Revenant

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.

When I was starting to shop for the 50 & 500 Lire coins, I used to start my Italian project for Shandy in November of last year I noticed that the same seller had MS66RD and 1 MS67RD 1962 Rhodesian Penny. It’s an interesting coin – it features two dancing elephants. It got my attention for 2 reasons: 1) As a Rhodesian coin it is closely associated with the work I’d been doing with my Zimbabwe type set. 2) As I had been wrapping up / mostly wrapping up the Zimbabwe set – because, yeah, I could and I may yet try to upgrade and improve that set but on a practical level it is more or less finished and future changes will be slow and gradual in comparison – my wife had said that something she’d enjoy seeing me tackle was Turtle coins (Ben’s nursery theme was turtles) or Elephants (Sam’s nursery theme). I actually have signature sets on the PMG side where I’ve started slowly slowly working on Turtle and Elephant thematic sets. The fact elephants, as one of the African “Big 5” feature on so many Zimbabwean notes make it even more appropriate as a Sam-inspired set / project and those Zimbabwean notes have started the foundation of that thematic set. Anyway… (I digress a lot. This is a thing. I’m aware of it.) At the time (Nov 2021) the seller was only offering the MS66s at a price even resembling reasonable and had the MS67 listed with a BIN of $300. Hard Pass. So I waited. Fast forward to January 2022, the seller finally listed the MS67 for ~$45. I looked at it, said, “I could do that,” bid and won unopposed. The first coin in what has become the set. I bring up all the forgoing because, while there are many themes / threads in this journal and a lot of sets I talk about at various times and over time, they do all tie together and interconnect and, since 2016, that connective tissue tends to be my wife and sons inspiring my collecting and these various newer sets are oftentimes born out of love for them. A couple of months after that I found another seller offering an MS64RD and MS65RD 1963 for $40-50. I decided to go for the MS65RD. I won it unopposed and the MS54RD went unsold. The seller later relisted the MS64RD for a lower price and I thought about bidding on it at that point just for fun, but… I didn’t, and someone else took it. In some ways I later regretted not going for it because later they popped up with an MS66RD, for the same price I’d won the MS65RD at, and… I won that one… because maybe I’m crazy. In retrospect I can’t help but think the MS64, MS65 and MS66 could have been an interesting looking grading set… but, I’m crazy. Anyway… At that point I had 2 dates of what is only a 7-date set, and I’d become aware of another seller that had a 1955, 1957, 1958, 1961, 1962 and 1963 in grades ranging from MS63 to MS65RD mostly. The eBay seller has the same username as a user here in the registry that at one time had a set in the category for these coins, but that set was curiously not as complete as this eBay seller’s inventory would suggest it should be, and it was since disappeared – or this person just changed their username here. Hard to say… Anyway. The selling price on these things was, to put it nicely, somewhat above the market rate, and, even though they took offers, and I tried, they weren’t willing to come down enough to make the coins a good “Fair Market” buy and this honestly had the feeling of dealing with a collector that honestly wasn’t all that motivated to sell. None of us know anything about that, right? After a couple of months, having some cash and just wanting it, as much as anything just to have all of the later dates, I bit the bullet and gave them what they wanted (less $10) for an MS65RD 1961. And so, there’s date #3. And now we come to the present (day). I’ve been watching their MS64RB 1955, their MS64RB 1957, and their 2 MS65RD 1958s…. If I just got them I’d have a 6/7 complete set. But, while I knew I wanted these, and while I was tempted to just get them, because, “what’s $200 in the grand scheme?” I just had a hard time pulling the trigger knowing the price on these was just probably high. But, my birthday was coming up, and I knew Shandy hadn’t gotten me anything yet because she had said she needed to get something ordered, and so I messaged her about them and was just like, hey, “if you want an idea / suggestion…” She asked me to send her the links so she could “look” at them. I’m like, “Okay,” and send the links. We’re each staying with a kid in different rooms at the time waiting while a kid falls asleep. I’m expecting her to look at them and for us to have a conversation later about which 2 or the 3 I like more and where I can tell her about the fact that I’m sure we could easily get $10 taken off each coin if we put in an offer and then maybe she might order them later. I’m really thinking she might get me 2 of them and then I can snap up the 3rd out of my spending money. What I did NOT expect her to do was just use the links to just pull the dang trigger and snap up all three coins for $225 – didn’t even ask for an invoice to try to combine shipping. She just snapped them up. So, then I just come downstairs, having picked up the other 4 coins to show her and to talk about it, and I start telling her about how we could probably haggle down the price a little and she gets this weird look on her face and I’m just like, “What?!?” and what follows is this horrible, awkward, hilarious conversation where I’m just like, “No! You didn’t and she’s just trying so hard to be evasive about it and she’d been planning to taunt me and tease me about it later about getting more Italian coins instead and then finally she admits that she got them. So… Anyway… And what followed was lots of awkward teasing for ruining the surprise and awkward, sheepish, “thank you”s… She has this little facebook girls-group chat with like 4 other women and they spent part of the rest of the evening laughing at me over this, but it’s cool. I told her she could tell them and laugh at me. She was going to be making fun of me all night anyway. So… Yeah. Assuming she actually still gives them to me and doesn’t chose to enforce the household rule we gave to Ben wherein if you find out what your gift is early it goes back, and you don’t get it… In a month I’ll have a 6/7 complete set of these coins… I just have to laugh. It’s a funny story that will now live with and probably get integrated into the Registry set as I build it now. I’m going to be happy to have them, I’ll be happy to stop arguing with myself internally about it now, they’re a gift and now I don’t have to feel bad about “overpaying” and, what’s $30-40 in the grand scheme? … and this is the set I’ve been quietly working on in the background this year while I’ve been submitting and talking about other things… because when I got that first coin in January I didn’t want to do what I’ve done with past sets (Zimbabwe, the 500L) where in the first year of a set I buy 1 lone set and go into December with a sub-50% complete set that can’t be in the running for the “New Set” Awards, because, while I’m by no means a shoe-in, it is at least nice to know you’re in the running and eligible for consideration. When you’re going to put in the effort on a set. Side note, but, even though these coins were produced before the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in Nov 1965, these coins reference Queen Elizabeth II but they don’t show her portrait like the coins of many other commonwealth countries. It has the Elephants instead. However, because her name is on the side with the elephants, I consider the elephants side to be Obverse and the side with the denomination and date to be the Reverse. However, this is another one of those coins where NGC tends to flip-flop on which side of the coin is on the label-side of the holder. As I get shots of these taken I’m going to be posting images with the Elephant side consistently in the Obverse photo position, regardless of how the coin is presented in the slab, the same thing I do with some of my Australian silver, which as the same issue. And… side note… because, I have no self-control some days, I also bought a half-penny, dated 1958. MS67RD, one of the finest examples currently graded by NGC. It has Giraffes. I think it is neat. I am crazy and sometimes have no impulse control with money in proximity to shiny objects. I finally got those reports issued for those big projects and put in my OT request – apparently, I just made it under the wire for payroll this month so I’ll get the money next week and not at the end of October. I told Shandy I was expecting to net about $500 on it after taxes. She said, “Well, that’s almost enough for a gold coin.” My response was I’d been thinking that would off-set the first month and registration fee for Ben’s Karate and maybe let me have $100-200 to have a little fun with. Kids are so expensive. I’m writing this as I’ve issued three major reports in the last 2 working days that together total about 2 months of work and about 1300 pages. And I finally get some time to breathe, relax, and drink my coffee as smaller things come in. It helped with making the day quiet yesterday in that the UK office was closed for QEII’s funeral.

