0
  • entries
    440
  • comments
    1,314
  • views
    44,251

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

Random Nonsense

The Old Man…

Yesterday Sam was finally feeling better – he is back at daycare today and we’re enjoying our 1 child-free work from home day of the week – so we got to go out with my in-laws so we could have a birthday celebration with them, and they could give me their present for me… and I finally got to find out what the big mystery was that my wife has been keeping. I laughed so hard and this and got a real kick out of it. I’m normally not very effusive when getting gifts but they said they think
Revenant

Revenant in Random Nonsense

3
Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

A charming looking group of coins, I think.

The Zimbabwe coin submission has arrived back from NGC. So, you people trying to ninja my brain and make me fret can just chill out. (Lookin at you, Mike! ) That said, I have been having an internal dialogue on this and “declared value” along the lines of “I’m wondering if I’m doing this wrong, which may bear further discussion. It is the last of the submissions mailed from the old house, the last of the submissions I had mailed back to my in-laws because of the move. So hopefully no m
Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

A (dirty?) 1980 Z Cent

So, it's a Sunday, morning at the time. Ben has had a friend over all weekend and the bickering has been constant all morning and we're both just short of the point of sending the kid home to just get some peace because they're driving us insane and we're tired. About a week prior I'd seen a 1980 Zimbabwean cent up for auction in "Mint State" with a $2.99 starting bid with $1.50 shipping. The seller's pictures weren't the best, but it looked promising at first glance. 1980-1989 cents f
Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

Well, Xan gave me my answer... or part of it anyway. lol

Xan Chamberlain must have gotten a box in the mail yesterday. This set popped up last night with just one coin and now the other 7 coins from that submission that got added to the census about 2 weeks ago have been added. It also looks like he has a $2 coin that popped up in the census the following week when my coins were added.But I'm not seeing in his set (yet, anyway) a 1999 10C in MS64 or an older-type $1 coin that popped up in the census the same week as my coins and that $2 coi
Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

I don't really NEED all those but at that price I'll take them...

I've referenced in previous entries that I've been having trouble sourcing some $1 Bond Coins at a reasonable price. All the other sellers I found offering the $1 coin were calling it "rare" (nonsense!) and asking $10-15 each for them. I've been trying to acquire multiples of all of these - usually 3-5 of each denomination - to have a better chance of getting a really nice one. But $10-15 each felt... rough. $6-7 is about the max I'll pay for these raw right now. But the other wee
Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

Not sure when or how, but the grades have posted at long last…

I was checking last night, and these still showed as being in quality control. This afternoon I opened my laptop, and the submission tracker page was open in a tab I left open last night when I shut the laptop. It auto updated / refreshed, and I saw “shipped” flash across my field of view as I was closing the tab, and then I frantically re-loaded the page, wondering if I had finally gone crazy. I’m guessing this is the result of some back-office people in the shipping department workin
Family

A little cuteness and positivity for the day...

Sam though quite recovered is serving out the last days of his quarantine because we have to go by 10 days from his positive test even though I'm pretty sure he'd been fighting it for a while at that point and he probably stopped being contagious days ago. As sometimes happens, he rediscovered some replica Morgans and Silver Eagles that another member here gave me for them, which he and his brother like to play with on occasion. At that point, for the next half hour or so at least a couple
Revenant

Revenant in Family

5
Gold

Someone's bitter pill - the things that shouldn't have been graded.

I have a saved search still on eBay for "ngc Netherlands 10G," so I get notified when one pops up without having to search myself all the time. I continue to hope an 1885 or 1886 will pop up one day to help me complete that set. But... 90% of the time I get an email and it's an 1875... or an 1877. I just got an email for my 10G search and it's an AU55 in a new holder, and I just can't help but shake my head and think, someone was REALLY disappointed when that posted the grade results.
Revenant

Revenant in Gold

3
Random Nonsense

The New Journal Features

Having joined the Collector's Society and started this Journal in mid-2007 I definitely feel like I've witnessed the site and the journal feature of the site "evolve" over time but I've been enjoying 1 new feature lately now that I'm gaining an understanding of how it works... the new Category feature. When I first rejoined / became active again around 2016/2017 I had to get used to the new system but I very much remember being disappointed by the fact that the new system only let me have 1
Revenant

Revenant in Random Nonsense

4
Random Nonsense

An interesting thought on the concept of "insurance."

When I shipped my box of 10G coins (and a few others) last week I was pretty happy/ content to fork over an extra $26 for Registered mail. The box in question was worth about $5,000-6,000 dollars and contained 12 years of a collecting journey. I would have a hard time finding another 1880, 1887 and 1888 in Gem or near gem grades. I do not want to lose those. However, I'm hoping to queue up 2 more submissions soon - one to NGC and one to PMG, both related to my Zimbabwe collection, that are
Revenant

Revenant in Random Nonsense

5
Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

Residue... Joy... But, forward with the Bond Coins! (... EDIT to add: Got my sale... maybe?)

