Coinbuf

As I've referenced recently, I've been sitting on and trying to accumulate some cash in my hobby budget to maybe buy a 1924 $20 double eagle in MS65 - my grandmother's birth year and now a newly 100-year-old coin. My grandmother would have been 100 years old in February if she were still alive.
I finally got some things moved around and have saved enough that I now have almost $2600 in my hobby budget, and the coin, back in January, was going for about $2,500-2,600.
But gold has moved up about $295/oz in the last 3 months and the coins are now going for about $2,900-3,000 now.
I'll soon have about $2,800 available. If I wanted to pull the trigger on it and get the coin while not quite having enough to buy in in my hobby budget I think Shandy wouldn't give me a hard time about it.
But I think I'm still just going to watch and wait a bit for now.
I may regret it later if the price of gold keeps heading up in the near term, but I don't know that it's going to stay at these levels.
The same people that have been predicting $3,000-5,000/oz for years are again going insane and screaming "buy now!" but, they've been saying this for quite a long time.
Gold hit about $2,050 in 2020 and hit about that same level in 2022. $2,050 in 2020 is about $2,475 now. So it would seem that this may only be an adjustment for 4 years of inflation. And that is the inflation adjusted 2020 peak. We might (and probably will) see it peak and drop back again, just like it always tends to. Until this recent spike, it's been basically flat for 4 years.

I looked up the all-in sustaining costs for some of the major gold miners and, they've gone up some, but they're still in the range of about $1,300-1,400 for most of the big ones, which is only up modestly from the $1,200-$1,300 it was a few years ago.
This spike up might have some legs yet, and it does bother me to watch something I want getting more expensive, but I'm going to calm myself and wait a bit yet.
The higher prices will inevitably bring more marginal production online with a lag, high prices always bring sellers onto the market, and spikes in demand spike premiums, which sour people on buying for a while. All of which will help reverse the trend.
Because of some bonuses and other things going on I'll probably get to add another $1100 to my hobby budget in the next 4-6 months, in addition to the $200 a month I normally get for my discretionary spending. And that also means that, barring a continued huge spike up, I might be able to get the double eagle and maybe one other thing - maybe a coin from Sweden to add to my old, world gold set.
On the other hand, maybe it's time to go for something from Mexico now that I have Venezuelan gold. Or maybe it's time to try to get some of those Zimbabwean bullion coins.
I guess we'll see how it all goes.

I stopped collecting coins once I entered college because of a lack of time and money.  Then, after graduating from college, my hobby turned to stock investing.  However, in the spring of 2006 I started reading more and more about the upcoming housing crisis.  The price increases in homes since 2000 were enormous and unsustainable.  This led me to sell off a large percentage of my stocks and I decided that gold and gold stocks would be a good place to put some of my money.  However, instead of just investing in gold bullion, my passion for coin collecting re-emerged and led me to focus on collecting gold coins from the United States of America in 2008.  I chose to collect coins that I thought were undervalued and scarce.  I thought that the Philadelphia and San Fransisco gold coins in denominations ranging between $1 gold pieces and $10 gold pieces offered the best value.  The scarce coins that I focused on had less than 150 coins in the NGC census. When my father passed away, I purchased my grandfather’s relatively common 1925D $2.5 gold coin from my mother for sentimental reasons.
 
Here are the mints in the US along with their mintmarks and time in operation:
•    Philadelphia, P or none, 1793 – Present
•    Charlotte, C, 1838–1861
•    Dahlonega, D, 1838–1861
•    New Orleans, O, 1838–1861 and 1879-1909
•    San Francisco, S or none, 1854 – Present
•    Carson City, CC, 1870–1885 and 1889-1893
•    Denver, D, 1906 - Present
 
My three favorite US gold sets are:
•    Philadelphia Mint Gold Issues, Complete Circulation Issue - https://www.ngccoin.com/registry/competitive-sets/132169/
•    San Francisco Gold, Complete Circulation Issue - https://www.ngccoin.com/registry/competitive-sets/119605/ 
•    Philadelphia and San Francisco gold coins from the Civil War reconstruction era (1866-1878) - https://coins.www.collectors-society.com/WCM/CoinCustomSetView.aspx?s=1036
 
Here I provide information about the 5 coins shown in the header, i.e., date, mint, denomination, grade, NGC population (total, same grade, higher grade).
•    1894-S, $10, NGC-CAC MS62, (172, 1, 0)
•    1856-S, $5, NGC-CAC AU-58, (167, 16, 6)
•    1870, $3, PCGS MS-62, (297, 7, 6)
•    1845, $2.5, NGC MS63, (281, 12, 8)
•    1857-S, $1, NGC MS-62, (121, 4, 2)
Boy, the NGC populations have increased significantly since I purchased these coins!  Some of the increases are probably due to people cracking out coins and resubmitting them.  
After selling some of my stocks I had a bunch of cash that was just burning a hole in my pocket. Well after discovering the big US coin auction houses, I was like a kid in a candy store and made many purchases early in 2008 (in hindsight, not the best choice).  Note that the 1870 $3 gold piece was the first coin that I purchased from an auction house, i.e., Stacks in January 2008.  Likewise, the 1845 $2.5 gold coin was in the first set of coins I purchased from Heritage one week later. A month after that, I purchased the 1894-S $10 and the 1857-S $1. In a later post I will share some of my experiences with the first US gold coins that I purchased, and the lessons I learned, if there is an interest. 
 

I had mentioned recently that I’d ordered a Rhodesian 3 Pence (1 1957 in MS66) to go with the Rhodesian Federation 6 pence my wife gave me for my Birthday.
Shortly thereafter I saw that I seller I’ve used for a lot of my Rhodesian Federation coinage had a 1955 and a 1964 in MS66, so I put in some offers, which they accepted.
After the coins spent a week in the Post Office, after the substitute carrier once again just put a slip of paper in the mailbox and didn’t come to the door, ring the doorbell, or see if I was actually home or not (or claimed to, since this time they didn’t even put the slip in our box and I had to print the tracking information of the website to take with me, but I’m digressing..) I was able to finally get out and get them picked up.
I still need to image the coins, but, as promised in another recent entry, here we get “A Bouquet of Flame Lilies.”
As my prior posts and my naming conventions for these tend to indicate, I tend to view all of these Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland sets as 1 project in multiple parts and I’ve taken advantage of the different short-run denominational sets to break it into smaller, easier to tackle chunks that I’ve mostly taken on one at a time.

At least for now, unlike the penny and half penny sets, this one is not a #1 ranked set. There’s a 100% complete set in the category, and that’s hard to overcome with a 50% complete set. The other problem I’m going to face here is that the 1956 is a key-date from a points perspective. That coin is worth considerably more than most of the other dates in the set in similar grades so it’s going to be hard to take the top spot in the category without getting one of those.
There currently are no pictures that are up to my normal standards for these coins and sets, but one thing that you might be able to notice from looking at NGC’s pictures of the coins in the slabs is that these 3 pence coins in particular are quite small. At 16.3 mm in diameter, they are a fair bit smaller than even a Roosevelt dime, which clocks in at 17.9 mm. The 6 pence coins come in a little larger than a US penny, with a diameter of 19.4 mm. I have to wonder a little WHY did they make these so small given that they’re not silver – they’re copper-nickel – so it wouldn’t have been an issue of keeping the silver value / melt value down.

