I'm glad I have a hobby.

I came back to college yesterday to start the new semester. I found out that the Hall staff had taken my 50ft 12-gauge extension cord as contraband. I then had to deal with (hopefully) the only senior on this campus that doesn't know how to pronounce the word "confiscated." (I'm sorry, but no. It's not "con-fist-i-cated.") Then, today, while buying school supplies someone backs into my car and breaks the cover piece to my break light. And of course he didn't have his insurance card with him... and then I had to deal with the university bookstore overcharging me for a textbook and if you know what they charge for those, it is so much more than just the principle of the matter... *grumbling and muttering* (If I seem crabby, that is why...)

So far I've kept my promise to myself to not buy any more coins for a couple of weeks though I'm chomping at the bit to make a few new purchases (That doesn't really help the grump-factor either). I did place an order for a new coin book though. I've arranged to have it delivered to my college PO box and I think I'll probably enjoy that a lot more than my new textbooks, which were each 3 or 4 times as expensive. The book is the "Standard Catalogue of United States Tokens (1700-1900)," 4th edition. I suspect that they might be releasing the 5th edition by the end of the year, but I don't want to wait that long for it. I also like having more than one edition of a book and seeing how it changes over time. When the 5th edition comes out I will certainly pick it up as soon as possible. I'm hoping that having that book to look at will give me something fun to do other than looking at more coins that I want to buy.

I've added a new signature set for Civil War tokens and I'm hoping that in a couple of years it will be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the more impressive token sets on the registry. As it is, it has only one coin, but I'm laying out the framework for the set right now. I hope that a couple of additional coins will be coming in about 3 or 4 weeks (I still have to keep that promise... I keep telling myself). I've also started to try to overhaul and improve my signature set for modern world silver bullion coins. If that set lives up to my vision, it will probably end up being very large and (hopefully) very impressive to everyone that looks at it. I also suspect that it will be very heavy. Every coin does afterall weigh 1 Troy ounce plus the weight of the slab.

Finally, I'm happy to say that those 4 1965 SMS coins that went missing after the Hurricane were found today. I'm not going to say how or where they were found as it's just too embarrassing. It should not have taken this long for them to be noticed. Anyway, it's great to know that they're not gone for good afterall.