Revenant

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all! Nothing I collect has drawn more attention from outside interests than my Laura Gardin Fraser collection of coins and medals. For instance, my set entitled “The Coins and Medals of Laura Gardin Fraser” won NGC’s “2016 Most Creative Custom Set” award. Additionally, I’ve had numerous requests relating to this set, from permission to publish my pictures to a request to repatriate an awarded medal back to the recipient’s family. I’ve also had solicitations from cold contacts to purchase scarce medals, one of which is in my collection today. Furthermore, I am privileged to own two medals previously owned by the Frasers. 
On top of that, I gave a Money Talks presentation on Laura Gardin Fraser at the 2019 ANA World Fair of Money show in Chicago and a podcast interview with Coin World magazine. Still, it’s the contacts and friends I have made along the way that means the most to me. 
Now, I am being honored by a museum. The Vrijheids Museum (Freedom Museum) in the Netherlands asked me to loan them a medal from my collection for an exhibit they will be running until October 2022. That medal is Laura Gardin Fraser’s 1913 Better Babies Medal. The exhibit will detail the worldwide rise of eugenic philosophy in the early 20th century. 
The Better Babies contests sought to educate parents in early childhood development and hygiene to combat the high infant mortality rate at the dawn of the 20th century. Better Babies contests were conducted at well-known venues like county and state fairs. Babies entered into the competitions were judged against specific scientific standards of early childhood development. The Better Babie medal was among several awards that parents and their babies could win by entering these contests. One of my problems with Better Babies is that infants were being judged at fairs, much like livestock. Thankfully, today, a healthy baby is a parents’ reward through well-baby exams measured by scientific standards at the pediatrician’s office. 
Another problem with Better Babies and other programs like it was that they opened the door to eugenic movements here in the US and around the world. Sadly, the logical end to eugenics leads to racism, forced sterilizations, abortions, human breeding, and ethnic cleansing. Some say that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. History demonstrates this to be true with Better Babies. 
Coins and medals have stories to tell. Sometimes I wish that Laura Gardin Fraser hadn’t been tasked to design this medal. Then again, collectors hoping to uncover history through the coins and medals they collect must chronicle the good with the bad. We are not to whitewash history but to tell the truth and learn from history. I have learned things in the coins and medals I collect that they didn’t teach me in school. I hope that the Freedom museum will do likewise with its eugenics exhibit. 
I’ve had several e-mail conversations with a museum intern to iron out the details of my loaning them the Better Babies medal. The top issue was how my medal would be portrayed in a eugenics exhibit. The following paragraph will quote the intern’s response word for word, to which I heartily agreed. 
From January 2022 till October 2022 we will have an exhibition in our museum about a group of people European societies classified as “antisocial”. In occupied Europe during world war 2, people who received this label could be sent to concentration camps and/or be killed. Most of this was done in the name of eugenics, as these “antisocial” people were not viewed as having the “right” traits (according to some people), which meant they should not reproduce (sadly, similar to Jewish people). We would like to show that not only Nazi Germany had a eugenics movement, but many countries around the world as well. With your medal, we would like to show how eugenics movements came into being in other countries. With our exhibition, we would like to warn visitors about eugenics movements and the seemingly innocent thoughts that precede them. We think your medal would be a good addition to our story and exhibition. 
If anyone is curious, I didn’t end up returning the “National Institute Of Social Sciences” medal to the family of its awardee, Clara D. Noyes. However, I promised to sell the medal back to the family if I found a replacement. Unfortunately, this medal is rarely available for sale, and I have not found a replacement. Interestingly, the family member that contacted me wrote a biography on Clara D. Noyes and graciously sent me a signed copy. 
Again, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Gary
P.S. In a future blog, I’ll be posting pictures of my medal in its exhibit. I just hope that COVID won’t ruin things by keeping people out of the Freedom Museum in the Netherlands ☹  

Here is another coin that Mark recently shot photos of for me.  This one I was able to get good photos of myself but not as sharp or with with the subtle color showing as well. 
 

I found a seller offering some old, Franklin Mint, “Coin Sets of the World” cards for Zimbabwe that had the coins from 1C to $1. Some of them were made in the 1990s and some of them had less-appealing coins with some spotting, but they had a couple – at a slightly higher price, but still only about $11 for a coin set - that had only coins from 1980-1983, that were clean, pretty, and spot-free per the listing and “nearly perfect.”

I saw these and decided to snap them up, initially thinking, “SCORE! This could get me examples of the older, non-steel-clad type coins I need!” … Except, to do that, I’d have to rip up the cards and cannibalize the sets… and the more I thought about that, I wasn’t entirely comfortable doing that. I snapped these up and I think I was having 2nd thoughts about breaking them up within 5 minutes of hitting “Confirm.”
I wasn’t sure I could feel good about destroying these cards and sets with their little cancelled stamps that are dated within a month of my wife’s 1st birthday, stamped in Harare only a few short years (about 5) after it became known as “Harare” and not “Salisbury.”
I was thinking I’d just need to find another source for older coins to grade and keep these and enjoy these as-is, maybe finding some way to keep them in the binder where I’ll be keeping the rest of the Z coins I’m going to leave raw.
Then they arrived in the mail, and I got to see them in-hand…

1)  These are incredibly neat, fun to hold fun to look at, collectables, and I think I’ll enjoy having them as part of the overall collection, even if they don’t all go towards what I bought them for.
But…
2) Some of the coins in these from 1980 and 1983 are GORGEOUS. These things look so much better even than most of the coins I’ve been getting from 2001-2003. I think some of these could get MS65 or MS66 grades and these coins could make the registry set I’m trying to build just rock-solid.
I decided to try to pick up more of these old Franklin Mint cards with coins dating from 1980-1988 and, having acquired 3-4, pick one or two with really solid looking coins to cannibalize while leaving the others intact. I think that will be a good compromise that I could feel good about.

While shopping those I found some other sets the seller had that had coins mostly from 2001-2002, that, if they contained similarly good-looking coins to the Franklin Mint sets, could help me upgrade or bulk-up my set on the post-2000, steel-clad types and get some grades above MS63.


And then I saw something else that made my jaw drop… Similar, 7-coin sets, with no $5 coins, but which were made up of almost all coins from 1997… but these sets had 1997 $2 coins, that looked like they might be shiny, pretty, mint state coins where every other $2 coin I’ve seen either looks like an ugly dog or is a 2001-2003 dated steel-clad coin, not this one-year brass type.

I caught Shandy in a good mood, did some light begging, and got to order 2 more of the Franklin sets, 2 of the 8-coin sets with mostly 2001-2002 coins and 2 of the 7-coin mostly 1997 sets with those conditionally uncommon $2 coins.

At this point my plan was to pick the 2 best of the four Franklin Mint Sets, the best of the 8-coin sets, and the 7-coin set with the best looking 1997 $2 coin and use those to build out the rest of what I want to send to NGC in early 2022.
Some of these – but not all, because I’ve gotten “losers” in every batch I’ve bought so far because that is the nature of this - would be going in instead of some of the ones Shandy and I had picked previously. Some of those previously selected coins (the $1 and $2 bond coins especially) would still be going in for grading for sure. We’d look at the old ones and the ones that came in these new sets and choose the best one again, continuing to try to refine / improve the quality of the group for submission as we find more / better coins.
*Picks the best set* “I think this one is the winner!” “What’s the prize for winning?” “DEATH!” *Scissors*

That was the plan... but some drama emerged with that order... and this post is long enough as it is. So, I’ll continue this story with the next post... with all of that fully resolved.
 
Slightly random aside, but does “Mint” not mean what I think it means? Is “Mint Condition” not the same as “Uncirculated?” Because the seller on these said they were, “MINT and possibly uncirculated.” I mean, isn’t that redundant? Like… What the hay, Man? If I were wrong that could go a long way towards my unhappiness with that first round of “MINT” 10-coin sets. Later on, on the listing for a card with 6 coins in it, the listing says, “All seven coins are Uncirculated.” I’m mostly willing to chalk some of this up to copy&paste errors since the seller lists a lot of these “Coin Sets of All Nations” cards, but… You high, Bro?

(You thought that meme was a one-off when posting about the offer on the house on 4-20 and it wouldn’t come up again... You were wrong!)
Another funny aside on this, but, when I ordered the first Franklin mint sets, I joked with Shandy that they could maybe make good stocking stuffers for me because the card was 5x8…. The INFORMATION CARD, that comes with them is 5x8. The card the set is in is… a lot bigger. It’s actually about 8x11.5 inches, about the size of a piece of A4 paper. No chance of getting that in any Stocking I’ve ever seen.

In early November I caught a post on reddit about the "Flying Nude" 20C Italian coins that were made until about 1924, that are more accurately called "Liberty in Flight." Also apparently called “Liberta Librata” (“Hovering Freedom”) according to Numista.
The original post was joking about the fact that the type 1 SLQ wasn't the only "scandalous" coin from the era / “The US didn’t have a monopoly on ‘scandalous’ designs.’ I find this a little funny as a claim when you actually look at the coin. I also think it’s more than a little funny that early 20th century Europeans / Italians were probably a lot less prudish about artistic nudity than early 20th century Americans or 21st century Americans. Seriously – it's a tiny-non-detailed boob on a coin smaller than a US nickel.
In either case, the design makes it clear that "Liberty" is wrapped in a cloth and a line above the bust makes it clear that the intent of the design is that she's covered - unlike the Type 1 SLQ – so the “nude” description probably isn’t even accurate. The whole "blowing in the wind" look just makes it a very form-revealing look. Anyway... I digress! It happens sometimes when you’re a pedantic nerd with, among other things, an A.A. in Visual Art.
I had never seen one of these before, and, when I realized it was Italian, I showed it to Shandy, and she thought it was pretty. I pretty much immediately wanted to get one or two to look at in-person together.
She did like it. It is a gorgeous coin design in my opinion and hers.
I ended up securing a pretty nice looking 1910 and 1913 for $4-5 each, and a 1918 & 1919 20 C that had a different design and a 1922 1 Lire - another very beautiful design that reminds me of the old, seated liberty coinage.