I got some belated birthday presents from my wife’s family this weekend and I finally got to find out what my wife said when she said she’d given her mother her “other idea.” My MIL gave me an NGC MS70 2013 Koala.
I had not been looking at these in a while and they weren’t on my wish list on eBay. She went into my registry sets and found a coin I didn’t have for a set and went on eBay and found it, in the right grade. The rest of the set up to this point has been all MS70s and they got an MS70.
I’m quite surprised – she’s getting better at figuring this stuff out and finding stuff on her own.
This does however make it more important to register things and have them in sets after I get them though. It would be sad to see her efforts wasted and fouled by an out-dated registry set.
I’m not sure if it’s the byproduct of getting back into things here to finish the Austral set up and running after my submission came back but before the deadline or of getting a coin from my wife a few weeks ago, but I seem to have the bug back.
I’d been building up quite a bit of money in my coin budget because I hadn’t been buying anything. I’d bought the raw Argentinian coins a while back and then nothing, and the raw coins were cheap. Now I’ve been buying a few things again – a few things for the 5 and 10 L sets, a couple of new Rhodesian coins…
And it has me pumped to start making a few more posts here to talk about some of this.
Also – miracle of miracles – I’ve updated that World Gold Coin custom set to include more coins and include some of the pertinent facts and design details. I know... It’s shocking.
I think when I first got back into the registry a few years ago I bought a few more coins for the Koala set myself, but I dropped it because it was going to take too much of my budget at the time and I couldn’t do that and other things. Having gotten this 2013 Koala, I am seeing that several more of the 9 coins I’d need are on eBay in MS70 for only about $60-75. It wouldn’t be hard for me to get that set back to being much closer to being complete and up to date again for the first time in a very long time.
We’ll see. I’ll be giving it some thought, and I may get a couple now / soon and a few more later. They are a nice  group of coins and they’ve never been as impacted by the spotting issues. That’s why I played with them again a few years ago.

I don't think this post is going to be long for the world - I'll probably pull it down in the near future because it's not going to have any relevance here beyond the fact that I know there are a few here that are probably curious and I don't know that I've really addressed it.
The rebound / recovery from a shunt revision isn't necessarily as bad as you might think it is from dealing with other surgeries on the body or thinking of it as "Brain surgery." Because they're not opening the gut, cutting into a lot of tissue and muscle. This isn't something where you spend days in the hospital afterwards while they're waiting for you to walk around the nurse station and waiting for you to have a good bowel movement. Yes, they are cutting into the person's head - there is an incision and a scar, but they're inserting a tube into the brain - they're not cutting into it or anything. In this case it was a step less than that. They just replaced his value. The tube / catheter going into his brain and the part going to his stomach were fine. They just replaced the valve - the hardware that's normally under his skin but outside his skull.
So, his recovery is almost immediate afterwards. He has to get out of the anesthesia and the have to make sure he's okay. We have to be careful about the cut to keep it clean, keep him from damaging stitches and keep it from getting infected...
However...
He starts feeling better immediately.
As in, they operated at 8:30 AM, he was out of surgery and awake by about 9:30 or 10:00 and before lunch time was even properly here, he had his appetite back and he was eating.
We were released the next day - about 30 hours after surgery we were going out the door and driving home. 
He was walking around fine, and not only that but jumping and trying to roll on his head of all things. He's feeling great and you have to hold him back and tell him to be careful - especially near his head and the incision.
He went home feeling fine, playing with toys again, eating like I don't think he's eaten in weeks.
The recovery is immediate, the only thing is the cut has to heal.
We went out on Tuesday night - just 4 days after surgery, and he stayed up late, walking on his own around the neighborhood, refusing his pediatric wheelchair so he could walk with his mother and walk up to houses. to say "Trick or Treat."





 

So, I've always thought the expression "It's all over but the crying" was a funny one, in part because when something is over people can be crying because they're happy or because they're sad. You see it on awards shows all the time with the happy cry, but, given that televised award shows are often for TV and movie stars who are, after all, professional pretenders, it does make you wonder sometimes how much of the happy crying is genuine.  
What I never knew, however, but what a little bit of quick googling has now taught me, is that this is apparently the name of and a line from a Hank Williams Jr break-up song from 1947. Which was... a bit before my time, if I'm being honest. I am now wondering what the broader cultural awareness of this song and the cultural origins of the phrase seem to be. Am I not aware of this song simply because I'm not 60-80 year old or is this something that most other people in their mid-30s currently are aware of and I'm just out of the loop?  
But, anyway... 
The registry awards are now closed. I wish everyone luck. I'll resist the temptation to make the obvious Hunger Games reference.
I thought I'd take the occasion to follow-up on a post from last year.
After I won in 4 Modern Italian categories last year my wife had jokingly asked, "So, 6 next year?" My response at the time was that I'd be happy to hold 2-3. It looks like the end result is going to be 5 for this year - Very solidly not bad.  

I guess we'll see how long people let me continue to get away with this.  I think the only set in that group that it would REALLY annoy me to see get knocked down from #1 would be the now-100% complete 500 Lire set that includes two coins her family brought back from Italy. That one I really would want to defend.
Somewhat to my surprise, the 1932 set was not challenged or bumped after the CAC points were removed, and, for the first time in 3 years, it'll take the top spot, and take both the overall and the NGC award, bringing that one up to 25 Best in Category awards earned over 16 years, which goes far beyond what I ever expected for that set.

For a little context - I've been in the Registry for 15 years from 2007-2022 and earned 48 Best in Category awards, and literally almost half of those are on that 1 set.
Some of my recent efforts are starting to change that. I think this is going to be my best year ever in terms of BiC awards and a few more years of this might help make that set less of an out-sized contributor, but I do still find it kind of amazing. But I think it continues to be a source of pride for my Father-in-Law.
I can't remember if I ever talked about this at the time (looking back, it would appear that I did not), but a year ago I gave my stepfather a 6-coin glass-lid Volterra display case as a Christmas present - very similar to the 5 coin case my wife gave me a year prior. When he saw it and saw that it held 6 coins he understood immediately and there was zero need to explain exactly what the idea for it was. And yes, 6 slots would do - because short of winning the lottery we are never getting that $20 Double Eagle.  But! If we ever do win a couple of hundred million dollars, I will gladly buy a new custom 7-coin case.  And at that point I doubt I'll ever have to worry about that set losing the top spot in the category ever again, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the old coins in the set - like the MS63 $10 Eagle - got some upgrades.  I tried to talk my Stepfather into some MS67RD pennies over the years I think but he hasn't bitten so far.  
For my part of the crying, I think the main thing I wanted to get done that I failed to do was that I failed to get pictures done and update the presentation fully on the 5L and 10L sets. Like I said before though, I was pretty sure that was dead as soon as Sam went into the hospital earlier than expected.  I also did not get the turtle coins fully imaged, and I have not set up anything for showing off that effort as it moves forward, but I've known for a while that that was going to be more a "next year" thing that I was just starting to work on this year, so I don't mark that as much of a failure.
I think the major focuses for next year will be to:
1) bring the Austral set closer to 100% if I can - it closed this year at 61%, there are 5 coins that I'll need to find and grade, and I've managed to pick up a raw example of 1 of those 5 so far.
2) do more with coins from the short-lived Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and maybe spread into the Republic Era that lasted from about 1965-1980 - an interesting period given that the country was in a Civil War for pretty much the entire time. But I do want to try to fill in this gap between my Federation-era sets and my Zimbabwe set. This year though, given that I have "A Tower of Towering Giraffes" and "A Parade of Dancing Elephants," I think you're going to see "A Bouquet of Flame Lillies" and maybe "A Leap of Vigilant Leopards."
3) do more with Turtle coins. I really am working on a few things with this, picking up some various raw coins where I find promising examples. Much like with Sam, I'm going to build this I think, even if all Ben ever does is roll his eyes at me for it later.  
4) work on my "Golden Nickels" set. I realized recently that I only have 5 coins listed in that little custom set I have, even though I've added several coins to the collection in the last couple of years and I think I could actually have 10 coins in that set right now. But I think the extent to which I've ignored and neglected this set is a testament to how much I don't like the old Custom set system at this point, which probably bodes poorly for the turtle set, if I'm being honest.  
Because, yes, it is sometimes fun to make these statements, call the shots, and see a year down the road if I actually kept to plan and did what I said I was going to do.
But that's my ramble for the day. Lots of laugh emojis just because I'm feeling silly and trying to relax after last week.

The family and I celebrate my birthday this week / this weekend, and, this year, unlike last year, neither kid is in the hospital, currently - and I'll take the win. However, we do now know that Sam's in-patient time is going to start on November the 13th. So there's that to "look forward" to.
I now have my historical blurb sections on 4 of my 8 Austral coins written or at least mostly written - these things tend to go through revisions over time and I'm still very much working on them.
For my birthday, Shandy got me an MS66 Rhodesian 6 Pence coin from 1955 (you may note that this is also one of my birthyear set years that I worked on with my step-father).
Now, if you want the funny on this, I'd thought this coin had a turtle on the back of it and that's one of the reasons I put Shandy onto it. I thought it would be a fun addition to the set of turtle coins I'm now unofficially, officially, building. 
It turns out I was wrong. It has a cougar / mountain lion on the back of it. 

