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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

Italian Coins

It is possible they did me a favor on this one.

Earlier in the week I'd been watching a 1983 Italian 500L graded Ms65 by NGC. The staring bid was $10 + $5 shipping and it had no bids. When it was about 12 hours out from ending I bid $20 hoping to win it for roughly the cost of grading and keep it until and unless something better came along - maybe one I graded myself. Then, about 15 minutes before bidding ended, someone bid $15, then $16, then $17, then $20, then something over $20... I don't know if this was a shill or someone tha
Revenant

Revenant in Italian Coins

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Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

It is 100%, for sure FOR SURE, someone else is submitting these too…

So today saw another census update and another big increase in the Zcoin population. Last week we saw an increase from 33 to 41. Today we saw an increase to 57. At the start of the year I think it was only 29 total - including 12 NCLT S$10 coins. The MS population increased from 9, to 17, to, now, 33. Interestingly, looking again, I actually don’t think the update last week included my coins like I thought and I think this week's update does - especially based on the dates and the
Family

It comes to a head: The 2nd revision

To borrow phrasing from my wife, Somethings have been odd with Samuel for a while. After getting a fast MRI (which had been delayed by him getting sick the day before the scan) the doctor wasn’t convinced by those results but was concerned by our observations of his behavior and wanted a CT. After getting a CT this morning, they told us to turn back around and come to the ER. We suspect a clog / slow failure – all four ventricle spaces have enlarged; some have nearly doubled. But they’re just go
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Revenant in Family

5

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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Is it really possible to have 2 hobbies?

Something to consider? Would they compete or build on each other? I?ve been playing around with an idea recently. I wonder if it?s really possible to have more than one hobby. Most of us aren?t and probably never will be super rich. Our hobbies have to compete with the rest of our lives for our time, money, and energy. Two hobbies would invariably end up fighting with each other for the same limited set of resources. It seems reasonable that both would suffer as a result. I?ve had several
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Invest or Save....

I'm not sure what to do. Well friends, I live the life of a poor college student. I live most of the year in a small dorm. My parents pay for my tuition, phone and car insurance. I work a part time job to pay for my food, medicine and most anything else I want while I'm up here. What's left after I pay for the necessities becomes my coin budget (coin collecting crowds pretty much everything else out of the discretionary budget). 1 other thing does manage to complete with the coins though. I
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In Rare Form This Week...

Some days I just don't do anything right... Some days I wonder how I keep track of my own head. Last week I was thinking all week about this auction for a coin that I wanted that was looking like it would go for a good price. The day of the auction (Saturday) I was feeling bad and I completely forgot about it until 90 minutes after it ended. I just wanted to smack myself for the stupidity of it. No, I don't use automatic bidding programs like "bidnapper." It just doesn't sit well with me to
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Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

I’m going to have to rethink this… find a better way… Or Maybe Just MORE…

I found a seller offering some old, Franklin Mint, “Coin Sets of the World” cards for Zimbabwe that had the coins from 1C to $1. Some of them were made in the 1990s and some of them had less-appealing coins with some spotting, but they had a couple – at a slightly higher price, but still only about $11 for a coin set - that had only coins from 1980-1983, that were clean, pretty, and spot-free per the listing and “nearly perfect.” I saw these and decided to snap them up, initially thin

I'm still here

Keeping on. Mostly window shopping... I've been keeping busy with class and work. I also haven't had much to report on. I've been making a smaller number of bigger purchases lately. Individually, they aren't going to be all that fun to talk about or hear about. There's a chance that I'll have some bragging rights by December but we'll see. Thursday I was in the final part of a 250 mile round trip when my car got hit by road debris off a truck. Bye, bye ball joints. Hello repair bill and gett
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Registry

I'm going to have to think on this one...

For the first time in about 2 years, I’ve received a grading credit from NGC, and I’m actually faced with thinking about how I wanted to use it. A couple of years ago I knew I wanted to reholder the 10G set and I immediately saw that credit as a chance to build a graded set of Zimbabwe coins for a registry set. Last year I knew before I even finished the Zimbabwe set that the next thing I wanted to do was Venezuela – and I even went out-of-pocket on most of that because I’d already use
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Revenant in Registry

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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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Random Nonsense

I wonder...