All in I spent about $30 on the 5 coins - the 1 lira was by far the most expensive at about $13, but I had a hard time finding a cheaper one that didn't look harshly cleaned, and the one I got looked very nice. All and all a fun and cheap way to add some new variety to the raw collection for a country my wife has such affinity for.
While I was shopping those, I also found some French coins from 1918 that looked cool and I spent about $10 snapping these up alongside the Italian coins, thinking they would make interesting companion pieces for that 1913 Gold 20F coin I have.



While a lot gets made about the expense of this hobby and how expensive it can be to duke it out in the Registries, collecting 20th century modern coins raw can still be very fun and inexpensive. You can get coins from 110 years ago for $4 - or less. I think I could have “done better” shopping at coin shows but, with gas getting close to $3 a gallon in Houston, there’s something to be said about not having to drive 30-50 miles to a coin show and pay at the door to get in and hope the dealers brought what you’re hoping to buy.
All in I think I spent about $300 getting hundreds of Zimbabwean coins slowly over a span of about 6 months and I've gotten a lot of fun and joy out of looking through them, alone and with Shandy, to find material for grading for that set. And I'm going to like having a lot of Raw ones in addition to the final graded set when this is all said and done. It wasn't originally my plan to have quite as many as I now do... but... I'll take it!
I had been tempted to go a ‘little’ nuts and get a bunch of these “Flying Liberty” coins in a variety of dates, but I managed to dial myself back. I always have a problem with my eyes getting big and going off on wild tangents and having “scope-explosion” problems.
In some respects that fact that these are cheap – cheap enough to be seen as minor impulse buys – becomes its own problem when you are a collector and you think things are neat and you just want everything. Small purchases can add up quickly – it's like the coin version of getting coffee at Starbucks every morning (and lemon cake... yummy, delicious, lemon cake... where was I? ).
Of course, part of the REAL reason I dialed myself back - on this - was so I could “go nuts” in another area. More on that in a few days – I do try to keep these entries smaller and digestible and space them out as to not be overwhelming. 
As some of you may gather as I post my next couple of entries, I haven’t had the best success at making myself stick to my normal budget in the last couple of months (October and November) and Shandy hasn’t tried too hard to stop me – once or twice even encouraging me as with the Kookaburra. But, she knows everything I do, and I ask permission and not forgiveness… which is probably why my head is still attached to my neck.
As part of looking at these ‘new’ (100+ year old) French and Italian coins and looking at all the raw Zimbabwean coins I also grabbed out and had another look through the binder with most of my raw world coins, including a lot of modern Italian coins, British coins, French coins, Greek coins, Indian coins, Argentinian coins, and German coins, some from her family's travels, some from my family's travels and some from our travels together. And there are some of these that I just really enjoy looking at.

I continue to work and getting better at taking my own coin photos and slowly am getting better.   But when I want some really good photos, like the kind I want for the coins in my three first place registry sets; I go to the professional Mark Goodman.   I have used three or four pro photographers in the past and a couple others were very good, but I have always felt that Mark was the very best of all those I have tried.   Anyway here are a couple of compilation photos of some of my registry coins that I wanted to have better photos of than I was able to produce.    All together I sent Mark 12 coins to image and as usual could not be happier with the results.   I'll add new entries to show each coin from this group and I plan to keep this going as I have plans to send Mark more coins in the first part of 2022.
Ok enough with the hype lets get to the coins.   First is a new addition this year to my 1st place 1940 year set, this is one beautiful walker if I say so myself.   Mark was able to bring out the subtle color and showcase the luster perfectly.   This MS67+ CAC green bean coin is really stunning and a great addition to my set.

In early November I caught a post on reddit about the "Flying Nude" 20C Italian coins that were made until about 1924, that are more accurately called "Liberty in Flight." Also apparently called “Liberta Librata” (“Hovering Freedom”) according to Numista.
The original post was joking about the fact that the type 1 SLQ wasn't the only "scandalous" coin from the era / “The US didn’t have a monopoly on ‘scandalous’ designs.’ I find this a little funny as a claim when you actually look at the coin. I also think it’s more than a little funny that early 20th century Europeans / Italians were probably a lot less prudish about artistic nudity than early 20th century Americans or 21st century Americans. Seriously – it's a tiny-non-detailed boob on a coin smaller than a US nickel.
In either case, the design makes it clear that "Liberty" is wrapped in a cloth and a line above the bust makes it clear that the intent of the design is that she's covered - unlike the Type 1 SLQ – so the “nude” description probably isn’t even accurate. The whole "blowing in the wind" look just makes it a very form-revealing look. Anyway... I digress! It happens sometimes when you’re a pedantic nerd with, among other things, an A.A. in Visual Art.
I had never seen one of these before, and, when I realized it was Italian, I showed it to Shandy, and she thought it was pretty. I pretty much immediately wanted to get one or two to look at in-person together.
She did like it. It is a gorgeous coin design in my opinion and hers.
I ended up securing a pretty nice looking 1910 and 1913 for $4-5 each, and a 1918 & 1919 20 C that had a different design and a 1922 1 Lire - another very beautiful design that reminds me of the old, seated liberty coinage.





All in I spent about $30 on the 5 coins - the 1 lira was by far the most expensive at about $13, but I had a hard time finding a cheaper one that didn't look harshly cleaned, and the one I got looked very nice. All and all a fun and cheap way to add some new variety to the raw collection for a country my wife has such affinity for.
While I was shopping those, I also found some French coins from 1918 that looked cool and I spent about $10 snapping these up alongside the Italian coins, thinking they would make interesting companion pieces for that 1913 Gold 20F coin I have.



While a lot gets made about the expense of this hobby and how expensive it can be to duke it out in the Registries, collecting 20th century modern coins raw can still be very fun and inexpensive. You can get coins from 110 years ago for $4 - or less. I think I could have “done better” shopping at coin shows but, with gas getting close to $3 a gallon in Houston, there’s something to be said about not having to drive 30-50 miles to a coin show and pay at the door to get in and hope the dealers brought what you’re hoping to buy.
All in I think I spent about $300 getting hundreds of Zimbabwean coins slowly over a span of about 6 months and I've gotten a lot of fun and joy out of looking through them, alone and with Shandy, to find material for grading for that set. And I'm going to like having a lot of Raw ones in addition to the final graded set when this is all said and done. It wasn't originally my plan to have quite as many as I now do... but... I'll take it!
I had been tempted to go a ‘little’ nuts and get a bunch of these “Flying Liberty” coins in a variety of dates, but I managed to dial myself back. I always have a problem with my eyes getting big and going off on wild tangents and having “scope-explosion” problems.
In some respects that fact that these are cheap – cheap enough to be seen as minor impulse buys – becomes its own problem when you are a collector and you think things are neat and you just want everything. Small purchases can add up quickly – it's like the coin version of getting coffee at Starbucks every morning (and lemon cake... yummy, delicious, lemon cake... where was I? ).
Of course, part of the REAL reason I dialed myself back - on this - was so I could “go nuts” in another area. More on that in a few days – I do try to keep these entries smaller and digestible and space them out as to not be overwhelming. 
As some of you may gather as I post my next couple of entries, I haven’t had the best success at making myself stick to my normal budget in the last couple of months (October and November) and Shandy hasn’t tried too hard to stop me – once or twice even encouraging me as with the Kookaburra. But, she knows everything I do, and I ask permission and not forgiveness… which is probably why my head is still attached to my neck.
As part of looking at these ‘new’ (100+ year old) French and Italian coins and looking at all the raw Zimbabwean coins I also grabbed out and had another look through the binder with most of my raw world coins, including a lot of modern Italian coins, British coins, French coins, Greek coins, Indian coins, Argentinian coins, and German coins, some from her family's travels, some from my family's travels and some from our travels together. And there are some of these that I just really enjoy looking at.

Last time I talked about seeing that post about the old, early 20th Century 20 Centesimi Italian coins and going shopping for some raw Italian coins.
While doing this I got the idea to look to see if there were any nice, pretty, NGC-graded Italian coins that I could get for good prices. I thought she might like that – some cool MS coin if they were out there to be had.
I did a bit of eBaying and found a couple of sellers with MS66 to MS68 Italian coins from the 1980s and 1990s – mostly 50 Lire, 100 Lire, 200 Lire, and 500 Lire coins. I screen-capped some of them, sent them to her and asked Shandy what coins she liked the most. Somewhat to my surprise, she said she liked the 500 Lire bi-metallic the most. Remember that one? I made a post about it earlier this year after finding several in the coins from her father.
I really thought I’d get a little reaction out her on the 50 Lire with Vulcan’s naked butt, but no dice. She doesn’t like the face on the obverse as much. Way to kill a good joke, Love.
While we were having that conversation, I also got the idea to check to see if there were any categories for Italian coins from this era and what the competition looked like. I saw that the competition was a fair bit stiffer for the 100 Lira, but It would only take 1-2 coins each in the right grades to take the top spots in the 50 Lira and 500 Lira categories. I think these were / are new categories for 2021 so not a lot of sets, not a lot of coins and not a lot of fight to snag them. It would only cost me about $130 to snap up three coins and take a stab at winning those 2 categories, and I loved the idea. I immediately wanted to try to win those categories with set names and descriptions dedicating the sets to her. I was really in love with this idea.
So, since I’d need to go outside of my normal budget to pull this off and do it in time for the awards cut-off, I told her about the idea – actually got her to happy cry over it – and got the greenlight from her to do it / go for it / try to win these. I think it would have been more romantic to have just gone and done it and told her about it after the fact if I’d pulled it off, but 1) As I’ve said, I ask permission, not forgiveness, and that does good things for my marriage, 2) I was clearly too pleased with myself and she could tell I was up to something / planning something from the stupid grin on my face because I have no poker face, 3) I really wanted to share it with her and be able to talk to her about it as I progressed with it, to show her the coins and the banner images and let her read and approve the descriptions.
I was able to win the coins - all three now reside in a curio cabinet in her office on little stands along with some dragons that I got years ago.

