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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

NCLT

Trying to work eBay Bucks almost cost me money.

Around the time I ordered that Lunar Monkey coin for Ben's birthyear I saw that a seller had listed 5 2019 Lunar 2 Pig coins that had the Early Release label. That was pretty much exactly what I wanted for Sam's year as an equivalent piece. One of the five sold almost immediately but there were four left and I felt pretty safe with that and I decided to wait and see if I could hold out for a 5% eBay bucks deal - always nice if you can pick up some cashback on things, right? About a week lat
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Revenant in NCLT

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Trying to Finish with Something

Trying to go out with a bit of a bang. It just kind of hit me today that I hadn't bought a coin or really even gone looking for anything in over a month. My last purchase was on October 26th and after that I just barely had time to think about coin collecting. I had some work to get done and that doesn't really bother me, but it would bother me to let this collecting year (which I see as beginning and ending on December 10th) end without me making some kind of final purchase or final collectin
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Trapped in the incomplete

Nothing can get finished... Lately I'm feeling kinda trapped by my collecting projects. I have started large sets that I want to build and while they're great for long-term goals, it doesn't give much gratification to fill one more hole in a sea of holes in a set. I'm currently pursuing the following: Lincoln Cents [MS66-68RD](250+ coins) Statehood Quarters [MS67-68] (~180 coins) Presidential Business Strikes [MS65-66FD] (80 coins, 8 more years) Presidential Proofs [MS69UC] (40 coins,
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Today: Quality Control; Tomorrow: Victory!

Grades soon, yes? My first submission (2 invoices, 61 coins) just went to quality control today. Maybe I could have finalized grades available tomorrow? Maybe? Little hope? Nah... I just hope it doesn't spend 5 weeks in QC like a coin that a dealer submitted for me. It kinda surprised me when BOTH hit QC today. They were on different tiers and one invoice had gone to "scheduled for grading" 2 or 3 days ahead of the other. This week also saw some really impressive delivery times for USPS. May
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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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Random Nonsense

To the Moon!

On January 18th 2021 I got the blessing from Shandy to pick up a 1 kilo silver bar. The spot price had recently come down from about $27 / oz to $25 / oz and I was able to find a Perth bar from a good dealer for $875. Relatively shortly there after the "Reddit Raiders" temporarily spiked the price to $30 / oz and you couldn't get anything physical hardly unless you were paying $35 / oz or more. Those kilo bars started going for over $1050... I guess I should have sold then... I was pretty c
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Revenant in Random Nonsense

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To Cross, Sell or Trade...

The coin that can no longer function as part of the registry set. When I started looking at my collection again recently, trying to decide where I might want to try to start working on it again I knew I wanted to just focus on one, maybe two things for now and try to make that set pretty awesome (to the extent my time and budget allows). I thought it would be fun to try to finish my 1875-1889 Netherlands 10G set since it's classic gold and I wanted to work on a gold set, but I quickly realiz
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Time to start shopping again...

Seller screwed me out of the coin. I've hated this week. A week of trying to get a seller to send me a coin I won at a nice price 3 weeks ago. I had to use PayPal today to force them to give me a refund. Now I get to start over trying to get another 2001 Silver American Eagle in a NGC holder graded MS 69. 3 Weeks of waiting and no coin! Oh well, I'll be able to buy another one within another day or two... Since some others have been discussing coin alterations, I offer the following penny. I
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Coin Displays

Thoughts on the 20 Lire and the display front.

So, counting the post yesterday on the PMG side this'll be three posts in three days but I guess things are finally starting to settle and I'm starting to de-stress and I feel like talking / writing again. The good news on the tax return front, other developments in the political sphere that I've referenced before, and the recent dip in gold prices have me optimistic that, in the near future, I'll get to knock a coin off my wish list, and I think its going to be an Italian 20 Lire. The
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Revenant in Coin Displays

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Those Lean Years ... and again?

The Great Depression resulted in a great disruption in the mintage of several American denominations As we head further into what several predict will be hard times, there are many who look back to the Great Depression for a point of comparison. Something that I don't think all coin collectors think about though, is the impact that this event had on our grand hobby. The penny is the big winner. It was produced, usually by 2 mints, every year through the early 1930s. This is most likely becau
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Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

This was a little late for April fools, and it's a little early for 4/20.

Well, I've been a bit quiet lately because I've been hoarding my cash and working on some other things, but I thought I'd pop in and check things out. I got quite a shock when I saw this: I've said before that I thought that set was strong enough that it had a good chance of holding up over time, so this immediately got my attention and then I see this: I've been aware that Xanno was trying to complete his set and he was rapidly filling his in, but how is it even

This time I totally bought the label

I know the first rule of collecting in registry-ville is “buy the coin, not the label,” but the coin I got in the mail at the end of this week was all about the label. A 2019, 1/4th oz American Gold Eagle, Early Release, Blue label, graded MS70. In 2007, I bought a MS70 1/4th oz AGE for my 21st birthday. It was my first ever gold purchase, 2 years before I started the 10G set. When Ben was born, I bought a 1/4th oz 2016 AGE in MS70 to celebrate and one day give it to hi
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Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

This threatens to raise my hopes...

