Revenant

This week has had emails from annoying clients every day right at the start of the day. Emails from clients that don't communicate internally so that your Point of Contact agrees to something but then never communicates that to the rest of their team, so you get questions about it for months. Clients that expect you to be at their beck and call and let them have meetings with you on 15 minutes notice. Clients that want meetings to discuss or clarify things that are clearly written in the report... not that they would know that because they never read the report, even when you told them in an email what section or what page to look at... That kind of thing. However, I did get one bit of good news in the midst of this! Huzzah! We have made it to quality control! Grades soon! Maybe! - Probably! I saw that it went to quality control on Tuesday, early in the morning, so I'm hoping that maybe tomorrow if I'm very lucky or maybe next week I'll see grades. I'm thinking next week is more likely. Week after next is possible. But I'm definitely feeling confident I'll have grades and maybe coins to take pictures of by early October! Last week on Thursday I got a pink notice that USPS tried to deliver a package / envelope (LIES!!!) and so I was able to get out and collect it yesterday. As suspected it was my shipment of coins from a dealer in Hungary. The coins are 2014 issues from New Caledonia. I'm going to make this easy on me (be lazy) and use the seller's images to show the coins for the most part. I saw these online and thought they were very cool with the stylized, abstract turtle designs. What the above images don't do a great job of showing is that the 2F and 5F coins are a golden-colored brass material that I've seen a fair bit of lately where the 10f, 20f, and 50f are silver-colored and probably made of zinc or nickel or plated steel. I'm not sure which yet. The other thing I wasn't prepared for was the range in sizes involved - the 100f is actually quite massive, as is the 50f. I'm not sure my picture below is doing a much better job of expressing the color difference (the 100f is an orange brass colored ring around a "silver" core, btw), but it should give you a feel for the range in the sizes. I put the 2f coin at about 18 mm - same size range as a US dime - and the 100f coin around 38 mm - putting it in the same size bracket as a Morgan dollar, somewhat smaller than a lot of modern 1 oz silver bullion coins (~40-41 mm).