The FIJI 6 pence from this period has a turtle on it.

So... That's a little funny... they're both 6 pence coins, from the 1950s and have Elizabeth II on the front. I buy Rhodesian coins a lot and I got myself confused.  Often wrong. Rarely in doubt. 
But I'm still happy to have the coin. This may end up being the start of an Elizabeth II, Federation of Rhodesia an Nyasaland type set, which, let's be honest, we all know was probably coming at some point.  
But this has Shandy encouraging me to get the Fiji 6 pence and a Rhodesian 3 pence to pair with the 6 pence.  So maybe I fail upward? 
I could definitely see the turtle set(s) / turtle coins and a Rhodesian type set being the focus of my coin collecting efforts next year now that the Rhodesian pennies, Rhodesian half pennies, and the 500 Lire set are all basically done.
On that note, Shandy said jokingly that "all of your sets (or at least the ones I am really into and talk about) are either very full and complete or very hard to find coins for." Hmmm....  How about that, folks?  
In the course of our conversation, it came up that the same seller that we've bought a lot of these Rhodesian coins from has just a lot of coins from different places and years and just a lot of cool, random old stuff. I made the comment to her, "Ya know, if you ever see something of his that looks interesting, even if it isn't something I'm collecting but you think it's cool and I'll enjoy it, you can go for it and surprise me." I'm not saying I'd want her to buy just anything or from anyone, but when it's a seller we've bought from a lot that offers generally reasonable prices, I'm down to let her take some risks on her own.
Speaking of coins that are hard to find, I did manage to find a 1990, 1000 Austral coin that looks pretty good (advertised as uncirc, but I have a hard time telling sometimes with the old steel / aluminum coins) and that may end up getting sent in for grading next year to add to the Austral set. I need to find the 100 Austral and the 500 Austral to try to complete that set.
Doing all of this work and making a banner image for the 10L set recently also got me looking at some modern Italian coins and I ended up picking up a 1953 and 1954 10 Lire coin for that set. They're both pretty big wins and additions to the set and they put me ahead of the guy that beat me in the 10 Lire category last year. Those two coins are enough to over-come the 1951 he has in that set. He had another coin in his set that had his point total up to 106 but 24 hours after I added my new coins, he removed the other coin he'd had in his set. I'm not sure if the two events are related but the timing was interesting. It'll be interesting to see if he comes back later this month or next year and we slap it out over the category a little. 
It's very funny in the registry to have sets like the Morgan dollars where there are literally thousands of sets and building a set that gets anywhere near the top can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and then simultaneously to have quiet little, "backwater," modern categories where a couple of guys can "slap it out" a little with 10% complete sets for a couple of hundred bucks.  
That's all from me for now. There will be more forthcoming...  

I managed to make a little progress on my goals this weekend, which is pretty solid in light of the fact that the coins hadn’t been physically delivered yet and 3 of my remaining 4 points relate to imaging and editing shots of the new coins…
1) Getting the coins programmed in and in the slots, (Except for the Austral coins)
2) Getting my pre-written descriptions posted on the coins (for the new $10 Zimbabwe coin, 500L set, Argentinian Set, and Venezuelan coins)
3) Getting pictures taken of the 500 Lire coins to polish the presentation on that set,
4) Getting pictures on the new Venezuelan coins to maintain the quality of the presentation on that set,
5) Getting the Austral coins imaged and
6) Getting my historical write-ups for the Austral Set ready.
But to this I have to add…
7) Making a banner / set image for the Austral set – which I haven’t made a banner image for this one yet as I usually use images of the graded coins, which
Guess what Fed-Ex dropped at my door today:

I’ll have to have an unboxing with the wife soon – probably tonight, possibly not. We also have TV to watch.
I have the day off on Friday and I might try to use some of that time to get some pictures taken – assuming I don’t get a chance before that.
The crush of things at work seems to finally be slacking off after some very hectic months this summer.
Overall, I’d say it’s coming together, which is probably good considering I logged in today to post this and I noticed… Dun dun dun! ... The countdown has begun!

We are officially in October, and this looks like it was (logically) set to start displaying when we were 30 days from the deadline.
I think I at least have a framework for how I want to do the historical write-ups for the Austral set.
The Peso Convertible set is officially becoming a “next year”-thing, I think. 
In the midst of this... we're also getting ready for another hospital stay with Samuel, albeit a planned one this time. To get to the bottom of his headaches and determine if it really is low ICP (intracranial pressure) we're going to pick a Monday when some of the best neurosurgeons in the country are... not on vacation or at a conference... and we're going to go in for them to put in an ICP gauge and spend about three days measuring the pressure in his head. At the end of that, we may go home without answers, we may have a shunt revision and replace his shunt with a programmable shunt, or we could be strapping in for a procedure called and ETV... which could have him in the hospital for 6 weeks... I'm mostly hoping for not that last one.
I am very much hoping that this happens soon, so his headaches can stop. So that does have the potential to impact my ability to pull off some of this... but, hey, we all know I can take pictures and write some stuff in a fairly short period of time if I feel the need, and this has been a source of stress relief for me since before 2019,  so don't count me out there. 
 
On a closing note... That $25 coin is clearly mocking me...  I may have to do something about this... 

Congrats for those that were selected in 2022. So many winners in such a large pool of users on NGC, kudos to the judges going through all these individuals. I personally feel honored (and humbled) for being selected for one of my sets out of this pool.

Looking forward to seeing winners for 2023!

Well, NGC and PMG announced the awards today around lunch time.
Let me first say Congrats to Mike. I was happy to see so many familiar names, but I was most happy to see his name pop up on both the NGC and PMG side.
Also congrats to many of the others I've often seen on the forums: The Welsh Dragon, ChrisInJesup, Physics-fan3.14, libertad1998, lehigh96, Ray USMC,... Hopefully I'm not missing anyone there but, gosh, it is a long list these days. NGC is increasingly generous on that front. But, in saying that, please don't think I'm marginalizing the accomplishment - there's like 13,000 users and they give out about 45-50 plaques a year and I think only 1-2% of users have ever gotten a major award in the ~20 year history of the awards. So, Congrats! It's a cool thing.  
I am very happy to get a New Best Presented Award for my Venezuela set! 
I really was not thinking that would get a Best Presented this year. I thought If I got a Best Presented it might be for the 500 Lire set. I thought if that Venezuela set would get something it would be a Best New Set. - Don't ever think I have a crystal ball, I'm often wrong.  However, the 500 Lire set did not win this year, so Mike's crystal ball also clearly is not perfect either, at least this year.  
And, now, instead of waiting until my membership renews in June, I need to get on getting the rest of the coins for that set ready to go in.  Or... I might end up waiting until June anyway and spending the Reward Credit and the Membership Renewal Credit at the same time. Time to finish that set and have a set so nice and dominant it sits on the top spot for the next 10 years, right?  
The judges got me chuckling a bit this year with the comment about "Revenant documents the circuitous ways in which he built his collection."
I mean, admittedly, I do drone on about how these sets were built in the coin descriptions. I do often wonder if I drone on and belabor this a bit too much and it might lead to audience tune-out . At the same time, the lengths that I have gone through to build these sets (Zimbabwe and Venezuela) are the main reason why I think they might not have a serious challenger for the top spot in the category for a long time - at least on the NGC side. On the PMG side, thanks to certain specific dealers, there's enough graded material to make those much more approachable. But, on the coins side, if you want to build these sets out, you can't just open your wallet. You have to do the work - at least for now. This may change in the future.
You haven't heard from me much lately because December was full of, among other things, kids being home sick all day with colds and such. But, I'm also shifting to a lower gear for now on the coin and note collecting side. Part of this is just because I've mostly finished most of my main projects for now - I just need to send in some coins to fill some holes in the 500 Lire and Venezuela sets. But, I don't know that I'm going to have a lot to talk about until and unless I find some cool new thing to build out in some epic way and add written and photographic flourishes to.
I do have a few ideas...
Shandy did surprise me on the 25th however with 2 new Rhodesian Half Pennies. That's a nice little set to build but emphasis is on little - it's only 5 dates / 5 coins and I now have 3 of them. But I may be emphasizing trying to get the last 3 coins to finish a half penny and a penny set from that last period where Zimbabwe was still part of the Commonwealth of Nations.
I'm also considering messing around with ~1970s era Rhodesian cents from the Civil War era - the civil war lasted like 15 years... which sounds... hideous.
Another contender might be spinning off from those Dancing Elephants (Rhodesian Pennies) and building an Elephant themed set. I recently rain across a 1941 Liberian Cent design with an elephant on it. From what I was seeing (haven't confirmed) I think it might have been struck in the US, at the PA mint, which immediately made me think Coin928's set / collection.