I popped them into the registry sets about 2-3 weeks ago, right in the middle of November… spent FOREVER working on different versions of the banner image for them and harassed poor Mike endlessly for about a week there bouncing ideas off him. I also did some quick research and populated the sets with good descriptions to go with the best images I could manage to take – the alloys those coins are made of are HARD to shoot. They do not image well or easily IMO.


I think Shandy warmed to the idea of the 50 Lire coin when she found out that the person is supposed to be Vulcan, who in mythology made his forge in Mt Etna – the volcano they lived on the side of while they lived in Italy.


And… then I waited to see if anyone else with a stronger set would list it before December 1st… and no one did. So… I think I won the categories for her for this year, and I’ll get to give her the certificates for these in a few months.
Ti amerò per sempre (I will love you forever, in Italian, at least, according to Google. Any Italians? Anyone want to confirm?).
So, what’s the next step for this? … Because I totally have a plan and I’m totally not just impulsively buying random stuff... Totally! 
Her father brought home a few of these that look really nice from 1990 and 1991. I’ve bought a few more raw examples in lots online for about $16, and I now have a 1984, a 1985, and a 1988 in a raw state that all look solid – a 1992 too, but that’s less helpful given that I just bought an MS67. I also have a 1987 that I’m a little more “meh” about.


I’m wanting to spend about $150-200 next year and send several of these in to get graded by NGC and add those to the set. This will mean that the 500 Lire set – the one she picked as her favorite design of that group - will have 1) mostly coins we picked and had graded ourselves, and 2) coins from that bag of coins her father brought back with them. Coins they got and brought back from Italy with them nearly 30 years ago, one of which from one of the years they were in the country if she remembers correctly (she was young at the time).
I suppose it’s not quite the same as “slaying a dragon” but I think it works pretty well as romantic gestures go. That feels like about the best Registry tribute I can give her. I’ll let you guys know if I come up with a better one later. I’m not really sure what more can be expected of a safety engineer and a coin nerd. I slay cockroaches, if that counts for anything.
If the 1990 and 1991 don't grade as well as I'm hoping they may ultimately hurt the set from a competitive standpoint down the road if I end up catching more competition, but I still just like the idea of incorporating that into the set.
I don’t know if or to what extent I’ll pursue building the 50 Lire set and try to defend that title in years going forward. It’ll definitely take a backseat to doing something with the 500 Lira set just because that’s the one she picked.
And, yes, there was not a chance I was going to talk or post about this until after December 1st, after it was done. Not this time. I’ve made enough competition for myself in Zimbabwe, and I didn’t want to broadcast it and then have it flop.  That would have been... embarrassing. 
And, yes, I’ve been up to this while also working on Banner images and Zimbabwe coins. I have been quite the busy boy this month, and during the Thanksgiving holiday, and any flex-day off from work. But this, in particular, has been completely worth it, because it made her happy. And posting about it is worth it, even though I’m probably just going to ultimately make my life harder by calling attention to it. Because if I’m going to go on at such length about my other silliness, I have to brag up a win for her, at least once it actually is a win. 

Last time I talked about seeing that post about the old, early 20th Century 20 Centesimi Italian coins and going shopping for some raw Italian coins.
While doing this I got the idea to look to see if there were any nice, pretty, NGC-graded Italian coins that I could get for good prices. I thought she might like that – some cool MS coin if they were out there to be had.
I did a bit of eBaying and found a couple of sellers with MS66 to MS68 Italian coins from the 1980s and 1990s – mostly 50 Lire, 100 Lire, 200 Lire, and 500 Lire coins. I screen-capped some of them, sent them to her and asked Shandy what coins she liked the most. Somewhat to my surprise, she said she liked the 500 Lire bi-metallic the most. Remember that one? I made a post about it earlier this year after finding several in the coins from her father.
I really thought I’d get a little reaction out her on the 50 Lire with Vulcan’s naked butt, but no dice. She doesn’t like the face on the obverse as much. Way to kill a good joke, Love.
While we were having that conversation, I also got the idea to check to see if there were any categories for Italian coins from this era and what the competition looked like. I saw that the competition was a fair bit stiffer for the 100 Lira, but It would only take 1-2 coins each in the right grades to take the top spots in the 50 Lira and 500 Lira categories. I think these were / are new categories for 2021 so not a lot of sets, not a lot of coins and not a lot of fight to snag them. It would only cost me about $130 to snap up three coins and take a stab at winning those 2 categories, and I loved the idea. I immediately wanted to try to win those categories with set names and descriptions dedicating the sets to her. I was really in love with this idea.
So, since I’d need to go outside of my normal budget to pull this off and do it in time for the awards cut-off, I told her about the idea – actually got her to happy cry over it – and got the greenlight from her to do it / go for it / try to win these. I think it would have been more romantic to have just gone and done it and told her about it after the fact if I’d pulled it off, but 1) As I’ve said, I ask permission, not forgiveness, and that does good things for my marriage, 2) I was clearly too pleased with myself and she could tell I was up to something / planning something from the stupid grin on my face because I have no poker face, 3) I really wanted to share it with her and be able to talk to her about it as I progressed with it, to show her the coins and the banner images and let her read and approve the descriptions.
I was able to win the coins - all three now reside in a curio cabinet in her office on little stands along with some dragons that I got years ago.

I popped them into the registry sets about 2-3 weeks ago, right in the middle of November… spent FOREVER working on different versions of the banner image for them and harassed poor Mike endlessly for about a week there bouncing ideas off him. I also did some quick research and populated the sets with good descriptions to go with the best images I could manage to take – the alloys those coins are made of are HARD to shoot. They do not image well or easily IMO.


I think Shandy warmed to the idea of the 50 Lire coin when she found out that the person is supposed to be Vulcan, who in mythology made his forge in Mt Etna – the volcano they lived on the side of while they lived in Italy.


And… then I waited to see if anyone else with a stronger set would list it before December 1st… and no one did. So… I think I won the categories for her for this year, and I’ll get to give her the certificates for these in a few months.
Ti amerò per sempre (I will love you forever, in Italian, at least, according to Google. Any Italians? Anyone want to confirm?).
So, what’s the next step for this? … Because I totally have a plan and I’m totally not just impulsively buying random stuff... Totally! 
Her father brought home a few of these that look really nice from 1990 and 1991. I’ve bought a few more raw examples in lots online for about $16, and I now have a 1984, a 1985, and a 1988 in a raw state that all look solid – a 1992 too, but that’s less helpful given that I just bought an MS67. I also have a 1987 that I’m a little more “meh” about.


I’m wanting to spend about $150-200 next year and send several of these in to get graded by NGC and add those to the set. This will mean that the 500 Lire set – the one she picked as her favorite design of that group - will have 1) mostly coins we picked and had graded ourselves, and 2) coins from that bag of coins her father brought back with them. Coins they got and brought back from Italy with them nearly 30 years ago, one of which from one of the years they were in the country if she remembers correctly (she was young at the time).
I suppose it’s not quite the same as “slaying a dragon” but I think it works pretty well as romantic gestures go. That feels like about the best Registry tribute I can give her. I’ll let you guys know if I come up with a better one later. I’m not really sure what more can be expected of a safety engineer and a coin nerd. I slay cockroaches, if that counts for anything.
If the 1990 and 1991 don't grade as well as I'm hoping they may ultimately hurt the set from a competitive standpoint down the road if I end up catching more competition, but I still just like the idea of incorporating that into the set.
I don’t know if or to what extent I’ll pursue building the 50 Lire set and try to defend that title in years going forward. It’ll definitely take a backseat to doing something with the 500 Lira set just because that’s the one she picked.
And, yes, there was not a chance I was going to talk or post about this until after December 1st, after it was done. Not this time. I’ve made enough competition for myself in Zimbabwe, and I didn’t want to broadcast it and then have it flop.  That would have been... embarrassing. 
And, yes, I’ve been up to this while also working on Banner images and Zimbabwe coins. I have been quite the busy boy this month, and during the Thanksgiving holiday, and any flex-day off from work. But this, in particular, has been completely worth it, because it made her happy. And posting about it is worth it, even though I’m probably just going to ultimately make my life harder by calling attention to it. Because if I’m going to go on at such length about my other silliness, I have to brag up a win for her, at least once it actually is a win. 

Greetings all:
My 1940-1944 mint sets are all #1 in the NGC-only registry; while the 1940 and 1943 sets are #2 in the combined registry behind my worthy competitors Coinbuf and ChancyMS60+, respectively.
It's been a good year.
 
 
My lead for the 1943 set in the NGC-only registry increased after the judging for 2021 was over; it so happened that I just purchased a 1943-S steelie in the grade of NGC MS67+ CAC...
 

