Revenant

Years ago a guy at a gas station in front of me paid for 2 beers with 28 silver dimes, 22 were merc dimes. The guy left the money and walked off before the cashier noticed but she did notice and freaked out a bit. I don't believe this for a second. People have gotten the cops called on them for trying to spend $2 bills. Any cashier who knew enough to not reject these would have pocketed them themselves.

Shandy and I have picked (from amongst the coins I have so far) the ones we think are the best and these will be among the ones I send in a few months from now. I am looking to make a couple more purchases of raw Zimbabwean coins between now and when these go out to NGC to try to get examples of the last few types I will need and maybe get better examples of some of these, so some of these may get bumped out of the submission if I find better – more on that in a couple of weeks probably. The current crop includes: 1 Km-1a 1980 1C 1 Km-1b 1997 1C (rolling the dice for a MS66...). 2 Km-2 1997 5C (I’m hoping I might snag an MS64, MS65 or even an MS66 with these, but bumping that 1999 AU58 out is going to be easy with these). 2 Km-3a 1999 10C (These 1999s look very good and it could be cool to have a coin for that slot that I graded myself. I think these might have a shot at a 65-67) 1 Km-6b $1 (Might get another 63, but this one looks a bit nicer than the 63 I got back - fewer deeper scratches). 1 Km-12b $2 (This one looks… It may do a 63 or 64) 2 Km-13 $5 (It may do a 63 or 64) 2 Km-21 2017 $1 Bond Coins (These look great and should hopefully come back as a 66 or 67 like the other bond coins – hopefully 67). 2 Km-22 2018 $2 Bond Coins (These look great and should hopefully come back as a 66 or 67 like the other bond coins – hopefully 67). The best of the 20C and 50C coins from the new batch basically look the same and seem like they would grade the same as the coins I just got back from grading so I’m not going to send any of the coins of those denominations from this batch in. I may still add in that 2017 50C Bond Coin Shandy thought was the best of those to the above – I will get around to asking NGC to add slots for the $1 and $2 Bond coins in December probably, just to get ready. I’m keeping the ones I’m planning to submit in flips, to make it easier to send them later and to separate them from the “rejects” / lesser examples, which are increasingly in 2x2s.In using both I find that I like different things about each and I find myself debating which I like more. I don't like the fact that the coins can slip / slide around in the flips a little if I'm not careful where the 2x2s hold them more snugly. Every coin in this group so far has been picked with Shandy and I sitting together, looking at them in flips by lamplight, comparing them, and talking about which one looks the best. And that, without doubt, is the biggest victory of this whole undertaking. I have gotten to sit and look at coins with my wife, with her participation, talking, smiling, and laughing, enjoying the time together, and at the end she says she enjoys it and seems to mean it. No matter how the grades end up next year, there's the win – We’re finding more ways to bond over coin collecting together. And I’m going to keep building on this. I’m already working on finding various ways to build on this – but more on that later too. I have no confidence in Zimbabwe coins alone to continue to hold her interest. I think I did myself at least 1 big favor in that I broke it up. I didn't come at her all at once with 11 types and 60-75 coins to look at. I did this over 4 nights with nights in between and only brought 2-3 types and 10-18 coins at a time. I did some pre-screening in some cases to knock out coins I knew weren’t the winners. With something like this, especially early on, especially doing this at night when the kids are in bed and we're tired and winding down, you absolutely can't overstay or overtax your welcome. When we’d picked through the last of them, very much to my surprise, Shandy asked if she was going to get “a link or something” to watch the Submission Tracker for updates herself when these go in. I don’t know how she could ever imagine these going in for grading and not getting constant, daily, yacking from me about it and watching for news. Utter madness. Still, for so many reasons now, this set is well on its way to becoming something that will be near and dear to my heart for a long time. We just celebrated our first Thanksgiving here. This will be our first Christmas in the new house. The tree is up. Time to start wrapping presents. This is the last entry for the 2021 Registry Year, but there is much more to come. I’m both surprised at how much I was able to get done in the last couple of weeks in terms of upgrading my pictures and banners and disappointed that I didn’t get further – didn’t get to the Koalas, the cents, the statehood quarters or the mint state presidential dollars that I have. It will be a goal to continue this into 2022’s award cycle and try to improve the pictures on these and the other “Wright Family” mint sets to bring all of these sets in line with my new photo standards and make every set in my registry a set worth looking at and clicking through. 2022 may well not be an NCLT-focused year as I continue to look for ways to build on what I’ve started this year with Shandy and continue to emphasize projects and goals that we can experience and share together. I'm somewhat torn in that part of me wants to focus on building / finishing existing / old sets and not starting entirely new things, but I also think some new things sound more fun, more promising, and more easily shared with Her. Still TBD on that one. Enjoy the journey.

Finished Retouching the coins in the 2nd string set and made their banner to compliment the main sets by emphasizing different designs.