So, the awards deadline has come and gone, and I made the joke to Shandy along the lines of, "Well, I lost the 50 Lire this year, but I managed to win in 4 Italian categories instead of 2 this year, so that's cool, right?" Her response was, "So, you're going to get me 6 next year, right?" "You planning to up my budget? " More seriously, my quip back to her would be that I'll feel pretty good about it if I manage the defend the title on 2 or 3 of these 4 next year. I seem to be decently good at calling attention to categories and getting more sets created.  
Can you tell which one was created as a bit of an afterthought that I haven't had a chance to really mess with yet? Seriously.... I thought I'd made and posted a banner for all of these, then I actually looked at the 5 Lire set last night and was like...  "Ooops."

At some point I'm also wanting to work with an image of the 1994 500L to work on and differentiate the 500 Lire type set banner from the non-circulating commemorative date set. But it works for now. 
Most of these coins that I haven't bought raw and graded myself have come from 1 dealer in particular and they've had some MS67 1981 200 Lire coins - celebrating the first observation of UN FAO's World Food Day - that I'd been wanting to get and add to the 200 Lire Type set. The only problem was, consistent with their usual, they'd listed the coins at $300 each, which is.... Silly.  
Just for Lawls, and as a reminder to myself I watched the listing on eBay. The seller then offered me a 15% discount. $255. Which was... Slightly less silly. "Nah. You can still keep it at that price."
As has tended to be the case, they eventually listed one for $50, which was starting to become more reasonable. I'm pretty okay to let someone recover their grading fees and make a little money if it is a good grade and they're saving me the work of hunting and submitting myself. When they're half-way reasonable on price I like these people. They make my life much easier on these sets, letting me focus more energy in other areas, so I do want them to continue having an incentive to keep submitting and supplying me with coins.
So, I watched that listing thinking I might pull the trigger on it later. Then the seller offers me another 10% discount, knocking it down to $45. At that point I finally showed it to Shandy, and she was with me on taking it at that price.
$45 plus shipping - down 85% of the original ask.
I am still frequently amazed by and in awe of what people will ask for on these rarely-graded, thinly-collected-as-graded-coins, modern condition rarities, frequently bragging up that the coin is Top Pop (for now, but in no way guaranteed to remain such).
I'm really looking forward to getting this one in, and when I do, I think it's going to be time to look into updating the 200 Lire banner to show off some of the different designs.
I suspect she'll take this one and add it to her small-but-growing stash. So I may have to steal it for the short term to take the pictures.

One coin I'd particularly enjoy adding to this set would be the 1980 issue:

Between the child hugging the woman and the book in her lap I think that's almost a perfect design for my wife.
Interestingly, this coin also references UN FAO, but unlike with the 1981 coin, I haven't researched this to figure out what the connection to FAO is with this one.
 

Sam was finally allowed to go home last night. We had a follow-up with his pediatrician today and he should get to go back to school and ease back into normal activity on Monday. Ben is still, somewhat comically, trying to get his new front teeth in.
It was very difficult getting out of there. I have rarely wanted to call a nurse a insufficiently_thoughtful_person to her face so badly. They tried to give him 2 vaccines in his two thighs at the same time and didn't restrain his hands while I held his legs so he tried to grab their hands and the syringe and could have broken the needle in his thigh.

We got to go home the day after spending my birthday in the hospital. I would have been just as happy to ignore the day and celebrate at a different time, but Ben had been having a hard time and clearly needed to mark the day and spend some time as a family more than I did so we made it happen.




I was more than a bit surprised to look here yesterday and see the timer counting down about 12 days to the awards cut off. I’d completely forgotten a while ago that the deadline was moved up this year.

With November no longer available and the last two weeks lost to a void of fatigue and stress, I have two sets that would need a lot of work to get them ready and I think I’m going to have to choose between the Rhodesian Pennies and the Venezuelan Set for getting something mostly ready for the cut-off. And I think it’s going to be the Rhodesian Pennies.

I think I can maybe get pictures up for both and I might even be able to get a banner image up for both. I can maybe even get descriptions in for the Venezuelan coins about how they were bought and such. But I’d hoped to have a lot of information about that set about the history of the coins and the country, the timeline of events and such and I just do not have the time or the energy to research that and put that together at this point. I want that set to be an equal companion to the notes set and the Zimbabwean sets, and that just takes a lot of time and a lot of work, and I haven’t been able to do it up to now and now we’re at the end, at least for this year.
Fortunately, I was able to take pictures of the new 500 Lire coins that came back - pictures that match up pretty well visually with what was there before - and that set is pretty ready to go. I’m happy with that one and I’m proud of what I built for Shandy. So that one at least I don’t have to worry about.
Who knows? Maybe I’ll just bust my butt this weekend and next and surprise myself?
The birthday present ended up lining up with the circumstances better than I would have imagined. The Zimbabwean note set is so closely associated for me with Sam and Sam’s birth and now this set, which expands upon it, takes a big step forward on a birthday I spent in the hospital with him.
Maybe I just need to abandon the whole damn thing and, if I do, he’ll stop having to go back to the hospital? Anyone think I’m that lucky? Nah. I think I'm just stuck with the hobby as my stress relief.

Following up on some recent points:
I got that 2010 25C Venezuelan Independence Commemorative from that seller and liked how the one looked so I ordered 4 more, bringing the total to 5, consistent with what I’ve been doing, and I’ll be sending the best of the 5 in to fill that slot in that set later. (Seller's images but the coins look good in hand)

I’ve also gotten in the new three-coin sets with the 50 Bolivar coins from 2016, though I haven’t had a chance to look at those yet. However, these coins do mean that, if the Venezuelan set isn’t really ready for primetime this year, it should be nearly complete and firing on all cylinders for next year. I need to try to cut those loose from the paper holder he shipped them in and get them into flips. This is perhaps a petty complaint given the first half of this post but I absolutely hate seeing coins arrive packed like this... because, yes, those are staples separating the coins between sheets of 20-pound paper.

The day before we went to the hospital, I got an offer from a seller offering me an old 1965 Venezuelan 1 Bolivar coin – the last year they were made of 0.832 silver. They offered it to me for $29. On Tuesday 10/11 I looked at it on my phone and saw the offer was expiring in like 10 minutes and I just took it. It arrived about a week later. In that price, at that grade, it felt reasonable enough and I just felt like it, so took it. It hadn’t been my plan to try to mess with extending the coins in this set back to the “silver age” but sometimes opportunities come up. (Again, seller's images)

One of my eBay saved searched also flagged up to me this morning that one of my favorite notes dealers has, at long last, started listing PMG-graded examples of the new Digital Bolivar notes from 2021. So, I may be expanding the Venezuela Note set to include those in the near future. It's a little funny and amusing that the persion that had been thumping me rather badly on the PMG side and buying all the high-end notes for ZImbabwe and Venezuela seems to have lost interest for now. They haven't been buying, adding or competing for recent new releases when they come up in high grades. I'm wondering if Mike is seeing the same thing in Ukraine.

My in-laws had my car through most of the last 2 weeks so they could have car-seats to help with Ben, so they got together and detailed / cleaned the 6-year-old car and it looks quite nice now. I'll have to try to treat the car a little better and try to keep it a little cleaner and nicer this time. This is something Shandy and I had been wanting and planning to do since we paid it off and then they decided to do it for my birthday. Shandy is now offering, since that now didn’t come out of our budget, to let me go out and use a roughly equivalent amount for some nice coin or something else I couldn’t normally ask for from family for a gift. So I’ll have to give some thought to what I might want to use that for. I have no major leads or thoughts at the moment. I had considered going for a Gold 20 Bolivar from around 1930 but I'm not really seeing anything like that at a price I like at the moment. 
So, there is the rambling, multi-front update.

