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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

Thanks, Michael!

This post is a few days overdue. I wanted to thank Michael for the trivia challenge and for the Barr note! It arrived in my mail box saturday. (To tell you the truth, I never knew what a "Barr note" was, just that it was supposed to be kinda special. Currency has never been my specialty.)
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The bubble is bursting?

Precious Metals are way down. As I type, gold is down $90 from its high ($920 from $1010), Silver is down over $3 ($17.1 from $20.7) and Platinum is down about $400 ($1860 from about $2250). Is the economic/panic bubble that has been running them up collapsing? Are we just seeing a massive sell off from people who have hit their target numbers and are doing profit taking? Did a miracle occur and the dollar has started to rebound?
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Joining the 10K club

I finally made it! I finally made it to 10,000 registry points! Yay! This is one of those nice landmarks. I also just achieved an all time high in the overall rankings. Over half of my points are concentrated in 4 sets (Silver Eagles, Prez Dollars, Lincoln Cents, Statehood Quarters) with over 1000 points each but I have other up and coming sets.
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The Registry as a Community

When we're at our best... I collected raw coins for about a year before I bought my first "slabbed" coin. Shortly after I bought my second slab (first NGC coin) I tracked down the NGC homepage and then started seeing things about the registry. I initially thought that this place was some kind of super competitive environment where only people with $100,000+ invested in their collection should even dare venture for fear of being laughed to scorn and humiliation. When I started looking into it
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One left.

Just 1 left before the set is complete. Even though I really probably shouldn't have (I've bought way too much lately) I saw a 2000 Millenium Set MS69 Silver Eagle going for a pretty nice price and I decided to go for it. Now I have 23 coins in the set, with the 1994 and the 2000 MS coins ordered. The only one left is the 1996 coin and then the set will be complete. Edited to add: Apparently I got one of the lower prices achieved recently; about $101.50 after shipping.
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Subdivided Registry

Getting 1 registry account to represent 2 different (separate?) groups of coins. When I originally joined the registry I was joining just for my own fun and to list my own coins. I started with 1 set, my eagles. My registry grew to contain 17 sets. Only 3 of which are anywhere near finished but almost all of them are sets I hope to one day complete. I'm getting off track though because I don't want to get caught up in that subject. The point is that this was my collection. Several weeks ago
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Being called "Obsessed"

It's bad enough when they say it to your face... Just yesterday, while I was out of the room, one of my family members turned to the others and expressed concerns that I'm "obsessed" with my coins. They also underestimated how well I can hear and I came into the room and made no secret about hearing them. Now, I've always thought to "obsession" as taking something to a clearly unhealthy level and I don't think I'm anywhere near that. I still work a part time job, I still bring home mid to hi
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The Points vs Rank Curve

Something funny the look at/think about. AJ Biddles noted earlier the Gardner is in a league of his own but I've long thought it was interesting that the relationship between points and rank followed a really nasty exponential decay model. Only the first 4 people have over a million, only 19 have over half a million, and only 357 (less than 10% of all registry members) have over 100,000. This is a crazy drop-off. The thing that I find interesting though, is that when you take this data and sev
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To: Bully Re: "In God We Trust"

Why not capitalize the word? Maybe it's because I'm a WASP; maybe it's because I go to the most conservative university in the nation, a school that values tradition above just about everything else, but I think that some things deserve to be continued and protected. The line "In God We Trust" first appeared on our coinage over 140 years ago and if I recall correctly the law that authorized it was one of the last laws signed by Abraham Lincoln. About 40 years later T. Roosevelt felt much the
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I'm glad to hear someone thinks that.

That's a great coin VUMC409! I couldn't help but feel a little happy when I read VUMC409's post but for my own reasons. Just a few hours ago I bought 3 lincoln cents off of telecoin and I was really hoping that this was going to be a good seller. 2 of the coins are for a collection I'm starting to help my step-father build (See the sets in my registry labeled "Wright Family Collection") and 1 coin is the first addition my humble lincoln cents set has gotten in about 6 months (The 1982 Lg Dt
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First Spouse coins crucified on the "Cross of Gold."

I've never understood this decision. Ever since I heard about the series I've never understood WHY the first spouse coins were done in gold. 1) The presidents are on "golden" dollars so making silver spouses makes perfect sense (to me). Making the spouses in gold was a money (greed) driven decision that has priced out a lot of people. 2) by making them in gold the mintage limit was set lower and many would be collectors found that there simply aren't enought to go around at times. Yes, there a
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My Silver Eagle Deadline

May 27th, 2008 On May 27th it will have been 1 year since I started building my silver eagle set. I hope to have my set complete (up to date) by that time. There's no particular reason for it, I just think it would be neat to have it done in a year. The silver eagles aren't a hard set to collect in MS69 if you have the capital to devote to it. When it's "complete" I won't be done working on it though. I'll have to send a few coins in for review and I'll be replacing some, some might be upgrade
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Bad Feelings about gold.

