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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

Well, no West Point Quarters for me today...

Maybe I shouldn't post this... feels like it might be stepping on a landmine... but... I'm not that smart. So... I had to go to the bank today to deposit some cash that a relative gave me to pay for something. I figured while I was in the bank anyway I'd just see if they had any of the new quarters. I thought it might be fun to search some rolls. I figured if I found anything I'd stick them in 2x2 mylar flips and sit on them for 10+ years. When I got back into coin collecting as an adu
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12

When I’m Wiser and I’m Older.

Looking back, I made the first entry into this journal on June 14, 2007, when I was not quite 21 years old (clocking in at 32 now, with a receding hairline. Oh, how it does sting a bit).    This was 10 years before NGC would switch to the new (current) journal format and we’d gain the ability to give a unique name to our journals. I’ve given some thought over time to what I think I’d like to call this (other than just “Revenant” or “Revenant’s Journal”) and I think I’ve settled
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10

Something I love about the people here.

Some praises need to be sung for the people that hang out here. A few weeks (maybe months at this point) Sheik Sheck offered to send me something for Sam and I got this a short time later: This is a ZImbabwean P-9, 100 ZWD note. It's one of the few first dollar notes I didn't have a PMG graded example of. It also happens to be the series 2 note that has an image of elephants in the lower corner that is mirrored on the front and back of the note (elephants being the theme we chose
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1

An interesting chance to learn about errors?

Ben went to the museum with my wife today and operated the penny press himself. Expert press operator that he is, apparently something went slightly wrong.  Even so, I think it's fair to say that he was happy with the results. Making pre-schoolers happy and making a collector can be quite cheap and easy - $5 for the album and $0.51 every time he gets a coin to put in it. He wants to take that album with him whenever he goes to the zoo or the museum now. Some
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4

Feeding Daddy’s Money to the Puppy

I’ve made references to a piggy bank in a previous journal but one thing I don’t know if I’ve discussed is what the piggy bank is. The piggy bank is a small dog that has been in my possession since I was around Ben’s age, plus or minus a bit - I was too young to remember. This is one of two piggy banks that I still have from this early period of my life. The other one is metal, but it no longer works as a piggy bank because I lost the door that goes on the bottom of it to keep the coin
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2

I don't suppose they still send / give these out.

I still have this from the first time I became a paid member some 10-11 years ago. Part of me wonders if they still give these to new paid members and just how bad I date myself and how long I've been here based on the fact that I have this. I noticed it collecting dust in a corner of my desk. Maybe I'll give it a perch next to the plaques.
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6

Elongated Cent Albums

We've been to the zoo a couple more times and gotten Ben a couple of new pennies. This almost immediately brought forward the idea of how do we help him not lose them and keep track of all of them? So I decided to see what I could get on Amazon. I was able to find some "Penny Passport" books for a good price. A seller was offering 1 for about $7.80 and a set of 3 for $15 so I just bought a group of three. I figured, one for him, one for me, and one for Sam and we'll all do it together over time.
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Mistakes Happen – because we’re all human

We’ve had a fair bit of discussion in the boards lately on phantom sets, ghost sets, inactive sets, and sets with coins that a person no longer owns or never owned or what have you. It’s all a bit cloak and dagger for me. But the discussion did remind me of something that happened to me about 5 years ago. I got a notification from NGC that someone else had tried to register a penny that I had registered in one of my sets. I immediately started getting indignant and bent out shape b
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4

NGC on Pawn Stars

I don’t know if many / any others here do but I like watching Pawn Stars – I know it isn’t real, but it’s usually at least mildly entertaining. I haven’t had cable in 10 years, so I watch it on Hulu when I have time and / or can get away with it with my toddler, who doesn’t seem to find it terribly interesting. As a result, I don’t know how old / dated the episodes I’m seeing are – I just play what’s there. So what I’m about to comment on may be very old news to others here.
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14

The New '32.

Sleep is a splendid and wonderful thing, when you can get it. I finally got to have some rest yesterday and, rather than taking a nap in the afternoon I decided to get some pictures taken, edited and sent over to Choya with the new set and coin descriptions. He indicated his approval, so the newly updated 1932 set is up. If you've seen the set before I don't think the new version is going to have many surprises for you. Other than the updates regarding Bob to the set description it
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6

What’s in the Easter Basket? Lot’s of money and lots of candy.

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

Sometimes the unlikely happens - Sam is home

Things went well and fell into place yesterday and Sam was released this morning. He's finally home from the NICU after 59 days (16 days before his due date). 2-12-2019 to 4-12-2019 - Finally home from the hospital. Now the fun really starts. I may not be getting to play with coins and the camera this weekend... USPS was supposed to deliver a package yesterday for the Zimbabwe set. Apparently, even though the package has been in Houston since Wednesday, they're being a bunch a ins
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9

Ben's First Pressed Penny and My Wife Trolling Me

We went to the Houston Zoo as a family yesterday with my son, wife, and her parents. The zoo here is full of those old penny press machines. I'm sure most of us in the US will be familiar with them but I don't know if they're common outside the United States. For those unfamiliar with the concept: You feed the machine $0.51 (2 quarters and 1 penny) and turn a press-wheel. The quarters go to pay the machine / the company that owns it. The penny... gets smashed. The machine presses / rolls th
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13

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
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3

What we forget and the power of the journals

A while ago I was looking back through some of my old journal entries, something which I’m sure many of the long-time journal author’s do, and I found the first entry that references my 10G set, just as it was getting started, which I made right around 10 years ago in May 2009. The thing that struck me in reading that post was how much of that information I’d forgotten in the intervening years. I remembered that the 1875 was the first coin purchased for the set. I had not remembered th
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9

Rest in Peace Bob Sr.