It is only now, now that I’ve taken the coins from the submission and populated a competitive set that I realize I made a massive boo-boo when I sent these coins in:
I had 5 examples each of the 10 Bolivar and 100 Bolivar Fuertes coins from 2016… but I forgot to look at them with Shandy, pick one of each out and include them with the submission. I should have submitted 24 Venezuelan coins, not 22.
I think this happened 1) Because the number of coins and the number of different types with the same denominations kept growing on me and so I forgot about these Bolivar Fuertes coins, remembering instead only the 2004-dated Bolivar coins with the same face value. 2) They were in a page alone together in the back of my binder and I think I grabbed them up with the rest of the BsF coins, trying to get to the BsS coins, and literally flipped past them in my binder.
So now I’m sitting here, kicking myself, because there’s a massive hole in the set now when there should only be the 1 missing 50 Bolivar coin that I had not managed to acquire… for… reasons…

Speaking of the 50 Bolivar... I'd found a seller offering 3-coin sets of the 10, 50, and 100 bolivar from 2016. They were priced reasonably at $6 per set but the shipping was $6 per set and they said in the listing that each additional lot was $6... So buying the 3 sets they had would be $18... plus $18 shipping. I emailed the guy like, are you seriously going to charge $18 to ship 9 small coins (that collectively way 52 grams). The response was, that he does combine shipping based on the weight of the box. Just request an invoice at checkout. I'm like, okay, fine! I committed to buy and asked for the invoice... apparently I should have looked at his chart more closely because his combined shipping fee was $16... to ship a box that by his own admission weighs 80 grams, or about 0.2 pounds... I'm more than a little salty about this... but, lesson learned. This will be the first and last time I buy from him. But I'll get at least a few examples of the 50 bolivar coin and a few more examples of the 10 and 100 that may or may not be better than what I have now.
I'd also found a seller offering the 25C 2010 200th Anniversary coin for $ 6.99 each + $1 shipping, but if you ordered 4+ they'd be $5.59 each. I found this tempting to get one of these circulating commem type coins, but, not having bought from this person before and not 100% sure what I'd get, I wasn't sure I wanted to do my normal and get 4-5 of these to pick through from them on a first purchase. I just added it to my watch list to think about it. The next day they offered me $4.80 + $1 shipping for one of them. At that point I just said, "Sure, I'll spend $6 to get a peek at what you have and see if I want to get more later." So, we'll see how that goes. But if that works out that would leave me only needing the 2011 25C and the 2010 50C to have all the slots in that set filled.
So… on that note… I go to bang my head on my desk. For more than one reason now.
I hope you all continue to enjoy the sharing of my crazy and my misadventures... some of which blow up in my face, just a little.
 

My grades have finally posted! I checked early this morning and the submission listed as shipped! Yay!
And the box is in the mail and so it will probably arrive at the house before we leave for a short vacation and won’t end up stuck in the Post Office until I get back – Double Yay!
I also now feel especially smart for getting the last post out on Wednesday night because I don’t like to make too many posts on the same day or too clos together. I had a feeling these were about to drop.
 
As I did with the Big Zimbabwe / Italy submission results I’m going to talk about the Venezuelan and the Italian Grade results separately, each in their own post, because 28 coins is a lot to talk about and the 2 countries make for a clean, easy, division.
So here are the results:

So… Getting the obvious pain point out of the way first… that 62… Man! Ouch! That stings and burns a little. I missed the mark on that one.
Other than that one really really low point, I’m very happy with how these did.
Only that one coin did not grade Gem (65) or better. Only 3 other coins got an MS65, so only 4 coins out of 22 got below an MS66. That’s pretty good for being not-a-pro and a lot better than I did back in the day. These results seem like they’re probably at least about even with what some more active submitters and dealers get based on things I’ve been seeing on eBay (more on that later). So I’ll take that as a collector with cornea scaring in one eye working with his wife. I’m not in this set to make money anyway.
There were 3 MS68s and a MS69 though, which I’m very excited to see. Another 5 scored an MS67 with MS66 being the most common grade with 9 coins.
It’s not lost on me that the low grades were heavily focused on larger coins like the 1B and 5B but the high grades were heavily concentrated on smaller coins – 1C, 5C, 10C. I’m wondering if I’m not giving enough attention to relatively small flaws on the larger coins that individually or collectively are still enough to pull the grades down on the larger coins. I feel like I also struggled in relative terms on some of the Larger Zimbabwean coins, hitting some of my lowest grades on things like the 50C and the $1 coins. But then, I also got some really good grades with those on the $1 and $2 bond coins. But that may have just been a factor of getting lucky with getting nice coins in my orders from the dealer.
At the end of the day, I’m buying usually 5 to 10 examples of each coin and sending in the one we think is the best. If I just get a “bad” batch the best of the bunch is the best of the bunch and still only a lower-gem grade. So then is the take away to just not send in anything and buy more raw examples hoping to get something better rather than just sending the best I have gotten so far to fill the hole, lay a foundation, and maybe build from there?
I feel a small measure of extra vindication with the 2007 1C, 5C and 25C coins coming back so high – There have been some coins already graded by NGC on eBay the last couple of months in MS66RD and MS67RD grades. I had seen these get listed when I was still planning and preparing my submission and I seriously thought about just buying those and taking the guaranteed MS67RD rather than rolling the dice on my eyes and skills. The problem I had was the sellers were asking $50-70 each for these 1C and 5C coins. There is also an MS66 12.5C and a MS67 25C that sellers are asking $65 each for + shipping.
If the sellers had been offering guaranteed MS68s for that price, I probably would have been more tempted. I still don’t know if I would have bit at that price, but it would have been tempting. But with what they were asking, for an 66 or 67, it wasn’t worth it to me. I was happier spending $20 per coin to roll the dice and see how I did.
I missed by one point on the 12.5C, but I did at least 1 point better on the three others. Overall, a big win for me.
Edited to add,
eBay also has a 2012 1B Bimetallic in MS66 with an asking price of $60 that I matched point-for-point. If I had bought those 5 coins pre-graded I would have been out about $300 and this entire 28 coin submission (including the Italian coins which we'll talk about tomorrow probably), set me back about $430 in grading fees (Well... and $150 in credits too i guess. But i got a discount there).
I guess, yeah, I spent a chunk buying all the raw examples to search though, but I'd already sunk that cost in deciding to send these in vs buying pre-graded, and I enjoyed looking at them all with my wife, and I still have all those other raw examples too now.
With Zimbabwe and now these Venezuelan and Italian coins, I've been enjoying collecting this way for these sets - looking at raw with the Wife and grading myself.

In some new, interesting developments, it looks like the 50 Lire category picked up 2 new sets in a day and I'm bumped to #3 for now. I think this happened just yesterday.
I kinda had a feeling this would happen and that that would be a 1-year win when I made the set but had no plans to heavily develop it thus year - opting instead to focus on the 500 Lire set.
I'm not ruling out building that 50 L set some more and giving the newcomers a bit of a fight. But the 500 Lire has always been the focus and flagship of this effort and my priority and it still is.
On that front, I'm hoping what I've done - which will soon build that set out to 11 coins in the 14 slots - will be enough to keep that set on top a while longer.
I'm still eyeing making it a complete 14/14 set.
On that front, I was doing a bit of shopping and found 1) a seller with a lot of coins that included a 1995 500 Lire that looked really solid in the photos and 2) a seller in Germany that was selling these by the date and had 1 2000 and 1 2001 listed for sale. The coins are shown in flips in the pictures and I'm hoping they'll be in good condition when they come.
I decided to spend ~$20 taking a shot in the dark. I bought all three.
With these 3 coins I will at least have a representative piece for each date / year that is currently included in that set category.
I may continue shopping and buying some things that look promising in the interim, but I think when my membership renews next year and I have $150 to spend I'll send in 1 per date ( the best of each that I find) and make that a full graded set of the non-comemmorative issues. 
Then maybe I'll slug it out with someone over 50 Lire coins.
 
Side note but a 14 coin set is an awkward number to display.
Am I bum if I get a really fancy case / display for my Zimbabwe birds but not this 500 L set for my wife?
 
