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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

A Proof 2016 SAE for Ben - Aiming for fairness.

I just picked up a 2016 Proof SAE for Ben’s birth year. My mother-in-law gave me a 2019 proof that she bought when she visited the mint at the end of last year. That gave me one for Sam’s birth year and I got a 1986 - for our birth year - years ago. Ben smashing the capsule for the 1986 the other week - forcing me to go shopping for replacement capsules - was what got this back on my mind, but it had been on my collecting agenda since I was given the 2019. Cash was a bit tighter back then a

Revenant

Revenant in Family

Possible Die Cracks and Thoughts on Die Life and Die Pairings

In looking at that 1880 10G coin I picked up a couple of weeks ago now one thing kind of stood out to me. There’s something on the left side of the Obverse that looks a lot like a die crack that runs between the K and one of the stars. Unlike a lot of the things you see people posting about in the Newbie forum you can actually see this with a naked eye and I think it really is a die crack and not a scratch - but I could be wrong. Looking closer under high magnification it looks l

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Revenant in Gold

USPS: Keeping those standards high!

Well, I've been wondering when the certificates were going to arrive this year since the plaques are already in - the plaques almost never arrive first. I go to the mailbox with the family this morning and I'm treated to this: All I can do is just sit here and shake my head and think, "Really? For Serious?" I know those folks aren't having the best time right now but... really? Yeah. Technically, NGC didn't stamp "do not bend" on it, but, why else would you ship

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I love him, but he just kind of breaks… everything.

Ben came into my office the other day and found the 1986 Silver Eagle I have that’s in the original mint packaging. He’s always coming into my office wanting to take things from there or from my desk. Apparently, I just have all the best… everything! And he just wants to play with and take all of it. So, he decides that he needs to take it downstairs and show it to momma. Of course, he trips on the tile in the kitchen and drops it and breaks a chip off the mint capsule for the coin… Great!

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Dirty Gold

I like watching documentaries and docu-series and I’ve become quite a fan of “Dirty Money.” I don’t know how popular it is, but I must not be the only one that likes it because it just got a 2nd Season. It reminds me a lot of “The Smartest Guys in the Room,” about Enron. I’m also a big fan of “The Big Short” and other documentaries on the financial crisis of a decade ago like “Overdose.” In particular with “Dirty Money,” in the first season I was a big fan of the episode on Volkswagen and the on

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Ants and Grasshoppers

My wife has an acquaintance she’s known for a number of years. This friend and her husband go on about 3 Disney Vacations a year. A couple of weeks ago, on the same day we were starting our self-isolation - with coronavirus cases already increasing in our area - they decide to go on an impromptu / unplanned trip to Florida to go to Disney World. The park started shutting down while they were there, and they stayed in their hotel a few more days before coming home. Instead of picking up su

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Crackin’ Slabs… What am I missing?

It is Day 13 of our Coronavirus Self-solation. Frequent walks help make it not so bad with the stir craziness now. We’re taking the cars for short drives and driving out to the woods to walk around so that the cars don’t sit idle for too long. I thought it was a good day to have a bit of fun. A few years ago I ended up with two graded 1883-O Morgans in my collection. One is an NGC MS63 that I bought. One is a PCGS graded AU58 that another member here gave me when I bought a coin

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There’s a good chance that I might have overpaid for this… but I did it anyway!

I’m not sure if I should care. An NGC 1880 Netherlands 10G appeared in the wild in MS65 for sale! For $600! … Ouch. But it was perfect for my set! I’ve never seen one of these (already graded by NGC) come up for sale before. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it hasn’t happened in all that time, but this is the first one I’ve been aware of while it was for sale. A recent round of internet searching revealed that in Sept 2015 a PCGS graded example graded MS66 went up for sale with sever

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Pictures are for Parents

My wife pointed out to me the other day, likely very correctly, that pictures of children are for parents - not for the children. I suspect their simple existence is often enough for the child to know that the parent cared enough to have them taken. Nevertheless, these are some that I wanted, and they're very much for me. Yeah... you give a kid something and take away the pacifier and its going in the mouth. On another front, it would appear that the time has come to start

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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

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“PIF by Borrower”

For months now I’ve been crossing my fingers hoping that I’d get a nice bonus and we’d be able to pay off my student loans and maybe finish paying for the cruise we’re wanting to take in October. I’m still waiting to find out about if I’ll get a bonus this year, but we just got a big surprise on our Taxes. Because we can claim an extra dependent this year and a couple of other things this year, instead of owing money we’re going to get some back and this is going to let us pay off my loans,

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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

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I now own 1 “stickered” coin I guess