Shandy and I have picked (from amongst the coins I have so far) the ones we think are the best and these will be among the ones I send in a few months from now.
I am looking to make a couple more purchases of raw Zimbabwean coins between now and when these go out to NGC to try to get examples of the last few types I will need and maybe get better examples of some of these, so some of these may get bumped out of the submission if I find better – more on that in a couple of weeks probably.
The current crop includes:
1 Km-1a 1980 1C
1 Km-1b 1997 1C (rolling the dice for a MS66...).
2 Km-2 1997 5C (I’m hoping I might snag an MS64, MS65 or even an MS66 with these, but bumping that 1999 AU58 out is going to be easy with these).
2 Km-3a 1999 10C (These 1999s look very good and it could be cool to have a coin for that slot that I graded myself. I think these might have a shot at a 65-67)
1 Km-6b $1 (Might get another 63, but this one looks a bit nicer than the 63 I got back - fewer deeper scratches).
1 Km-12b $2 (This one looks… It may do a 63 or 64)
2 Km-13 $5 (It may do a 63 or 64)
2 Km-21 2017 $1 Bond Coins (These look great and should hopefully come back as a 66 or 67 like the other bond coins – hopefully 67).
2 Km-22 2018 $2 Bond Coins (These look great and should hopefully come back as a 66 or 67 like the other bond coins – hopefully 67).
The best of the 20C and 50C coins from the new batch basically look the same and seem like they would grade the same as the coins I just got back from grading so I’m not going to send any of the coins of those denominations from this batch in.
I may still add in that 2017 50C Bond Coin Shandy thought was the best of those to the above – I will get around to asking NGC to add slots for the $1 and $2 Bond coins in December probably, just to get ready.
I’m keeping the ones I’m planning to submit in flips, to make it easier to send them later and to separate them from the “rejects” / lesser examples, which are increasingly in 2x2s.In using both I find that I like different things about each and I find myself debating which I like more. I don't like the fact that the coins can slip / slide around in the flips a little if I'm not careful where the 2x2s hold them more snugly.

Every coin in this group so far has been picked with Shandy and I sitting together, looking at them in flips by lamplight, comparing them, and talking about which one looks the best. And that, without doubt, is the biggest victory of this whole undertaking. I have gotten to sit and look at coins with my wife, with her participation, talking, smiling, and laughing, enjoying the time together, and at the end she says she enjoys it and seems to mean it. No matter how the grades end up next year, there's the win – We’re finding more ways to bond over coin collecting together.
And I’m going to keep building on this. I’m already working on finding various ways to build on this – but more on that later too. I have no confidence in Zimbabwe coins alone to continue to hold her interest.
I think I did myself at least 1 big favor in that I broke it up. I didn't come at her all at once with 11 types and 60-75 coins to look at. I did this over 4 nights with nights in between and only brought 2-3 types and 10-18 coins at a time. I did some pre-screening in some cases to knock out coins I knew weren’t the winners. With something like this, especially early on, especially doing this at night when the kids are in bed and we're tired and winding down, you absolutely can't overstay or overtax your welcome.
When we’d picked through the last of them, very much to my surprise, Shandy asked if she was going to get “a link or something” to watch the Submission Tracker for updates herself when these go in. I don’t know how she could ever imagine these going in for grading and not getting constant, daily, yacking from me about it and watching for news. Utter madness.
Still, for so many reasons now, this set is well on its way to becoming something that will be near and dear to my heart for a long time.
We just celebrated our first Thanksgiving here. This will be our first Christmas in the new house. The tree is up. Time to start wrapping presents.

This is the last entry for the 2021 Registry Year, but there is much more to come. I’m both surprised at how much I was able to get done in the last couple of weeks in terms of upgrading my pictures and banners and disappointed that I didn’t get further – didn’t get to the Koalas, the cents, the statehood quarters or the mint state presidential dollars that I have. It will be a goal to continue this into 2022’s award cycle and try to improve the pictures on these and the other “Wright Family” mint sets to bring all of these sets in line with my new photo standards and make every set in my registry a set worth looking at and clicking through.
2022 may well not be an NCLT-focused year as I continue to look for ways to build on what I’ve started this year with Shandy and continue to emphasize projects and goals that we can experience and share together. I'm somewhat torn in that part of me wants to focus on building / finishing existing / old sets and not starting entirely new things, but I also think some new things sound more fun, more promising, and more easily shared with Her. Still TBD on that one.
Enjoy the journey.
 

To paraphrase Forest Gump, coin collecting is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna find.  I find this especially true of the Heritage weekly world coin auctions.  Sorting out all of the consignments that Heritage gets into their various auction formats must take quite a bit of time and when it comes to world coins, I doubt if all the people involved are experts in all coins across all of coin minting history.  Still, I am surprised to find the occasional scarce variety pop up in the weekly auctions.  Late last year I found a scarce pillar dollar, one of the difficult date/assayer combinations in the 1760-1771 Mexico City 8 reales series (Gilboy R2, 25-50 pieces known). This one is a straight graded AU with good eye appeal that replaces a rather ugly details graded one that took me years to find.   In a weekly coin auction this year I found a really special coin that just happens to be related to the pillar dollars that I focus on. And it's a pretty important coin in general for those of us interested in coin imagery (as in the images depicted on coins as opposed to coin photography).    1684 ducato of the Kingdom of Naples (and Sicily).  The obverse shows the bust of Charles II, ruler of the Spanish Empire which, at this time, included the Southern portion of Italy and the island of Sicily.  The reverse has the legend VNVS NON SVFFICIT (one is not enough) which was previously seen on medals and printed works of art as VNVS NON SVFFICIT ORBIS (one world is not enough), and depicts a pillar surmounted by a crown and two hemispheres of the globe.  The initials on the reverse are for the mint official Andrea Giovane and assayer F. Antonio Ariani. On the obverse, the initials under the bust are for the engraver Giovanni Montemein.   Earlier depictions of the two globes theme are not as geographically representative of the New and Old Worlds as we see on this coin.  The earliest example that I have found is from a medal commemorating the union of the French King Francis II and Mary, Queen of the Scots from no earlier than 1558.  Another example is a medal of Francis I, with a date of 1515 but likely produced in the 17th Century, showing one earthly globe juxtaposed with a celestial globe. It seems unlikely that Francisco Hernández Escudero was unaware of these precedents when he designed the iconic pillar dollar in 1729, a coin that would become so successful as a trade dollar across the globe.   ~jack
 

Shandy and I have picked (from amongst the coins I have so far) the ones we think are the best and these will be among the ones I send in a few months from now.
I am looking to make a couple more purchases of raw Zimbabwean coins between now and when these go out to NGC to try to get examples of the last few types I will need and maybe get better examples of some of these, so some of these may get bumped out of the submission if I find better – more on that in a couple of weeks probably.
The current crop includes:
1 Km-1a 1980 1C
1 Km-1b 1997 1C (rolling the dice for a MS66...).
2 Km-2 1997 5C (I’m hoping I might snag an MS64, MS65 or even an MS66 with these, but bumping that 1999 AU58 out is going to be easy with these).
2 Km-3a 1999 10C (These 1999s look very good and it could be cool to have a coin for that slot that I graded myself. I think these might have a shot at a 65-67)
1 Km-6b $1 (Might get another 63, but this one looks a bit nicer than the 63 I got back - fewer deeper scratches).
1 Km-12b $2 (This one looks… It may do a 63 or 64)
2 Km-13 $5 (It may do a 63 or 64)
2 Km-21 2017 $1 Bond Coins (These look great and should hopefully come back as a 66 or 67 like the other bond coins – hopefully 67).
2 Km-22 2018 $2 Bond Coins (These look great and should hopefully come back as a 66 or 67 like the other bond coins – hopefully 67).
The best of the 20C and 50C coins from the new batch basically look the same and seem like they would grade the same as the coins I just got back from grading so I’m not going to send any of the coins of those denominations from this batch in.
I may still add in that 2017 50C Bond Coin Shandy thought was the best of those to the above – I will get around to asking NGC to add slots for the $1 and $2 Bond coins in December probably, just to get ready.
I’m keeping the ones I’m planning to submit in flips, to make it easier to send them later and to separate them from the “rejects” / lesser examples, which are increasingly in 2x2s.In using both I find that I like different things about each and I find myself debating which I like more. I don't like the fact that the coins can slip / slide around in the flips a little if I'm not careful where the 2x2s hold them more snugly.

Every coin in this group so far has been picked with Shandy and I sitting together, looking at them in flips by lamplight, comparing them, and talking about which one looks the best. And that, without doubt, is the biggest victory of this whole undertaking. I have gotten to sit and look at coins with my wife, with her participation, talking, smiling, and laughing, enjoying the time together, and at the end she says she enjoys it and seems to mean it. No matter how the grades end up next year, there's the win – We’re finding more ways to bond over coin collecting together.
And I’m going to keep building on this. I’m already working on finding various ways to build on this – but more on that later too. I have no confidence in Zimbabwe coins alone to continue to hold her interest.
I think I did myself at least 1 big favor in that I broke it up. I didn't come at her all at once with 11 types and 60-75 coins to look at. I did this over 4 nights with nights in between and only brought 2-3 types and 10-18 coins at a time. I did some pre-screening in some cases to knock out coins I knew weren’t the winners. With something like this, especially early on, especially doing this at night when the kids are in bed and we're tired and winding down, you absolutely can't overstay or overtax your welcome.
When we’d picked through the last of them, very much to my surprise, Shandy asked if she was going to get “a link or something” to watch the Submission Tracker for updates herself when these go in. I don’t know how she could ever imagine these going in for grading and not getting constant, daily, yacking from me about it and watching for news. Utter madness.
Still, for so many reasons now, this set is well on its way to becoming something that will be near and dear to my heart for a long time.
We just celebrated our first Thanksgiving here. This will be our first Christmas in the new house. The tree is up. Time to start wrapping presents.