So, starting with a small update on Sam... Two ER visits, a Neurosurgery follow up and 3 CT scans later... we're waiting and watching see when he has clinical signs of shunt failure before moving forward to surgery - probably an ETV to try to free him from shunt revisions. Two ER visits, a specialist appointment, and 3 scans later... we're right back where we started... watching and waiting... for an indefinite and unknowable period of time... What the actual hell?!? So... I guess we'll see there. My submission hit "Grading/Encapsulation/Imaging" on 8/31 - or that's at least when I noticed it was in that phase... but I check it pretty much daily, so... I don't think I'm off by much. It's still in that stage but having them hit grading at the tail end of August got me more hopefully and optimistic that they'll be done early enough in October for me to get them and photograph them. So that has gotten me to shake off my apathetic laziness on this front and continue drafting out my set and coin descriptions - for the new, planned Argentinian sets in particular. I've drafted up one of my typical "opening essays" for the set description, once again centered around an old quote that I found and enjoy. Each coin is going to have some coin facts for the coin (composition, diameter, thickness, KM#, etc) and some information on the animals and structures featured on the coins. I'm hoping to add for different coins in the Austral set historical information on some of the old debt defaults from 1827 to about 1889, and then have the Peso Convertible set focus on the origins of the Peso Convertible specifically and have an emphasis on the more modern troubles surrounding the 2001 and 2014 debt defaults and the more modern 2019-2023 debt and economic crises. I feel like I can definitely have the coin facts and discussion of the features up well before November. I'm pretty sure the Austral set's discussion of the historical debt defaults are do-able before November... The Peso Convertible set being fully fleshed out may be a bit of stretch goal - we'll see. I haven't looked recently but I think I drafted out information for the new Venezuelan set hole-fillers and the 500 Lire set hole fillers months ago. If I'm right I can just pop those up when the coins come back. If not... I think I can bust them out pretty fast. I'm hoping some fun new turtle coins I ordered will be here... soon? ... in the next couple of days maybe? ... I'll see if I can get another post about those out. The set is not public yet because it has no coins registered in it, but below is what I'm working on for the Set Description for the Argentinian sets: “Debts are like children – begot with pleasure but brought forth with pain.” - Moliere The name of Argentina comes from argentum, which is the Latin word for silver (and the reason why the atomic symbol for silver is Ag). In the early 20th century, Argentina had one of the largest national economies in the world, thanks to its production of beef, wheat, and other farm goods, combined with an educated workforce made up mostly of European immigrants and their descendants. Argentina emerged from the 2nd World War in the mid-20th century as the 7th Largest Economy in the World. But the constant economic crises, often attributable to government mismanagement, sometimes combined with fluctuating commodities prices, have plunged millions into poverty and put the country off-limits to most foreign investment. Even with everything it has gone through in the last ~70 years since WWII, Argentina has still been hanging out at around 25-27 on the list of the largest economies in the world since 2021, with a GDP of about 520 Billion dollars. But, with Argentina, while commodities prices crashing played a role, as it did in Venezuela, the ongoing story of national misery seems to have long centered around the management of national debt. The country, by some counts at least, has defaulted on its debts 8 times since declaring independence in 1816. Some sources will say 9 defaults. Some say more. And I think part of the disagreement in count may come from debating the definition of a “default” or a “partial default” / “full default.” Personally, I think most of the counts are unfairly high as, in some cases, you have more than one default listed in a short period of time and a more through look at the facts show that the country never fully emerged from the crisis that led to one default / missed payment, and they were forced to miss another one. This to me, doesn’t constitute two separate events - it’s one long crisis. To illustrate this point, you can look at a 2019 Bloomberg article that listed 9 defaults. These 9 defaults were: • 1827 • 1890 • 1951 • 1956 • 1982 • 1989 • 2001 • 2014 • 2019 I don’t really see how the 1951 and 1956 events can be treated as separate and distinct events given that they occurred as part of a decade’s long era of pollical and economic instability in the post WWII era. The 1982 event was precipitated a collapse in commodities prices combined with Volcker’s interest rate hikes, which made the country’s debt to US and British Banks unpayable. These same events caused 27 nations – including 16 in Latin America – to restructure their debts. So, Argentina had company in its misery, but this triggered a spike in inflation and efforts to bring that inflation under control, and those failures lead to the 1989 default. So, it’s hard for me to treat those as completely separate events. And the 2014 default was triggered because of legal actions brought by creditors from the 2001 default that the country was never able to come to terms with. It’s also worth noting that the Bloomberg references September 2019 as a default, where some articles reference a 2020 default, and everything being discussed by various sources and articles presents what looks more like one continuous period of pain that started up around 2017/2018, continued through the COVID era, and now seems to have entered another phase that could provide as terminal for the Argentina and the Peso Convertible as the Zimbabwean crisis of the early 21st century and the Venezuelan collapse that followed a few years later. The thing that adds an extra layer of interest to this, for someone that loves coin and currency collecting anyway, is that these debt defaults often corresponded with spikes in inflation – sometimes into hyperinflationary territory – and these inflationary spikes often led to the death or abandonment of the national currency and the creation of a new national currency for Argentina. So, from 1813 to the present, there have been 7 national currencies for Argentina. • Real (1813-1815)) • Peso Fuerte (1826-1881) • Peso Moneda Nacional (1881-1969) • Peso Ley (1970-1983) • Peso Argentino (1983-1985) • Austral (1985-1991) • Peso Convertible (1992-Date) If you look at the date ranges for the currencies vs the debt defaults, it’s clearly not a perfect 1-to-1, but you can see a lot of places where the national currency changes with a couple of years before or after a debt default – usually a year or so after, consistent with the idea of the default leading to an inflation and currency crisis, leading to the “death” of the currency. This Registry Set includes the coins from the brief reign of the Austral as the national currency, from 1985 to 1992.