Well, I got the notice from NGC/NCS today that they're recommending sending the 1975 Tobacco Dove coin to NCS to remove Residue... No idea how that happened unless it got on there from the OMP back in the day.  Anyway... I went ahead and told them to remove it and then try for a grade again. I suspect I'm going to end up regretting sending that in at all unless it comes back as a MS70 by some miracle. I got the Zimbabwe Bond Coins opened up and into flips. This process was more interesting
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
Revenant

Revenant in Family

0
NCLT

All Hell Breaking Loose? - Because of Reddit? of all things?

So, it would appear that the group of redditors that have been playing games with Gamestop and AMC stock (among others) are now plotting a short squeeze on SLV and the silver futures market, which is driving up spot a little (but not insanely much so far). It's also causing a crush of orders to hit the dealers, causing the dealers to limit or stop taking orders and it's causing the prices of / premiums on physical metal to spike and getting physical metal is staring to cost $35+/ounce now.
Revenant

Revenant in NCLT

9
Family

The joys of the junk box... it goes beyond coin collecting.

I took Ben to that game store today while Shandy and the baby were napping to kill some time while we were waiting for the sellers to finally vacate the new house - it was the last day of the leaseback and they were clearly unprepared and determined to drag things out all day. We didn't get the keys until 8:30 PM after telling us 5PM and cussed me out and left the house dirty when I challenged him on it, but we won't dwell there. I don't want this to be about that. Anyway... There was a bin
Revenant

Revenant in Family

0
Coin Grading and Results

Grade results and closing on the house - Turning into a solid week!

So, if it seems like I am more quiet lately know that it is only because Fenntucky Mike and like 5 other people on the PMG side have gotten to witness a lot of manic babbling about near-worthless hyperinflation novelties - feel free to check that out to be as bored as my dear wife.   So, I got grade results back yesterday evening. No stand-out wins and some minor disappointments. On the CWTs I had expected like 55-58 but part of me had hoped for a 61-62. I got an XF45 and a AU 55 BN. T
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.
Revenant

Revenant in 2020 Awards

3
Family

It's worth WHAT?

As part of the planning our home purchase my wife asked me what the value of my coin collection was. I have rarely heard such shock in her voice or seen disbelief on her face when I 1) gave her an honest answer and 2) backed it up with hard numbers. The main driver of it is, of course, one small box of coins that I've recently referenced in another entry.    I had to remind Shandy that she let me purchase 2 new gold coins, which added about $1,100 to it, just a month or two ago. And she's
Revenant

Revenant in Family

7
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
Random Nonsense

So.... WHY are they slammed?

It seems like one of our favorite things to do lately is complain about turnaround times at NGC. The popular narrative amongst the unhappy is that this is clearly NGC slipping but NGC says the problem is they're just slammed. They aren't blaming the problems on logistics - like not being able to get enough slab parts or inserts. They're just getting 800+ packages a day and that working 6 days a week, 12 hours a day isn't keeping up. That suggests that they're dealing with double or more the
Revenant

Revenant in Random Nonsense

14
Family

Haunting my childhood with my Son

The move has brought us back closer to Shandy's Parents and to mine, but it has also brought me back to being close to an old game store i used to go to as a high schooler, some 16-17 years ago. Ben has been missing going to the game store by the old house - we were lucky in that it was only half a mile or so from home - so today I took him to the old card and game store I went to all those years ago. It wasn't like going to the other store used to be - in this case its still 10 miles and a
Revenant

Revenant in Family

0
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
Revenant

Revenant in Coin Displays

13
Gold

And now I got to order it! (The 20 Lire)

So work did come through with a bonus this year - smaller than last year but still a very nice surprise considering I wasn't expecting anything. So rather than making me wait to see what happens in Washington the wife let me order an NGC MS64 1882 20 Lire coin last night. I won't post pictures or anything because the seller watermarks their images but I'll be looking forward to getting the coin - hopefully sooner than their shipping estimate suggests - 2 weeks from California to Texas
Revenant

Revenant in Gold

0
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
Revenant

Revenant in Family

1
Family

So we wait...

Well, no grades yesterday. So that’s three weeks almost / 13 working days in “Grading/Encapsulation/Imaging” without getting grades back. When the submission arrived on 6/7/21 or 6/8/21 the listed turnaround was 49 working days and the coins have now been at NGC for 65 or 66 working days as of Monday. And I really don’t care if the turnaround now is 85 working days - it was 49 when mine arrived, it was 49 for over a month of the time they’ve been there, and it was only later raised to 61, and we
Revenant

Revenant in Family

15
Random Nonsense

I wonder...

So, the Zcoins still haven't been finalized... but the Census did go up by about 9 coins today, all mint state, and 8 of those line up with the 8 pre-hyperinflation coins in my submission… So I may have just gotten a sneak peek at some of my grades… and the grades are pretty consistent with what I would have expected from those coins… but no way to know for sure. But, while I can’t talk grades officially yet, I have little better or more interesting to do with my socially-isolated, work-fro
Revenant

Revenant in Random Nonsense

10
0