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About this journal

This journal was originally to record my thoughts on collecting and building my Netherlands Wilhelm III Gold 10 Gulden Set and other projects like  my modern silver bullion NCLT sets. When it got started in the summer of 2007 I was single, in my early 20's, and working on my B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering. Starting in 2016, with my marriage and the birth of my first son, Benjamin, much of my writing has focused on raising my sons to have a love of collecting coins and exonumia and discussing how my collecting occurs in the context of my marriage and life overall.

Entries in this journal

Family

Got the award / plaque, now to the Post Office?

A couple of weeks ago now I received the award I'd referenced previously. In true 2020 fashion I got to receive a professional award in a Punisher tshirt and sweatpants. Because the organization wanted good pictures with the newsletter we had to re-do this in a suit and I got the whole family in on it. As the corresponding (and surviving) author, both plaques were sent to me and its my task to mail the other plaque(s) to the other author(s), or, in my case, to his family.
Revenant

Revenant in Family

4
Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

A Bouquet of Flame Lilies

I had mentioned recently that I’d ordered a Rhodesian 3 Pence (1 1957 in MS66) to go with the Rhodesian Federation 6 pence my wife gave me for my Birthday. Shortly thereafter I saw that I seller I’ve used for a lot of my Rhodesian Federation coinage had a 1955 and a 1964 in MS66, so I put in some offers, which they accepted. After the coins spent a week in the Post Office, after the substitute carrier once again just put a slip of paper in the mailbox and didn’t come to the door, ring
Registry

I guess that's all over except the crying.

So, I've always thought the expression "It's all over but the crying" was a funny one, in part because when something is over people can be crying because they're happy or because they're sad. You see it on awards shows all the time with the happy cry, but, given that televised award shows are often for TV and movie stars who are, after all, professional pretenders, it does make you wonder sometimes how much of the happy crying is genuine.   What I never knew, however, but what a little bit
Revenant

Revenant in Registry

4
Italian Coins

So... There's a 2 Lire coin, you say?

Some of you may recall that, when I started buying graded Modern Italian coins in late-2021 to build sets for / to celebrate / in honor of my wife, one of my initial wants / goals was as 1986 Mint set for Italian coins.  I haven't talked about it much recently because... it just came together quickly and I completed it easily and... it was built but doomed to rot in the purgatory that is the custom set feature in the old registry.   Seriously though, how do you even brag up a cus
Revenant

Revenant in Italian Coins

4
Venezuelan Coins and Currency

Oh no… I have done the dumb.

It is only now, now that I’ve taken the coins from the submission and populated a competitive set that I realize I made a massive boo-boo when I sent these coins in: I had 5 examples each of the 10 Bolivar and 100 Bolivar Fuertes coins from 2016… but I forgot to look at them with Shandy, pick one of each out and include them with the submission. I should have submitted 24 Venezuelan coins, not 22. I think this happened 1) Because the number of coins and the number of different types wi
Italian Coins

The 500 Lire Redux - Ti amerò per sempre

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
Revenant

Revenant in Italian Coins

4
Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

Learning that you're a little right, a little wrong, and a little ignorant...

I'm starting to work on digging into the Zimbabwe coins more to try to build out a nice group of descriptions for that set once the coins clear grading. I am clearly not excited about those coins / getting them back graded or anything. Clearly. I am just front-running working on descriptions for coins I will not get back for a month and a half. Anyway... I finally found out what the KM numbers for all of them were. And found out I was wrong about several of them - some that I thought g
Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

This threatens to raise my hopes...

I looked today and my 13 coin Zimbabwe submission is now fully entered in the system and "scheduled for grading."  This has me hopeful that I could maybe see grades by the end of this month - maybe 2-3 weeks sooner than I'd been expecting based on the turnaround times listed at about 49 days... but I'm basing this on how quickly other things - not world moderns - have gone from scheduled to in grading. So that hope may be dangerous. I could just in in for 3-4 weeks of them sitting as "Schedu
Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

The Z Coins away, the 10Gs back home.

