973 the Bahamas officially became an independent nation ( I also own the $10 silver Bahamas coin from 1973 with their Independence day and sailing ship- a large 1.5 ounce silver coin.)
 
So back to the original title of this journal-- along with the remaining dollar coins to complete that series, I had a wonderful $2 Flamingo coin from 1972 that I believed would easily be an upgrade over my existing MS66 for that year.
There have now been 199 Bahamas $2 uncirculated coins submitted to NGC from the 1966 thru 73 series and I am proud to say, we now have a SINGLE Perfect MS70 in the books and encapsulated to stay that way. Without further ramblings-- here is the first picture of this scintillating beauty. Best of luck with your submissions my friends and as always, happy hunting........

My wife’s parents recently went on a trip to Europe - the Netherlands and parts of Italy / Rome. They asked about ideas of things to bring back for us / Ben. I linked them to the Penny Collector website and brought up the idea of bringing back some elongated cents for Ben’s penny book.
They got him a couple of pennies for his book.


I’m guessing they used Euro Cent coins for the press because they’re slightly larger than the ones we’ve been getting / making here and they just BARELY fit into the slots in the book. It was areal squeeze.


So, yeah… It’s a family thing now and I think that's going to stick.


I guess we'll see if I end up with a coin collector or an exonumia / elongated cent collector.

… when you deal with things that are priced close to melt anyway.
When I was shopping for an 1877 10G late last year the common dates in the series in MS65 and lower were going for about $275. That's not that much given that the coins had a melt value of about $242 with gold around $1200/oz.
I have an eBay saved search for these things that I keep active even at times like now when I'm not really actively hunting.
The other day a couple of auctions popped up for an MS61 1875 and MS62 1876. These are easily the two most common dates with the highest mintage and if it isn't MS65 it might as well not even be graded. Last year you would have been lucky to get $275 for these. So I laughed when I saw bidding starting at $350 for them.
Then I had to think about it...
With gold at about $1500/oz the melt on these things has gone up to about $300. So I still think $350 is a bit ambitious for these things - they're not going to recover those grading fees - but $325-330 is probably reasonable / achieve able and $350 isn't as crazy as I was thinking at first.
This window of cheap gold that we've been enjoying since about 2013/2014 might be closing for a while. (It fell from the highs in 2011 but it was coming down more gradually for a while after that.)
 