Here's a new banner image for the 1986 Mint Set. I chose to have it use the same layout and look as the banner image for the Proof set, just with images of the mint state coins. I like the commonality that gives the presentation of the mint state and proof sets, even if it does leave me at risk of being called unoriginal by reusing the idea.

The month ended up being more eventful than hoped - including with Mom spending most of the weekend before Thanksgiving in the hospital with unexplained low blood pressure issues. So Choya was not able to get the 1986 coins to me until the afternoon on Thanksgiving day, and there was a coin missing from the group when he did - though I think that can be easily forgiven under the circumstances. But I am trying to get what I can reimaged and ready to go and I'll hopefully use these to bust out one last banner image: old: new: old: new: old: new:

In its own way I think it can be freeing to know that #1 is not in the cards and you can just build it the way you want it, that makes you happy and which maximizes your value/ enjoyment without the pressure.

I think your challenge will be convincing them there is enough collector interest in these to change their prior decision and add the category. While we all have our pet categories and types of sets we'd like to see, but if they made everything we asked for we'd all probably just have our own categories where we all get #1 rankings because we're all just listing in our custom category. I'm pretty sure the custom sets were created specifically to let us all make ourselves happy without making all these empty categories where there's no competition.

I taught a 65 student class for 1 semester. I never want to do it again. It is a lot of work unless you just shove most of it off onto the TAs, and even then. And it is infuriating to see students blow off a class on Industrial Hygiene and Process Safety.

Congrats on top 10, but that screen cap makes just moving up to 9 sound expensive and hard. When I first joined here in 07/08 I bought like 25 graded Lincolns with dreams of a set, then I looked at all those slots and did some basic math and gave up. So you get props from me on it. I don't even want to reimage mine...

The simpler ones like for the gold coins are pretty easy. The more complicated ones like the Kookaburra image and the Panda image are bigger time-sucks. The Zimbabwe image is the reigning champ for taking forever because I had to isolate all those design elements like the tree and the bird and the buffalo.

Good... There's no emoji for rubbing your hands in a super-villian like manner.

Psh! We don't know things! We spend money on old worthless money and share our crazy!

You need posts for there to be trolls. We have Me, Mike, a guy named Pounds, Steve, Ddr70, and Shiek. Maybe a few others. And the crickets.

You should both post over there. That place makes this place look lively.

Just to offer something else a little different than the "norm," technically these are depictions of ancient carvings of birds. Both currently among the finest examples NGC has graded so far - not that that says much given the size of the graded population

Here's your problem: Add pictures to the 18 coins that are missing them and add comments /notes to all 61 and you'll be tied for #1.

And why 14? If you have a range of people missing pictures and descriptions to varying degrees that could get you 14 levels of pf70 coins.

I don't generally ignore anything but bots, but I also don't feel the need to engage.

Still one of the better looking American eagles in the last 200 years.

Fenntucky Mike has also had good dealings with them so they just seem solid. Lemberg-zp is what they go by if I remember right and you're shopping for moderns.

There's a dealer out there that sells sets of coins from different countries or lots of 5 sets at reasonable to good prices that delivers good coins that I've dealt with mostly for Zimbabwean Bond Coins. That's about the extent of it for me and Ukraine. But 4 of the 5 Bond Coins I submitted from the 25 they sold me came back as MS67. The 5th was MS66. So they send pretty good stuff IMO.

Yes and no. Most of these NCLT coins are things that used to be a major focus of mine 10 years ago. For the last 3 years I've mostly just had the one focus, which has been Zimbabwean banknotes, which expanded to include Venezuelan hyperinflation notes and now Zimbabwean coins and maybe soon Venezuelan coins - mostly in a raw state, some of which I have graded or will grade later to make a complete Mint State type set. But since those are mostly complete now I am looking at a bunch of mostly long abandoned sets and thinking about what's next, and thinking about going back to something old rather than go off on some wild, random, tangent again. But... there is another tangent building. But more on that later.

Yes, this deals with 2 of them anyway - the disappointing first one and the better 2nd one. I've dealt with three dealers now buying lots of these coins - one in California, one in Utah and one in the Ukraine. I think I have something like 150-200 circulation strike Zimbabwean coins at this point with more likely.

Sometimes when sellers are selling sets / lots of "uncirc" coins I'll make a smaller purchase and see what I get. I've tried this with 5 sellers. One ended horribly on a Zimbabwean purchase with Environmental damage on "Mint" coins, 3 have produced great, TPG worthy, shiny coins in the mix (and you always get some with ugly bag marks) and for one my trial purchase is coming in the mail today. I'm going to be trying to focus more and more such purchases on the sellers that have proven themselves already as my available pool expands enough to get me the options I need.

Looks like you continue to be in-range on the grades. Hopefully this isn't costing you a ton in extra shipping fees but enjoy getting back what you can.