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Yesterday’s Delivery

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Revenant

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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’s what it was because I wasn’t expecting anything else in the mail today.

I didn’t open it right away. I took it upstairs and stuck it in the bedroom to wait until after the kids were asleep. I will likely repeat what I did last year and try to get a shot of the two boys together this year holding the two plaques for this year now that I have both, but I wanted to get a minute and just enjoy opening this and looking at it in peace myself. I opened the PMG plaque with Sam around and it took a while before he let me have it back.

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So, here’s the coin:

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A MS64 1881-S Morgan, which will be quite a partner / buddy for my MS64 1882-S Morgan. :D I'm now ranked in the top 1,700 for Morgan sets in the registry. It's straight to the top now! #1 set, 2021 awards! lol

I had guessed that the coin would be a 1 or 2 ounce graded silver NCLT from 2020. I was wrong and very pleasantly surprised. Fenntucky Mike posted an image of his full slab and (unsurprisingly) looks like all these Award Winner coins have the same 7-digit invoice number and they’re numbered 001 through… 50? I think? He got number -008 and I have -022. Gary appears to have -034.I wonder who got -001? Who got the last / highest number. I'm sure it was all random but it is funny to think about.

(Edited to add this bit, which I'd said as a comment elsewhere) Honestly, the sheer number of coins they had to give away - and the unstated expectation that everyone would be getting the same / mostly the same thing - is the main reason I was REALLY expecting the coin to be 2020 NCLT, just because those would fit because of the year and would be easy to get in an arbitrarily large number in the same basic grade / condition (69/70).They really surprised me with this one, managing to give 50+ people MS64 Morgans from San Francisco from just a couple of years, but, as Gary said, they are more common dates. Even then, I really wonder if it was at all "interesting" to round them up and how they went about it - Did they go into the market for RAW coins until they had enough MS64s? Did they buy some of their previously graded MS64's on the market? A little of both?

When the PMG plaque arrived I posted a shot of the 5 together and Fenntucky Mike said something along the lines of I’d need another or a bigger shelf soon. I shifted some things around, cleaned up my desk, and popped over to Michael’s to buy another stand last month, so here is my proof. I made it work (for now). If NGC or PMG are nice enough to give me something next year I'll cross that bridge and deal with that “problem” when the time comes.

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I also got the new certificates in the mail over the weekend. So far, I’ve managed to keep track of all the certificates I’ve gotten since 2016 – including now 5 certificates for the 10G set for all the years since my marriage and Ben's birth.. 

Thanks again to NGC! Thanks again for those who read these and say they like it / what I write.

The version of myself that Joined the registry in 2007, the version of myself that started this journal as a 20 year old, did not, and would not have imagined this. Not what’s sitting on my desk hutch now, not my life as it is now, not my wife or my sons, not this past year.

I’m not done yet! More to come!

Side note, but one of Shandy’s current obsessions is our next housing situation. With our current lease up on 3/31/2022 she’s looking to move us closer to her parents for more access to free baby-sitting and more date nights. So there’s a good chance that, if I win anything next year – be it plaques or certificates – they’ll be delivered to the new address / the new home or subject to mail forwarding. But we’re hoping that will be the last home – for the foreseeable future anyway. She was looking at this last night even!

I think Ben’s Beyblade collection now numbers 19 – with three more seemingly lost forever in some magical void that only children can access in some 1-way capacity. I’m pretty committed to not buying more but he does get a weekly allowance now so what ne does with his allowance is his business!

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Once again, congratulations! You have a rather impressive set of plaques there. For the record, the Morgan I received was number -036, but it would be interesting to see who received the first and last number. 

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Say, I just noticed the camera you have on your bookshelf is much like the first camera I owned as a youth interested in photography. My parents gave it to me for Christmas one year. The yellow focus adjust window connected to a gear that manually focuses the lens is exactly the same as on my camera. The only thing I wish is that I still owned that camera. I don't remember when I lost or sold it but I sure regret it. Gary 

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7 hours ago, coinsbygary said:

Say, I just noticed the camera you have on your bookshelf is much like the first camera I owned as a youth interested in photography. My parents gave it to me for Christmas one year. The yellow focus adjust window connected to a gear that manually focuses the lens is exactly the same as on my camera. The only thing I wish is that I still owned that camera. I don't remember when I lost or sold it but I sure regret it. Gary 

The camera is an Argus C3. I'm a photo nerd so in addition to coins and other things I collect vintage and antique cameras- sorry if those words wound you 🤣.

Get on eBay and search Argus C3. If you want one you can have it probably for $40-50.

Trivia here but Collin Creevy (sp?) Uses an Argus C3 with the flash in the Harry Potter film series.

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19 hours ago, coinsandmedals said:

Once again, congratulations! You have a rather impressive set of plaques there. For the record, the Morgan I received was number -036, but it would be interesting to see who received the first and last number. 

Congrats to you again. I'm sure you'll have more coming your way in the future.:)

1 hour ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

Looks great! I like that PMG plaque the best. :wink: 

I am a little curious as to why you say that. Is it appreciation for the set that its linked to, do you like PMG / notes collecting more these days?