A couple of days ago my Venezuela & Italy submission finally hit grading / quality control. I'd said about a month ago I was hoping to have grades by yesterday or maybe sooner but it was not to be. I'm increasingly accepting that waiting longer than the advertised turnaround time is partially the price I pay for submitting things that are rarely submitted and which they probably have to put extra incremental effort into grading vs, say, a monster box of American Eagles. Like I said in a previous post, I'm pretty sure I "lost" about 3 days on this one just with them doing some research and variety attribution before the coins even got in the system good. I am still very much looking forward to filling out that 500 Lire set. The 1995 500Lire coin I got as part of a 4 coin lot for $2.65 and the coin looks... okay. It does look uncirculated. It does have good looking surfaces, but the brass / bronze-like center has a little bit of discoloration on it as is common with these so I'm not 100% in love with it. It was worth $2.65 for a shot in the dark and I will be keeping it in my back pocket as a part of a possible 2023 submission to build out the set the rest of the way. I still have not gotten the 2000 and 2001 I bought off someone in Germany but I can't say that is entirely surprising. But I will be looking forward to seeing those. This is my first day off in 2 weeks where I haven't been using nap-time to do work on a project that had to be rushed through because an old client / project had had the bad idea of spit in a regulator's coffee and earn themselves a lot of frustration and pain on their permitting process. This rush project was on top of two other bigger projects that were also demanding attention! Right now! Because everyone's problems are important! But... once I fill out my paperwork and put in for it on Monday, now that things are slowing down a bit I'll probably get a few hundred in OT pay and I might get to use some of that on something nice for myself. I'm also coming up on a vacation with 5 days of no email access. Yay! The way it should be. Just thought I'd add, Ben has lost like 3 teeth in the last month, including his two front teeth. He also started Kirate / MMA this week. The net result is... amusing. A kid in a Gi, missing his two front teeth.

