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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

Census updated weekly?

I don't think so. I don't know about the rest of you but I'm still waiting for them to update the census with data about the 2007-W Silver American Eagle. Speculation about the number of those things that are going to be available have been inflating the price and encouraging speculation on those coins since mid-June.
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Random Nonsense

Curious, Jealous, and Annoyed

I think it's getting up to 2 years since I've added a coin / filled a hole in the 10G set and the set is still sitting at 72% with 3 slots open. But the low hanging fruit is all gone and all that's left are 3 coins that don't always show up. The last couple of years I’ve been adding other types of world gold coins to my collection and not finished this set largely just because I haven’t seen any attractive opportunities come up. Mine is one of the oldest sets in that category. It was one of
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Looks like the MS65 is coming home to me!

Well, when I made the last entry I was really leaning towards the MS66. By the time I went to bed on Saturday I had pretty much convinced myself that the MS66 was the way to go and that I should bid aggressively to make sure I got that coin. So then why am I writing this, saying that I bid on and won the MS65 tonight and why am I so stinkin’ happy about it that my wife is snickering about it at my expense? Well, my basis for thinking that the MS66 was the way to go was thinking it look
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Thank you! Congratulations! & My Hopes for 2019.

Thanks to the judges at NGC for the journal award – 10 years exactly after I won it in 2008. I really appreciate it! I also wanted to say congratulations to the people who won the Best Modern, Best Classic, Best Presented, Best Custom and Overall Achievement awards – especially ColonialCoinsUK, Mohawk, Coin928 and some of the others I’ve talked to in the forums lately. Friday turned out to be a really good day for me on a writing front. I found out that an old paper I submitted in Dece
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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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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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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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So this is Benjamin

2 weeks old today. So this (picture below) is Benjamin, my first son. I found out that he was coming about 6 weeks after that last journal entry and he completely changed my plans and priorities heading into this year. He was born on the 26th of March weighing 7 lbs 12 ounces, 19.5 inches long. Now he's already over 8 pounds. I've been amassing a few 10 ounce silver bars in the last 10 months to build up a little silver bullion independent/apart from my 1 ounce rounds that I love so much. Wh
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Coin Collecting: A Guy Thing?

It always seems to be the men... Is it just me, or does it seem like it's always the males the are into coin collecting? And even when a couple collect coins together it seems like it's usually the guy who's REALLY into it and the woman considers it a simple point of interest. Now, I'm not saying that there aren't/can't be female coin collectors that are just as serious as the guys, but it just seems like it doesn't happen nearly as often. If this indeed is the case then we must ask ourselve
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Revisiting an old project.

I was really excited to collect the presidential dollar series in 2007 and 2008 when they were just starting out. The US History buff in me loved the idea of the set even though they were mostly a naked effort by the US Congress and the US Mint to keep the music playing as the statehood quarters series was winding down (which they did with the America the beautiful quarters). Then, of course, the effort got promptly dropped but not quite entirely forgotten in 2009 when I had to start getting rea
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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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Family

Not just marking time...

I posted on 1/12/2019 about winning the 2018 Journal award and mentioned that, pretty much at the same time as I found out about that, that I'd gotten a paper accepted for publication. I didn't really go into this at the time but it was a paper co-authored with my graduate advisor - who passed away on September 11, 2018. He's the person I decided to name Sam after. I didn't know it at the time but I posted that entry exactly 1 month before Sam's surprise early birth - the "first published" date
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1881 Bulgarian Coins

Given by a friend of the family. Well, apparently there was some kind of dig or excavation and a few Bulgarian Coins from the time when that country was ruled by a Monarch were found. It seems they had a few extra ones and the the curator at a museum (I don't know which one) gave 2 of them to a friend of my mother who is from that country. Well, she knew that I collect coins including some foriegn coins I've found over time and so she gave them to my mother to give to me. The coins are black
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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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Re: Why do we put bad guys on coins?

Lack of options I think one flaw in your arguement is that you're assuming that the people of these countries decided to put them on the money. In the cases which I think you're refering to, the person in question wasn't a 'bad person' or even a leader, they were a ruling dictator. While alive a dictator gets what they want whether the people like it or not. 2nd, I would point out that our standard of a bad leader does not necessarily coincide with other peoples' definitions of a bad person,
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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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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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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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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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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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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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Re: Is it just me? Making the connection

It's always nice but not always attainable. I like to be able to handle coins, have the coin actually in my hand but it's something I very rarely get to enjoy, even with my raw coins. My system is very hard on metal. I have to wear a watch that's made of stainless steel. Anything else and I'll cause any metal pieces to rust over in 2 to 3 months. I love coin collecting but I've long since learned that if I have a nice coin and I want it to stay nice then I can't touch it.
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Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

Moving along...

I thought it was worth an update to say, I got the email from NGC this week saying that they acknowledge the receipt of my 29 coin submission (22 Zimbabwe Coins, 7 Italian Coins). So the timeline so far is: 1/14 - Package Mailed 1/26 - Package Delivered 2/22 - Receipt Acknowledged and Submission entered as received by NGC 2/23 - Payment Acknowledged Looking at it, since I sent this box in, World Moderns have increased from the 71 business days they were at in Januar
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
Family

A Fresh New Hell

Well, it had been my intent to make a post this week about some progress working on the Venezuelan competitive set - taking some pictures and buying some coins, getting some in the mail, but Monday night Sam had a seizure that would not stop. Which forced us to call an ambulance. He's been in the hospital, intubated and under heavy sedation for going on 30 hours now. We're waiting to have some final test results soon but maybe they can bring him back up and take out the tube - EEG has been
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