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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

Venezuelan Coins and Currency

Moving along and almost there maybe.

A couple of days ago my Venezuela & Italy submission finally hit grading / quality control. I'd said about a month ago I was hoping to have grades by yesterday or maybe sooner but it was not to be. I'm increasingly accepting that waiting longer than the advertised turnaround time is partially the price I pay for submitting things that are rarely submitted and which they probably have to put extra incremental effort into grading vs, say, a monster box of American Eagles. Like I said in a

Why our spouses usually shouldn’t buy our collectables…

Tomorrow is my 3rd Anniversary with my wife. We decided to exchange gifts yesterday because I wanted to give her an opportunity to use her gift. She’d been secretive about my present. Lately she’s been getting me mostly practical gifts but we’re practical people. As I’ve transitioned into my 30s and fatherhood, I find I have less and less desire for random stuff in my life. My coin collection is one of the few things in my life these days that falls into a special category of “it’s mostly u
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Gold

The 20 Mark and (Finally) Shipping the 10Gs

The 20 Mark coin arrived a while back and I was really happy with how the coin looked in hand. I’d been a little concerned about unattractive marks on an MS62, but I was very happy with the look of this one. There’s a significant number of scratches on the high points but nothing I consider too distracting or detracting from the look of the coin when I look at it in person (pictures can always be a bit hit or miss with how good or bad they make a coin look under high magnification). A
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Finally Moving on the Falcons (and the Queen's Beasts)

I finally convinced myself to pick up some more air-tite capsules for the British Queen's Beasts coins, since I've been out of them since I picked up the last of the Black Bulls I needed, and now I've ordered three of the Falcon coins. It'll be a while before they arrive because I ordered them with an echeck to keep the costs as low as possible. I've been thinking I needed to do this for a while because Christmas will be here before long and I've been giving these to my Step-father as
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What to do...

A bit of a windfall I found out recently that, starting next month and continuing for 9 months, I'll be getting a regent's fellowship in addition to my graduate assistantship. After taxes, it's like saying I'm going to have about $600 added onto a $1400 income. I can live on the $1400, and that basically makes the $600 gravy. I can do whatever I want with it basically. While I will save some of it to rebuild my cash reserves, I'm not going to save all of it as cash in the bank because that j
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Family

The first shunt revision

Well, when I was posting last time Sam was napping and we were getting ready to take him to Urgent Care hoping all the grabbing of his head and crankiness was an ear ache. It wasn't an ear ache. We had a shunt revision today and it looks like his shunt catheter, which we already knew had shifted, had nearly completely failed and it wasn't draining fluid and pressure effectively. He should hopefully be discharged tomorrow for a 1-2 week light recovery. We're told he "beat the odds"
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Coin Photography: 2 years later

The problem of even lighting Going down this road is probably a mistake... a soul-sucking, time-destroying, horrible mistake. I remember how much time I spent trying to take "good" photos of my coins last time. I don't need to do that again... but I wanted to try... In 2007-2009, when I did the bulk of my collecting and coin photography I could never really get pictures I was happy with. This is a problem many of us share. Coins are highly reflective surfaces and you can't just point a light
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Update on the personal front

Well, after 18 long months of him hitting 20% of his sales target, my former boss, the regional sales manager for North America, was canned about a month ago. In the month that has followed some things have come to light that have left me looking very good. This culminated on Friday in me being informed that I'm finally getting the raise I'd been hoping for in March, and it's actually better than what I'd been hoping for - it's more than a 20% increase over my current rate. I suspect, in some wa
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Ben's First Pressed Penny and My Wife Trolling Me

We went to the Houston Zoo as a family yesterday with my son, wife, and her parents. The zoo here is full of those old penny press machines. I'm sure most of us in the US will be familiar with them but I don't know if they're common outside the United States. For those unfamiliar with the concept: You feed the machine $0.51 (2 quarters and 1 penny) and turn a press-wheel. The quarters go to pay the machine / the company that owns it. The penny... gets smashed. The machine presses / rolls th
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Family

5 Years

So yesterday was our 5th anniversary - we are over 6 years into the relationship. The 5th anniversary is supposed to be “Wood” so my wife had considered getting me a challenge coin / coin holder make of wood with the idea of putting a coin that relates to us / our relationship in it, but I don’t really have a coin that fits that bill - the closest I had was that Standing Liberty half she got me as an anniversary present last year, and, since it is in a slab, it wouldn’t have worked for this
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Revenant in Family

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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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2020 Awards

So much to say…

So, this will be long and perhaps rambling, but I have several things to touch on and I don't like making multiple posts too close together, so I just refuse to break this up. At a different time in my life this probably would have been posted yesterday but you don't always get time to sit down and write with 2 kids under 5 around in the time of CoVID, and I had cube organizers to build. I snuck in some posting on the boards mostly on my phone, but I wanted to take my time with this more.
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Revenant in 2020 Awards

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An interesting chance to learn about errors?