I could see several things helping with my cause there: 1) a nice display for it, 2) finishing the graded set and 3) winning a major award with the 500 Lire set next year. I mention the last only because you've said you think it will happen, but I do think the fact that I included coins that they actually brought back to the US with them when they returned definitely gives it a good story that may put it in the running.

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.

Work has had me crazy this week but I wanted to steal a few minutes and share something fun. My Venezuela submission took a few more days than I normally see as typical to go from just "Received" to being able to see the list of the coins. When the coins did come up I saw some variety information that I hadn't had had been entered in. Notably, one of the coins I sent in was the non-magnetic, non-steel, zinc-aluminum version (2001-2004) and not the steel version (2000-2002). I had not even thought to check this or test this personally. All of the other coins that I had from that batch / date range from those lots I bought from my Ukranian dealer were dated 2004. So they were after the date range of the steel versions and they had to be zinc-aluminum. So, In that context, it makes perfect sense that the 2002 10Bs were also zinc-aluminum and not the steel version - where there was such a version. Interestingly, it doesn't look like the 50B version had a zinc version. Those appear to have been steel consistently. Same thing for the 100B coins from 2001-2004. So I'm thinking the seeming delay might have been because they had to research these a little or look them up to see what and how to enter them in. This might seem like an odd thing to say but I'm almost more excited about the Italian coins than the Venezuelan coins this time because the Italian coins will be mostly completing established sets and they won't be much work. On the other hand, I have a lot of buying, searching, submitting, and writing to do before I can honestly say the Venezuela set is complete and I just don't even know how it's going to happen. If you can find these things for sale in MS at all you don't see a lot of listings saying if the coin is magnetic or not. How am I going to try to hunt these varieties in the wild. I'm more or less "on-hold" with building out that custom set for the Venezuela coins because, with how custom sets get built on the NGC side, it will be far easier for me to build the set if I just wait and enter the coins in as I build the slots. It really is jarring to me some days just how different things are for custom sets on the PMG vs NGC side. It was quite easy on the PMG side to build out empty slots for notes I didn't have yet but on the NGC side it feels quite awkward. I don't know if this is bias from being used to / accustomed to the PMG side or what. Also, now I can't help but wonder: The Magnetic nickel-clad-steel 10B is 2.33 grams. The non-magnetic zinc aluminum 10B is 1.74 grams. So if they have a reasonably accurate scale they could have told the difference by weighing it, but I just have this visual in my head now of them touching a magnet to it (through the flip to not scratch it, of course) to see if the coin responded or not.