I finally took a minute, filled out the rest of the paperwork and printed the shipping label and the Z coins are scheduled for pick-up. Doing a bit of a deeper dive on this than I have in previous entries, I am sending in 13 coins: KM-1b: 1 cent KM-2: 5 Cent KM-8: 10 Cent KM-9: 20 Cent KM-10: 50 Cent KM-11: $1 KM-14: $10 KM-15: $25 KM-16: 1 Cent Bond Coin KM-17: 5 Cent Bond Coin KM-18: 10 Cent Bond Coin KM-19: 25 Cent Bond Coin
Random Nonsense

The New Journal Features

Having joined the Collector's Society and started this Journal in mid-2007 I definitely feel like I've witnessed the site and the journal feature of the site "evolve" over time but I've been enjoying 1 new feature lately now that I'm gaining an understanding of how it works... the new Category feature. When I first rejoined / became active again around 2016/2017 I had to get used to the new system but I very much remember being disappointed by the fact that the new system only let me have 1
Revenant

Revenant in Random Nonsense

4
Family

We made an offer on a house on 4/20! ... and now we wait.

We put in an offer on a house on 4/20! We started negotiating on 4/19 but the seller didn't accept until 4/20 and that's when we put in the bid contract - which is the only thing that matters under Texas law. We're still waiting on confirmation that they have signed it to put the house under contract after most of yesterday was lost to hashing out a minor issue in the draft of the contract we signed and submitted on 4/20, so we re-signed and resubmitted yesterday and... fingers cr
Revenant

Revenant in Family

4
European Pocket Change

Pieces of Italy

My wife and I are coming up on a pretty significant day for us and I've joked that it caps off a sequence of special Fridays. 12/25 - Christmas 1/1 - New Year's Day 1/8 - The NGC/PMG Awards announcement 1/15 - Our 5th Wedding Anniversary. One of the things my wife has talked very fondly of the entire time I've known her is her memories of the time they spent in Italy when she was young. I was finishing up putting her father's old coin bag in flips today (I'll have t
Revenant

Revenant in European Pocket Change

4
Family

Survived that weekend...

Well, we got the negative Covid test from my Nephew late Friday, but by then my wife and Sam were already at the ER because Sam gave us the scare of our lives when he stopped talking and we were worried he might be having seizures or some other issue and might have shunt failure. Two nights at the hospital later, short on a lot of sleep, we came back home on Sunday after a day of observation saying, "we'll watch for now, move up some of his other tests and appointments and see if we see any more
Revenant

Revenant in Family

4
Family

Not just marking time...

I posted on 1/12/2019 about winning the 2018 Journal award and mentioned that, pretty much at the same time as I found out about that, that I'd gotten a paper accepted for publication. I didn't really go into this at the time but it was a paper co-authored with my graduate advisor - who passed away on September 11, 2018. He's the person I decided to name Sam after. I didn't know it at the time but I posted that entry exactly 1 month before Sam's surprise early birth - the "first published" date
Revenant

Revenant in Family

4
Family

Happy Father's Day

I know quite a few of us that frequent this place are also fathers. Shandy let me sleep in this morning and, when I got up, she had the boys in Star Wars shirts saying "I am your Son" and one for me that says "I am your Father." I mentioned elsewhere that I had an ebay auction ending late last night. I followed my practice of putting in my best number and going to bed. It so happened that, when I put in my best bid, i was winning it but my bid was maxed out and if anyone else had bid
Revenant

Revenant in Family

4

Subjective Novelty

It’s a little funny sometimes to come to a place like this and see someone talking about a 225 coin or token and to hear or see them say, “it’s not all that rare or special, but I like it,” and to contrast that with the reaction I get sometimes from my family. You show people a 225-year-old token and they’re going to think it’s crazy cool! - Or maybe not… As others have noted recently, sometimes you show someone something that you think is really cool - and they just shrug and say, “that’s
Revenant

Revenant

4

New photos of the Civil War Tokens

I have four old graded civil war tokens that I've always found it difficult to take photos of because they're mostly pretty dark brown, they're in the old style holders and it's hard to get a good shot of something dark when it's surrounded by so much white. Anyway... I decided to take another stab at these and see what I could get. I think these came out pretty good so I thought I'd share. Three are pretty common patriotic varieties and one is a store card that I found interesting, es
Revenant

Revenant

4

Because I’m slowly going blind?

