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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

Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

I think Sam really has the worst luck...

Well, shortly after I made my last post we went to pick up Sam from daycare and we found out he'd been lethargic and sick all day and was running a fever again. He's been home since then but lethargic and increasingly unwilling to eat or drink. Today we too him back to the doctor and then later in the day had to give up and take him to the ER because he wasn't peeing anymore.  Turns out he as pneumonia... at two and a half... and his O2Sats are low and he'll probably be getting admitted again fo
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
Revenant

Revenant in Random Nonsense

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Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

A cute, dopey, derpy set full of TOP POP coins?

My submission of Zimbabwe coins, as of yesterday, is officially “received” at NGC, but it’s that weird new kind of “received” where you cannot click on the invoice number and can’t see any of the line items. They just took them out of the box and put the invoice number in to say, “See! We got it! Now go away and stop bugging us about your box!” Joking! Said with love, folks! Anyway… I have been thinking about my MS65 10C coin, and the fact that it’s a TOP POP - that I got for $21 after it
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
Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

And now things get more clear...

So, I was still feeling salty about those $2 and $5 bi-metallics and decided to leave a bad review on them a while ago - I left good reviews on two raw notes I'd bought that both graded well. A few days later they reply to the 5-star reviews thanking me, but I see nothing on the 2-star... The 5 stars are showing on the website, but the 2 star isn't. Three days later I finally see a reply come through saying that they tried to reach out to me but got no response... the 2-star review sti
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
Revenant

Revenant in Random Nonsense

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Random Nonsense

Artsy Coin Photos

Well, I'd really thought that after my Z coins hit grading on Tuesday of last week I'd get grades this week almost for sure and I'd be getting to post about the results. Sadly, this was not the case - I'm still waiting. But hopefully they'll finish soon. But I won't see grades before Tuesday now with Labor Day coming up. Gosh... I'm really wanting to know the results and hoping to not be massively disappointed. This is dragging on and turning into a nail-biter! In the mean time, I thou
Revenant

Revenant in Random Nonsense

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Family

We made an offer on a house on 4/20! ... and now we wait.

We put in an offer on a house on 4/20! We started negotiating on 4/19 but the seller didn't accept until 4/20 and that's when we put in the bid contract - which is the only thing that matters under Texas law. We're still waiting on confirmation that they have signed it to put the house under contract after most of yesterday was lost to hashing out a minor issue in the draft of the contract we signed and submitted on 4/20, so we re-signed and resubmitted yesterday and... fingers cr
Revenant

Revenant in Family

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Registry

The Psychology of Completion

I’m narrowing in on getting to call several on-going projects complete. My 10G set is about 80% complete if you don’t count the 1879/7 variety. My Queen’s Beast sets are getting into about that same 80% range and several of the parts / sub-series of my Zimbabwe hyperinflation set are getting to be about 85-92% complete by pick number. Most of these sets are missing only 1-3 issues before they’re 100% complete registry sets. One thing I’ve been noticing lately is that, as I narrow in on the
Revenant

Revenant in Registry

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Registry

What works for the Physical Doesn't work for the Digital I guess

Well, after (finally) putting the time and the energy and cash / credit behind getting them all reholdered I had thought that a picture of the group of coins all in their matching slabs would make a good banner image for my 10G set in the new registry. While I do think the group of coins look good and I'm still happy I got them reholdered, and while I do think the images looked good, I have to admit that they fell a bit flat as banner images. I think they look great in pers
Revenant

Revenant in Registry

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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
Family

Collecting cards is more complicated than I would have thought…

So… Ben has gotten in to Yugioh cards… He started watching it on Netflix after he’d been watching lots of Pokemon and Bakugan and other anime and Netflix suggested it. Thank you for that suggestion Netflix… So helpful. So we had a collection of Pokemon cards that was mostly a hand me down from me / my youth, a collection of bakugan, a now rather staggering collection of Beyblades, and now he wants to collect Yugioh Cards and play duel monsters… So, we’ve definitely got t
Revenant

Revenant in Family

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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
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
Revenant

Revenant in Random Nonsense

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Gold

The 20 Lire and Soon the 20 Marks.