I actually managed to get my box to the Post Office on 8/12 and, since I decided to chance it on a Priority Mail Flat Rate box and not pay for Registered Mail for such a low-value submission this time, NGC received the box on 8/15. The submission is still not showing in the system yet, but, based on currently advertised turnaround times, I'm hoping I'll have grades by around 09/09 or 09/16 (3 or 4 weeks from now to be generous on my expectations vs 13 business days). We'll see. In any case, that would put the coins back here earlier in the year than my first Zimbabwe Submission and that should give me a comfortable amount of time to get the new coins imaged and in the sets. The 500L coins and 1986 Italian coins at a minimum anyway. I'm less convinced that the Venezuela Set will be ready for "Prime Time" this year but starting to build that out as a Custom Registry Set is going to be next on my list of coin-related projects. My plan is to have a large number of slots in that Venezuela set representing issues and varieties that I do not have and I'm not convinced I'm going to be able to get them at economically attractive or feasible prices. So I don't know what the ultimate fate and state of that set is going to be. Because I started this thinking I could snap up representative pieces of everything and then I figured out how much I didn't know about and now I just don't even know how to get the stuff I now know about without feeling like I'm just massively over paying and over spending. Some days I wonder if it'd be easier to just collect US, but I think it would be way less interesting and fun (for me). Edited to add: I've officially started building this set and posted the first of what will probably be many many drafts and iterations if the Zimbabwe note set, coin set, and the Venezuelan note set are any indications. Pain into Suffering - Custom Set (collectors-society.com) Edited to add, the submission showed up in the system as received this morning.

Certainly with the notes set along the way I tried my best to tell the story. It's been my experience that the information is out there but it wasn't all in one place by any means and the information wasn't often closely tied with information on the notes. I like movie references.

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.

Ah, well, sorry if my response underwhelmed. I've actually been told on multiple occasions by my wife that I'm a bit of a horrible gift recipient - People give me things and I quietly sit there looking at it - examining it because I'm curious but not being very outwardly happy usually. I'm also usually not a very effusive person even though my excessive use of " " might suggest otherwise. Anyway... Yeah. I do like those. I find them interesting from a historical / collecting perspective, in much the same way I find the 2001 gold coins they made interesting. But, if I'm being honest, I do find the coin design a bit underwhelming. They have the same feel and spirit to them as those old US Assay office rounds. I also find it odd and a little interesting that it's a SILVER coin celebrating the opening of the Zimbabwe GOLD refinery. To coinbuff's point though (and yours) no. I don't own one, but I could definitely be down to get one if one came up at an attractive price. Sorry. I think it's been a solid 1-1.5 months since I've been active over here. Wanna know something horrible? I filled out all the paperwork for that coin submission three weeks ago, bound up all the coins in groups of flips 2 weeks ago and they're still in the house. I'm working on boxing them up, printing a label and scheduling a pick-up. If these don't get back by December, it's my own dang fault but... life is never dull with a 6 year old and a 3 year old with CP.even when you have the extreme luxury of working from home.

Thanks! I think one or two of the Zcent images ended up being a bit "soft" on the details but I'd say the Italian coins with those odd alloys are probably harder to get nice looking photos of overall than the Zimbabwean coins. The Bimetallics also tend to be a pain.

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...

I don't know. I find it interesting.

I mostly interpret it as being part of the larger narrative that these are a part of - they're hyperinflation coins. Coins produced by and made to support a struggling economy. And so they were trying to probably trying to get every last coin they could out of ever last set of dies and produce as many coins as they could as fast as they could and as cheap as they could, and so you see this - coins made using dies that would have been already been retired by any mint with a budget and self-respect.

I took a little time to try to get a few shots of one of these Venezuelan coin that I think is showing die cracks / die wear issues and see what everyone thinks, both using the Nikon with the Micro lens and the new Coin Microscope. Looking at this (50 Bolivar) in person, and looking at it in the photo with the macro lens and this lighting, that line along the back of the neck definitely looks raised above the design and not cut into it and so I'm thinking more and more that this is a die crack and not post mint damage. The fact that I have two of these with what look like identical marks re-enforces this for me as, what are the odds of that? The odd looking bits in the corners along the edge of the hexagon also look like they're the result of die state issues and not PMD. Overall, the coin looks very very clean with regard to what I think is actually PMD, and I think the coin could actually grade pretty darn well. Below I have some of the microscope images: Oddly (maybe not to those who have more experience with such things), I think the Nikon and the Macro lens did a better job of capturing the neck crack and making it more clear that it probably is a crack and not a scratch, but I find it interesting to see the texture and the details captured by the microscope in the rim areas. The below is a different 50 Bolivar coin's reverse: This is a 100 Bolivar: At some point I need to make a new banner image based around the Venezuelan Coins to compliment the Italian and Zimbabwean/10G themed ones.

