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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

Coin Photography as Macro Photography

I wanted to share a bit of new vs old photo results. Both the coin images are of the obverse of the 1876. I set up my equipment the same way I usually do for macro photography of miniatures and other really small objects. I have a 105 mm f/2.8 VR Macro lens for my D600 and I added the 2x teleconverter so I could shoot really close in to the coin - having the coin fill most of the frame for really high resolution images - while still staying far enough back that I didn't get in the way of my

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Revenant

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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“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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Funko Pops: The Plastic Scourge

I was looking around at pop-culture news on the internet recently as I sometimes like to do, as nerds like me sometimes like to do, and I found an article saying that there’s going to be a Funko Pops movie - it’s going to try to piggy-back on the success of the Lego movies. This has me in the mood to rant a bit. So this is me being my best “super-judger,” as my wife would put it – anyone reading this is forewarned now. It has been interesting to me that Lego sets have become collectable in

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A coin collector's birthday

I got my big surprise that my wife and her mother have been sitting on for about a month and a half yesterday. It would seem that, while in Pennsylvania for work, her mother stopped at the Philadelphia mint, too the tour and these things. The Silver Eagle and the birthday set were for me, the coin explorer book was for Ben and the birth year set was for Sam. She also got a bag from the mint that’s also pretty cool. The book for Ben is pretty neat to look at. I hop

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The Canadian Quarter…

I find myself trying to take a minute to focus on something positive as its looking like Laura is coming for us - as if the year of the ‘Rona wasn’t bad enough without a Cat 3 or 4 Hurricane to spice things up. I always hate the lead-up to a storm. The stress and worry tie your stomach up in knots. Anyway… In early November of last year, I went to Canada for a few days on a job. These trips are not usually all that fun - I usually plan them so I get in, do the job, and get back home without

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Revenant in Random Nonsense

Trying to work eBay Bucks almost cost me money.

Around the time I ordered that Lunar Monkey coin for Ben's birthyear I saw that a seller had listed 5 2019 Lunar 2 Pig coins that had the Early Release label. That was pretty much exactly what I wanted for Sam's year as an equivalent piece. One of the five sold almost immediately but there were four left and I felt pretty safe with that and I decided to wait and see if I could hold out for a 5% eBay bucks deal - always nice if you can pick up some cashback on things, right? About a week lat

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Revenant in NCLT

So that was definitely for him.

Yesterday was the Bday. I finally found out what Ben's present for me was and it was swords... a set of 6 foam swords. Which he has had great fun running around with and playing with, including with his mother while I'm working. I'm so glad that those are mine. Clearly. They don't hurt when you get hit with them though so I guess that is a form of gift. A form of one... My in-laws gifted me an Uncirc 2020 SAE, which is nice - after some recent discussions here though and current silver pri

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Revenant in Family

Who Says Registered Mail is Slow?

From Texas to Florida in a weekend. Wow! Whenever I talk to people about registered mail I get this speech about "it's slower than other forms of mail because it's tracked so carefully but it's much more secure." I get that, but how slow is it really? My latest submission was given over to USPS at our local post office on Friday afternoon (3/20). I checked today and apparently NGC has received it! I did a double take when I saw that. Interestingly enough, this submission was received exactly 2

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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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Starting work on PawPaw's coins

Some of the 2x2s I ordered came in today and Ben wanted to play with them not really understanding what they were so I agreed to work with him with them when Sam was napping. We sat down with the bag of coins from PawPaw and the staplers and tried to put some in the 2x2s. He lost interest quickly. He still struggles with the stapler. He's young. He doesn't get it fully. I'm easily more interested in these than he is, but maybe that'll change with time. He's four. I still need to remember th

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Revenant in Family

The 1986 Italian Mint Set is going up...

Thursday of last week, when everything was going down with Sam, that MS68 1986 100L arrived in the mail and over the weekend I won an auction for an MS67 1986 20 Lire. That, with the MS68 1986 50L I got last year, gives me (or will soon give me) 3 of the 7 coins for an Italian 1986 Mint Set, so I've gone ahead and made a custom set for that and popped in what I have so far. 1986 Italian Circulation Strike Set - Custom Set (collectors-society.com) The MS67 20 Lire is the highest graded

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Revenant in Italian Coins

Now that I think on it more… this WILL start competitively

So, I’ve talked a fair bit about my plan to make a signature set / custom set around the Venezuelan coins I submitted and just got back… but I think I’m going to table that for now and focus instead on building out two competitive sets: Reform Coinage, Type Set, 1879-2005, Circulation Issue Sets | NGC Registry | NGC (ngccoin.com) Set Details | NGC Registry | NGC (ngccoin.com) Reform Coinage, Type Set, 2007-Date, Circulation Issue Sets | NGC Registry | NGC (ngccoin.com) Set De

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.