This is the last entry for the 2021 Registry Year, but there is much more to come. I’m both surprised at how much I was able to get done in the last couple of weeks in terms of upgrading my pictures and banners and disappointed that I didn’t get further – didn’t get to the Koalas, the cents, the statehood quarters or the mint state presidential dollars that I have. It will be a goal to continue this into 2022’s award cycle and try to improve the pictures on these and the other “Wright Family” mint sets to bring all of these sets in line with my new photo standards and make every set in my registry a set worth looking at and clicking through.
2022 may well not be an NCLT-focused year as I continue to look for ways to build on what I’ve started this year with Shandy and continue to emphasize projects and goals that we can experience and share together. I'm somewhat torn in that part of me wants to focus on building / finishing existing / old sets and not starting entirely new things, but I also think some new things sound more fun, more promising, and more easily shared with Her. Still TBD on that one.
Enjoy the journey.
 

When it comes to building out registry sets, I find that I'm very much one of those people that needs to "begin with the end in mind." I find that when I don't have a clear vision for a set and an idea of what the finished project will look like I have a hard time making anything I'm happy with and I have a hard time making progress or even really starting.
I've been wanting to build out the 1986 mint set for over a year and I just could never come up with an idea for how to build it out that actually excited me... and now I finally have! I'm going to build it out by talking about some of the things that happened that year and how many of them are relevant to my life or my wife's.
Things like Studio Ghibli releasing their first film in August of that year. The Phantom of the Opera debuting in London - my wife loves that story/ play. The first official discovery of Mad Cow disease. The launching of Mir, Challenger. And the Chernobyl disaster. An odd list - and all 1986 apparently.
My wife has looked at the work in progress on it and called it, "kind of a love note to us." I'm good with that - although, as love notes go, it’s an old one when a love note talks about the Challenger Disaster and Chernobyl, but, ya know… I’m an odd one.
Of course... the pictures I'm less than thrilled with, now that I look at them again. I wouldn't call them "bad"... but I don't know that I love them. I think I'd redo them and do them differently now. Funny thing is I remember being at least happy-ish when I re-imaged the set like ~2.6 years ago but... I guess my standards have changed/ gone up. A phone call to Choya later and he's going to try to meet me sometime this month and give them to me, even if it is just at Thanksgiving. Depending on when I get them, I may try to bust out new pictures and a new banner in rapid fashion to redress the set for Dec 1st. We'll see. Just for fun. Do I expect it to win anything? No. Not really. But personal pride has me wanting to put a shine on it and have it looking nice for the cut-off.
I don’t know to what extent this is just a natural outcome of the journal writing and / or the fact that the set is one of the oldest in the category, but that 1986 set has more views than any of the other sets in the category. Interestingly, of the 4 sets closest to it in view count, none have pictures, and the current #1 set has no pictures. So, maybe I can make that 1986 set something worth continuing to look at and deserving of that “most viewed” status.
Working on this got me looking on eBay. I took an opportunity to get a new 1986-D quarter in MS66, which improves on the MS65 we have (the weakest coin still in the main set) for only $19. I figured at that price I could just call it an impulse buy and it isn’t something I’m likely to regret too much later.
I'm also working on improving the visual presentation for some other sets and my wife is calling these set banner images one of my new obsessions - alongside buying lots of raw Zimbabwean coins like a crazy person. I'm not presently involved in researching Zimbabwean or Venezuelan banknotes and culture so... out comes the camera and the Photoshop!'
These new images are in part an effort on my part to leave the Collector's Society site, at least for the NGC side, and "live" in the new registry. For the PMG side, Collector's Society is still the only option and that seems unlikely to change... And if they make a new PMG feature and the Signature Sets don't cross over I am going to be crying because that 127 note signature set for Zimbabwe was... a lot of work.  













Some of those were quick and easy (1932, the Texas Commems). The Zimbabwe banner was a hideous amount of work that took 3 or 4 nights and over a dozen versions. I think it was worth it. I had a vision I needed to nail. All of the banners of the gold coins are made with brand new pictures, some of which are vast improvements on the old ones. I really like the simple Obverse / Reverse on the white background for most of the sets with only 1 design, but I like the collaged approach with the type set.
I feel like one of the biggest challenges with these images is accounting for the Rank ribbon and for the fact that the aspect ratio or the image and how the rank banner looks is different on my PC (1:1 square ratio) vs My phone (2:3 ratio).
Working on the pictures of my Presidential Dollars Proof set is probably a waste of time if viewed completely from a competitive standpoint, but that’s at least a gratifying waste of time with a set that is closed-ended, not growing by 5 or 10 coins a year anymore, and which is 60% complete, so it doesn’t just mock me with all its emptiness. Lol I’m considering just biting the bullet and getting PF70s on the 2012-2014 coins to finish out the set since the PF69s I’m seeing aren’t much cheaper. But I’m worried that if I do start down that road, I might be tempted to bump some of the others up to 70s later.
I’m wondering how far I’ll take this photo / banner upgrade drive and what the next victims will be. The 1986 Proof Set seems like it is ripe for a full re-image and a new banner. 
 
Edited on 11/27 to add: I've uploaded new photos to the 1986 set and posted a comment below with some new / old comparisons.

As some of you may know, I am a Ph.D. student. Graduate school often entails a mind-numbing amount of work on very short deadlines, which continue to escalate as you get closer to finishing your degree. Earlier this month, I defended my dissertation prospectus without changing my experimental design, which gave me the green light to start data collection. After finishing all the paperwork, I started collecting data the same day. So far, it is going way faster than I anticipated, and I am already well over halfway done. Of course, this is only part of the fun, as I still have plenty of work to do before I can defend my dissertation and earn my doctorate.
With my dissertation in full swing, I started seriously pursuing the job market, which has consumed what I consider an unhealthy amount of my time. For those of you unfamiliar, finding a job in academia requires what seems like an endless stream of documents. All of which need to be carefully tailored to each job as the requirements can vary wildly. With that in mind, I have spent countless hours writing cover letters, research statements, teaching philosophy statements, diversity statements, and tweaking my CV to highlight the skills the position requires. 
On top of those efforts, I also teach over 230 students across two upper-level courses at my university. It takes far more tie and energy than you would think to lecture, respond to student emails, and grade assignments. Luckily, I have two graduate teaching assistants who help with the grading, but it is still a lot to manage. I am also organizing a research conference for my department and actively serving on several committees while working on a handful of publications and managing a small team of undergraduate research assistants.
Typing it all out makes me wonder how I find time for it all, but I suppose when you have no other choice, you figure it out. It is a lot of work, but I am thankful for where I am in life and even more so for my amazing wife. Throughout all of this, she has been extremely supportive. My home life is the only escape that I have from the craziness of grad school. I made a deal with her and myself that if I finished enough work, I would take the entire week off during the break, and now I am enjoying the rewards of that labor. That said, please forgive my recent posting spree, as I am simply taking full advantage of the opportunity!
It seems weird not to post one, so please enjoy the pictures of my pets lounging out. They are my relaxation inspirations.

I hope everyone has a safe and restful holiday season!

So, I’ve received the new 10-coin sets of Zimbabwean coins and I’m torn between being very happy and more than a little frustrated.
I haven’t closely examined all of these yet, but these new 10-coin sets are just significantly better than what I got last time buying from the other dealer. The 5C, 10C, $2, and even the $5 coins are vastly better even at first glance – Shandy even commented on how stark the contrast is. The ones from the new sets in some cases just straight up make the ones from the first dealer look sick. One or two of these “lightly circulated” $5 coins I think are uncirculated and will get MS63-MS65 grades, and I think they even look better than some other $5 coins I bought for about $7 a piece (after I was so disgusted by what I got in the original sets).
Just for fun, here’s a comparison of my shots of the AU58 1999 recently returned from NGC, under very high and unflattering magnification, vs the new 1997s from these sets. I feel it is worth saying that the AU58 1999 is a nice-looking coin in hand IMO but with this magnification and in this lighting it does look rough.


The “lightly circulated” $10 and $25 coins are basically on-par with what I got from the last dealer, but that’s okay - I knew what I was being offered this time. Though there is maybe one $10 coin that might be nicer than the others and might get a mint state grade - maybe a MS63/64 I think.
I am glad I have been snapping up 1980-dated Z cents though because all 5 of the coins I got in this group are 1997 dated. There’s something about 1997 for these 1 C coins. I’ve gotten eight 1C coins and they’re all 1997. I’ve seen multiple eBay auctions for 1997 cents and very little else. I’ve even seen someone offering a bag of 100 uncirculated Zimbabwe cents – but they’re all 1997. There is something about 1997… maybe one day I’ll figure out what that is! Lol
But 1980 seems common enough too for one reason or another – I’ve seen 2 dealers now offering lots of 25 uncirculated 1980s for $15-25 ($0.60-1.00 each). I’m guessing 1980s were hoarded back in the day for being the first year of issue for coins from a new country / currency. The 1997s seem stranger – they were not the last year of issue. 1999 was – but maybe they weren’t producing many by that point after producing a ton in 1997. Zimbabwe did not produce every denomination every year and only made cents in about 12 of 20 years.
But that’s 1980 and 1997. I’ve seen some from 1983 and 1988. Getting coins from 1986? 1989? 1991? 1994? 1999? Good luck… I have not seen them.
The 1C coins are otherwise similar to what I’ve gotten before - there are a couple of 1Cs that I think could do about as well as the MS65 I just got back from the first set. I don’t know if I’ll take the shot and see how the best of these can do in grading. Maybe, maybe not – depends on how much over budget I’m running at the time, I guess.
There was one sad coin that had a nice reverse, and then I flipped it over to see a huge, ugly scratch. Oof! … Sad times. Sad Times.