2nd side note, but, as was pointed out to me on the PMG side, the RBZ has announced that they will be making 1/10th, 1/4th, and 1/2 oz versions of their "popular" new 1 oz gold coins and that those will be coming out in November. I think I will definitely be begging the wife for the 1/10rh and the 1/4th oz.
 

Borrowing the title from that line in "Starship Troopers." Anyone else remember that movie? I hear it's 25 years old now?
Anyway...
I feel like I teased this concept months and months ago - probably close to a year ago now - but I never really delivered on it:

I feel like I very much survive on a kind of "one step at a time" incrementalism some days. I got the coins back, I got them in the set. I uploaded new descriptions a while after that. Got new pictures posted a couple months after that. put these in the case a month or so after that, and now I finally drag out all the notes and the plaques during nap time today and took this picture.
So there it is - my latest attempt at giving a "Best Presented" Registry set a physical presentation that lives up to the digital one. And I do look at it in person and in the picture with a lot of pride after about 3 years and a lot of effort to make it a reality.
Some of the coins have "company" and some have "corporation' on the labels for NGC's name I think but I very much view the visual match of the slabs as part of the physical presentation for the sets. I just think it makes the set look better in person - going back to my justification for my "sin" of killing those 25 year old fatty slabs that some of my 10G set was in before 2020.  
The title of the post comes from the fact that, as I was setting this up, I couldn't help but think, if this was set-up at a table at a coin show, with or without the awards, would seeing the coins and notes like this make you want to come up, check it out, and learn more about them?
The case has an extra (24th) slot in it that I'm currently using to let the case store both of the $2 bond coins that came back as MS69s from that submission.
I posted on the PMG side about the fact that Zimbabwe has announced they're coming out with new 1 ounce bullion coins to sell as inflation hedges. It breaks my heart that they're 1 ounce because I can't just casually throw down $1750-1900 for a coin, but I would have loved to have gotten one of those and used it to fill that 24th slot with something unique. Though alternatively I could buy and include one of these old 1989 silver rounds like the one Mike has recently posted an image of - assuming NGC would grade it. I don't know if they have ever graded one or if the "gradability" of those has been tested or confirmed. And it would need to be graded to work in this display.
 
About 3 weeks ago I said on the PMG side that I was drawing up the forms to (finally) make a submission of Venezuelan coins and Italian coins to further my 500L set and to get that Venezuelan hyperinflation coin set off the ground.
About 2 weeks after that I finally get the coins in flips with the right labels and bound them up and I'm working this weekend on finally boxing them up and printing a mailing label  Like I said, progress one very small step at a time!
The new submission is going to actually be very similar to the last one. The last one was 22 Zimbabwe coins with 7 Italian coins. This one is going to be 22 Venezuelan coins paired with 6 Italian coins - 3 500L hole-fillers and 3 1986 coins to help me build out that year set.
I think for now I'm going to hold off on grading another 2003 $10 Zimbabwe coin. The one I had looks better than the AU58 I have graded but I still think it would do MS62-63 at best and I think for now I just need to hold off and see if I can find better options for the $10 and $25 coins, letting those AU58s hold down the fort for now.
 
Edited to add:
I am aware that turn-around times on submissions have come down quite a bit in the last few months. But part of my concerns about getting this submission out and back stems from the desire to have time to get descriptions posted and pictures taken and uploaded. And that process sometimes takes a while or takes a while for me to find time to do it. So ideally I'd like to get the coins back well before December's deadline to have time to get the presentation on the registry sets up to snuff.

I finally took some time and got new pictures taken and uploaded for the Zimbabwe and 500L sets that are at least consistent across the board even if I don't necessarily think these are in every case the best images I've gotten of each coin:
Set Details | NGC Registry | NGC (ngccoin.com)

Set Details | NGC Registry | NGC (ngccoin.com)

Now that I have nice photos of the Zimbabwe bird in the yellow of the $2 coins I decided to use that to fill the gap in my banner image. I'd originally left that corner open to account for the banner, but the current system with the banner image moving depending on where you look creates a bit of a "darned no matter what you do situation. The old banner looks just fine... until the rank ribbon goes away and you have a winning set entry and now you just have a gap in the corner. 


The Zimbabwe set continues to be a living and growing thing as i recently found a snippet naming the type of tree depicted among the Great Zimbabwe ruins on the $1 coin so I added something about that type of tree.
Last weekend I used some quiet time on Father's day and I finally got done looking at the last of the Venezuelan coins I have to pick the best ones. That might have been a sign that I was getting close to submitting, but then Sam got Hand, Foot and Mouth and Shandy tested positive for Covid the same day, so we're all just trying to get through the day.
But I did, today, take advantage of sale on Memberships to upgrade my membership here, so I'll now have a $150 credit towards the submission I want to make... I just need to fill out the forms and mail it out...  

So yesterday there's a knock at the door and I see it's the mail carrier, and he has a small package. As I'm walking up I'm wondering what this is and thinking I'm not really expecting anything.
When he gives it to me it's the 2nd set of 2002-2004 Venezuela coins from Ukraine!
I had completely forgotten about these things. I've been busy and I hadn't thought about them or thought to check the tracking in weeks. The last tracking update I'd seen had them in Kiev on April 6th. Then, while I wasn't paying attention, they were scanned in New York... on May 4th... nearly a full month later.
So... here they are!


Funny thing being that I'd recently been through the older Venezuelan coins from the late 1980s and picked the ones of each of those 5 denoms / types that I like the best, but hadn't gotten past that. These 2002-2004 denominations were going to be the next ones I looked at. Now I can get these out and into flips and look at all the available coins together. 

The other day over the weekend I decided to finally pull those 500 Lire coins I'd ordered out and look at them to see if I'd gotten anything good / promising. I'd been wanting to look at these for a while knowing it would be kind of shot-in-the-dark and I might have something good or I might have gotten nothing. I thought I'd sit down and look while Shandy napped with Sam and Ben watched TV.
But, somewhat to my surprise, Ben took notice and wanted to look at them with me and was asking if these were my gold coins and if they were "real gold." I told him, "No. They're an alloy that looks like gold in the middle." He saw a 200L in the same page and asked if that was gold - nope. Brass alloy. So since he seemed really interested in seeing the real gold ones I went and I got out the actual gold ones, which he claimed he thought were really cool. I showed him the 2016 and 2019 for their birthyears, which he seemed to think were neat, but when I asked if he thought there was one or two that were more interesting he couldn't / wouldn't pick one and he didn't want to ask about them even though I offered to talk about any of them he wanted.
He, of course, wanted one - he'd wanted a 500L coin before the gold ones came out and I'd let him have one that he picked from an old batch. That 500L coin is now on the couch or between the cushions or something. I was just like, "No. You're going to be a lot older before I let you have something like this. " "How old?" "Like at least 18." "No! Like 8 or 9!" "Not happening."
You can see the 500L he picked in his hands, still in his soccer jersey from the game that morning.


He made some comment about how the gold coins could "make a dollar" which makes me pretty sure he has no clue just how expensive those are and that 1 of those coins is about 2 years of his allowance. Of course, one of the first things he did was count to see how many there were - he can count to 100, as he finishes his Kindergarten year.
As you might imagine, I didn't get to actually look at the 500L coins well, or for very long. At the end of nap time I was feeling pretty disappointed with what I had seen because a few very nice ones I'd seen where for dates we already had well covered and I'd seen some that didn't look good at all. And I didn't get to look at these again for 2 more days, looking at them at night using a flash light to read the tiny little dates on them.
However, when I finally did get to look at them I felt a bit better about the outcome. We'd gotten 25 coins when I'd been expecting 24 - but one of those was a 1994 that was one of the circulating commemorative years that doesn't fit into the registry set I'm building. From the remaining 24 there was only 1 1987 and 2 1983s, and I don't think any of those are nicer than the 1983 and 1987 I got from the franklin mint sets. However, there were 3 1986-dated coins, and a couple of those actually look pretty nice. So that might be the big score from the purchase / lot.
I also got in those 2003, $10 Zimbabwe coins. I do think they are nicer than the AU58 I have but I think the seller calling them Gem Uncirc was a bit of a stretch. I think MS63 is more likely. I still might submit one with the 500L coins though just to try to improve that AU58.
I got a chance to take images of the new 500L coins recently. Shandy also noticed and pointed out that, while the pictures of the old coins are nice and while the new pictures of the new coins are nice, the color balance on the images / color tint doesn't quite match, and I'm not sure how to fix that. I think to get a perfectly consistent set of images that I'm happy with I'm going to have to just re-shoot the whole group at the same time just because I'm not that good at perfectly matching things up between shoots and the human eye can pick out some small and subtle things when they're right next to each other. This is the approach I've taken with the 10G set - shooting them all again all at once - and this is probably the approach I'll take with the Zimbabwe coins, But I don't want to go that route with the 500L set just yet because if I do that I'd like to wait to send in and get back these next 2-3 coins (1983, 1986, 1987) and have the set a little more complete for that kind of effort.
I would not have expected that it would be a month after getting the coins back and I wouldn't have taken shots of all the New Zimbabwe coins yet or popped them into that new case yet, but life has just been a little busy lately, including at work, and Sam and Ben have been home sick a lot lately - usually one and then the other and then the other again.