Interestingly, I think the PMG plaque (PMG plaques in general and the PMG Best Presented more so) are rarer / fewer in absolute number than most NGC awards just because PMG gives so many fewer, but I think there are more of them per registered user on the PMG side because the PMG user base is so much smaller.

1 hour ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

All well deserved and congratulations again.

Thanks and congrats to you. It'll be great to see your Ukrainian note set recognized with a "Best Presented" or similar honor - and I see that as being inevitable unless they just stop giving them out in the next couple of years. You're on track to build that into one of the great sets on the PMG side.

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4 hours ago, Revenant said:

The camera is an Argus C3. I'm a photo nerd so in addition to coins and other things I collect vintage and antique cameras- sorry if those words wound you 🤣.

Get on eBay and search Argus C3. If you want one you can have it probably for $40-50.

Trivia here but Collin Creevy (sp?) Uses an Argus C3 with the flash in the Harry Potter film series.

That's right, now I remember, mine was also an Argus! However, it had a brown body as opposed to your black body. I can't tell you how much fun I had with that camera and the darkroom that I used at my high school to process the pictures. All I did then was shoot black & white but I didn't care, I had a blast! When I was a youth I asked my parents for a 35mm camera, and that Argus was my first. Today I have a Nikon Z-5 mirrorless, full frame camera, and now I'm finally back to shooting 35mm pictures. Yes I know that I need the right lenses to take full advantage of the larger CMOS sensor. They're coming. Until then I'm adapting my new camera to the macro lens I currently own. This camera is a huge improvement over my last one, it's like night and day. I will be posting a blog about this soon with macro shots of my NGC award coin. (Hint: My coin has a few VAM diagnostics). With the nice spring weather around here, I tried my hand at macro shooting in the yard. The following are just a few of those pictures. Gary

P.S. Don't let the spider scare you, compare him to the shot with the twin daffodils to get a perspective of his true size!

  

 

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Edited by coinsbygary
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3 hours ago, coinsbygary said:

Today I have a Nikon Z-5 mirrorless, full frame camera, and now I'm finally back to shooting 35mm pictures.

Most of my coin photos these days are done with a D600 and a 105 mm VR macro lens. It's heftier than the Z-5 but I like DSLRs. :)

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8 hours ago, Revenant said:

I am a little curious as to why you say that. Is it appreciation for the set that its linked to, do you like PMG / notes collecting more these days?

Interestingly, I think the PMG plaque (PMG plaques in general and the PMG Best Presented more so) are rarer / fewer in absolute number than most NGC awards just because PMG gives so many fewer, but I think there are more of them per registered user on the PMG side because the PMG user base is so much smaller.

Both. The Zimbabwe signature set is amazing, I have a lot of respect for that set and I tend to hold signature/custom sets in higher regard due to the added thought and work in constructing them. I have been and still am focusing more on notes these days, so I probably am showing a little favoritism at the moment. I've shifted away from coins as my prime focus for the moment due to the increase in spot, along with a lot of people joining in on modern NCLT series that I collect which ramped up prices considerably, which is both good and bad. I'll be shifting back to the coin side of my collection shortly as I have aspirations of constructing some IoM sets yet this year and I need to use up the ol' credits as well. PMG plaques number fewer in total but plaque per capita hadn't really entered into my mind until now. lol

9 hours ago, Revenant said:

Thanks and congrats to you. It'll be great to see your Ukrainian note set recognized with a "Best Presented" or similar honor - and I see that as being inevitable unless they just stop giving them out in the next couple of years. You're on track to build that into one of the great sets on the PMG side.

Thanks! That's the goal, Best Presented, but I still have a lot of work to do and I doubt I'll get it to the level I want by the end of the year. We'll see.

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1 hour ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

Both. The Zimbabwe signature set is amazing, I have a lot of respect for that set and I tend to hold signature/custom sets in higher regard due to the added thought and work in constructing them. I have been and still am focusing more on notes these days, so I probably am showing a little favoritism at the moment. I've shifted away from coins as my prime focus for the moment due to the increase in spot, along with a lot of people joining in on modern NCLT series that I collect which ramped up prices considerably, which is both good and bad. I'll be shifting back to the coin side of my collection shortly as I have aspirations of constructing some IoM sets yet this year and I need to use up the ol' credits as well. PMG plaques number fewer in total but plaque per capita hadn't really entered into my mind until now. lol

As always - Thanks, that means a lot.

Now that I think of it, I may do some background work and make this a PMG journal about this later but a great thing (to me) about that set is that it's actually not that hard to build or that expensive to build. I think at the time I won I'd spent $2,000-3,000 on it (I wasn't keeping close tabs in the end as I made my final push in the 2nd half of last year). Which is only 4-6 times the value of the grading credit you win and not much at all compared to what some people spend on just one note for some sets. That set stands completely on the presentation and the message of it and, having won, it undermines that narrative that money and deep pockets trumps everything in the registry awards.

Good luck with yours. Take your time with it and enjoy it. I've been enjoying taking a bit of a step back after the win but I'm finally moving again to use some of these credits, get some things to fill in holes and bolt on a coin set to what has been a note-based affair. lol I need that break but I'm increasingly excited again to get some of these things done and... maybe... pick the next big project. I have several ideas. I just need to decide what my focus going forward is going to be.

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