I took Shandy and the baby to the airport yesterday for that trip to New York that did end up happening. She was stuck at the airport for 3.5 hours of flight delays with the baby but fortunately the baby slept through most of it and it wasn't too stressful for her. She's in New York with her mom and having a blast.

Before I drove her to the airport though I finally decided to pull the trigger on an 1875 Netherlands 10G coin that I'd been looking at.

There is no exciting tale of finding it for sale and a nail-biting bidding war. This coin is a case of weighing options based on price, the look of the coin, the quality of the seller, etc.

I had been considering buying a coin in one of the “old fatty” style holders with a 195XXX or, better yet, a 1959XX serial number, to continue the theme holders and serial numbers I have with the 1876, 1877 and 1879 (and, to a lesser extent, the 1887).  I actually even found an NGC graded MS66 with a 1959 serial number that seemed like it’d be perfect for the set, but… then I tried talking to the seller and suddenly found myself not wanting to give him my money.

The seller was already asking premium money for the coin and that attitude just really took the “shine” off of it. The seller had pulled the listing for a few days and was going to relist the coin - making a comment about how quickly the price of gold had been going up. That made it pretty clear to me that the already high-end price on that coin was just going to be higher in a week when they re-listed it. Waiting would also mean, as that seller thought, risking the price of gold continuing to rise and seeing prices go up on other coins I was looking at. Waiting would have also meant missing out on a 5% eBay bucks offer that will ultimately return about a $20 rebate to me. At that point, the incremental cost and risk of waiting and going for that coin (assuming they really relisted it) just seemed like it was going to be too high.

While I know that I could have a cool story and incentive to get that coin based on the holder and serial number, I can't count on anyone else ever liking it as much for that reason, so paying more for the coin for that reason becomes a very dicey proposition that I just didn't have the appetite for right now. When I did something similar with the 1877 in December it was an auction and, as expected, the MS65 in the old holder sold for about $50 less than the MS66 in the new holder, and those where auctions, so I wasn't in a position of having to shell out extra to meet a seller's asking price just to get that holder. This would have been different.

So instead I went with this MS66. It isn’t in one of the old fatty holders and doesn’t have the “shared history” angle of the numerically close serial numbers, but, at the end of the day, it’s the coin that matters and I can’t promise these will be staying in the old holders anyway. I still dream of one day getting a full 10/11 coin set and sending hem all in for re-holding to make them all match. But I won’t do that until I have a full set.

This looks to be a very charming coin, and, with a grade of MS66, while is isn’t as impressive grade / points-wise as that MS67, it’s still a great addition to the set. (Sometimes I do wonder if I will ever see an NGC MS67 in the wild, for sale, and what it would cost me if I did).

This is one of only two MS66 graded coins in the set and they form the “bookends” or end-caps for the set, the first and last dates for the series - the 1875 and the 1889.

I don't have it in hand yet, obviously, but it has shipped out as of this morning and should arrive around Tuesday. I'm looking forward to it.