Thanks! "A Bale of Turtles" is the name I gave my turtle note set on the PMG side and it'll probably be the name given to this coin set if I ever formalize it into a registry signature set. No clue on the queen though. The coin is a 2017 issue. If it was from the mid or late 1990s I'd blame the kids. Lol

So.... This is long delayed, but I've been far busier at work than usual and we're having a lot of difficulties with Sam's health the last couple of weeks and months and so the journaling and the coin research is suffering. Sam has been in decline since June. We think he has Slit Ventricle System (SVS) and he's dealing with almost daily debilitating headaches that are making him cranky and, in some cases, frankly, violent. Which just makes things hard. We're probably going to have to cancel a family vacation in October to have him hospitalized for weeks and in the meantime, we're stuck with pain management strategies that don't seem to be doing much good. That too, may tank any plans of actually making some of this work for this year, but, if it does, it does. I also have a bad habit of making the perfect the enemy of the good enough and I've been letting that get in the way of just getting some pictures of these turtle coins I'm starting to work on imaged. But yesterday I just decided to make something happen and say, "good enough." So, a quick update on the submission with about 35 coins I sent in: 7/5 - Shipped 7/10 - Delivered 7/27 - Showed as Received 8/3 - Payment Acknowledged 8/7 - Scheduled for Grading The estimated times on this when I sent it in and when they acknowledged it suggest the submission will be finished around Mid-September to Early October. I'm mostly hoping that they just get home before November 1st so I can rush out some photos for the Argentine sets I'm planning, and the Venezuelan Set and the 500 Lire set I want to have more or less "finished." The submission includes examples of the coins in the pictures that follow. These coins are ones that lost out to the ones I submitted so these are still home in flips while the ones we thought were the best are hopefully going to come back with some nice grades: Colombia - 1000 Pesos Cabo Verde - 1 Escudo. Sorry! These didn't come out good. Tokelau - 1 Cent - check out those die cracks on Queen Elizabeth's face! That die was tired! Cayman Islands - Congo - 1 Franc 1 Seniti I'm working on buying some more raw coins with stylized turtles on them. You'll almost never see me admit to shopping for something here until I've already bought it so I'm not talking yet. I tried showing these to Ben and he acted kind of interested and said they were cool but he was over it pretty fast. I don't think this moves the needle for him much. Maybe one day he'll think they're cool. Maybe they'll be show and tell ammo down the line.

Thanks! The posts are a but leaner these days because I've been busier at work and with other things lately, but maybe I'll have more to say soon if this submission gets moving. I've wanted to get into the Argentine set more but it's hard to move on that one with no set to build in the registry and show to go.with the post and no pictures of my own.

And I do hear you on that - 100%. It did make sense on that basis which is one of the reasons I mostly just shrugged it off - not that I think my whining would have changed it before now anyway. 🤣 But, as you say - politics.

Thanks! I've never really agreed with them getting extra points but it's something I've never wasted much thought on. This I think is the only set that has ever been impacted by the issue just because I've been focusing on sets of coins that are hardly ever graded and for which CAC stickers just are not a thing. So it's nice to have this one back, for now. We'll see how long it sticks - 15 straight years of winning something with that set. It still kind of amazes me that it has held up so well for so long.