Ben went to the museum with my wife today and operated the penny press himself. Expert press operator that he is, apparently something went slightly wrong.  Even so, I think it's fair to say that he was happy with the results. Making pre-schoolers happy and making a collector can be quite cheap and easy - $5 for the album and $0.51 every time he gets a coin to put in it. He wants to take that album with him whenever he goes to the zoo or the museum now. Some
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The Diamond Jubilee Penny

A few months ago I gave a technical presentation for the local section of my professional organization. Speakers for these events usually get little gift bags as a “thank you.” Such is the state of my life with kids and everything that I never got around to looking in the bag until just recently (a sad waste of candy, to be sure). One of the things in the bag was particularly interesting to me as a coin collector. The local section was founded in 1942. I don’t know what possessed them
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European Pocket Change

Pieces of Italy

My wife and I are coming up on a pretty significant day for us and I've joked that it caps off a sequence of special Fridays. 12/25 - Christmas 1/1 - New Year's Day 1/8 - The NGC/PMG Awards announcement 1/15 - Our 5th Wedding Anniversary. One of the things my wife has talked very fondly of the entire time I've known her is her memories of the time they spent in Italy when she was young. I was finishing up putting her father's old coin bag in flips today (I'll have t
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Revenant in European Pocket Change

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Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

Oh no.... Oh this (coin) is horrible. lol

So... Saw this... Just wanted to share and laugh and have this to remember this later for the lawls... I was looking for a nice 1956 Rhodesian Half Penny... It's the last date I'd need to have a complete set of the Giraffe design from the 1950s and 1960s during the pre-UDI, Federation period (assuming I get the raw 1955 I bought graded). I see a new listing that shows a raw coin and says in the title "Collectable Grade." And then I look at the pictures...  And... O.M.G..

Very Cool.

Got the award in the mail. This is way over-due since I got the thing a month ago. I thought it was really cool when I saw that it looked basically the same as the Journal Award from 2008. They match so they look really cool together in my living room. Thanks, again to NGC. I keep telling myself this, but if the budget and circumstances allow it I'm going to try to pick up a new coin. We'll see. There's actually a little coin show that comes to town around May. I might try to take advantage
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Family

“I need it for my collection”

For about the last week or so Ben keeps saying that he needs things for his “collection.” He has a robot “collection.” His Legos are a “collection” now. His toys are a “collection.” He needs all my old dice for his “collection.” I’m not sure where this came from, but I really don’t think it was from me. I don’t think I use the word “collection” around him very often. I’m thinking he must have gotten this from one of his little shows he watches on Netflix – maybe even power rangers sinc
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NGC on Pawn Stars

I don’t know if many / any others here do but I like watching Pawn Stars – I know it isn’t real, but it’s usually at least mildly entertaining. I haven’t had cable in 10 years, so I watch it on Hulu when I have time and / or can get away with it with my toddler, who doesn’t seem to find it terribly interesting. As a result, I don’t know how old / dated the episodes I’m seeing are – I just play what’s there. So what I’m about to comment on may be very old news to others here.
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So that was a privy mark…

There’s only 10 dates / years of issue for the Netherlands 10G coin during the 41-year reign of Willem III. All of these years occurred in a 15-year period from 1875 to 1889. Because of this, he only had one official portrait during this time and all the coins have the same obverse. Because even the date is on the reverse there is absolutely no way to discriminate one issue in the series from any of the others by just looking at the design of the obverse. By contrast, his daughter, ruled for 58
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Random Nonsense

One day, I will have a full set... maybe.

Recent discussions on the forums had me looking at and thinking about getting some of the new American Innovation series dollars to show Ben and Sam as they get older. I'd initially dismissed the idea of doing this in 2018/2019 because I didn't really have the budget for it, and I was sure it turn into another series I'd never finish - like the presidential dollars. This got me looking at the presidential dollars on eBay. The last time I did this I picked up the 2009 and 2010 sets but
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Revenant in Random Nonsense

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Nobody wants them...

A funny moment at the local Whataburger I was in a really bad mood the other weekend and I really just didn't feel like cooking so I went out to a Whataburger that'ss a mile or so from my apartment. After I ordered I was just sitting there waiting, mostly ignoring everything around me when something one of the girls working the registers said caught my attention. I have no idea why this just happened to pierce the fog of my own thoughts floating around my head but it did. She said, "instead
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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

USPS Is Giving Me Nightmares....

Sorry for the double post today.... Well, I order a very big coin for a very big set and the seller sends in out the very next day, express mail. The package should have arrived yesterday. When it didn't, and it didn't arrive today, we started asking questions of the local post office. It turns out that they had in fact tried to deliver the package on Thursday..... just at the wrong house.... on a different street. A $3000 insured package and they take it to the wrong house... there are days
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The 105 year old French Bird in my house

I picked this up in late 2017 but we were focused on the holidays and an upcoming move so I never go to log-on here and post about picking this up, or even add it to my registry. Back in December my wife gave me the okay to pick up a small gold coin. The original idea I had in mind was to pick up an 1877 for my Netherlands 10G set. The 1877 is the last of the more common dates that I still don't own for that set and at the time leading up to her giving me the okay there was an MS66 on sale
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