I looked today and my 13 coin Zimbabwe submission is now fully entered in the system and "scheduled for grading."  This has me hopeful that I could maybe see grades by the end of this month - maybe 2-3 weeks sooner than I'd been expecting based on the turnaround times listed at about 49 days... but I'm basing this on how quickly other things - not world moderns - have gone from scheduled to in grading. So that hope may be dangerous. I could just in in for 3-4 weeks of them sitting as "Schedu
Coin budgets

This mostly proves me right about me and eBay...

A while back there was something going around that eBay, after this year I think, wouldn't allow coins, currency and bullion to be sold on the site. I remember saying or thinking at the time that, if they made that rule change, I'd probably be done with eBay just because that's literally all I shop for there and I just wouldn't see a point in looking or shopping there most of the time if that happened. Well, this week, as part of their 25th anniversary celebration, eBay sent me an emai
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Revenant in Coin budgets

12
Random Nonsense

This is where the fun begins…

Be honest – how many of you remember that line from the start of Star Wars: Episode 3? I have bemoaned several times over the last few months that it is hard to get excited or get motivated about building a registry set when you… don’t… have coins… But! I find that it is much easier to get excited about researching and writing about coins for a registry set when you… have coins… and have pictures to go with "da wordy bits." I also gotta say - even feeling slightly disappointed at some
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Revenant in Random Nonsense

3

This is the last of Earth!

I am content. - John Quincey Adams, Last Words As crazy as things get around here dealing with school and work it's easy to complain about life. This week though I'm pulling up on a bit of a milestone. In 6 days I'll be 22 years old. Because of issues I'm not going to get into, I was lucky to make it to my first birthday, lucky to make it out of high school alive (long story), and sometimes you just have to wonder how you made it through 2 decades. Last year, upon reaching 21, I purchased a pa
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There’s a good chance that I might have overpaid for this… but I did it anyway!

I’m not sure if I should care. An NGC 1880 Netherlands 10G appeared in the wild in MS65 for sale! For $600! … Ouch. But it was perfect for my set! I’ve never seen one of these (already graded by NGC) come up for sale before. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it hasn’t happened in all that time, but this is the first one I’ve been aware of while it was for sale. A recent round of internet searching revealed that in Sept 2015 a PCGS graded example graded MS66 went up for sale with sever
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Family

The Zoo reminding him of some things and renewing interest.

Ben has been off for Spring break all week and Shandy took him back to the zoo.  While he was there, he asked for this "gold" "tiger" (Lion) coin, which she got for him, and she said Ben was showing some interest in the penny crushers again, but she hadn't brought pennies and quarters so they couldn't do that. The elongated cent albums kind of dropped out a couple of years ago when COVID hit and we stopped going anywhere, including the zoo, so we weren't getting any pennies. I guess we'll n
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Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

The Zimbabwean $5 coins look more promising this time.

I got the new Zimbabwean $5 coins I ordered in a few days ago and... they look a lot more shiny and nice this time. They actually look shiny and nice this time - there are no dark spots or mint green areas of obvious environmental damage. Unfortunately - no pictures for now. They got packed away a few days ago along with all the other raw coins in 2x2s in the binder. We are now 8 days out from when we're supposed to get the keys to the new place and all non-essentials are rapidly getti
Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

The Zimbabwe Birds are in Flight!

I took advantage of having the day off yesterday to box up the Zimbabwe coins and take them to the post office before Shandy and I went to lunch as a kind of pre-versary thing - today is the day. 6 years together. We were supposed to attend a wedding today for a cousin that will now share our date, but our child care got sick and Sam is dealing with his latest ear infection, so we decided to call some quiet time alone today and a nice lunch good enough and we'll try to just enjoy some stole
Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

The Z Coins away, the 10Gs back home.

I finally took a minute, filled out the rest of the paperwork and printed the shipping label and the Z coins are scheduled for pick-up. Doing a bit of a deeper dive on this than I have in previous entries, I am sending in 13 coins: KM-1b: 1 cent KM-2: 5 Cent KM-8: 10 Cent KM-9: 20 Cent KM-10: 50 Cent KM-11: $1 KM-14: $10 KM-15: $25 KM-16: 1 Cent Bond Coin KM-17: 5 Cent Bond Coin KM-18: 10 Cent Bond Coin KM-19: 25 Cent Bond Coin
NCLT

The things that change while we're not paying attention...

About a month ago I was surprised to see that all the coins in my Presidential dollar set had been removed from the set and the score had gone to Zero. When I looked into it, I saw that there was a new category for "First Day of Issue" dollars and my coins weren't eligible for the set / category they had been in before. I also saw there was a lot of screaming and bemoaning the unfairness of it all. For me, it was no big deal - I deleted the old set and started a new one. That set had never
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Revenant in NCLT

11

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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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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The Queen’s Beast Sets – I might actually finish these.

Over the weekend I got a package with 4 of the Yale coins. Back in December I finished picking up the rest of the Falcons that I needed. So that gives me all of the coins I need for the first 6 issues and 2/3rd of the total I need for the 7th issue – so I’m almost 70% of the way there now and I’m only about 1-ish issue behind. After thoroughly failing to keep up with the statehood quarters and the presidential dollars as they were coming out I’d like to actually be able to say that I
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