So, I recently have been seeing some chatter on Facebook and elsewhere that CAC, no longer content to just deface PCGS and NGC slabs with oval stickers, is now going to be grading coins completely on their own, and putting them in slabs that look shockingly similar to PCGS slabs... I wonder how PCGS feels about that. Then I come on here the other day and see the 7/24 announcement that NGC is taking away the points bonus for CAC stickered coins effective the next day. As I look on the boards, there's some chatter about NGC not being able to use the verification service anymore and its starting to look like someone - possibly someone in CAC - decided that the friendly relationship that has existed that allowed for PCGS and NGC to check the CAC stickers and award these points in a highly efficient and automated way may be over because it may not serve someone's perceived interests anymore. Yeah.... it's conspiratorial of me, and supposedly the functionality is coming back... but it has been down for about 1.5-2.0 months apparently, which seems interesting and suspicious, including with the timing. But, for me, this change to point values has some interesting personal side effects. Some of you may remember that about 3 years ago the 1932 set I built with my stepfather lost the top spot in the category after being on top for more than a decade: I made a post about it at the time and otherwise mostly shrugged it off - we weren't going to spend $$$$ to defend the title on such short notice. My stepfather, at the time, was not thrilled as you might imagine, and I got a call not long after asking - somewhat bitterly - why PCGS coins were getting more points than NGC coins in the NGC registry. It didn't make sense to him. I had to explain that it wasn't the fact that they were PCGS coins - it was the fact that they were CAC coins. I could understand his confusion though - in addition to being almost fully CAC stickered, the other set was almost completely PCGS coins where ours was almost fully NGC graded. But it was the bonus for the CAC stickers that was putting him over the top of us. Note - they have 5 PCGS and 1 NGC to our 1 PCGS and 5 NGC coins. But they have 5 CAC stickers to our 0 and the stickers are all on the PCGS coins. I had actually looked into the pricing for submitting coins to CAC in the past couple of years and tried talking to my step-father because I knew getting some of our coins stickered and getting the points boost could have put us back on top, probably for just a couple hundred dollars - a lot less than trying to upgrade one of the $1,000-$4,000 coins in that set to something even more expensive. I'd been thinking if we went the upgrade route the best option was probably going to be the $10 Eagle just because bumping that from a 63 to a 64 or 65 would be easier and probably cheaper than trying to track down MS64 or MS65 D and S quarters. But, based on current pricing, upgrading the S quarter to a 64 might have been an attractive and reasonable option. But... as of yesterday... all of those bonus points are now gone! (For now?) So, Liberty just took about a 700-point hit, and that has flipped the balance of the points back in our favor. So, if you want a funny... We made our set back around 2008, and we have not upgraded anything in close to 15 years now, I think, and we won for about 12 years (2008-2019). Liberty then made their set in October 2020 - a month before the cut-off - and has not changed any of their coins out in the last 3 years, and they've won for the last 3 years. For the last 3 years we've still gotten the "best set" award based on only NGC coins because... their set barely has any NGC coins. And now we're back on top in #1 and we may take the awards again in about 3 months - both awards possibly, NGC and overall. In that time - we'll say 3 years, since October 2020 - nothing has changed. I guess technically my last re-imaging and presentation update might have happened in that period - I can't remember the timing on that - but neither set has been upgraded. The only thing that has changed is how points are assigned. I'll be interested to see if this prompts some kind of response or some upgrades from Liberty to try to take the top spot back. I haven't talked to my Stepfather about this, but I guess I'll have to give him a call soon and let him know, just for a laugh.

I mostly just pick the best of what I have after I get a bunch - which is partially where things like the MS65s come in. Sometimes I order 5-10 raw examples to look through and none of them are exceptional. However, I did submit 2 of one of the 6 Venezuelan denominations because Shandy and I really liked both of them. When we've done this in the past it has resulted in dual MS69s and MS68s. So I have especially high hopes for that slot turning out well. No. They weren't his idea any more than the Zimbabwe and Rhodesian sets or the Elephant note signature set were Sam's ideas. But he still sleeps with his turtle lovie, I think the coins look interesting to him, and I hope that one day he appreciates the gesture.

That thought has occurred to me at various points but it has never really been my style in practice. I'd usually rather just build out and display my set and do my thing and I generally just post up the coins. But I'll probably only get these back about a month before the cut-off anyway. Which isn't going to leave a huge time gap for someone to react to the move anyway. Of course, if the grades aren't all that then it just becomes moot.