I was looking around at pop-culture news on the internet recently as I sometimes like to do, as nerds like me sometimes like to do, and I found an article saying that there’s going to be a Funko Pops movie - it’s going to try to piggy-back on the success of the Lego movies. This has me in the mood to rant a bit. So this is me being my best “super-judger,” as my wife would put it – anyone reading this is forewarned now.
It has been interesting to me that Lego sets have become collectable in recent years and that some of them have appreciated in value quite significantly - to the point that I’m now starting to see articles talking about them as “investments” and that economists have been doing complete studies and publishing papers about the returns they’ve realized. I think the whole thing is a ridiculous and insane bubble that is going to pop and leave some people in tears… but I’m getting off topic.
I like / love comics and comic characters and love watching the superhero movies - much to my wife’s chagrin - but I have not and likely will not ever buy one of these little Funko Pop figures, with their odd, cutesy, chibi-style artwork, that retail for about $8-15 each most of the time. I just see them as mas-produced plastic garbage, the likes of which we already have entirely too much of in the world already.
My brother-in-law does not share my view on this. He collects them, quite avidly. I’ve never been inside this room in their house and I’ve never witnessed it, but supposedly he has an entire room in their house full of boxes of these things. He has so many he has to store them in the boxes, and he can’t even pull them out and display them properly in a way that he might get some kind of enjoyment out of owning them. I find it vaguely insane.
One of the biggest head scratchers for me is that these things occupy a room in his house and my sister lets him get away with this. I think my wife would murder me if we had a room in our house that couldn’t even be used because I was using it just to store my collectables. The smallest room in our home serves multiple functions as an in-home office for me while also being the place where I store photography equipment, coins, coin books, gaming books, and we even keep a twin guest bed in there on top of it all.
At Christmas last year (2018) we got into a discussion about them and he claimed that some of them, some of the ones he has, can be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars. I think that if someone will actually give him that much for some of them, he should sell them now while the money is good and my sister agrees, but what do we know? I did some research after that conversation and found that there are a handful that collectors of these figures will pay $500 to up to $2,000 for, but these are almost all special, convention exclusive variants with limited productions of 500 or less. I didn’t see any of the off-the-shelf ones that he’s always asking for for Christmas on that list.
To me, these things are a fad. They’re not at all unlike beanie-babies, baseball cards, comics or anything else. They’re popular and new right now, you’re going to see some crazy prices for a while, but, eventually, those prices are going to pop, and they’ll probably never see those high prices again. I think this movie is going to help build-up, hype up and extend the life of that bubble, but, in the long-term, I see these things going the way of the do-do. I wouldn’t want to be collecting them and left holding the bag when that happens.
Don’t get me wrong - I know coin collecting has had its booms and busts over the decades as well and that’s something we all have to watch out for. However, I think those booms and busts in the modern context of coin collecting tend to be more contained to smaller sections of the broader market, in areas that I don’t currently participate in. I don’t think there’s a bubble in the 19th and 20th century European gold coins I’ve been buying for about 20-50% over the spot price of gold. I think we might one day see a crash in the values achieved by modern condition rarities, but I think that’s going to be a problem for people that collect those condition rarities. I guess we’ll see if I’m ever proven wrong there.
My brother-in-law compared his collection of these toys to my coin collecting at one point. Call me biased, but, no. These made-to-be-collected toys will never be the same as 18th, 19th, and early 20th century coinage. They don’t have the artistry. They don’t have the history.
It’s also odd to me though that he feels that his collecting experience is similar to mine. I don’t know if he spends time researching his collection beyond mere price-discovery activities, but it’s hard for me to imagine that there’s much to look into or research there (again, maybe this is my bias showing). But I spend a lot of time with my collection. I spend a lot of time researching it, reading about it, taking pictures of the coins and notes, writing about them here and elsewhere. His Funko Pops sit in boxes.

Some praises need to be sung for the people that hang out here.
A few weeks (maybe months at this point) Sheik Sheck offered to send me something for Sam and I got this a short time later:

This is a ZImbabwean P-9, 100 ZWD note. It's one of the few first dollar notes I didn't have a PMG graded example of. It also happens to be the series 2 note that has an image of elephants in the lower corner that is mirrored on the front and back of the note (elephants being the theme we chose for Sam's nursery and Ben's original favorite animal at the zoo - now he's obsessed with lions and tigers). The other notes feature different animals, like giraffe's and rhinos. I'd been trying to figure out which one, if any, had elephants when I got this in the mail and saw it. That is sitting in a small currency album for now. I'm debating either leaving it in there or putting it in a small floating mount frame and letting them look at it on the wall as they get older.
Another member had been sending me messages about and talking to me about the Zimbabwean notes - I won't name them because they don't post publicly so far as I can tell so I'm going to respect that. A friend of his gave him a pair of uncirculated Zimbabwean 100 Trillion notes along with some German hyperinflation notes from the early 1920s. I told him to buy that guy a drink if he sells the 100 trillion notes because he can get about $100-200 a piece for them. I also jokingly said that I was jealous of the German notes because I love hyperinflation notes in general and would be looking to get some of those one day. He didn't really want to keep them and didn't want to go through the effort to sell them so he offered to let me have them. USPS turned getting them into an adventure in the worst way possible but I'll avoid going off on that rant / tangent. I got them just recently. 

I think this may be one of the few times my wife has genuinely found something like this neat (she studied German in High School).
He also sent these with the notes for Sam / the boys.