“’Tis but a scratch.” “’A scratch?’ Your arm’s off.” “Just a flesh wound.”
 
Where things are a little extra interesting - the 10C coins I got are from 1999, the last year of the Km-3a, before the switch to clad. So, these coins would be competition for the MS65 1980 coin I have, not the 2001 MS61 that is the coin I’d really want to upgrade, but I may submit the nicest of these anyway to add a 1999 to a possible future custom set with more coins & dates.
More interesting stuff (to me) - The fact that all of these were 1999 10Cs and all of the 5Cs were from 1997 and all the 1Cs were 1997 - which matches the dates of the coins that were part of a certain submission that went through NGC recently - has me wondering if this seller is also where someone else bought their coins. Am I once again sourcing my material from the same places as my main competition?
The 20C, 50C and $1 coins are a bit more mixed. Some of them have promise in the choice-but-not-gem-uncirculated range. I’ll look at these more closely later alongside the graded ones and decide if I feel strongly enough that these could do better to try sending 1 or 2 to NGC next year.
Looking at these, it’s hard to not feel a little like getting the others and then not just returning them and looking elsewhere was a mistake. But I don’t know that I can call it a complete misfire. I did get the MS65RD cent out of it. And it was a start, and a reasonable start at that. And I do still feel good about the way the grades largely lined up with what I’d expected in sending them in, suggesting that I am learning some things, even as my eyes have gotten worse with age and corneal scarring.
All of this buying of different lots is also giving me an increasing variety of dates, which may come into play later if I go beyond just a type set, and, I’ve just been enjoying getting to buy all these and put them in flips. I’ve enjoyed looking at all of them, and showing them to Shandy, and talking about them with her. I’ve gotten to enjoy the hunt and the chase with these in a way that I haven’t in a while and which you don’t get to have or enjoy in the same way when just buying pre-graded coins.
I ran out of flips while trying to take these out of the shipping container, forcing me to double up some of them in the flips – this was even after I had some coins I knew I didn’t want to submit (AU-looking $10 and $25 coins) skip the “flip” stage and go right into stapled 2x2s for long term storage in the binder. I’ve ordered more flips and I should get them soon. When each coin is in its own flip, I’ll try to sit down with Shandy to try to pick the best ones for sending in, hopefully with her help, input and buy-in.
My moment of Zen: I think she caught me grinning. So maybe that’s the sign that the joy is winning out over the frustration.

About a month ago I was surprised to see that all the coins in my Presidential dollar set had been removed from the set and the score had gone to Zero.
When I looked into it, I saw that there was a new category for "First Day of Issue" dollars and my coins weren't eligible for the set / category they had been in before. I also saw there was a lot of screaming and bemoaning the unfairness of it all. For me, it was no big deal - I deleted the old set and started a new one. That set had never won anything and it wasn't that big a deal anyway. All it really did was reset my view count to 0. But... that and another recent journal got me wondering if I need to go back and have a look at some other sets.
When I made my Lunar dollar set some 14 years ago - I think - the set / category didn't include varieties. Then they were added. So, my 17-coin set was only about 17% complete - which was miserable and demoralizing. However, at some point - no clue when - NGC made a new category that included only the series 1 & 2 coins in mint state with no varieties. Which is pretty much perfect for me. I deleted the old set, made a new one, and got the exact same score. I went from being 17% complete to 68% complete with less than 10 holes to fill in a close-ended set. That is something I like a lot more and something I might actually want to (and be able to) finish.

The Lunar coins are now also among the latest beneficiaries of my efforts to improve the pictures in some of my older sets and give them banners to improve the overall presentation in my registry.

I've also re-imaged my Chinese Panda's and other NCLT rounds. (Shandy called this one cute!  )

In (kinda) related news, my wife encouraged me to get a new Kookaburra for the first time in like 12 years. She said she has been thinking I might need something new to work on soon - I've mostly wrapped up my Zimbabwe note and coin sets except for sending them off to grade and the Venezuelan note set Is also mostly done - and this is her way of "voting" for the kookaburra set, which I already have a solid foundation on, and she seems to like.

Adding that coin got my set to exactly 50% with 16 of 32 slots filled. That means I’m eligible, right? That’s totally what that means, right? I mean, it’ll actually win a major award when pigs fly but I can dream about it really loud.

I like these but I'm not sure they're going to “win” and be the next thing I work on finishing - even with her vote. I'm also really tempted to try to build out the Lunars, the Koala, or the Kiwi sets. Or I could end up doing none of the above. I've been away from the Silver NCLT for quite a while but going back and looking at them and taking pictures of them again has gotten me remembering why I like them. Any or all of those 4 sets could be fun to work on again and it could be fun to make most or all of 2022 a NCLT focused year. After she encouraged me to get this I went out and accepted an offer on a 2012 Koala. I guess that’s my protest vote / way of showing I’m not 100% sold on the Kookaburra’s as my next focus.

Then her brother unexpectedly gave me a gift card as a belated birthday present and I used that to buy a 2014 Kookaburra. So that’s 2 new Kooks and a Koala. But I would need 15 more Kooks to get my set fully up to date and 8 more Koalas…  … but only 4 more kiwis…  Choices… 

I guess we’ll see if that 2014 makes it here in time for the 1st and some last-minute pictures.
Whenever I'm not heavily focused on one thing I do seem to go through these periods where I pick up a lot of random odds and ends, but, at least right now, I'm mostly getting things that add to old / existing sets and I'm not picking up random things that are going to sit alone in "sets" that go nowhere. I'm trying to avoid that.
But these sets do 1 problem that does give me pause. I'm not a fan of the problem with coins spotting post-encapsulation, which is sometimes a problem with these series too. Here's an image of one of my Philharmonics, a coin that did a lot to sour me on these Silver NCLT rounds for a while because it showcases just how bad the post-encapsulation spotting can be and just how bad of a job the various mints do at cleaning these blanks before annealing and striking in some cases. If I do decide to buy a few more of these coins I’m likely to restrict my purchases to 2016 and before, just so I have a higher degree of confidence that any spotting / hazing they’re likely to do has already occurred and that I’m not going to get too many more ugly surprises like these.

Just to end on a slightly more positive note, here are some new shots of my Chinese Unicorn and Peacock rounds, which are still some of the prettiest, most interesting and unique rounds in my Silver NCLT collection.



… and here are some pictures… some from a recent family photo session with the boys and some from some shots I took later that day of Shandy in a new evening dress she bought for a wedding we’ll need to go to in a couple of months.


Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

No, I'm not talking about this year which I can only call another strange year, but rather, the year 1860.  In trying to broaden my Silver Dollars of '60 custom set, I researched the silver dollar-like coins issued from European nations in 1860 and I believe there are only two.  By this time, thalers had shrunk to 33mm and 18.52g so they no longer fit my definition of silver dollar size!  Having already acquired a nice 20 reales of Spain (38mm, 26.291g), I was stuck with finding the 5 lire of the Kingdom of Sardinia (37mm, 25g), a coin with a mintage of only 5,044.  That is one hard year!   But, why such a small mintage?  In 1859 the Kingdom of Sardinia, also known as Piedmont-Sardinia had launched an effort to reunify the Italian states and successfully concluded several military campaigns with their French ally against Austria.  In 1860 the Kingdom proceeded to gain support from other Northern Italian States through plebiscite and achieved decisive military victories against the papal army and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.  Warfare is expensive so my guess is that silver stocks were depleted leading to the low mintage of coins for general circulation.   The political and military successes of 1860 led to the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy with the King of Sardinia, Vittorio Emanuele II, it's first ruler of a united Italy since the 6th century.  Clearly, for those that benefited from a unified Italy, 1860 was a great year.   I finally tracked down an example of the silver dollar-like coin from the Kingdom of Sardinia, dated 1860.  This coin was minted in the principle city of Piedmont, Turin, as denoted by the eagle head mintmark.  Turin was the capital of the Kingdom of Italy until 1865.   ~jack

Recap: I submitted a very complex order to NGC that spanned six invoices and several special requests. You can read about it here.
Much to my surprise, the world economy submission is already on its way back to me, but this was not by design. When I submitted these coins, I requested combined shipping to save on the return shipping charge. For whatever reason, NGC accidentally mailed out the world economy submission on 11-19.  I didn’t notice until I received the shipment notification from NGC later that night. I finally got a chance to call earlier today, but the coins were already on their way back to me. In line with my prior experiences with NGC, they readily acknowledged the error and offered a full credit for the shipping charge. It was nice to see that they are still very customer-friendly despite their massive backlog and continuous staffing shortages. Many, myself included, assumed that the longer turnaround times for the economy tier would delay my other submissions, so this was a big surprise.
The posted pictures are not my best work. My normal setup was out of commission when I first took these so I had to do the best I could with what I had at the time. I plan to take new images with my typical setup once they arrive back from NGC.
 