I did manage this last week to print the label and mail off that large, mixed submission to NGC for grading. I decided just to use Priority Mail and let the carrier pick it up from my front door - hopefully they don't give me cause to regret that, but it seems unlikely. In the interim things have gotten a little more interesting and there's slightly more riding on that submission now. I noticed a week or so ago that a new set had knocked my Venezuelan type set down to #2 in the category. That person didn't have a complete set at the time and they were barely ahead of me but now they've brought their set up to 100% complete. There are 6 holes that I need to fill in that set. All 6 will be filled by this submission I've just sent in. But, looking at the point spread, I need to pull mostly MS66s and MS67s on the new coins to pass the new guy up again - some MS68s or another MS69 would be welcome. If they're out there I might also consider buying a couple pre-graded coins if they'd help bump me up just a little - I have some spending money set aside and I am willing to maybe deploy a little of that to retain the top spot for that set this year. Unless all the grades on those coins come back horrible and low it's going to be a tight race with a narrow gap between us once I add those new coins in. Though there will definitely be a limit on how far I'm going to be willing to go on it. I'm not going to continue buying up more of these same coins and submitting them in hopes of high grades when I find a really good one, for example. Part of the problem there is, I've built this set, I've had my fun building it, and I know I'll have more fun in the long-term building and researching something new than fighting over this category. But I will try to defend the title on a category - especially for a set I put so much time into and which won a major award. And on that note, no matter who takes #1 this year, I'm pretty sure my set still wins on presentation. This reminds me of something Mike said a few years ago now about the Zimbabwe set and my thoughts at the time about it possibly being unseated. The Zimbabwe set and it the 500 Lire set I'm building for my wife (and about to bring to 100%, I think, with this submission), remain effectively unchallenged. I guess we'll see if that changes. I DID go ahead and include a new $10 coin for the Zimbabwe set in this new submission. I don't think the new coin is going to get a great grade, but I do think it would be very nice if it could take some low MS grade (even an MS61) and bump out the current AU58 in the set. That and that $25 coin remain some of the few really weak points in that set. But finding nice examples of those coins has proven oddly difficult - and I've tried. I'm also not thinking the grades on the 1995, 2000, 2001 500 Lire coins will be great either, but there weren't many of those made in the first place, and they're a pain in the butt to get, so I'll consider it a win just to fill in those gaps for now. We'll see how it all comes out. World Modern turnaround times are still sitting at about 9 weeks so I may not know grades on those coins until Mid-September. I've been busy at work lately, which is good in some ways - paid work is job security. But I'm going to have to try to start shifting some focus and time soon into building out the structure of the Argentinian Sets I want to build. I'm not terribly concerned about the 500L coins or the Venezuelan coins in the submission. Those will be easy for me to build out and incorporate into the structure I've already built for those sets. The turtle coins are probably just going to sit for now. I think that thematic set is going to have to reach a certain critical mass in terms of coin count before it makes sets to build something out in the registry for it.

When I was growing up my mother started (but failed to finish) a 2nd Master's degree. She would often make the joke that she "could have been a professional student" - meaning she loved being in classes and learning things like that - mostly about history. Having reached my mid-30s, having earned my PhD, my 3rd and terminal degree, and gone on to hobbies that involve a lot of reading and writing, I can honestly say that I like learning - but I do not like homework, and so I don't like being a student. I'll be just fine if I never have to take another written test in my life. I'm just fine googling things and learning for free and not paying tuition. The older I get, the stranger I find my mother's statement. Anyway... My membership renewed about 2 weeks ago and I have my ~35 coin submission ready to go. I just need to seal it up and put it in the mail. I'm debating on if I really want to go through the effort to take it to the PO and send it registered or if I want to just take the risk and mail it Priority Express. This submission is going to be quite a mix as it tries to 1) Finish the 500L set, 2) Finish the Venezuela set, 3) Build / start 2 Argentine sets, and 4) submit a bunch of turtle coins I found that are going to start what may or may not be formalized as a turtle themed custom set for Ben. I may have some pictures to post of the turtle coins I've been picking up down the line. I just haven't found a convenient time to try to snap shots of them and what time I have had as been acquiring and selecting the last few coins and getting the submission ready to go.