I sat down with my wife earlier in the week and we ordered the gold sovereign. I decided on an NGC Graded MS63 1915 George V Sovereign – A coin struck at the Royal Mint during the Great War. It arrived yesterday. Below are some of the seller’s images. I had been holding out to see if eBay would put on a 10% eBay bucks deal heading into Valentine’s day. They put on a 5% deal for president’s day and I decided to go for it. I’ll get about $22.20 in eBay bucks in April that I can use for

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Sam turns 1 – The kid has definite potential

Sam is now 1 year old! He’s still not crawling or walking, but he’s sitting up on his own. He managed that skill at 11 months, which is very good for a 29-week preemie that had a grade 4 IVH which was then complicated by hydrocephalus. His PT, neurologist, neurosurgeon, ophthalmologist, and pediatrician are quite happy with him. Side note – an infant should not have so many doctors, but I digress. PT thinks he’ll soon be army crawling. The main hold up for that and sitting up on

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The Diamond Jubilee Penny

A few months ago I gave a technical presentation for the local section of my professional organization. Speakers for these events usually get little gift bags as a “thank you.” Such is the state of my life with kids and everything that I never got around to looking in the bag until just recently (a sad waste of candy, to be sure). One of the things in the bag was particularly interesting to me as a coin collector. The local section was founded in 1942. I don’t know what possessed them

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The challenge of finishing the 10G Set…

I’ve known for a while that finishing the 10G set might require buying some raw coins and submitting them to NGC for grading myself. The grading credit that NGC just gave me for winning the journal awards seemingly makes this a good time / year to go for it – buy a raw 1880, 1885, and 1886 dated coin and send them in. The set would finally be complete at that point except for the 1879/7 but I’ve never felt especially committed to that variety anyway. Even the way NGC defines the set, includ

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So… when are you buying that other gold coin?

This was my wife’s question to me shortly after we went to the coin shop on our anniversary. When I got a big raise in October my wife agreed to buying the $10 gold Eagle for Sam’s birthyear but said she considered that more a purchase for Sam and that I should get something that was more “for me.” The answer to her question was basically, “when these other bills are paid off and I feel comfortable enough with the finances to drop $450-500 on something unnecessary.” I got the coin

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The Queen’s Beast Sets – I might actually finish these.

Over the weekend I got a package with 4 of the Yale coins. Back in December I finished picking up the rest of the Falcons that I needed. So that gives me all of the coins I need for the first 6 issues and 2/3rd of the total I need for the 7th issue – so I’m almost 70% of the way there now and I’m only about 1-ish issue behind. After thoroughly failing to keep up with the statehood quarters and the presidential dollars as they were coming out I’d like to actually be able to say that I

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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

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The Anniversary Purchase

My wife was having a hard time deciding what to get me for our anniversary (1/15) so I suggested we could go back to that coin shop she was in about a month ago, look around together and see if we saw anything. As I told her when we were driving there, I wasn’t necessarily committed to getting anything. It would just depend on if anything stuck out at me that was reasonably close to the appropriate price range we set for the occasion but I was going to be looking for something different tha

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Woohoo! Thank you!

So, first off, thank you to NGC for the journal award! When the announcement of what would be given out this year made no mention of the journal awards, I was thinking that meant there would be no journal awards this year - and I don't think I was alone in that assumption. Participation in the journals has dropped aggressively since 2017 and, given that, it certainly could have been an understandable move. I suppose it’s possible that it was their intent to do away with it, but then we pu

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My son is Houdini. I can't sell this couch now I think.

A couple of months ago I took a buffalo silver round out just to play around with. It goes missing in the living room shortly thereafter, never to be seen again, months later. The other day Ben wants to have "big big monies," so I get out a fake "copy" silver eagle and give him that to play with. I figure, "Whatever, it's not even silver." Shortly thereafter he looses it in / around the couch and I can't find it. He's all bummed about it so, whatever, I give him another one. He looses it ag

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Odd purchase

Recently (I think it was Thanksgiving), I was at my mother's house for a holiday and my mother came in and showed me a "coin." It was trying to be a 1795 silver dollar but it was a bad fake. It's the kind of thing that you take one look at and you know it isn't real. Didn't feel right and you know pretty much immediately that it isn't silver and the weight is off. I got to thinking about this again today after looking at yet another post wondering if a similar looking 1795 silver dollar was real

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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

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Do we give USPS the benefit of the doubt? I think... No.

So a package ships out from Queens, NY late on a Friday night on 12/13. Tracking says it's due to arrive on 12/16... Every day, it updates to say, at midnight that day, that the package is "In Transit to the Destination." It doesn't say where it is. This makes it rather useless as "tracking" information... It's been 5 days of basically getting updates saying "it's coming. We promise." No measure of progress. Part of me wants to give them the benefit of the doubt - it is mid-Decemb

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