1.      
Description: Uniface die trial of the 1811 Bank of England Dollar
My grade: XF – Detail
NGC grade: Ineligible type
Comment: This one caught me off guard as this is a well-documented piece described and cataloged in no less than four internationally recognized authoritative guides. After discussing this with the customer service representative earlier today, I plan to write a brief email providing documentation for the piece and making my case that it should fall within the purview of the items they grade. I have been somewhat successful with similar requests in the past, so maybe this will eventually end up in a slab.
2.      
Description: 1753 Great Britain ½ Penny
My grade: AU-55 BN
NGC grade: AU-58 BN
Comment: I am not surprised by the grade this coin received. The pictures make it look dull, but in hand, it retains a good amount of luster.
3.      
Description: 1754 Great Britain Farthing
My grade: MS-64 BN
NGC grade: MS-63 BN
Comment: I am happy with this coin in an MS-63 holder. I am excited to get it back in hand to see what I might have missed during my initial inspection. Fun fact, a number of these pieces dated 1754 and depicting George II were actually struck in 1762 and 1763 under the reign of George III. This lackluster attempt to address the small change shortage of the era further highlights how disinterested the crown was in helping the average citizen.
4.      
Description: 1917 Costa Rica 10 Centavos  
My grade: MS-63 PL
Result: MS-64
Comment: I am happy with the numerical grade, but the lack of a PL designation is disappointing. I have images of this coin, but they all fail to capture how it looks in hand. The devices are slightly frosted, but the fields are fully reflective. At first glance it looks like a proof, but from my research, it doesn’t appear proof strikes were ever recorded for this coin in silver. On any note, it is an interesting coin that will soon find a new home. 

About a month ago I was surprised to see that all the coins in my Presidential dollar set had been removed from the set and the score had gone to Zero.
When I looked into it, I saw that there was a new category for "First Day of Issue" dollars and my coins weren't eligible for the set / category they had been in before. I also saw there was a lot of screaming and bemoaning the unfairness of it all. For me, it was no big deal - I deleted the old set and started a new one. That set had never won anything and it wasn't that big a deal anyway. All it really did was reset my view count to 0. But... that and another recent journal got me wondering if I need to go back and have a look at some other sets.
When I made my Lunar dollar set some 14 years ago - I think - the set / category didn't include varieties. Then they were added. So, my 17-coin set was only about 17% complete - which was miserable and demoralizing. However, at some point - no clue when - NGC made a new category that included only the series 1 & 2 coins in mint state with no varieties. Which is pretty much perfect for me. I deleted the old set, made a new one, and got the exact same score. I went from being 17% complete to 68% complete with less than 10 holes to fill in a close-ended set. That is something I like a lot more and something I might actually want to (and be able to) finish.

The Lunar coins are now also among the latest beneficiaries of my efforts to improve the pictures in some of my older sets and give them banners to improve the overall presentation in my registry.

I've also re-imaged my Chinese Panda's and other NCLT rounds. (Shandy called this one cute!  )

In (kinda) related news, my wife encouraged me to get a new Kookaburra for the first time in like 12 years. She said she has been thinking I might need something new to work on soon - I've mostly wrapped up my Zimbabwe note and coin sets except for sending them off to grade and the Venezuelan note set Is also mostly done - and this is her way of "voting" for the kookaburra set, which I already have a solid foundation on, and she seems to like.

Adding that coin got my set to exactly 50% with 16 of 32 slots filled. That means I’m eligible, right? That’s totally what that means, right? I mean, it’ll actually win a major award when pigs fly but I can dream about it really loud.

I like these but I'm not sure they're going to “win” and be the next thing I work on finishing - even with her vote. I'm also really tempted to try to build out the Lunars, the Koala, or the Kiwi sets. Or I could end up doing none of the above. I've been away from the Silver NCLT for quite a while but going back and looking at them and taking pictures of them again has gotten me remembering why I like them. Any or all of those 4 sets could be fun to work on again and it could be fun to make most or all of 2022 a NCLT focused year. After she encouraged me to get this I went out and accepted an offer on a 2012 Koala. I guess that’s my protest vote / way of showing I’m not 100% sold on the Kookaburra’s as my next focus.

Then her brother unexpectedly gave me a gift card as a belated birthday present and I used that to buy a 2014 Kookaburra. So that’s 2 new Kooks and a Koala. But I would need 15 more Kooks to get my set fully up to date and 8 more Koalas…  … but only 4 more kiwis…  Choices… 

I guess we’ll see if that 2014 makes it here in time for the 1st and some last-minute pictures.
Whenever I'm not heavily focused on one thing I do seem to go through these periods where I pick up a lot of random odds and ends, but, at least right now, I'm mostly getting things that add to old / existing sets and I'm not picking up random things that are going to sit alone in "sets" that go nowhere. I'm trying to avoid that.
But these sets do 1 problem that does give me pause. I'm not a fan of the problem with coins spotting post-encapsulation, which is sometimes a problem with these series too. Here's an image of one of my Philharmonics, a coin that did a lot to sour me on these Silver NCLT rounds for a while because it showcases just how bad the post-encapsulation spotting can be and just how bad of a job the various mints do at cleaning these blanks before annealing and striking in some cases. If I do decide to buy a few more of these coins I’m likely to restrict my purchases to 2016 and before, just so I have a higher degree of confidence that any spotting / hazing they’re likely to do has already occurred and that I’m not going to get too many more ugly surprises like these.

Just to end on a slightly more positive note, here are some new shots of my Chinese Unicorn and Peacock rounds, which are still some of the prettiest, most interesting and unique rounds in my Silver NCLT collection.



… and here are some pictures… some from a recent family photo session with the boys and some from some shots I took later that day of Shandy in a new evening dress she bought for a wedding we’ll need to go to in a couple of months.


Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

Wow hard to believe that the registry cutoff is just a week away, this year has certainly gone by quickly.   As I look back I had no specific goals other than to try and add or upgrade to my existing sets in order to hold onto as many of my first place awards as possible.    Looking at my sets now it seems like I have actually lost some ground in that regard and will have fewer awards for 2021 than I did in 2020.   Partly because I spent some time and money adding some memorial and shield Lincoln coins which was (and is) not a major focus, yet still my OCD gets the better of me at times as I would really like to finish the full date/mm run from 1909 to current.   An insane number of coins that is currently at 293 coins and counting, absolute insanity to complete the entire run and a goal that I would abandon if I had any smarts.    I also spent more and upgraded more coins in my 1940 date set than I had planned to do, but the friendly competition from the former 1st place set; who wants to be back in 1st place; had me doing more to defend the set.    That is a good thing as I added some amazing coins to the set, but it also diverted some funds that I would have used to improve other sets.
I did lose ground on a few sets as it seems that a few gold bugs put together some sets in the early 20's year sets, well not really sets as most of those sets only have one two or three coins in them.   But those high grade $50K gold coins really rack up the points and it makes competing with them next to impossible as I do not have an unlimited budget.    That is unfortunate in a way as I now have to decide what to do with those coins, I could keep them and just leave the sets as they are.   Or should I sell those coins and move on to something else, tough call and I'm just not sure how I'll proceed just yet.
All in all it was another nice year and I am blessed to care and provide the stewardship of the coins I have in my collection.    Like many I am grateful that I have my health, too many have been lost to Covid and other diseases over the past year.   And whatever the next year brings I will continue to enjoy the friendships that I have made within the hobby and the coins in my collection.   For sure there is still much to be done in the way of better photos and descriptions for many of the coins in my collection and that will be a continuing focus each and every year.
Happy Thanksgiving and a joyous Christmas season to everyone here.

About a month ago I was surprised to see that all the coins in my Presidential dollar set had been removed from the set and the score had gone to Zero.
When I looked into it, I saw that there was a new category for "First Day of Issue" dollars and my coins weren't eligible for the set / category they had been in before. I also saw there was a lot of screaming and bemoaning the unfairness of it all. For me, it was no big deal - I deleted the old set and started a new one. That set had never won anything and it wasn't that big a deal anyway. All it really did was reset my view count to 0. But... that and another recent journal got me wondering if I need to go back and have a look at some other sets.
When I made my Lunar dollar set some 14 years ago - I think - the set / category didn't include varieties. Then they were added. So, my 17-coin set was only about 17% complete - which was miserable and demoralizing. However, at some point - no clue when - NGC made a new category that included only the series 1 & 2 coins in mint state with no varieties. Which is pretty much perfect for me. I deleted the old set, made a new one, and got the exact same score. I went from being 17% complete to 68% complete with less than 10 holes to fill in a close-ended set. That is something I like a lot more and something I might actually want to (and be able to) finish.

The Lunar coins are now also among the latest beneficiaries of my efforts to improve the pictures in some of my older sets and give them banners to improve the overall presentation in my registry.

I've also re-imaged my Chinese Panda's and other NCLT rounds. (Shandy called this one cute!  )

In (kinda) related news, my wife encouraged me to get a new Kookaburra for the first time in like 12 years. She said she has been thinking I might need something new to work on soon - I've mostly wrapped up my Zimbabwe note and coin sets except for sending them off to grade and the Venezuelan note set Is also mostly done - and this is her way of "voting" for the kookaburra set, which I already have a solid foundation on, and she seems to like.

Adding that coin got my set to exactly 50% with 16 of 32 slots filled. That means I’m eligible, right? That’s totally what that means, right? I mean, it’ll actually win a major award when pigs fly but I can dream about it really loud.

I like these but I'm not sure they're going to “win” and be the next thing I work on finishing - even with her vote. I'm also really tempted to try to build out the Lunars, the Koala, or the Kiwi sets. Or I could end up doing none of the above. I've been away from the Silver NCLT for quite a while but going back and looking at them and taking pictures of them again has gotten me remembering why I like them. Any or all of those 4 sets could be fun to work on again and it could be fun to make most or all of 2022 a NCLT focused year. After she encouraged me to get this I went out and accepted an offer on a 2012 Koala. I guess that’s my protest vote / way of showing I’m not 100% sold on the Kookaburra’s as my next focus.

