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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

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
Revenant

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Coin Photography

Well, I could definitely see this causing some marital strife if not handled well, but then, I try to be clever.

A few months ago, my wife got this ring light to use when she’s doing her web-based English lessons with Chinese students (13 time zones away). Up to this point she’d been using the modeling lights on some old cheap strobes I had to do her lighting. I went head and got this ring light for her because 1) using the strobes just for the modeling lights is inefficient (they’re power hogs) and 2) the strobes generate a lot of waste heat, which heats up the room and can make her uncomfortable when tea
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Revenant in Coin Photography

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Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

The persistence of half cents and half pennies.

I always thought of the half cent as something of the distant past. The United States didn’t produce any after 1857. However, I’m increasingly aware of the fact that other countries have made half cents and half pennies of and on until relatively recently. I have a set of Rhodesian pennies and half pennies from the 1950s and 1960s. Finding out that these half pennies existed was surprising but when I think about it I can understand it. For a long time there the UK pound
Italian Coins

The 500 Lire Grade Results

So here is the 2nd post about 1 submission, splitting off the 500L coins to give them their due, befitting a group of 7 coins (decent sized group in their own right by my submission standards) and a group of coins that represent their own, very important project. And here are the results - Shandy and I picked the ones to send together when we had more than one of a certain date, but we didn't play “guess the grade” on these because we didn't have a big selection of graded coins in different
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Revenant in Italian Coins

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Looks like I'm going to be looking to buy some MS70 gold soon.

My wife and I found out a couple of weeks ago that we're expecting our second child in the middle of next year. Most people don't know yet but we'll get around to that when we're further along in the process and we know a little more. We won't have the first doctor's appointment for another 3 weeks. When my son was born I picked up a quarter oz gold American Eagle in MS70 for his birth year. I'll be looking to do that again with the new baby.  I'm also hoping I might be able to talk my wife
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Random Nonsense

"Bad Luck Pennies" / "Hard Times Pennies"

I had to run an errand today and I found a penny in the parking lot on the way to my car. I stopped and picked it up like I have always tended to do ever since I was a small child, as I was encouraged to do. I remember always being taught the rhyme, "Find a penny? Pick it up! And all the day you'll have good luck!" Some years ago now I had a supervisor at work whose husband took this rather seriously and got upset when he found out that their child had found a penny on the ground and l
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Revenant in Random Nonsense

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Venezuelan Coins and Currency

Venezuela returns to gold, at least in part.

I don’t know if I’ve discussed this here, in the NGC journal specifically, but those that follow my PMG writings will know I’ve been building a set of Venezuelan Hyper-Bolivars (Bolivares Fuerte, Bolivares Soberano and now Bolivares Digital) as a kind of sister set to the Zimbabwe Hyperinflation set, and I’ve been trying to follow what’s going on with that. And so. the other day an interesting article from Bloomberg popped up for me. In 2008/2009 the Zimbabwean economy “dollarized” even bef
Family

We may yet buy a house this month...

So we (finally) got an appraisal back on the house. It was supposed to be delivered Tuesday and we were assured it always comes in on or before the due date and... the appraiser missed due date... This ends a 3-week saga that led us to leave the lender we'd been planning to use for someone else local because they were not getting the appraisal scheduled, weren't interested in doing anything to move the process forward and we were in danger of missing our closing date over it. We'd been all
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Revenant in Family

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When I’m Wiser and I’m Older.

Looking back, I made the first entry into this journal on June 14, 2007, when I was not quite 21 years old (clocking in at 32 now, with a receding hairline. Oh, how it does sting a bit).    This was 10 years before NGC would switch to the new (current) journal format and we’d gain the ability to give a unique name to our journals. I’ve given some thought over time to what I think I’d like to call this (other than just “Revenant” or “Revenant’s Journal”) and I think I’ve settled
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Buying Euros!

1.5 of them to be precise... A few days ago I ordered a pre-graded MS69 Austrian 2008 Vienna Philharmonic coin. It's a 1 oz 0.999 fine silver round just like the Silver Eagles. This is the first year that they've made them. It's really nice to be getting in on the ground floor with one of these series. The coin was given a face value of 1.5 Euros. That's indicated on the label as $1.5E so I guess NGC can't make that funny little E either. I ordered it for the signature set I'm working on th
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Major Acquisitions and keeping my fingers crossed....

Hopefully USPS will be on the ball this week... Well, my step-father and I just ordered a major coin today for what I've dubbed the "Wright Family Collection." I'm not going to let any of you know what this coin is (yet) but It's going to be nice I can promise you that. I just worry about 1 potential problem with this purchase. Where all the other coins we've bought have been shipped to my permanent address, this one is going to be shipped to his. He lives on Harvey Blvd. There are 3 street
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Some More (Old?) Mexican Silver

Continuing to work on the Mexican Libertads and a little more... Last week one of the other members on the forums was offering a fairly large amount of silver for sale. This is something he doesn't pretty consistantly. He always seems to have a lot of silver available that he wants to unload. Sometimes he moves material, other offerings get offered again in a couple of weeks and new material periodically enters. I saw that he was offering 37 1984 silver libertads a price much lower than I'd
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Pick a price and stick to it!

Go into the auction already knowing what you'll pay. I realized that I tended to go nuts on auctions pretty early on and I've subsequently found 1 way to prevent over bidding. I look at the item and decide well in advance what I'm willing to pay. (Note: That's what I'm willing to pay, not what any price guide says it's worth though I may consult the book.) In the heat of the moment I'll sometimes go 1 or 2 dollars over, but not more than that. Yes, I'll moan and groan went it's something that
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Family

Taking my shiny right out of my hands, but getting away with it for being cute.