I'll call them "replicas" and not "fakes" - they're actually marked to indicate that they aren't real. According to the sender, they were a in friend's father's collection and he had a habit of buying things off infomercials while drunk - but the rest of his collection, which was real, went for $20,000+ when he helped the son sell it. Moral of the story: Don't watch infomercials while drunk? 
I could see Ben more so than Sam having some fun with these at the moment. Sam will probably like them in 2-3 years - though, he is a baby and the are shiny. Since I have the real things too these may ultimately be used as fun teaching tools.
I really appreciate those of you who read these things and like them, and I love that there are people out there in this community that just freely offer and share things like this. I think this kind of thing deserves props.

We've been to the zoo a couple more times and gotten Ben a couple of new pennies. This almost immediately brought forward the idea of how do we help him not lose them and keep track of all of them? So I decided to see what I could get on Amazon. I was able to find some "Penny Passport" books for a good price. A seller was offering 1 for about $7.80 and a set of 3 for $15 so I just bought a group of three. I figured, one for him, one for me, and one for Sam and we'll all do it together over time. Each album holds 36 pennies so I'll just get more as needed. They each come with 1 random elongated cent. I let Ben decide which one each one of us got. I have a feeling in a few years Ben might have some regrets when he realizes that he gave Sam the one for Roswell, New Mexico with the flying saucer on it, but he took the one from the San Antonio zoo for himself.

Recently Ben has been a bit spoiled by both his grandparents and us and almost every day he looks to see if there's a package that's been delivered with a "surprise" for him. This is partially my fault because for a few days we were getting several packages with things like water guns that he's finally old enough to start playing with. Expectations will have to be recalibrated but I'll deal with that later. But all of this meant we had to "find" the package on the porch (even though I'd gotten it from the mailbox earlier) and open it together.

All and all I'd say he was excited.

Later on, at bed time, he wanted to take it to bed with him. The next day, when they were getting ready to go to the children's museum, he wanted to take it with him to that.
I'll have to see if I can convince my wife to let me sneak a few extra the next time we go so I can catch up with him in the books / collection. (the wife: "It's not a competition." … "It totally is.")
I have 3 old elongated cents from my child hood from Moody Gardens, the San Jacinto Monument, and the Battleship Texas. I'd considered putting those in this new album. But, when I found them, I found that my younger self hadn't done a very good job with handling and storage and they all look a bit green. I'm considering excluding those, especially given their condition and just starting fresh, doing this with Ben and Sam.

We've been to the zoo a couple more times and gotten Ben a couple of new pennies. This almost immediately brought forward the idea of how do we help him not lose them and keep track of all of them? So I decided to see what I could get on Amazon. I was able to find some "Penny Passport" books for a good price. A seller was offering 1 for about $7.80 and a set of 3 for $15 so I just bought a group of three. I figured, one for him, one for me, and one for Sam and we'll all do it together over time. Each album holds 36 pennies so I'll just get more as needed. They each come with 1 random elongated cent. I let Ben decide which one each one of us got. I have a feeling in a few years Ben might have some regrets when he realizes that he gave Sam the one for Roswell, New Mexico with the flying saucer on it, but he took the one from the San Antonio zoo for himself.

Recently Ben has been a bit spoiled by both his grandparents and us and almost every day he looks to see if there's a package that's been delivered with a "surprise" for him. This is partially my fault because for a few days we were getting several packages with things like water guns that he's finally old enough to start playing with. Expectations will have to be recalibrated but I'll deal with that later. But all of this meant we had to "find" the package on the porch (even though I'd gotten it from the mailbox earlier) and open it together.

All and all I'd say he was excited.

Later on, at bed time, he wanted to take it to bed with him. The next day, when they were getting ready to go to the children's museum, he wanted to take it with him to that.
I'll have to see if I can convince my wife to let me sneak a few extra the next time we go so I can catch up with him in the books / collection. (the wife: "It's not a competition." … "It totally is.")
I have 3 old elongated cents from my child hood from Moody Gardens, the San Jacinto Monument, and the Battleship Texas. I'd considered putting those in this new album. But, when I found them, I found that my younger self hadn't done a very good job with handling and storage and they all look a bit green. I'm considering excluding those, especially given their condition and just starting fresh, doing this with Ben and Sam.

Looking back, I made the first entry into this journal on June 14, 2007, when I was not quite 21 years old (clocking in at 32 now, with a receding hairline. Oh, how it does sting a bit). 
 