Thursday of last week, when everything was going down with Sam, that MS68 1986 100L arrived in the mail and over the weekend I won an auction for an MS67 1986 20 Lire. That, with the MS68 1986 50L I got last year, gives me (or will soon give me) 3 of the 7 coins for an Italian 1986 Mint Set, so I've gone ahead and made a custom set for that and popped in what I have so far. 1986 Italian Circulation Strike Set - Custom Set (collectors-society.com) The MS67 20 Lire is the highest graded example out there right now. Not to say there won't be MS68s later but I'll take a Superb Gem Uncirc Top Pop for now over buying and submitting and hoping for the best - I get some good grades and some not-so-good grades on my own. I have a 4th coin for it - the 500 Lire - raw that I'll hopefully be submitting in a month or so, once I can get my act together. In a bit of retail therapy impulse buying I also picked up an MS68 1994 200L, because I showed it to her and Shandy thought it was pretty, and the seller combines shipping. This logic seems to hold up. I'm not going to be shot for blowing $80 on a whim this week. I seriously, seriously thought about pulling the trigger on an MS66 1986 200L. If it had been an MS67 I probably would have gone for it, but MS66 just didn't do it for me. This sparked me to look at some coins I have from Franklin Mint Sets that look really nice. I have a 1986 200L, 5L and 10L that I think could all grade quiet well. So, since I'm thinking about sending in the '83, '86, and '87 500L anyway, I'm seriously thinking about sending in a 1986 5L, 10L, and 200L, and using that to finish up that set, making it, with the '86 500L, 4/7 self-submitted. So... actually. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure, right now, I have a complete 1986 mint set of Italian coins in high grade. They just aren't all NGC-graded yet. Some of this is causing me to expand into a couple of new competitive categories and some of this may ultimately lead to Shandy becoming a force in the Modern Italian registry. And I do mean Shandy when I say that - The other night, with the 1986 100L in hand, I laid all the graded Italian coins in our room to show her the state of it. We boxed them up at the end then then she scooped up the box and put it on her side of the bed saying something like "I'll just take this and put it over here." So... Yeah. I'm finding them and buying them but she very much claims them. I find it hilarious and love it. With opening up these new sets, that for now are mostly just places to park and display single coins in the new registry - because custom sets don't work in the new registry for now - I'm only really invested in defending the #1 spot on the 500 Lire set for now, but I'll take any other wins I can get, if I can get them. There IS a competitive category for a 1991 Italian proof set, and that does make me wonder if I could get a competitive category for this 1986 mint set if I asked for it, but... I don't know... that just feels a little too self-serving of a request for now. Maybe if I keep making these posts and inspire more interest and activity in the Modern Italian registry... But it is my hope that I get at least a few years before the Zimbabwe set and the 500L set suffer the same fate as the 1932 set and now the 10G set. I guess we'll see.

We ended up not getting to have him go back into the OR until 5 PM yesterday but we got him in. By the time they took him back he was so upset he was puking and that got the nurses in there worried it might be his shunt and I'm just looking at them like, He's 3. He has been poked with needles for 2 days. He has not had any food for 18 hours waiting on this surgery. He didn't get a nap this afternoon because of this and he's been up for 11 hours after a bad night of sleep, and you brought us into this room 2 hours ago and didn't let us bring his toys... do I really have to explain this to you? But, today we went home.

Well, there are 3 or 4 going depending on if you count the 1986 italy coins / 1986 Italian mint set as part of the same project / set as the 500 L. The Italian and Venezuelan projects are known. The third is a special secret.