Time to order my Senior ring. The price of gold suddenly has me feeling ill... Well, last semester I battled my way through 12 hours of engineering course work in one of the hardest semesters I've ever had. I got a 4.0 for the semester. All A's, and something wonderful happened. I finally had enough hours to order my Aggie Ring. Getting this ring is everything to an Aggie. It is unchanged since 1894 and it is one of the most recognized class rings in the nation. The male ring is very large, ve
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SAE Victory

Making progress. Last Friday I picked up a 1989 Silver eagle which has been shipped but hasn't arrived yet. Well, tonight I pulled a double, winning the 1988 and 1991 in a set of dutch auctions. This was partially to advance my set and partially to reward myself after a series of test grades all came back very good.
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It came the day after Christmas!

My 2006 W Silver Eagle. Yesterday I finally got the coin I've been waiting on all week. I finally have my 2006 W Silver Eagle. I got one pre-graded MS69 by NGC with the Early Release label for about $93 after shipping. I only have 7 SAEs left unless you count the 2008 (which I don't, yet).
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The phenomenon is over

I think the age of high dollar Silver Eagles is over. The silver eagles are much more popular now than they were in the early 90s and many more of them are certified than a decade ago. I think the age of low pop MS70s and PF70s that command thousands of dollars is over except for events like the 2006 W and 2006 reverse proof.
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6 months later, semester over, vacation soon!

6 months on the registry! Well, I've been here sharing my craziness with the rest of you for 6 months now. Today also happens to be the last official day of finals. My semester at college is over and I'll get to go home this weekend. Woohoo! To celebrate being here for 6 months and the end of what has been a very good semester grade-wise I added two new coins to my SAE set today. The SAEs were my first registry set so it seemed appropriate to build that set up some more today. It now has 17
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Hammer time!

My first foreign coin purchase. Until recently, all of my foreign coins have either been given to me by my grandmother, found in change, or given to me by family friends. As such, most of them have great personal significance. Well, several weeks ago I saw this awesome looking Russian 50 kopek coin that was a 1 year issue minted the same year my grandmother was born and I just immediately fell in love with this coin. I just looked at it and instantly wanted it. It also had the very agreeable
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Thanks for looking! and Updating "the Display"

Thanks for viewing my sets! I did a little checking the other day and realized something kinda surprising. Even though my Presidential Dollars set isn't the highest grade (mostly only MS65FD) and even though I only just the other day got the Thomas Jefferson coins (3 months after their release), my set comes in as number 9 out of 343 for having the most views (I'm only in the top 80 by points). This made me both happy and a little embarrased. Until today only the Washingtons were imaged and
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Controling Certification Numbers

Should I add the rest of the family's coins to my registry? I've made gifts of a few certified coins to my stepfather and I'll soon be giving him a few more. I'm also going to be holding on to some coins for my niece until she gets a little older. So far I haven't had any of these coins as part of my registry, even though I'm the only family member with an account. I've been considering adding them because 1 it aids the inventory process and records the certification numbers in the event of th
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Rotating Sets

Moving from one thing to another and back again. (I'm sorry I make these longer every time don't I?)I've always had ADD so I've never been able to do one thing exclusively for too long. My coin collecting is no exception. Instead of having one main project I have several and I switch between acquiring coins for different sets. Late last month I picked up some SAEs, then I bought a MS63 Morgan for my type set (which may ultimately get upgraded to a MS64 but I liked the look of this 63), and just
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My niece

Trying to be a good uncle, In just 2 days my first niece, Cara, will be 3 months old. I hope I?ll make a good uncle in a few years but we?ll see. I was on eBay last week looking for Jefferson MS65FD and MS66FD dollars for my presidential dollars set. It occurred to me that the Jefferson dollar was released on August 15, just 6 days before my niece was born. The ?First Day of Issue? coins are basically as old as my niece. I thought it would be cool to get one of these and give it too her when
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Explosive Growth

I think I have a problem... Well, I started collecting slabbed coins about 5 months ago and today I realized something, I have 43 (44 will be here in about a week) certified coins. For the first 3 months of collecting I was on summer vacation and didn't have anything to occupy my time. I added about 10 coins a month for 3 months reaching 32 coins by September 1st. After that my collecting has slowed to about a coin a week for 2 months, and that's with me working as hard as I can to take it slo
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Silver Dollars

Everyone's favorite coin Dollars have aways spoken to me in a way that's completely different from anything else. First, they're big! Second, by the time I was small the large dollars had completely disappeared from circulation and the first time I saw a significant number of silver dollars was in a coin store when I was less than 10, and when you're that young those big shiney silver coins are just so impressive. When I started collecting last year the first thing I did was to buy some raw
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Overhaul

Complete remodeling needed. I've taken the first steps towards revamping my SAE collection and getting that closer to completion, (I hope to be 100% by 1 year after the first coin was bought, about 7 months from now. I'm currently only about 50%.) Looking at my registry collection in general though, I'm convinced that I'll need to completely rework things. I need to update with all the new images and I think I'm going to redo all of my half-assed descriptions. Unfortunately this all gets t
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