Following up on my last post, just  for fun. I'd left the 2018 American Innovation coin on my dresser. I picked it up and was going to take it to join the other coins. Sam was in the room and it caught his eye and he demanded that I hand it over. He proceeded to walk around with it, wave it around and look at it. I think this is one of those times when you just have to say "what the heck," and let them have it. Worst case scenario is he manages to break something I couldn't break
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Revenant in Family

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Still alive

In case anyone still remembers... Found myself thinking of this place again recently. I defended my PhD a little under a month ago and passed by unanimous vote of my committee. I've been working on getting all my paperwork turned in and getting all of my approvals but everything should be go for graduating in August 2015 and becoming Dr. Pittman. Today marks 1 year since I met a wonderful young lady who I see myself staying with. It'll be one year since our first date in about a week. In t
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Sometimes you hate the game and especially the player…

I’m always amazed by the games some people try to play in conducting business, even the ones that, at least on paper, you shouldn’t need to worry about because they have 100% positive feedback with scores in the thousands… Find an auction for something you like, check it out, see it has free shipping with nary a word anywhere about shipping insurance or anything else. You bid, win the item and, within minutes, the seller sends an invoice for it. Now, if you’re like me and you pay throu
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What a week....

From Friday to Friday, oh what "fun" has been had. 1 week ago on the 15th the Postal Service finally delivered a package they had had for exactly 4 weeks. For a shipment from Austin to Houston that's just terrible, but it arrived. Both invoices in my first submission to NGC have switched to "scheduled for grading" on different days this week. I'm checking daily in vain hope. I must admit that I'm really excited by this and I'm really hoping for at least a few good grades. A childhood frien
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Final call on the 1875

I think I've been debating whether or not to cross this coin to NGC about as long as I've been married and it's gotten to the point that when I talk about it my wife smiles a little and laughs silently under her breath. But I think I've finally made up my mind on how to deal with it - I'm not going to cross that PCGS MS67. No matter how hard I try, I don't think I'll ever be able to convince myself that it's a good move to spend $30+ shipping both ways to have a coin that is already graded and s
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Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

Because the #1 set should be worth looking at...

So I'm probably going to come off like a bit of a "super judger" (as my wife puts it) while also preaching to the choir a bit, but I wanted to post about the work I've been doing on my Half Cent set recently. I said recently that my wife gave me a 1955 Rhodesian Half Cent, following up on the 1957 and 1958 she'd given me at Christmas, buying things I'd put on my watch list.  Putting this coin in my set put it in the #1 spot in the category. And so, it was a #1 ranked set for me - with
Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

Learning that you're a little right, a little wrong, and a little ignorant...

I'm starting to work on digging into the Zimbabwe coins more to try to build out a nice group of descriptions for that set once the coins clear grading. I am clearly not excited about those coins / getting them back graded or anything. Clearly. I am just front-running working on descriptions for coins I will not get back for a month and a half. Anyway... I finally found out what the KM numbers for all of them were. And found out I was wrong about several of them - some that I thought g

Group Photos and re-imaging

Whenever I get a new coin for a set, provided it’s a smaller set that doesn’t require pulling out 20+ coins, it’s always fun to pull out all the coins in the set and look at them together. It can be a lot of fun with the larger sets too but it can also be a lot of work to find them all amongst the other coins, get them out and, eventually, put them all back. When I get the new coin in for such a set I try to get new pictures done and this usually leads to new pictures being taken for the wh
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You probably shouldn’t…

So over the weekend my wife met a friend for reasons we won’t go into because they’re unpleasant and my wife was there to be a friend but… Let’s just say this was someone we met back in March in the NICU… Anyway… After a while my wife sends me a message asking me if she can get away with going a little over-budget on my Christmas. I’ve been "pounding the table" so-to-speak on watching the budget. I just told her to do what she wanted but she probably shouldn’t. (Hey, I’m arguing agains
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Family

Parents 20 years ago didn't have to deal with this nonsense...

Off-topic but... Some days it begins to feel like a game of "What has my 4 year old managed to get me charged for this time?" A couple of months ago he managed to get us signed up to Amazon Music for a month. Last month he managed to upgrade my Netflix account to "Premium" - so now we can have 3 screens going at once instead of 2 - and it costs me $3 more a month. I was just looking at one of the credit card bills, seeing a 5 dollar charge and thinking, "Oh no... What did he
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Revenant in Family

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Random Nonsense

Oh no… I’m becoming what I collect. Not Fair! I miss my hair…

Around the start of our self-isolation my hair had been getting really long and my wife convinced me to just let her and Ben use the trimmer on me and make it short - finally lean into the hair loss that has been eating into my temples for 10 years. At the time I’d shaved my beard. Recently they did another pass to keep it short and I saw a picture of myself… Then I looked at the coins I collect, and I thought a little… Then I went to Google and Bing for photos…
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Revenant in Random Nonsense

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Coin Photography

Test of Concept With the Ring Light:

I got a little time today where Shandy had both the kids occupied and I decided to get that ring light out and go for it to get some proof of concept shots. I decided to snap some quick shots of something I’ve taken pictures of recently so I can compare the shots I get this way to some recently taken shots done the way I’ve been doing them lately (camera on the floor with an LED on a speedlight). So, I grabbed my 1880 10G. Old photos taken the old way: New Photos taken with the R
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Revenant in Coin Photography

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