Then her brother unexpectedly gave me a gift card as a belated birthday present and I used that to buy a 2014 Kookaburra. So that’s 2 new Kooks and a Koala. But I would need 15 more Kooks to get my set fully up to date and 8 more Koalas…  … but only 4 more kiwis…  Choices… 

I guess we’ll see if that 2014 makes it here in time for the 1st and some last-minute pictures.
Whenever I'm not heavily focused on one thing I do seem to go through these periods where I pick up a lot of random odds and ends, but, at least right now, I'm mostly getting things that add to old / existing sets and I'm not picking up random things that are going to sit alone in "sets" that go nowhere. I'm trying to avoid that.
But these sets do 1 problem that does give me pause. I'm not a fan of the problem with coins spotting post-encapsulation, which is sometimes a problem with these series too. Here's an image of one of my Philharmonics, a coin that did a lot to sour me on these Silver NCLT rounds for a while because it showcases just how bad the post-encapsulation spotting can be and just how bad of a job the various mints do at cleaning these blanks before annealing and striking in some cases. If I do decide to buy a few more of these coins I’m likely to restrict my purchases to 2016 and before, just so I have a higher degree of confidence that any spotting / hazing they’re likely to do has already occurred and that I’m not going to get too many more ugly surprises like these.

Just to end on a slightly more positive note, here are some new shots of my Chinese Unicorn and Peacock rounds, which are still some of the prettiest, most interesting and unique rounds in my Silver NCLT collection.



… and here are some pictures… some from a recent family photo session with the boys and some from some shots I took later that day of Shandy in a new evening dress she bought for a wedding we’ll need to go to in a couple of months.


Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

I've been talking and thinking about starting a set of the Innovation Dollars to show the boys as they get older and a seller on eBay gave me an offer for this after I watched it so I decided to bite. After shipping it cost me $20. At that price it just becomes fun impulse buy at a stressful time. I thought it was worth it to begin the journey of about 50 coins with this one. I think I will make a set of these, but in the near term I think my focus will be adding a few more presidents to that old set - I'm probably going to buy year sets of those for 2015 and/or 2016 soon.

In looking at this label though, with all that information and all that color... I just couldn't help but laugh. If you look at the labels for the old fatty holders they say hardly anything usually. Just something like S$1 and a year and mint mark. Done. And you have to think they couldn't put much more on that label if they wanted too. 6 lines of information a barcode and the "American Innovation" tagline.
I really like that gear / mechanical wheel graphic on the label though.
I still find it odd that they kicked off this series with this one-off coin that breaks the whole pattern. One coin in a year rather than 4 and about a person and not linked to / for a state or territory. Honoring the first patent is also interesting in the context of modern times and the use / abuse of patents to lock competition out of markets and crush by litigation.
That coin arrived in the Mail Monday at the old house. I didn't get a chance to get it out until this morning because we've been going so hard but I didn't want to risk it being forgotten in the mailbox. We really need to set up our mail forwarding. Anyway...
Also on Monday - the really big news - Shandy got a new job!!! It has been / was a crazy week because she was having to do remote interviews and skills tests while we were packing every day and night too.. super stressful and crazy but Monday made it all worth it with the big news! So she'll be using her new home office for that and no longer doing 5 AM English lessons. We'll have offices together on one side of the house with a small bathroom between us. It's going to be great I think. We'll spend more time in the morning together with the boys. It's gonna be fantastic!
The movers came today and after a lot of hours and a lot work in the heat of August almost all of our stuff is over here now. We're going back to the old place one last time tomorrow to finish getting the last of our stuff and cleaning up a bit. But tonight will be the first night in the new house. With a little child-care help from in-laws this house is and will continue to "come online" very quickly.
Saturday night we'd brought a bottle of bubbly wine and apple cider with champagne flutes to celebrate. After all the unpleasantness that wrecked that evening we never opened them - it didn't feel right. But we'll get everyone over soon and pop the corks in a proper celebration of the new house.
It's all coming together. One day at a time.
Tomorrow's priorities are building the crib, setting up my desk so I can work Thursday and generally unboxing things as able.

So, the Zcoins still haven't been finalized... but the Census did go up by about 9 coins today, all mint state, and 8 of those line up with the 8 pre-hyperinflation coins in my submission… So I may have just gotten a sneak peek at some of my grades… and the grades are pretty consistent with what I would have expected from those coins… but no way to know for sure.
But, while I can’t talk grades officially yet, I have little better or more interesting to do with my socially-isolated, work-from-home, life… so I’m going to “treat” everyone to more of my scientific wild-### speculation… You’re welcome. Straight into my "Random nonsense" category with this one.  
I've had some on-side discussions with Mike about the idea of how easy or hard it would be and how well it might actually work out in practice to de-bottleneck the back end of the process by adding people to do minor work / tasks... but I do wonder if there could be another issue at play.
I was wondering the other day, how many machines does NGC have for sonically sealing the slabs? How quickly can they be loaded? How long does it take per coin to encapsulate, even if you're well practiced? What is the theoretical upper limit on the number of coins NGC can encapsulate a day without buying more machines? I’m guessing those things are not cheap and if they actually hit the upper limit of their capacity for a while it wouldn’t necessarily be a trivial choice or task to get more and bring them online.
Of course, the other thing I've wondered about at times... with 2021s supply chain issues I've wondered where they source slab parts from and how well they've been able to keep slab parts and inserts of various sizes on inventory... My local Walmart can’t even keep generic sodas in stock consistently the last few months so it does make me wonder where NGC gets their parts from and what kind of susceptibility they have to vender supply interruptions…
But the bump up in the census today has me really wondering about another wrinkle I hadn’t considered at all up to this point: The census itself.
Several of the coins I submitted in my Z coin submission were the first ones like that that NGC has ever graded, so adding those coins to the Census also probably involves building out the database on the back end to add rows / categories for those coins to go into. If NGC is getting a larger than normal in-flow of World coins, it could also be that they are getting a much higher than usual number of coins that are the first-of-their-kind-graded-by-NGC. If that’s happening that could easily cause a bottleneck / slow things down considerably because I’m sure that’s not something NGC would just hire someone off the street to work on. I’m sure the accuracy and integrity of the census or the underlying database is something they take really seriously.
Something like this would probably also explain why this would hit world coins so hard while not impacting the US coins at all. Except for new 2021 / current year issues I’m sure there’s almost nothing under the sun in American coins that NGC has not graded a thousand times over (assuming there are that many in existence). So, there wouldn’t be much need to expand / build upon the underlying database for US coins, but I’m sure there is a UNIVERSE of world coins out there that NGC has never graded before and I’m sure they’re encountering new ones with increasing frequency with their efforts to expand beyond the US…
I know from emailing customer service that my coins were probably graded 1.5 to 2 weeks ago, if not more… but the Census bumped up today / this week…
It gets even more interesting in this context that the update to the Zimbabwe census today may include all of my coins except the bond coins… That this update would include coins that are just new dates for things they have graded before but not the bond coins which they maybe be planning on entering into the census in a different way…
Of course, I don’t know… and will probably never know… because NGC customer service is very tight-lipped. I mean EXTREMELY tight lipped. But I REALLY am starting to think I’m on to something with this one…
 
As of today, World Modern turnaround times are up again to 93 working days... I'm wondering if they'll hit 100.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I've been talking and thinking about starting a set of the Innovation Dollars to show the boys as they get older and a seller on eBay gave me an offer for this after I watched it so I decided to bite. After shipping it cost me $20. At that price it just becomes fun impulse buy at a stressful time. I thought it was worth it to begin the journey of about 50 coins with this one. I think I will make a set of these, but in the near term I think my focus will be adding a few more presidents to that old set - I'm probably going to buy year sets of those for 2015 and/or 2016 soon.

In looking at this label though, with all that information and all that color... I just couldn't help but laugh. If you look at the labels for the old fatty holders they say hardly anything usually. Just something like S$1 and a year and mint mark. Done. And you have to think they couldn't put much more on that label if they wanted too. 6 lines of information a barcode and the "American Innovation" tagline.
I really like that gear / mechanical wheel graphic on the label though.
I still find it odd that they kicked off this series with this one-off coin that breaks the whole pattern. One coin in a year rather than 4 and about a person and not linked to / for a state or territory. Honoring the first patent is also interesting in the context of modern times and the use / abuse of patents to lock competition out of markets and crush by litigation.
That coin arrived in the Mail Monday at the old house. I didn't get a chance to get it out until this morning because we've been going so hard but I didn't want to risk it being forgotten in the mailbox. We really need to set up our mail forwarding. Anyway...
Also on Monday - the really big news - Shandy got a new job!!! It has been / was a crazy week because she was having to do remote interviews and skills tests while we were packing every day and night too.. super stressful and crazy but Monday made it all worth it with the big news! So she'll be using her new home office for that and no longer doing 5 AM English lessons. We'll have offices together on one side of the house with a small bathroom between us. It's going to be great I think. We'll spend more time in the morning together with the boys. It's gonna be fantastic!
The movers came today and after a lot of hours and a lot work in the heat of August almost all of our stuff is over here now. We're going back to the old place one last time tomorrow to finish getting the last of our stuff and cleaning up a bit. But tonight will be the first night in the new house. With a little child-care help from in-laws this house is and will continue to "come online" very quickly.
Saturday night we'd brought a bottle of bubbly wine and apple cider with champagne flutes to celebrate. After all the unpleasantness that wrecked that evening we never opened them - it didn't feel right. But we'll get everyone over soon and pop the corks in a proper celebration of the new house.
It's all coming together. One day at a time.
Tomorrow's priorities are building the crib, setting up my desk so I can work Thursday and generally unboxing things as able.