This was 10 years before NGC would switch to the new (current) journal format and we’d gain the ability to give a unique name to our journals. I’ve given some thought over time to what I think I’d like to call this (other than just “Revenant” or “Revenant’s Journal”) and I think I’ve settled on an answer: 
“When I’m Wiser and I’m Older.” 
 
It’s a reference to a song by Avicii that I’ve loved ever since the first time that I heard it, called “Wake me up.” The first versus and the chorus of the song are as follows: 
 
Feeling my way through the darkness 
Guided by a beating heart 
I can't tell where the journey will end 
But I know where to start 
They tell me I'm too young to understand 
They say I'm caught up in a dream 
Well life will pass me by if I don't open up my eyes 
Well that's fine by me 
 
So wake me up when it's all over 
When I'm wiser and I'm older 
All this time I was finding myself, and I 
Didn't know I was lost 
 
I had this idea when thinking about a comment I made about the hobby and life being a journey and the self-discovery aspect of that on thisistheshow’s journal entry a few months ago. 
 
The part of the song I’ve always loved are the last two lines of the chorus, “all this time I was finding myself and I didn’t know I was lost.” I feel like that fits well with my experience and the changes I’ve undergone in the last 12 years – spanned and covered somewhat unevenly by this journal. 
It's hard to think of a core aspect of myself that hasn’t changed much since this journal was started. I’ve gone from being a single, 20-year-old, undergrad college student to being a married father of two, with a PhD, 7 published peer-reviewed papers. The things that were the all-consuming focus of my collecting life 10 years ago are almost an afterthought at the moment as I pursue radically different endeavors.
 
It’ll be interesting to see what I’m doing in another 10 years and if I’m still writing entries here. 
 
Naming the PMG journal “Gradually, then suddenly,” to match my signature set was pretty easy comparatively. That collection of entries / writings basically exists as a testament to  my obsession with those notes and hyperinflation notes in general – and, one of these days, when I’ve completed or mostly completed the Zimbabwe set, I am going to expand to include Yugoslavian, Venezuelan, Hungarian, Argentinian and other hyperinflation notes. At least, that’ll be the plan / hope. 
 
Who knows? Maybe one of these days all of this will offer my sons some insight into how my head works. 

Looking back, I made the first entry into this journal on June 14, 2007, when I was not quite 21 years old (clocking in at 32 now, with a receding hairline. Oh, how it does sting a bit). 
 
This was 10 years before NGC would switch to the new (current) journal format and we’d gain the ability to give a unique name to our journals. I’ve given some thought over time to what I think I’d like to call this (other than just “Revenant” or “Revenant’s Journal”) and I think I’ve settled on an answer: 
“When I’m Wiser and I’m Older.” 
 
It’s a reference to a song by Avicii that I’ve loved ever since the first time that I heard it, called “Wake me up.” The first versus and the chorus of the song are as follows: 
 
Feeling my way through the darkness 
Guided by a beating heart 
I can't tell where the journey will end 
But I know where to start 
They tell me I'm too young to understand 
They say I'm caught up in a dream 
Well life will pass me by if I don't open up my eyes 
Well that's fine by me 
 
So wake me up when it's all over 
When I'm wiser and I'm older 
All this time I was finding myself, and I 
Didn't know I was lost 
 
I had this idea when thinking about a comment I made about the hobby and life being a journey and the self-discovery aspect of that on thisistheshow’s journal entry a few months ago. 
 
The part of the song I’ve always loved are the last two lines of the chorus, “all this time I was finding myself and I didn’t know I was lost.” I feel like that fits well with my experience and the changes I’ve undergone in the last 12 years – spanned and covered somewhat unevenly by this journal. 
It's hard to think of a core aspect of myself that hasn’t changed much since this journal was started. I’ve gone from being a single, 20-year-old, undergrad college student to being a married father of two, with a PhD, 7 published peer-reviewed papers. The things that were the all-consuming focus of my collecting life 10 years ago are almost an afterthought at the moment as I pursue radically different endeavors.
 
