First off, congratulations to all the registry participants and the winners of the 2019 registry awards.  As for me, I won a Classic Set award for my Mexico City 8 reales Pillar Dollars of Charles III (1760-1771).  This is my third major award and I had never posted about them in the past, but for this one I will make an exception.  I want to highlight the wonderfully broad approach that the NGC judges have chosen in selecting sets for their awards.  I haven't yet browsed through all of the other winning sets but I'm sure that mine is more of an outlier than most.  To start with, the advertised criteria for Classic Sets is "US or World Sets, 1792-1964" so my set has somehow slipped through the time-frame constraint.  But the point I want to emphasize is that, using my set as an example, you don't necessarily need the highest grade coins to be considered for an award.  I built much of this set from raw examples -- and most of my coins fall in the XF range!  

Now, I know that many collectors that use the NGC journals or forums are not keen on registry participation for all of the valid reasons that you've posted but maybe some of you might reconsider your opinions.  I believe there are many magnificent collections out there that are just waiting to be recognized.

Here is, perhaps, my least impressive coin from my set, grade-wise. VF details, but still a quite scarce variety.

~jack