The 1882 20L coin arrived recently and I'm very happy to have it. It's a great addition to my growing set of smaller European gold coins from the late 19th and early 20th century - a group of coins I call my "golden nickels," because they're all about the size of a US nickel and because of what happened at around that same point in history with the "no cents" V nickels in 1883. It's a group of coins from the pre-Great War period that I think I'll always find endlessly fascinating. All
Revenant

Revenant in Gold

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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
Revenant

Revenant in Gold

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Coin Displays

New Storage and Display Options

My father's day gifts this year hit the PMG and NGC sides of my activities, with Shandy and Ben giving me a new green note storage box and a new display case for graded coins. This follows up on a couple of previous posts in my journals. These note storage boxes come in 4 colors and I'd gotten 3 of them a while back - black, blue and red, but not a green. Why? The others were $20 each and you couldn't get a green for under $30-35. No clue why, as I said at the time on the PMG sid
Revenant

Revenant in Coin Displays

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Gold

I will get no end of grief over that joke…

A few entries ago I jokingly referred to my 10G set as my “golden babies.” I thought was being silly and a little tongue-in-cheek, but my wife has given me no end of ribbing about this, so I think I’m going to be continuing to catch grief about that for a while every time those coins come up in conversation. I think this cements the Zimbabwe set as my “pride and joy” and the 10G set as my “golden babies” whenever my wife feels the need to tease me. They do look good in the new holders
Revenant

Revenant in Gold

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So, do we actually want the value of these things to rise?

A few months ago I talked to another collector who recalled a conversation where-in he and someone else agreed that, if they had tried to build their collections today, buying graded coins and not ones they “discovered” themselves, they never could have afforded to build their collections because prices have gone up so much. I can’t help but think of that statement periodically and ask myself, “So do we really want the value / price of these things to go up?” Or, stated more usefully, “Do
Revenant

Revenant

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Coin budgets

The coin budget might get a boost afterall...

This might be a bit rambling but I will get to a point, I swear. My wife and I got that 2nd stimulus check a few weeks ago and we set about spending the majority of it on 1) redoing and improving our kids playroom to make it more comfortable and fun for the boys ($500 that has made life sooo much easier for Shandy) 2) allowing us to spend more than we normally would have on anniversary presents and 3) planning a weekend AirBnB get away to celebrate Ben’s Bday since he will once again not be
Revenant

Revenant in Coin budgets

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Family

"Hey, Dad. We should get a Penny sorter."

So Ben randomly pops up with the fact that he wants a "penny sorter," which my brain interprets to mean one of those automatic coin sorting and rolling machines. I hadn't thought of those in years probably but him saying this reminded me of the fact that I used to see those in Walgreens and other places as a kid. I always really wanted one and thought they would be so cool, but I could just never justify it (or talk my mom into it) and so I always just sorted, counted and rolled by hand. To
Revenant

Revenant in Family

3

“PIF by Borrower”

For months now I’ve been crossing my fingers hoping that I’d get a nice bonus and we’d be able to pay off my student loans and maybe finish paying for the cruise we’re wanting to take in October. I’m still waiting to find out about if I’ll get a bonus this year, but we just got a big surprise on our Taxes. Because we can claim an extra dependent this year and a couple of other things this year, instead of owing money we’re going to get some back and this is going to let us pay off my loans,
Revenant

Revenant

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Zimbabwean Coins and Currency

Zimbabwean Coins Set and Traveler’s Check Sets

I said in a recent post that I’d be looking to buy some Zimbabwe coins from a dealer in the US that I’ve used a lot and get those submitted. Then, to my surprise, when I went to order, I found that they’d upped their prices and upped their minimum order from $50 to $100. Yeah, they offer free shipping, but, sheesh. Let me have the option to pay the shipping for a smaller order. I wanted to order 2 sets of coins and some notes for about $55. I had not wanted to or planned to spend $100 and buy 3-
2020 Awards

Yesterday’s Delivery

So, unlike with the PMG plaque, which arrived on 2/27 - much to my shock – I can’t really call this one a surprise in the mail. I’d seen other’s posting about getting theirs on Monday and Tuesday, so I knew the arrival of this package was probably imminent. Still, it was great to get it. My home office and my windows sit almost directly above the front door to the house, so I heard the carrier scanning the barcodes and the beeping as it was dropped off and I wondered in that moment if that’
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Revenant in 2020 Awards

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Family

Some Updates… That escalated quickly... very quickly.

Sam’s intensive therapy is over. Yay! His last day was actually the Thursday I posted about getting the plaque in the mail. Three weeks of stress and crying and having a generally unhappy 2-year-old can end – but it was for his own good, and he did great. He’s supposed to continue to wear a cast and restrict his left hand one day a week and one meal a day to continue the development of motor skills with his right hand, but that hopefully won’t be as contentious. Shandy and I both got the fi
Revenant

Revenant in Family

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