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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

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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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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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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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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re: Family Time

Time with the family, in a different way. I've always loved coin collecting although my family didn't support the idea. My mother, grandmother, and siblings all view it as being interesting but ultimately a waste of time, effort, and most especially money. I finally said to hell with it all last year and started actively building a coin collection and I met with a lot of resistence from all sides save 1. The man who entered my life 3 years ago and who will likely soon be my step-father was als
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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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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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22 Mercury Dimes

Looking back to 14 months ago. I found this old entry in another online journal I keep and thought it was worth revisiting. This was written only about 2 weeks after I started collecting, about 14 months ago, and the intended readers were non-collectors. "22 Mercury Dimes: Well, I still can't believe it. I was in a gas station convenience store and the guy in front of me paid for his 2 beers with 22 Mercury (1916-1945) dimes and 6 old Roosevelt dimes from the 40's and 50's. Now, what's the
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My Silver Eagles

My most important and most frustrating set. I've wanted to build a set of Silver Eagles since I found out they existed. They're cool coins and they started minting them the same year I was born. It took me a long time to decide how I wanted to collect them, but I settled on getting them graded as NGC MS69s. I might collect the proof coins after I finish getting the Mint States. I spent tons of time trying to win online auctions over the summer to build the set... and half of them came back wit
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The Rule does need to change

I really think that the rule should be 90%. It's always seemed to me that in order be #1 a set should truely be complete. The registry points are an arbitrary system designed by a group of people that thought they knew the best way to rank coin sets using a function of (supposedly) multiple variables. I've never seen their algorithm and it may be the best ranking system that can be realistically achieved, but it may not be. However, no matter the case, it is extremely short sighted to say that
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My first MS 70

The allure of perfection... I think the idea of "perfection" features really prominantly in the thinking of coin collectors, not just in the concept of MS70s, but more abstract standards of perfection. Building the "perfect" set, and finding that "perfect" coin (that's rarely an MS70) is the thing we're all after. As a collector I'm not usually very concerned with MS70. The only things that can even be found in MS70 are modern proof/uncirculated strikes that were never even meant for circula
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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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No smooth edge proofs

You won't find a smooth edge presidential proof Unlike the presidential business strikes, which are made with a 2-strike method, the presidential proof coins are made in a single strike process in which the edge-letters are added at the same time the obverse/reverse designs are added. As such, it isn't possible to find a presidential proof that has 'accidentally skipped a step' in the process and avoided having the edge-lettering added. Even so, I wonder if we'll see people trying to remove
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2 months on the registry

6/12/07 to 8/12/07 Well I've been on the registry for 2 months now. I've gone from having 1 set for 5 certified SAE's to having 11 sets, 21 certified coins, 6 more certified coins on the way and constantly building up. I initially thought I'd just sit back and watch but I ended up being rather vocal (in a written sense) in the journals and the forums. Thanks guys for building a great online community which I'm happy to now be a part of. Since I joined the registry has grown by about 100 a
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Everything fluctuates

Nothing is constant Everything varies within certain limits. It's one of the first principles of understanding nature. Even equilibrium is dynamic, almost never static unless you're talking about mechanical equilibrium. My point is that there are lots of variables to be considered in online auctions, not the least of which is who's online at the time the auction is closing (since on eBay the last hour is generally the most important). When I won my MS64 1976 Eisenhower I participated in 3 au
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NGC vs PCGS? Whatever

Same old song. We can sit in front of our computers and debate NGC versus PCGS for weeks with both sides of the arguement having valid points and stories/examples. I see no purpose in even discussing the point. The people refered to who pay more for PCGS plastic than NGC plastic are doing just that, being stupid and paying for the plastic. Personally, I prefer NGC, not for the name one the label (that is a factor though since I don't buy XYZ affairs) but because I like the look of the NGC slab
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