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Thoughts on the 20 Lire and the display front.

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Revenant

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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 more I think about it I'm increasingly liking the idea of making a small display with a Sovereign and the 20 Lire since my wife lived in those countries growing up (I brought this up in the "5 Years" post in January). Having discussed it with her I think see likes the idea too. This led to a bit of dreaming and browsing on Amazon and sharing some images / ideas with her, which she also seems to like. I really like the idea of combining this hobby of mine with a bit of her family history and something she loves and thinks of fondly for something we can look at and enjoy together.

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Another idea that has some appeal to me though would be getting something a little bigger and including one of the Netherlands 10G coins, a Swiss 10 or 20 Franc, a French 20 Franc and maybe (eventually) a Prussian 20 Mark. This idea would be somewhat aspirational in nature too though in that she want's to return to Italy with me for a vacation one day and I think she's wanting to visit other places in Europe together over time because she just loves travel - she's very experienced based in her thinking and not at all really a collector or a "stuff" kind of person. Makes me wonder why she married a hording homebody like me but I probably shouldn't question it much. lol

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But (and this is just more of me musing and dreaming) if I ever manage to complete a 10-coin date set of Willem III 10G coins I'd love to get either two of these or something that could display 10 coins and make a really cool display of that set. If I somehow manage to finish that set after like 15 years and get them all in pretty new-gen holders that match I have to find some fun and cool way to display that set. I just have to. lol I'd love to have them all in 1 case but I've only seen options with up to 8 coins displayed at a time. So if I want 10 I think I may need to find a custom option or get 2 of these 5 coin ones... If I'm dumb enough to get the 1879/7 variety and make it an 11-coin set I may be very SOL. lol Maybe I could put the 10 coin date set together and put the 9/7 in with the multi-currency displayed above. hm

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I wonder if anyone else here has experience with these things, owns some or use them to display anything? I see a lot of them for "challenge coins" too.

Oh my... me and my big dreams. :idea: I used to laugh and roll my eyes at my mother for all of her big plans and big projects that never came to fruition and I still laugh at my wife for all of her day dreaming about things (like winning the lottery and going off on her millionth vacation idea) and here I am doing the same .:roflmao:Her favorite dream and point of discussion is possibly buying a home near her parents soon and moving away from this house.

Talking about all of this got her asking me about what my favorite coin(s) is / are. In response to my answers I got a "I love my coin nerd," and a "I would love to go to a show with you and be bored to tears just wandering about and holding your hand." I have this in writing in Messenger so there's proof and she can't call me a liar later! lol 

On a slightly random note on the 10G set, I almost never see anything over an MS66 graded by NGC but I have several times now seen PCGS graded coins at a MS67 or MS68 come up for sale - especially at Heritage and similar places. There's only two theories I can come up with on this - either 1) PCGS just grades higher / looser on these than NGC does or 2) all the REALLY high grade examples have gone to PCGS and not to NGC for grading because that was the preference of the owners / submitters at the time.

I'm worried that it might be number 1 given what I've heard with regard to PCGS world coin grading but I simply have not seen enough PCGS graded examples in-hand. All I can say is that I think the NGC MS66s I have look as nice or nicer to me than my 1875 MS67, which PCGS graded. But I'm not a grader, and I don't claim to be able to grade these (or anything) in that grade range where small nicks and differences count for so much. A lot of this has just continued to dim any hopes I had with regard to perhaps one day crossing that PCGS coin at the same grade and further convince me that getting the NGC graded 1875 to go with the NGC registry set instead was probably the way to go. I don't want to give up that MS67 on the slab if it ever comes time to resell (but I like the coin and I'm not in a huge rush to sell) but I also like the idea of having a full NGC-graded matched set one day.

That's all for now. I may have more soon though, either here or on the PMG side.

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I've been looking at this kind of stuff too, considering kinds of 2-3 coin sets that could look good together in a nice box or frame.  I saw those 3 slab wood boxes for about $30 on ebay, haven't committed yet.  Any 3 gold coins ought to look good together!  Put up a picture if you actually get one of these and put the slabs in it.  I got one 3-part one last year, foam not wood, that doesn't fit PCGS, only NGC slabs.  I think most other items selling now out there found a way to fit both and they say so in the description. 

 

Glad you survived your ordeal with some sense of humor too.  That whole Texas thing has really added to the growing pile of things making me really want to move out to somewhere I can own a generator and store more stuff 

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1 hour ago, deposito said:

I've been looking at this kind of stuff too, considering kinds of 2-3 coin sets that could look good together in a nice box or frame.  I saw those 3 slab wood boxes for about $30 on ebay, haven't committed yet.  Any 3 gold coins ought to look good together!  Put up a picture if you actually get one of these and put the slabs in it.  I got one 3-part one last year, foam not wood, that doesn't fit PCGS, only NGC slabs.  I think most other items selling now out there found a way to fit both and they say so in the description. 

I'd say it's almost guaranteed to happen at this point. It's more an issue of timing. Part of this is that I want the 20 L coin to be part of whatever form this takes as well.