So here is the 2nd post about 1 submission, splitting off the 500L coins to give them their due, befitting a group of 7 coins (decent sized group in their own right by my submission standards) and a group of coins that represent their own, very important project.
And here are the results - Shandy and I picked the ones to send together when we had more than one of a certain date, but we didn't play “guess the grade” on these because we didn't have a big selection of graded coins in different grades to look at with Zimbabwe. We just had 2 coins - a MS67 and a MS68.

Hands down the big win here is the grade on the 1990 - the highest grade in the submission going to one of those two super important coins that they brought back from Italy nearly 30 years ago. And it is a legitimately good grade - not just the highest grade in a low scoring submission. 😅 An MS67 is dang good for something that spent 28 years in a bag. That 67, combined with the 1992 in MS67 and the ’82 and ’85 in MS68, gives the set a strong core.
The 1991, also crucial for the same reason, didn't do as well but it did good enough. An MS64 is high enough for it to not be too much of a liability to the set point / score-wise.
With both of those I thought they would grade well but you never know when a grader is going to feel there's a bit of wear that you didn't see and then you get an AU55/58 - like that 1875 10G I posted about seeing on eBay some time ago. These grades are going to help these coins stay in the set as the sentimental core of it while still keeping the set strong.
I had hoped the 1992 would match the MS67 I bought last year but it just missed at a MS66. However... I still feel like this coin is more attractive than the MS67. So, I think this is actually the coin I'll keep in the set for now unless I need points and adding back the MS67 could make a difference. 😅 But, the MS67 does look mighty fine in the images I got of it. We’ll see.
The result on the 1985, while not a bad grade IMO - I would have been pretty happy with straight 65s to fill out the set - basically confirms I made the right choice snapping up that MS68 from the same year.
As to the other 3 - two MS66s and a MS64. Again - solidly "good enough." Two of three hit the MS65 threshold I wanted for filling the set with gem uncirculated coins or better and two of them did 1 point better. The one that missed only missed by a little.
Now I just need to cut up those Franklin Mint sets and send in that '1983 and '1987... and find an '86, '95, 2000 and 2001...
 
Some other fun updates that are somewhat related:
The certificates arrived from NGC - I pulled them out of the mailbox the same day I posted about the Zimbabwe grades. It's possible they were sitting there for a while. Life was a bit crazy, and I wasn't checking the mail - almost late paying the water bill!

I told Shandy that, since I took a picture with the plaques, she needs to hold these.
For those that thought it would have been great if the Zimbabwe coin award had still had my little typo on it, you may be happy to know the distinction of immortalizing that goes to the "Best in Category" certificate, which are generated and printed automatically.

I've been working as hard as I can to get the descriptions for all 29 of these coins fleshed out and finished and uploaded into my registry, but not adding them to the sets that they're for. Once they arrive I'll pulse out full group of coins (the ones that made the cut anyway) into the main sets and then I just have to get good pictures of everything! 😅

The box came with the Zimbabwe and Italian coins yesterday. With the kids in bed and the chores handled we sat down together to take them out of the box.


She joked about me and my hoard and how pleased I was, but I was surprised by how quickly the 500 L coins were pulled away and how happy she was to get to handle them and look at those.

I went at one point and got the other 500L coins, the previous submission of Zimbabwe coins and a couple of empty boxes I have. I gave one of the boxes to her and she was thrilled to realize she was getting her own box for her group of 10 coins - but, seriously, 10 coins is a decent number and a lot to handle as loose slabs. So it made sense, but it also made her really happy.
When I handed her the box she actually perked up more, smiled and said, excitedly, "I get my own box?!?"

I also had to pull out all the old coins, lay the out, order them, and there ya go: the largest collection of NGC Graded Zimbabwean coins in the world - because no one else has been crazy enough yet.

After we were done looking I got on my phone and popped all the cert numbers into the sets at last. Shandy called me crazy because of all the "TOP POP" coins, but most are top mostly because there are so few graded, and her newly expanded set isn't short on Top Pops for now, for similar reasons. But she may have a point that the Zimbabwe set is now complete (but very much working on the 500L set) and that set now presents just a wall of "Top Pop" only broken at one place for now.  My "cute, dopey, derpy set of (well-presented) Top-Pops" fullfilled!
     
She spent the rest of the night referencing "my" (her) coin collection and pointing out, "I think you love me." 
I did good. She's happy. Her with the 1990 that her family brought back, that is now in an NGC holder as an MS67.

So, there you have an "unboxing" story, that is really more about the moment than the coins.

TL:DR – The coins did great and I’m thrilled and freaking out a bit about some of these! XD So “Thank you, NGC” on the hard work and the much faster than expected turnaround.
 
I need to give major props to NGC, who have pulled off a major turnaround, brought turnaround times down and delivered me grades on these months sooner than I was thinking. It was only about 5-6 weeks ago that I was saying I might not have grades for another 4 months from now.
I’m hoping this also means that they’ve succeeded in expanding capacity and their 60-hour weeks are also a thing of the past.
 
Since there are 29 coins in this submission, and 22 from Zimbabwe, I’m just going to talk about the Zimbabwe coins here and talk about the results on the 500L in a separate post. Even then, I’m not going to go into has much detail and discussion on each of these things as I might with a 5-coin submission. I’m just going to hit on some of the high notes (if I can stop myself).
Here are the results, with my guesses and Shandy’s so you can see how we did. We both like to be deliberately conservative in our guesses to try to not get our hopes too high. So, we tended to be low when we missed, but it also makes the ones where we got lower than we guessed just a touch more disappointing.
Shandy had made it clear that she’d never let me hear the end of it if she beat me, so I’ll gladly take a narrow win that still leaves both of us with our dignity. I think she’s learned a lot, and quickly, and she’s quickly gotten very picky about which ones she thinks are good enough.