As they say, “when it rains it pours.” My step-father's father, Bob Wright passed away yesterday. I can’t say it came as a complete shock, but the timing was still surprising. I spent as much of the day as I could with my Step-father on Friday (3/28) while still making it back to my side of town to get my son from daycare – we live about 45 miles away from each other. The loss of Choya’s mother was the instigation for building the 1932 mint set and the other birthyear sets that we made
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10

Success!! (With the Micka Mouse Money)

After my son’s lukewarm response to the Chuck E Cheese 40-year tokens in the aftermath of his birthday party I left the tokens sitting out on my nightstand. Ben comes into our bedroom a lot in the mornings when he first wakes up and he likes getting things off my nightstand and playing with daddy’s stuff. Today he comes into our room and sees the tokens sitting there. He takes interest, picks one up, holds it out to me and says, “Daddy, I need it” - his way of telling me I need to get it ou
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4

My continuing efforts to indoctrinate my eldest son

Today we had Ben’s 3rd birthday party at Chuck E Cheese’s (which my son still calls “Micka Mouse” because I don’t think he yet fully understands that Mickey Mouse and Chuck E Cheese are different characters, but he understands that they’re both mice). He loves going there and he’ll often ask, “can I got to Micka Mouse?” So it seemed like a great place for his party. The party was originally supposed to be March 3rd. We’d planned to have it really early just in case my wife was put on bed rest at
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10

Plot twist! The MS62 1888 10G resurfaces!

Some of you may remember from my post about getting my MS65 1888 in early 2018 that, at the time I won that coin, I’d only seen one other coin of that date come up for sale that had been graded by NGC. That wasn’t too surprising given that, at the time, only 20 had been graded by NGC and, even now, only 22 have been encapsulated by NGC. I don’t think I’ve ever bothered to check this before but PCGS has graded a total of 33. So, assuming there hasn’t been any that were cracked out and/or re-
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8

Maybe I was wrong about the pricing on the 20 Trillion note…

In fairness to a seller that I have and now continue to do business with I think I need to take back my earlier assessment that they overcharged my wife when she bought that ungraded Zimbabwean 20 Trillion Note for $60.    I guess the thing that should have been my first clue was that they’ve always offered returns and gave us a perfect, no-fuss return on the note and I’ve always been able to get very reasonable prices from them on so many other things, including most of my oth
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4

Well, doesn’t that just look… odd?

I’ve been really focusing on my Zimbabwe note set recently but I’ve been having a nagging voice in the back of my mind telling me that I should try to set a part of my budget aside soon and pick up the Falcons I need for my Queen’s beast set. I think the biggest problem I’m having with listening to that little voice right now is that the Zimbabwe notes / set / collection has me feeling pumped and excited and interested right now and that Falcon just... doesn’t. If it weren’t for the fact th
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8

We’ll call that an effective ad / offer

About a week ago I got an email from NGC with a coupon code and offer for $10 off any tier of paid membership, which would have made the lowest ($25) level just $15 for a year. I’ve been debating becoming a paid member again for a while as some may be aware from past entries, but this lowered the threshold for doing so enough to get me to go ahead and do it. Honestly, as much time as I spend on here lately, I think it makes sense to support the site / company a little directly, even thoug
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2

1886A 20 Franc in MS64 and Resolution on the Anniversary Notes

I got my new 20 Franc coin in the mail just the other day. I’ve been watching a bunch of these late 19th century French 20 Franc coins on eBay through November, December and January. I’ve mostly been looking at examples in MS63 and MS64. The MS63s were more in the price range I was hoping for, but I was really hoping to get an MS64 – I like to stay in the MS64+ range with these purchases. Most of the sellers have been wanting $440-500 for an MS64, depending on the date. After having a rel
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5

And so it begins... Updated 2/22

I was gone all night at a professional function. I finally got home around 9:00, my son was already in bed. My mother-in-law stayed with them all evening while I was gone so Shandy wouldn't be alone, just in case. Maybe 5 minutes after my mother-in-law left, less than half an hour after I got home Shandy started bleeding. We went to the hospital. She was having contractions she couldn't feel and there was no way to stop the bleeding with the contractions and so she's in the OR now and I'm w
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28

So that was a privy mark…

There’s only 10 dates / years of issue for the Netherlands 10G coin during the 41-year reign of Willem III. All of these years occurred in a 15-year period from 1875 to 1889. Because of this, he only had one official portrait during this time and all the coins have the same obverse. Because even the date is on the reverse there is absolutely no way to discriminate one issue in the series from any of the others by just looking at the design of the obverse. By contrast, his daughter, ruled for 58
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