1 hour ago, deposito said:

Glad you survived your ordeal with some sense of humor too.  That whole Texas thing has really added to the growing pile of things making me really want to move out to somewhere I can own a generator and store more stuff 

I survived having a premie in the NICU for 2 months, so it's going to take more than a few cold days without power to fully strip my sense of humor on a more long-term basis. lol 

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I can't speak for the 10G coins, but from my experience with English and Irish copper, NGC is far more consistent in their grading. I have viewed countless PCGS and NGC graded coins in my area of focus, and more often than not, the PCGS pieces do not meet my expectations for the assigned grade. That said, it can be very hit and miss if you do not have accurate images to rely on. In my experience, PCGS is far more liberal and inconsistent with English and Irish copper. I have read similar sentiments related to other areas of world coins, so I doubt this is an isolated issue. I would be curious to see what others have to say. 

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On 3/1/2021 at 2:10 PM, deposito said:

Any 3 gold coins ought to look good together! 

Of course, now I find this and I'm very intrigued. It's a lot like a small shot glass cabinet my wife gave me several years ago. But I'm worried it might be too much / over kill. I agree that a small display with a few coins on a theme would be really great, and that was my original idea. Other than NCLT I'm not sure I have enough slabbed coins with a common theme to make something like this big cabinet work and I think the size and number of coins might actually make it lose "punch."

Of course, my wife tells me she thinks it is overkill and she doesn't like it! I think that means. "it's dead, Jim." lol

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On 3/2/2021 at 8:25 PM, Revenant said:

Of course, now I find this and I'm very intrigued. It's a lot like a small shot glass cabinet my wife gave me several years ago. But I'm worried it might be too much / over kill.

yeah I've seen that thing.  3 is about perfect, 2 could make sense, and 5 or 6 would be a topping off point for a nice little gift set or breakout collection I think.  The wall case?  Maybe to fill with nonsense tokens as burglar bait but not for anything you actually like.  Important to have a bunch of gold and silver electroplated bars and coins somewhere that will get found easily, can't beat this display to get them on the right path

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There are some really nice display cases out in the market, I really enjoy woodworking also and have thought about building one or two myself once I'm retired and have the free time (free time who am I kidding:roflmao:).   I bought a case to hold my #1 1930 and 1940 year sets together, I use some lower grade duplicate coins for the copper coins in here as the ones in the set are stored in Intercept shield holders in the SDB for protection.   Every now that then I get them out and put the full sets together for display at special occasions or just because I want to.

 

 

 

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Edited by Coinbuf
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12 hours ago, deposito said:

yeah I've seen that thing.  3 is about perfect, 2 could make sense, and 5 or 6 would be a topping off point for a nice little gift set or breakout collection I think.  The wall case?  Maybe to fill with nonsense tokens as burglar bait but not for anything you actually like.  Important to have a bunch of gold and silver electroplated bars and coins somewhere that will get found easily, can't beat this display to get them on the right path

For me the appeal of more would be having similar size gold coins from about the same period from a bunch of different European powers from the turn of the 19th/20th century - Pre-WWI basically. Because this would basically be what I'm building with these coins and what I'd like to represent down the road as a custom set. What's amazing to me is that there were a bunch of these essentially interchangeable European gold coins circulating around that time where the Swiss 20F, the French 20F, and the Italian 20L all had about 0.1867 toz of gold in them and then the British sovereign and the Prussian 20 Mark were a little beefier at about 0.23 toz. But, with those countries where a Franc and a Lire were essentially equivalent in this period you had a de facto international unified currency, through gold, 100 years before the Euro. And that makes these coins very very cool and interesting to me, but more on this later.

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2 hours ago, Coinbuf said:

 

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I've seen these. Does the lid stay up well / easily to display the coins? I'd been leaning towards something with a glass window for the lid so I could be sure I could actually see the coins in the case. That had me seriously thinking about this Lighthouse case.

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The one I have is from Lighthouse so that may be where you have seen it, it is the three tray (the bottom tray is the bottom of the case and does not remove) display box.   I really like it as it holds both sets with a couple of slots for extras, in case lol.  No issues with the lid opening or closing and it stays open with no problems, here is a shot of it with the top two trays pulled out (note you can see some of my imposter coins :D).  If I was only doing one set or a sub set I probably would have gone with one of the glass top designs.

 

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Edited by Coinbuf
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On 3/6/2021 at 2:42 PM, Coinbuf said:

The one I have is from Lighthouse so that may be where you have seen it, it is the three tray (the bottom tray is the bottom of the case and does not remove) display box.   I really like it as it holds both sets with a couple of slots for extras, in case lol.  No issues with the lid opening or closing and it stays open with no problems, here is a shot of it with the top two trays pulled out (note you can see some of my imposter coins :D).  If I was only doing one set or a sub set I probably would have gone with one of the glass top designs.

Yeah. I'm seriously thinking I'm going to get a 5-8 coin glass top case and put some 100-140 year old European gold in there. :D

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I might have to look into something like this, but for raw coins.....something like an old-time coin cabinet, but smaller.  I think some of my best Faustinas would look pretty nice in such a display.  Coinbuf.....what you posted looks great (thumbsu

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