It’ll be interesting to see what I’m doing in another 10 years and if I’m still writing entries here. 
 
Naming the PMG journal “Gradually, then suddenly,” to match my signature set was pretty easy comparatively. That collection of entries / writings basically exists as a testament to  my obsession with those notes and hyperinflation notes in general – and, one of these days, when I’ve completed or mostly completed the Zimbabwe set, I am going to expand to include Yugoslavian, Venezuelan, Hungarian, Argentinian and other hyperinflation notes. At least, that’ll be the plan / hope. 
 
Who knows? Maybe one of these days all of this will offer my sons some insight into how my head works. 

My wife hit upon the idea of putting coins / spare change in some of the eggs for the Easter egg hunt we set up for Benjamin late in the day on Easter Sunday. We had dinner with her parents and then did an egg hunt just for him in the back yard around 6:30 or so. Shandy came up with the idea of letting him have money in some of his eggs completely on her own. It was her idea. I had nothing to do with it – I swear! Some of the eggs hand your standard fair – jelly beans, chocolate kisses, Reese’s peanut butter cups – and some of them had quarters, nickels and dimes.

Ben was quite excited to have the money in some of his eggs. As he started emptying them, I got him 2 zip-lock sandwich bags = one for the coins and one for the candy. I’ll admit that I wasn’t totally thrilled about him touching the coins and the candy together / one after another while stuffing his face. Pocket change isn’t terribly clean / sanitary, but I guess the germs will be good for him in the long run.

He didn’t even get half way through opening the many, many eggs they left for him to find before he got bored and went back to playing. When the family asked what was in his basket it went a bit like this:

“What was in your Easter basket?”

“EGGS!”

“Okay… What was in the eggs?”

“Lots of money!! … and lots of candy.”

Seriously – he said money first. Like he was more excited about the coins than the candy.

Interesting… This has potential.

We’ll have to empty the rest of them later. He’ll be hopped up on sugar for days. The coins will go into the puppy.

...And now I have it! A search encompassing a fair number of years has culminated with the purchase of an MS-61 1882-H Newfoundland $2 gold coin. This is like a dream come true from the first time I knew that this coin existed until now. FYI, I bought the book, "The Gold Coins of Newfoundland 1865-1888" shortly after it was published in 2017.

In 1865 the Royal Mint began striking new coins exclusively for Newfoundland including a $2 gold coin for a then population of 122,631 people. You will notice the conversion values for this coin on the reverse of 200 cents/100 pence. This is related to Newfoundland's coinage being based on the British Pound well before Great Britain adopted the decimal  system for its currency. Thus there was 240 pence to the pound which converted to $4.80 in Newfoundland currency.

The Newfoundland $2 gold coins were struck for circulation irregularly between 1865 and 1888 from a low mintage of 2,500 to a high mintage of 25,000. Incidentally my coin has a mintage of 25,000. The 1882 coin also has an H mintmark denoting that it was struck at the Heaton Mint in Birmingham. This coin was designed to be nearly equivalent to the American Gold Eagle which also circulated in Newfoundland. A US gold eagle contained 0.48375 ounces of gold while the 0.91666 fine Newfoundland $2 coin  had 0.0981 ounces of pure gold. Thus the Newfoundland $2 gold coin was worth $2.0277 US dollars. The diameter of the Newfoundland $2 coin is 17.983mm and the weight is 3.328 grams.

I have been looking for a suitable yet affordable example of this coin for many years. My problem is that this coin is scarce and was popular as a circulating coin. Thus there are very few nice looking coins to be had. I had decided that if I was going to pay good money for this coin, I wanted it to look nice. With only a handful of MS-65 coins and steep prices for an MS-64 coin, I was looking for something in the AU-58 to MS-62 range. Without really looking too hard this coin popped up on e-bay with a best-offer option. I put forth my best offer and it was a sale. The gold toning on this coin gives it contrast. As such it is a very nice looking coin with lots of eye appeal. Gary

In fairness to a seller that I have and now continue to do business with I think I need to take back my earlier assessment that they overcharged my wife when she bought that ungraded Zimbabwean 20 Trillion Note for $60. 
 