I’m really thrilled with these results. Only 3 coins are in the “disappointing” column – there were 4 MS64s but I don’t consider the 1997 $2 a disappointment because that grade was in-line with expectations. The same could be argued of the 2002 dime for that matter, which, if anything, beat expectations / did better than we’d guessed and hoped. The 2002 $1 also came back with the grade I guessed – just below the guess Shandy made. So maybe only 1 of 22 can fairly be called a disappointment – that 1988 cent I’d had such high hopes for.
The 1997 $2 is worth calling out. At MS64 it easily beats the XF45 that is the only other NGC graded example eligible for that slot. It also beat Mike’s guess that it would get at least an MS63. I’d initially hoped it might do better but… It is still by far the best I’ve seen. Most of the 1997 dated $2 I’ve been able to find are just… so… ugly. I’m very grateful to Mike for this coin. I’m not going to be in a rush to try to upgrade this one and I doubt it would be all that easy.
I don’t know if it’s better or worse that 3 out of 4 of these MS64s are still better than anything else I have for the slot. Meaning 3 of these 4 still earn a spot in the top set. Meaning 3 of 4 clearly weren’t a “waste” / complete misfire – they still improve the top line set and in so doing achieve what I’d hoped for in sending them in. We got several MS66 and MS67 grades, including some on some key coins, but those weren’t on coins that could fully paper over these sub-Gem coins.
Having said all that though, I had really hoped for an MS68 on that 1997 5C, and, while I got an MS67 on the 1980, that MS65 on the 5C is not what I’d been hoping for there. So maybe that’s disappointing too, even though the 1980 makes up for it.
The 1980 10C getting an MS66 feels like a big win and vindication on sending it in. It did, in fact, beat the MS65 I already have. This can be bitter-sweet as it knocks out the first coin bought for the set, but it also means the top type set will be 100% self-submitted – no bought-pre-graded coins. The thing that makes this even better is the fact that the 1980 5C got an MS67 – a staggering, fantastic victory in its own rights to me - and the 1980 50C and $1 got MS66, meaning that I have 2/3rd of a 1980 year set in MS66 or better now – but that just means I’m now having dreams in my head of adding an MS66 1980 cent and 20C.
The MS67 on the 2002 $5 coin just feels so great and cleansing after the disappointment of those nasty examples from the now long-ago first purchase of 10-coin sets. The same is true, albeit to an obvious lesser extent, with the MS66 on the 2002 $2.
It might seem strange to some that I just feel so happy about MS65, MS66, and MS67 grades on modern coins when the prevailing wisdom with moderns tends to be that you need MS68s for it to be worth it/ to be competitive, but I’ve long felt like I would be thrilled / happy to have the set mostly comprised of MS65 (Gem) coins or better and to be complete. It is now complete, with mostly MS65 or better coins. I’m happy. And these results are 1) consistent roughly with my guesses, and 2) far better than what I got when I tried self-submitting with my stepfather the first time 14 years ago. Suggesting that I might have actually learned a LITTLE in that time, in addition to taking damage to my corneas. Lol
I’m blown away by the results on the Bond coins. I can’t believe how well the $2 coins bond coins did – coins I got from that seller in the Ukraine, small aside. I am suddenly extremely happy that I went ahead and sent in both of those. EXTREMELY happy. I don’t know what I’ll do with the 2nd MS69. When I was looking at the pop reports / census for clues and saw 2 MS69s I had to pick my jaw up off the floor realizing those might be mine and I might have scored a HUGE win. I was thinking I’d be happy if I got MS67s that matched most of the rest of the Bond Coin sets. I just could not get myself to hope for MS68s or MS69s even though they looked darn near perfect because I’ve never gotten grades that high on circulation strike coins. To get those 69s on both $2 BCs and a 68 on the $1… Mind Blown. So happy on these. My first self-made circulation strike MS68s and MS69s.
Overall, this is going to leave me with a very solid type set that I think will be well positioned to defend its title for a while, though it will certainly be possible for anyone with the funds, the time and the determination to overtake this set. The overall strength this gives to the set and to the bond coins, however, does re-emphasize the fact that at some point I will need to address the weakness of the $10 and $25 coins to bring them more in line with the rest of the set.
The overall strength of the Bond Coins is also going to make me feel more pressure to one day get the 50C bond coin up to a MS67+ to match the standard set by the others in that group / sub-set. With 7 bond coins I do think that sub-set could make for a nice set / category on its own and there are plenty of categories out there with only 6-8 slots – just look at some of the mint sets. But I think there will have to be more collector interest in those before NGC agrees to that. I feel lucky enough to have the type set category to put these in, given how thinly they’re collected in graded form (Mostly just me and my crazy).
I’m very excited to get to upload some descriptions I’ve already been working on for these. As with the last set, each coin will have some general information on the design / landmark it depicts followed by a narrative on how that coin came to be in the set. These descriptions will heavily copy each other and borrow some of the narrative from my journals about all of these. I’ve worked carefully to keep track of what group of coins / sets / dealers each coin came from so I could build that into the narrative for each coin and have these descriptions emphasize the journey and the hunt of a 100% self-submitted set that I’ve made by looking at the coins with my wife. I think that’s part of what won this set an award from NGC and I think it’s very core to the charm and the appeal of the set as I’ve made it. I’m also really excited about taking good photos of all of these in the holders when they come in.
The case Shandy got me for these has been sitting in the closet in the packaging, waiting for me to be able to properly fill it. I’m very excited by the prospect of being able to pull that out, put all the coins in, and lay it out. I think I’ll need to put up pictures of that in future entry – Maybe include the plaque for the set in the image.
Can you tell that I’m excited about this? XD
So, in summation - I’m thrilled. I consider this a big win. But it also leaves a few things unresolved and opens a few more thoughts / dreams. I think I’ll be on pause with this for a while, but I’ll likely have to circle back later to tie up some of those loose ends – the 2003 $10, the 2003 $25, the 1980 1C.

Some clicks of my raw Franklins...shot with a Nikon 750 and 105mm Macro

I have stated to fellow coin collectors and on the forums that I never want to buy a "bad" coin.  I have even gone so far as to say I try my best to buy "great" coins.  But, I failed to define "bad" or "great".  This has lead to some collecting friends being a little hurt (my word not theirs), as I assume that they look upon the "bad" coin that I am considering buying to be a nicer example than the one held in their collection.  My true feelings about coins: There are no bad coins, only bad holders.  
Example:
A chocolate brown half cent in MS65BN is a trophy for nearly any collector.  However, the same coin becomes a "bad coin" if it is in a 67+RD holder.  At this grade, the coin becomes a bad deal.  The premium is significant for the holder, and the grade will come under serious scrutiny when it comes time to sell.  An MS63 that looks-to-grade MS65 is a "MUCH better" coin from an economic perspective.  It's a better coin at a better price, simple.
In the end... I will either look at my coin a say "Wow" or I will say "Darn".  Had I bought that 67+RD coin, I would feel a mild tinge of regret every time I looked at it.  I would know I was holding a misrepresented coin, and paid-up to do it.  That would be a mistake in my collecting strategy, and that makes the 67+RD a "bad" coin for me.
Here is what I do NOT mean when I say great or bad:
I do not mean that the over-graded coin that I am considering makes one's circulated example worse.  A bad MS64 will have zero impact on a "great" VF35.  I am not trying to compare MS and Circulated examples of a coin as bad/good.  They are completely different animals in my mind I do not mean that coins have to be in "Top Registry Sets" to be great coins.  A type set in P01 would be very interesting, challenging and affordable. To sum it all up... to me a great coin is the "right" coin that fits into the theme/grade/aesthetic/budget of my collection.  Everyone is entitled to their own definition of greatness based on his/her own criteria for their collection.  In the end... we look at our collections and say "wow" or "darn" based on that definition.  
I apologize to anyone I have offended in my opinions regarding "great" vs "bad" coins. 

I checked the mail Saturday, expecting to find something else and found a package from NGC that I immediately realized had to be the new award plaque. It turns out it included the coin too.

We were outside with the boys and I showed the package to Shandy and she initially, seeing NGC, thought it might be the Zimbabwe and Italian coins.. somehow.  I don't know why. She's seen the boxes from NGC before when coins come back and this padded envelope looked nothing like that, but, as she put it, the coins are just what she thinks about when she sees "NGC."
The package didn't get opened until late that night. If I look tired in the shot, it's because I was.  Saturday happened to be a very big Pokemon Go event - a game I started playing with Ben, Shandy and my mother in law a couple of months ago and that's been eating up a lot of my normal social media, writing and coin time.  I started playing it with Ben in part because I knew he'd need friends and allies to get the full game experience and It has also allowed me to learn the game and then teach those things to him to help him and my mother-in-law as she's gotten into it. It has turned into quite the bonding thing for all of us. Saturday turned into hours of trying to catch legendary Pokemon in group fights called "raids" and that turned into a teaching moment about community and teamwork and working together to do things no one could do alone.
But... I was tired when it was over.  
I couldn't help but chuckle at the coin choice this year - a 2021 MS70 ASE. This is exactly what I expected last year and then they really surprised me with the Morgan dollars. But, because of last year, I hadn't been expecting it necessarily this year. I was thinking it might be another Morgan.  
But, now that I have this, I have the twins - The two Zimbabwe plaques.  

Yup. Shirts changed. I didn't get the PMG plaque down from the office and take this one until the following night. Kids are exhausting.  
I have some things I need to post about when I can get a couple of hours to write one of these days / nights. I also need to stop trading with my wife at night and get us looking at those Venezuelan coins to get those lined up and ready.
As always, I'm very grateful to NGC (and PMG) for the awards and the recognition, and I am still very much excited about some new sets and new projects in the pipeline that I hope will prove worthy successors to this Zimbabwe project.