To borrow phrasing from my wife, Somethings have been odd with Samuel for a while. After getting a fast MRI (which had been delayed by him getting sick the day before the scan) the doctor wasn’t convinced by those results but was concerned by our observations of his behavior and wanted a CT. After getting a CT this morning, they told us to turn back around and come to the ER. We suspect a clog / slow failure – all four ventricle spaces have enlarged; some have nearly doubled. But they’re just going to have to go in tomorrow afternoon and check it all out, but it’s basically a shunt revision by another name. We’ve been at the hospital all day. My wife has, in the past, laughed at me for dropping bits of news like this and then moving on, making relatively brief note of them in otherwise longer posts but I often struggle to say much on these things other than, “Well, this happened.” I can’t claim to want to go into too much detail beyond the basic facts and I don’t know that many others would want that either. The Zimbabwean note set was built in 2019 as a monument to my stress relief efforts and this place remains my escapism. At the same time, I feel like these events have to be acknowledged here as I discuss these sets and these projects since so many of these projects are so tied to my family and ignoring these events here would rob these sets and posts of some very important context. I had not planned to follow up the last post with this one, of course. Shandy and I have been slowly looking through the 1989, 2002-2004, and 2007-2016 Venezuela bolivar coins. At this point we basically just need to look at the 2018 Boliver Soberano denominations (2 denoms) and the 2021 Bolivar Digital coins (3 denoms). I’m very happy with the coins we’ve been picking out as the best of the bunch. I’ve gotten a large number of coins from a variety of dealers that tend to supply good stuff. From these I’m culling together a set / collection that I think will be rather nice when it’s finished and put together – hopefully in the form of a custom registry set, if I can find the time. Having acquired 10-15 examples each of many of these I've frequently adopted an "heir and a spare" approach, picking out the one we think is the best and picking the one we think is the 2nd best, if there is a clear 2nd best, and setting it aside as well. I don't know what I'll do with the spares / 2nd stringers in right now, but I figure it doesn't hurt to have it / have them picked out for later reference. However, what I’d wanted to talk about is that some of the 2002-2004 coins – the 2nd batch of such coins that came from Ukraine the other week - have a lot of what look like die cracks on them. In a couple of cases there are what appear to be rather large cracks. I want to take pictures of them and post about this with the pictures – including breaking out and getting to play with a usb/wi-fi coin microscope I got a couple of months ago that has been mostly sitting in the box on my desk. If I remember right I was looking at these back in February or March on Amazon and then I got a lightning deal offer on this one for about $22. At that price I figured, even if it turned out to be complete garbage, it was worth a bit of amusement playing with it and looking at a few coins with it. My initial play involved looking at some graded coins in slabs and I'm decently happy so far with the focus adjustment feature and the way it allowed me to focus on the coins through the plastic of the slab. I have yet to test it with raw coins but I figure if it can be adjusted to give good visuals through a slab that's an encouraging/promising start. Having gotten that microscope out of the box earlier this week and played with it briefly, I’m still hopeful that one of these days soon I can get closer looks at those Venezuelan coins, confirm those are cracks and not scratches, and share some pictures. My timeline is clearly slipping on getting all these picked out and sent off, but turnaround times are down as Mike has recently reminded me and so I think I can still get this together, out, and back before December, even with life being crazy. On the 500L front, I guess the seller I bought that MS68 1982 500L from back in November of last year finally got tired of listing his top pop, finest known MS69 for $300-400 and having it not sell so they listed it for $39.99 + $3.50 shipping. With little else to do today but play pokemon on my phone and wait in a hospital room today, I bid on it and won without anyone bidding against me. It is interesting to me that someone bid on and beat me on that 1983 MS65 – spending $25+ on an MS65 – and these MS68s and MS69s continue to get no competing bids at $40-50. It does make me wonder if the other bidder in that 1983 auction was a shill or something because I have to think if a MS65 is interesting to you at $25 then an MS69 should be interesting at $43.50, but maybe I’m wrong there. In any case, I'm continuing my commitment to that set and trying to build it up into something brag-worthy for Shandy with every opportunity that crops up to improve it at a price that feels sane. Do I regret popping for the MS68 last year at almost exactly the same price? Nope. Not really. That one was available last year when I needed it to get that set started where this one was not available at a price I was at all willing to pay. Now I get to improve on the set with this one and I feel pretty good about both purchases and what they accomplished for me / helped me accomplish.