So one of my stocking stuffers on Christmas morning was a small pocket magnifier that has a light built-in. I saw this and asked my wife, jokingly, “So is this because I’m slowly going blind?” She said, “No! It’s for your coins!” “… and the fact that I’m slowly going blind?” In early 2016, right around the time Ben was born, I got a 5 mm corneal abrasion right in the middle of my right cornea – it almost split the cornea in half. I was lucky enough that it didn’t cost me use of the eye, but
Revenant

Revenant

4

When Is it worth grading?

Are only mint state coins worth grading? Or do coins become worth grading once they reach a certain set value? Unlike many of you, I'm barely launched on this journey. I've been trying to learn as much as I could over the last year but there's one question I've been running into increasingly often. When is a coin worth grading? Obviously the modern coins are only really worth grading if a high MS grade can be obtained but what about older coins? Do they necessarily have to be MS and worth hund
Revenant

Revenant

3

The 63rd Houston Money Show

Shandy took the kids to spend the day with her parents in Deer Park and that left me free to go to this show after Naked Angel put me on to it a few days ago. I debated not going and just spending the day alone at the house – quiet time alone at the house is a valuable thing. The show, while being the “Houston” Money show was also actually in Conroe and it was a 45 mile, 65 minute drive to get to it, which isn’t a trivial commute. Still, I don’t get opportunities like this a lot and I ultim
Revenant

Revenant

3

Some coin fun at Renfest today.

My wife and I went to Renfest today, childfree, while her parents had our sons. While there I found a "penny" on the ground only to find that it was some weird, penny-like token with a Jolly-roger on it. I'll see if I can get pictures of it to share later. Later on in the day I was given a 1974 half dollar in change - and I couldn't even tell you the last time that happened. No one ever has half dollars these days. I didn't keep it though. I tossed it into a tip jar later in the day.
Revenant

Revenant

3

Bringing them all out.

My mother and step-father paid me a visit today to see me and Ben. My step-father decided to bring out all of the birth year sets we've built and the Texas Commemorative set with them. This was prompted in part by the fact that I'd been getting the coins one or two boxes at a time to try to re-image some of the sets and get pictures of some of the coins I didn't have pictures of. In the process of this I found that it seemed like a few of the upgraded coins hadn't been inserted with their g
Revenant

Revenant

3

An NGC MS66 Netherlands 1875 10G

I took Shandy and the baby to the airport yesterday for that trip to New York that did end up happening. She was stuck at the airport for 3.5 hours of flight delays with the baby but fortunately the baby slept through most of it and it wasn't too stressful for her. She's in New York with her mom and having a blast. Before I drove her to the airport though I finally decided to pull the trigger on an 1875 Netherlands 10G coin that I'd been looking at. There is no exciting tale of finding
Revenant

Revenant

3

Living fast and hard as a penny… and other updates.

Sam has been doing well since having the shunt put in but he’s having trouble getting through all his feeds without help. He hasn’t had a brady in days though. We’re trying to see if we might be able to (finally) bring him home, even if it’s with an NG (nasogastric) tube to supplement his feeds. I went to the hospital yesterday to learn how to “install” the tube. I do not know who came up with the idea of using the word “install” to describe threading a tube into an infant’s nose, through his th
Revenant

Revenant

3

Pick a price and stick to it!

Go into the auction already knowing what you'll pay. I realized that I tended to go nuts on auctions pretty early on and I've subsequently found 1 way to prevent over bidding. I look at the item and decide well in advance what I'm willing to pay. (Note: That's what I'm willing to pay, not what any price guide says it's worth though I may consult the book.) In the heat of the moment I'll sometimes go 1 or 2 dollars over, but not more than that. Yes, I'll moan and groan went it's something that
Revenant

Revenant

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