I guess the thing that should have been my first clue was that they’ve always offered returns and gave us a perfect, no-fuss return on the note and I’ve always been able to get very reasonable prices from them on so many other things, including most of my other Zimbabwe notes. 
 
In saying that they overcharged her I was thinking about what paid for most of my Trillions notes back in late 2015. It would appear, since that time, the Trillions notes specifically have appreciated in value. As I’ve been shopping around, I’ve seen other sellers asking that much for the note and some asking quite a bit more. 
 
I can’t find the records of the sale anymore, but I think when I bought my 100 Trillion note in 67EPQ a few years ago I paid about $35-40 for it. The other trillions notes that I have are 65EPQ or 66EPQ and I got them for about $20-25 if I remember right. The other day I saw one of the 100 Trillion notes in 65EPQ sell for $95 (+$6 shipping) with another recently getting $92 (+$8 shipping), putting the price around $100 for a 65EPQ. These weren’t BIN sales. These were auctions with the bidders getting to determine the final price. 65EPQs have achieved up to $142 recently after shipping and it looks like 66EPQs have achieved up to $170. A 67EPQ sold recently for $350, and, I won’t lie, that one shocked me. 
 
I am very glad that I bought examples of the Trillions notes when I did and got them for the kinds of prices that I did. If I was shopping for them today, I don’t think I’d ever be able to buy them. I could just never imagine or get behind spending the same amount on that 100 Trillion note that I did to get that 1886A 20 Franc - more than what I paid to get my long sought after 1877 10G. As it was, it was a stretch for me to pay what I did back in the day. I only did that to get a graded example and I wanted a high grade because that note was inevitably going to be a highlight / centerpiece of the set I was hoping to build. 
 
I feel like there is a crazy but cool message about subjective valuation here. A coin with 130 years of history and nearly a fifth of a troy ounce of gold vs a 10-year-old piece of paper with ink and a lot of zeros on it, but, to the right people, they can both be sold for $300+. Of course, I know there are people out there that pay $8,000+ for US Education Series notes and people out there that pay $100,000+ for 1932 double eagles, so maybe this shouldn't surprise me as much as it does. I think part of it for me is the fact that those old notes and coins are actually fairly rare. These 100 Trillion notes still seem almost as common as sand on the beach. You still see people selling even the 100 Trillion note by the brick. It's hard for me to wrap my head around that valuation when they're still seemingly just so excessively available.
 
My wife has attempted to mess with my head by suggesting that I might want to sell the Trillions notes at these higher prices and use the money to pick up some gold coins - like an old British Sovereign or an 19th Century Italian 20 Lira, both of which are pieces I’d like to own. I’d likely be more tempted by this if not for the fact that I’m trying to build the set out more, note liquidate it, and getting rid of the Trillions notes would be quite a blow to the set. 
 
The higher prices are largely confined to the four Trillions issues (the 10, 20, 50 and 100 Trillion notes, P-88 through P-91) but the 100 Trillion issue in particular. Most of the other issues in the third dollar series can be purchased raw for a $5 or less and graded 65-67EPQ by PMG for $15-25 - barely more than the grading fees. That as much as anything is what threw me off at first. I was seeing low prices for everything else and what feels like moon-money for the Trillion series. But, clearly, for those notes, some people are willing to pay it. 
 
At $15-20 for a graded note I’m definitely a buyer of this series. I enjoy them and they’re worth it to me at that level. I feel like I don’t have to feel bad about spending it or worry about taking a bath on re-selling them later if I decide to. At $25-30 and above I have a harder time going for them. I have paid up to $40 for some first dollar issues in the past and I may do that again to get my hands on a few rarer, older, issues for that set when and if the time comes, but I don’t think I’ll ever spend much more than that for one of these. At that price, as my wife recently pointed out when we were talking, I can get some nice silver rounds and government bullion issues - sometimes already graded by NGC - and I feel like the silver content of those makes them a better value proposition over time – and, on the whole, I enjoy shiny metal more than paper.