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Revenant in Family

Residue... Joy... But, forward with the Bond Coins! (... EDIT to add: Got my sale... maybe?)

Well, I got the notice from NGC/NCS today that they're recommending sending the 1975 Tobacco Dove coin to NCS to remove Residue... No idea how that happened unless it got on there from the OMP back in the day.  Anyway... I went ahead and told them to remove it and then try for a grade again. I suspect I'm going to end up regretting sending that in at all unless it comes back as a MS70 by some miracle. I got the Zimbabwe Bond Coins opened up and into flips. This process was more interesting

A fun update

Work has had me crazy this week but I wanted to steal a few minutes and share something fun. My Venezuela submission took a few more days than I normally see as typical to go from just "Received" to being able to see the list of the coins. When the coins did come up I saw some variety information that I hadn't had had been entered in. Notably, one of the coins I sent in was the non-magnetic, non-steel, zinc-aluminum version (2001-2004) and not the steel version (2000-2002). I had

Making Progress and Hoping for Good News Soon.

I actually managed to get my box to the Post Office on 8/12 and, since I decided to chance it on a Priority Mail Flat Rate box and not pay for Registered Mail for such a low-value submission this time, NGC received the box on 8/15. The submission is still not showing in the system yet, but, based on currently advertised turnaround times, I'm hoping I'll have grades by around 09/09 or 09/16 (3 or 4 weeks from now to be generous on my expectations vs 13 business days).  We'll see. In any

The Zoo reminding him of some things and renewing interest.

Ben has been off for Spring break all week and Shandy took him back to the zoo.  While he was there, he asked for this "gold" "tiger" (Lion) coin, which she got for him, and she said Ben was showing some interest in the penny crushers again, but she hadn't brought pennies and quarters so they couldn't do that. The elongated cent albums kind of dropped out a couple of years ago when COVID hit and we stopped going anywhere, including the zoo, so we weren't getting any pennies. I guess we'll n

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Revenant in Family

Children can be adorable when it comes to presents

My wife ordered my birthday present about a week ago. She was trying to keep it quiet but then Ben saw her and wanted to "help" and gave it away in a big way. I think she ordered something for my Zimbabwe note set but I don't know for sure so this has me trying to limit / hold off on major purchases for the next couple of weeks until she gives it to me. Ben has been very funny throughout this. First he insisted that he needed to get me a small present too that he had to pick out and then he

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Revenant in Family

So, do we actually want the value of these things to rise?

A few months ago I talked to another collector who recalled a conversation where-in he and someone else agreed that, if they had tried to build their collections today, buying graded coins and not ones they “discovered” themselves, they never could have afforded to build their collections because prices have gone up so much. I can’t help but think of that statement periodically and ask myself, “So do we really want the value / price of these things to go up?” Or, stated more usefully, “Do

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Happy Thanksgiving! Time to keep some powder dry I think.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Have fun eating yourselves into a stupor tomorrow. It's a little funny seeing everyone and their dog putting on a Black Friday sale this week - with many of them extending into next week - even the coin and currency dealers!. In the next several days I'll probably place an order with one of my favorite merchants that will probably be one of the last purchases I make for the Zimbabwe set for a while. The notes will be part of my Christmas present this year,

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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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On to Venezuela?

The first of the packages of Venezuelan Coins from the Ukrainian dealer arrived. The box that came was the 2nd one shipped, containing the 2021 Digital Bolivar Coins. The first package is still showing it was last seen in Kiev. I guess we'll see on that one – but I’m mostly considering that one a lost cause after over a week with no updates. I’ll just be pleasantly surprised if I’m wrong. But at least I already had some of those from a prior order and dollarwise what I got this weekend was the b

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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Maybe it is paranoia but I'm still not doing it.

I've pretty much made up my mind that, before the year is out, I want to get my 10G set reholdered in scratch-resistant holders to harmonize the look of the set. I'm considering having them review the ones in old fatty holders to see if they might be able to pick up a point - this would be especially nice with the MS64 1887. I'm not sure how the best way to do this would be because, even if the grade doesn't change, I'd still want it cracked out and reholdered - There's just little point to me i

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Revenant in Gold

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