I always tell people to do what they have to when it comes to COVID-19. Sorry about your cruise. It looks like my daughter's Icelandic wedding in October will be cancelled. Its kind of hard catching a flight out of the country if our planes can't land anywhere outside the US. As for registered mail, I have never had a problem with it except that it can be slower because of the extra security. Finally, you have a mighty fine looking set there and I'm happy to hear that Sam is making great progress!

1 hour ago, gherrmann44 said:

Finally, you have a mighty fine looking set there and I'm happy to hear that Sam is making great progress!

Thanks. It's the Willem III compliment to your Wilhelmina set.

Nice set. It is great to get all coins of a set in the same holders when practical. I’m going in the opposite direction with my War Nickel set - all are NGC MS67 in the old holders, before edge view, except for the 1945-P. I would love to find a replacement in an old holder for that one. Anyone want to swap?

Also great to see Sam is continuingto make progress. Our preemie granddaughter has some of the same issues, and PT is helping tremendously.  She also has the same toys! 

42 minutes ago, CBC said:

Also great to see Sam is continuingto make progress. Our preemie granddaughter has some of the same issues, and PT is helping tremendously.  She also has the same toys! 

A lot of that used to be Ben's. Children's toys are one of the few things that don't get updated every year these days and there's also a healthy used market for it all.

I prefer the look of the edge view holders. I have a set that is mostly old fatties but the 1888 - the key date - is in a new style holder and I don't feel like my odds of finding one in an old fatty are good - NGC has only graded about 20-25 of them total.

Sam's looking good!

(The coins are nice, too)

On 7/21/2020 at 11:24 PM, Just Bob said:

Sam's looking good!

(The coins are nice, too)

Thanks! I just can't help but think that would be one dang nice looking set if the slabs matched.

It really is hard for me to believe some days that I bought that PCGS graded MS67 11 years ago in mid-2009.

Good news that your son is showing improvement and progress.    It will be a shame to lose the historical holders, I very much like the old fatty holders and gen 3 holders are getting harder to find.

2 hours ago, Coinbuf said:

Good news that your son is showing improvement and progress.    It will be a shame to lose the historical holders, I very much like the old fatty holders and gen 3 holders are getting harder to find.

Thanks.  Yeah. I feel your pain on the loss of the old holders (even though I don't prefer them to the new ones) but I do think the presentation of the set as a whole would be better if they all matched. And I really don't  think I'm likely to find an 1888 in an old fatty to harmonize the set around the fatties.

Having different slabs and slab types just doesn't bother me in the least, I value old slabs because I know the coins are stable and have not been doctored.  In fact when I see coins in brand new slabs the first thought is has this coin been recently worked over and how much do I have to worried about the coin turning in the holder, especially for copper and gold.  I know you have not been improving them but its a definite concern for copper collectors like myself

1 minute ago, Coinbuf said:

Having different slabs and slab types just doesn't bother me in the least, I value old slabs because I know the coins are stable and have not been doctored.  In fact when I see coins in brand new slabs the first thought is has this coin been recently worked over and how much do I have to worried about the coin turning in the holder, especially for copper and gold.  I know you have not been improving them but its a definite concern for copper collectors like myself

NGC's decision to have the guarantee expire after 10 years puts copper collector's in an awkward spot though - if these coins in my set in the old fatties from 1993 were copper then they wouldn't have been eligible for the grade guarantee for the last 17 years - nearly 2/3rds the time they've been in the holder.

22 minutes ago, Revenant said:

NGC's decision to have the guarantee expire after 10 years puts copper collector's in an awkward spot though - if these coins in my set in the old fatties from 1993 were copper then they wouldn't have been eligible for the grade guarantee for the last 17 years - nearly 2/3rds the time they've been in the holder.

Does not matter, if the coin has not changed in ten years then chances are extremely high that the coin will never change unless it is subjected to some very poor storage conditions.  In fact both the top TPG's really don't have any guarantee when it comes to copper, those provisions were gutted years ago. 

I've taken the liberty of reviewing your previous comments on a number of other threads and what I see is relevance spoken with reverence.

I understand your desire for uniformity but I wonder if you've ever heard of the following something I have been contemplating doing for some time:  I would like to mothball,  decommission, or have my  #1 set Registry of French 20-franc gold roosters retired for no other reason than to cede the top spot to the 2d place holder whose collection at PCGS I regard as superior to my own made at great personal sacrifice and expense down to using my own Blitzkrieg approach of hoarding the finest pieces quietly and registering them assembly-line fashion, one right after the other with unnecessary additional personal expense tlbeing the only realistic impediment ti onsideration. I seriously doubt you ever heard anything like that.

51 minutes ago, Quintus Arrius said:

I would like to mothball,  decommission, or have my  #1 set Registry of French 20-franc gold roosters retired for no other reason than to cede the top spot to the 2d place holder whose collection at PCGS I regard as superior to my own made at great personal sacrifice and expense

No. I haven't considered that and I wouldn't want to for several reasons.

1) I've only held the top spot for 4 years so far, the same length of time as the person I took it from. It's not like I've had it locked up for a decade. It's not like I'm a whale / heavy hitter and win a lot of categories here - I win 2 categories with two sets that I've put a lot of time, effort and love into..

2) My set has twice as many coins as the #2 - which is under 50% complete. My set has the two key dates of the series. This isn't even a close competition.

3) The #2 hasn't been modified in over 8 years and has no set or coin descriptions.

The 1879, which #2 doesn't have, is not rare. He could have easily gotten an NGC graded example in the last 8 years if he wanted one. The other coins in the set - the 1880, the 1885, etc - while they are less common and can be harder to get pre-graded by NGC - are common enough if you shop in the right places. The biggest problem I have with those coins is I don't want to pay a ton of money to have an unseen coin shipped to me from Europe just to have it show up looking cleaned, dipped or just straight-up ugly. If Mozin really wanted to compete with me or give me a run for my money I think he could. I passed him up 4 years ago and he hasn't tried to fight me for it. So I can't think he's too broken up over it or that he's desperately working to unseat me from the #1 spot.