I can't say I ever favor spending the rent or the grocery money on any hobby, no matter how much I want the thing. As a former TA and a former instructor, I can't say I like your helpful advice either. I wrote my own essays, and I suggest you do the same, or just don't waste money on college - the learning is the goal, not the degree or the grade. Funny enough, I've earned 3 degrees / graduated 3 times since this was posted.

Earlier in the week I'd been watching a 1983 Italian 500L graded Ms65 by NGC. The staring bid was $10 + $5 shipping and it had no bids. When it was about 12 hours out from ending I bid $20 hoping to win it for roughly the cost of grading and keep it until and unless something better came along - maybe one I graded myself. Then, about 15 minutes before bidding ended, someone bid $15, then $16, then $17, then $20, then something over $20... I don't know if this was a shill or someone that actually wanted the coin but nonsense like this is why i increasingly hate bidding before the last minute. I was going to bid $22 at the last minute to try to take it back. But the eBay glitches, doesn't let me bid, and it ends with me losing the coin for $20.50. I was not happy at the time but I can't help but wonder if eBay saved me from myself and did me a favor. For $26-27 or more I think I'm better off submitting one on my own with an '86 and '87 soon. It was attractive at $15-20 just to fill the whole for now but it's a lot less attractive at $25+. As it is I do have a 1983 that I think could grade out pretty well - maybe beating that MS65. Anyway... I've been a little more successful with a few other coins lately. I got an MS67 1997 500L and an MS68 100L from 1986. Neither fits into the 500L set I'm currently building in the registry because the 1997 was one of the circulating commemorative years. But both are nice coins, the 1997 is closely related to the main 500L set and Shandy liked it, and the 100L is one step closer to making an Italian birth year set for us, which I think could be cool. My in-laws were over at the house recently and I used the opportunity to pull out the graded 500L, show them to both of them and point out the coins they'd brought back that are now incorporated into it. I think my father-in-law liked seeing that I'd made a little something of / with that bag of coins and that I'd pulled that bag of foreign coins into something like that. I'm not entirely sure he understands my practice of "spending money on money" but I do think he thought that was nice. I still have not gotten to take pictures of all the new Zimbabwe coins and I want to take some pictures of some Venezuelan Coins I've been looking at lately to share but my weekends and days off keep going to other tasks lately - including cleaning out the garage. Something I've made solid progress on recently. Ben seems to have lost interest in Pokemon go for now so it's just us adults that continue to be addicted to catching them all / collecting them all and completing our pokedexes. 🤣 From talking to others this seems common. The kids get into it, the adults do it with the kids and then the kids abandon it while the adults still work obsessively to complete the game. 🤣

We haven't been guessing on grades at this point but so far we're seeing a lot of coins that we like in the 1989 denominations (5 denoms) and the 2002-2004 denominations (also 5 denominations). I'll probably have a new post about some of those soon. I can usually get things from Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, and Hong Kong in just 2, maybe 3 weeks. Not months. Not sure what you're dealing with.

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.

I don't think we'll ever see that though. Because of how NGC and PCGS differ on their labeling and such - the reason NGC gave in the beginning - it'd make too much of a nightmare for them. World PCGS just ain't coming back. I think people just need to accept that they need to decide what they want to be and make their peace with it. You want to collect what you like and not care about holders? Cool. Don't sweat the registry. You want to participate in a registry? Cool. Pick a company and buy / grade / submit accordingly. Personally, I like a consistent presentation, and it bugs me to have a set that has radically different holders. So I was always going to end up mostly collecting one company / one set of slabs for the visual consistency of the collection. So it doesn't harsh my mellow much.

I'm mostly going on Numista for now. I haven't seen enough of these to comment on their completeness.