So, the Zcoins still haven't been finalized... but the Census did go up by about 9 coins today, all mint state, and 8 of those line up with the 8 pre-hyperinflation coins in my submission… So I may have just gotten a sneak peek at some of my grades… and the grades are pretty consistent with what I would have expected from those coins… but no way to know for sure. But, while I can’t talk grades officially yet, I have little better or more interesting to do with my socially-isolated, work-fro
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Revenant in Random Nonsense

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Gold

I will get no end of grief over that joke…

A few entries ago I jokingly referred to my 10G set as my “golden babies.” I thought was being silly and a little tongue-in-cheek, but my wife has given me no end of ribbing about this, so I think I’m going to be continuing to catch grief about that for a while every time those coins come up in conversation. I think this cements the Zimbabwe set as my “pride and joy” and the 10G set as my “golden babies” whenever my wife feels the need to tease me. They do look good in the new holders
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Revenant in Gold

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Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

I think Sam really has the worst luck...

Well, shortly after I made my last post we went to pick up Sam from daycare and we found out he'd been lethargic and sick all day and was running a fever again. He's been home since then but lethargic and increasingly unwilling to eat or drink. Today we too him back to the doctor and then later in the day had to give up and take him to the ER because he wasn't peeing anymore.  Turns out he as pneumonia... at two and a half... and his O2Sats are low and he'll probably be getting admitted again fo

I think I've been shilled....

and I'm kinda ticked off about it. Earlier today I noticed 2 sets of some items I want for a set I'm making. They were ending 5 minutes apart from each other at around 8:30 (my time). They had a reasonable starting price ($49.95, free shipping) and no bids. There were also 2 sets available for a BIN ($69.95, free shipping) from the same seller. I decided to bid on the first set and wait. I bid $69.90 so I wouldn't pay anymore than the BIN sets. At about 45 minutes before the set ends, someon
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I think I'm over the cliche souvenirs

My wife's mother is offering to take her on a trip with her to New York City in a couple of weeks. This would mean she'd be taking the baby an leaving me at home with the 3 year old for three days. She was asking me if there was anything I'd like her to bring back and the answer was, honestly, no. I went to New York myself when I was 11 and I got a few things from that trip, one or two of which I still have to this day. Those mean more to me than anything that she'd bring back from a t
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Family

I think I might just be out of time on this one…

Sam was finally allowed to go home last night. We had a follow-up with his pediatrician today and he should get to go back to school and ease back into normal activity on Monday. Ben is still, somewhat comically, trying to get his new front teeth in. It was very difficult getting out of there. I have rarely wanted to call a nurse a insufficiently_thoughtful_person to her face so badly. They tried to give him 2 vaccines in his two thighs at the same time and didn't restrain his hands while I
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Revenant in Family

2

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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I love the people in this community...

...they know how to treat people well. Recently I arranged to buy an 1883-O Morgan dollar from another forum user. It wasn't a big deal really. The coin was a MS63, so not expensive. I paid the seller and spent the next week waiting on the coin. After a week I decided to ask if the seller had any info on where the coin was (like a tracking number) because I was afraid that the coin had been lost in the mail. Long story short, through a sequence of events that was kinda funny, the coin had sp
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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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Random Nonsense

I like learning... not homework...

When I was growing up my mother started (but failed to finish) a 2nd Master's degree. She would often make the joke that she "could have been a professional student" - meaning she loved being in classes and learning things like that - mostly about history. Having reached my mid-30s, having earned my PhD, my 3rd and terminal degree, and gone on to hobbies that involve a lot of reading and writing, I can honestly say that I like learning - but I do not like homework, and so I don't like being
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Revenant in Random Nonsense

2

I Just Don't Really Like "Colorized" Coins.

The more I think about this the more sure I become of it. There seems to be an ever-increasing number of colored or painted coins coming out of certain countries the last few years. At first I thought they were potentially neat but the more I've thought about it the more I've grown to dislike the basic concept. One of the things that always made me love coins (especially silver ones) is that they are metal and they are SHINY. Plastics and other materials will never hold the same sense of str
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Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

I have to share, and laugh, and give props here.

I got an email today from Ali asking me if I really meant to use the word “Causalities” in the title of my set and not “Casualties.” She wanted to make sure I meant to do that before she sent the plaque in to be made with it printed like that. I read that email and immediately wanted to bang my head on the desk. I do not think I will ever ever know how many times I have looked at that and not seen that, but, props to Ali, she caught it. I missed it. Shandy missed it. I have to as
Family

I have a coin for that...

My wife somewhat randomly brought up about a week ago that she and I are both "Tigers" - We were both born in the year of the Tiger for the Chinese Zodiac - 1986 specifically. She teaches English to Chinese kids and what brought this up was some parents had been asking other teachers if their young child was a "pig," meaning born in 2019, which was the year of the pig, which Samuel is, as it happens. So this got her curious and she looked up what we were and what Ben and Sam were and what t
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Revenant in Family

2
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
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Revenant in Registry

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