Some / a lot of what I have is from stuff on articles in places like Bloomberg and Reuters, but depending on what source you check the list of default years (and the absolute number of defaults) seems to be a bit different, and I think it might partially come down to some sites/sources counting partial defaults vs total defaults. It's really something I've only just barely started looking into and I need to read a lot more about it I think. Yeah. Totally forgot to list the Peso ley when I was typing that out and you can see the gap in the dates in my list. That confederation of provinces sounds a lot like the US for a while there with state banks and state currencies, not long before that same period (early 1800s for the US).

You may be dead to me for this opinion.

Well, I wasn't planning to submit this batch of coins until my membership renewed and I got my additional $150 credit on June 12th... The problem with this is that not having coins graded that I can pop into a set and not having a public set I can actually build has proven ... demotivating... when it comes to my research and writing efforts. It simply isn't as fun or as satisfying to work on a Word file with no pictures. So I've found myself pulled in other directions recently. But I'm still confident I can probably get something good together before November. Probably. Another problem I've been grappling with however is just getting some of the coins I've ordered. I've ordered some coins for the Venezuela set and the Italian 500 Lire set from different dealers in Europe and both sets of coins have not arrived. I've had to put in "Item not received" tickets on these, getting my money back in one instance and not in another. So, this is probably going to force me to just leave a hole in the Venezuela set for now and to just go with what I have on the 500 Lire coins. On an unrelated note, I've been experimenting with Miniature painting recently and Ben got into it with me a little. I'll resist the urge to spam pictures on this. Much like with the coin collecting, I find that he unsurprisingly lacks my patience. He'll declare himself done with a miniature in 30-45 minutes but I'll work on one thing for more than one session, applying more than one coat of paint, and spend a couple of hours total on each mini. But it's fun to work on these and like me he likes using the same magnifying lamp that's been seeing use as we pick coins for grading. I still need to find / buy / pick out some additional coins to grade when that submission goes in just to round it out. Given that we're in mid-May I should probably get on that... probably. Or I may just end up submitting what I have or just throwing some more random stuff in.

I thought I'd post an update on the recent journal on the 20 Bolivar coin. I did ultimately decide to buy an MS65 1930 10 Bolivar coin to go with it and I got the coins imaged a while ago when I had them both in hand. The nice thing about these two is that they slot into that Reform coinage type set that ends at 2005, along with my pre-BsF Venezuelan coins. So I didn't have to make separate sets for one or both of these like I have for so many other small European gold coins I've collected. Adding these also moved me from 25th place, briefly to 9th, before going down to 10th. So not quite as low there anymroe. ' A feature of these that I find quite interesting is that they do not say 10 Bolivars or 20 Bolivars. They give the weight of the coin and the purity of the gold. This goes nicely in line with the theme and my thinking on this unofficial type set I've been building - these coins come from a time, barely a century ago, when gold was the one true currency of the world, and all other currencies where just different ways of expressing weights of gold / agw. I've been told that an Argentinian type set that I asked for will be created soon, and I've been slowly working on building out a submission to send it that will hopefully lead to the first competitive sets in 2 Argentinian categories - one made for my request. And these two sets are going to form the two parts of my new project "Brought forth with pain," which are going to focus on the Argentinian battles with debt that have taken them through 8-9 defaults (depending on who you ask/what source you use) and about 5-6 currencies since about 1807. My collection and my project is going to focus on the last 2 of these currencies - the ones relevant to my lifespan and which are the easiest to collect - the Austral (1985-1991), Peso Convertible (1992-Date). My rough plan for now is for the Austral set to discuss the three older periods of debt crisis / currency crisis, and for the Peso Convertible set to deal with just the more recent troubles including the debt crisis that started around 2001, which has continued with related ups and downs for the last 20 years. Like with "Gradually, then Suddenly," there's a quote here that's going to be the theme of the set essentially - “Debts are like children – begot with pleasure but brought forth with pain.” - Moliere Argentina has, at least with what I've seen so far, generally been a country with a lot of resources and a lot going for it, but they'll get into debt in good times - begot in pleasure - and then the debt becomes supportable in bad times - when a war starts or when global commodity prices tank, or both. It's also interesting to me that, while Argentina is a former Spanish colony, it is actually their interactions with the UK and the United States, as the holders of the global reserve currencies, and the banks in those countries, that have bedeviled the country the most. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I think it'll be an interesting story to read more about and find a way to write about and structure a narrative around the coins. While there is absolutely not a 1:1 correlation, you can see how historically a debt crisis lead to an inflationary crisis that lead to the death of the currency and a new national currency. The Real survived the default in 1827. The Peso Moneda Nacional survived the defaults in 1890, 1951, and 1956. But you see the default in 1982 followed by a new currency in 1983 and 1985 and the default in 1989 helped crash the Austral, leading to the Peso Convertible, which, after 20 years of trouble, seems to be enterign a bit of a death spiral. List of Defaults: · 1827 · 1890 · 1951 · 1956 · 1982 · 1989 · 2001 · 2014 · 2019-23 List of Currencies: · Real (1813-1881) · Peso Moneda Nacional (1881-1969) · Peso Argentino (1983-1985) · Austral (1985-1991) · Peso Convertible (1992-Date) I guess I need to stop using Venezuela going forward and make a new category for posts about Argentina.

My statement was more focused on the idea of having good pictures/ the best pictures of the coins you can make and generally investing effort in the presentation that reflects, essentially, "pride of place." If you wanted to go further - a set that is 90% complete except for 1 or 2 rare coins losing to a set that is 25% complete that has that rare coin(s) and others in high grade? The points system of the registry, for better or worse, privileges key dates and high grades by design because this helps encourage/ drive demand for high grades and top pops. That's inevitably going to lead to some outcomes that some of us consider not ideal. I just hope and wish that the 25% complete set gives us good pictures of those high grade coins - sadly, they usually don't.

Thanks! Hopefully it'll prove difficult to challenge for a couple of years.

Some 16 years into this journey I find that I do far far better with type sets and mint/year sets where-in every coin is different than with date sets where every coin is more or less the same. Where I have had success with date sets it is with series with short runs - 15 years seems to be about my limit. My Zimbawe and Venezuelan sets - my main claims to fame this decade - are both type sets. These Rhodesian sets are manageable for me at only 5-7 issues.

So I'm probably going to come off like a bit of a "super judger" (as my wife puts it) while also preaching to the choir a bit, but I wanted to post about the work I've been doing on my Half Cent set recently. I said recently that my wife gave me a 1955 Rhodesian Half Cent, following up on the 1957 and 1958 she'd given me at Christmas, buying things I'd put on my watch list. Putting this coin in my set put it in the #1 spot in the category. And so, it was a #1 ranked set for me - with none of my own photos, just NGC photos, no set banner image, no set description and no coin descriptions. This happened in large part because I hadn't been focusing on this - I'd been focusing on buying and working on coins for another set that I'm also researching at the moment and I'm going to build it out as a phase 3 to what I've done with Zimbabwe and Venezuela. But then this new set snuck up on me, going from 20% complete and rank 5 to 80% complete and rank 1, driven completely by my wife, who knew I liked them and had heard me talking about them. But once it was #1, I really felt a need to table some of the other stuff for a while, get pictures of these, and build out a presentation for the set. Because - I really think, if you made a #1 ranked set, you should make it worth looking at and fun to look at if you're at all able too - no shade intended at those that can't get a good photo of a coin, perhaps just because they don't have the equipment. But it is just so much nicer to click on a #1 ranked, 100% complete set and see gorgeous, lustrous, detailed, close-up photos. And I love that NGC made it easy to pop-in their verification photos... but that's photos are just not as good as what many of us can produce and they often do not do a good job of showing off the coin. Those photos are produced in a quick, generic, assembly line kind of way and you're not going to get the best images of a particular coin unless you're taking your time with each coin - something NGC just can't afford to do unless you're paying them an extra fee for their high-end photos. And so, that's what I've done and built and at this point the set presentation is more or less finished and built. I have at least 1 more coin description to get to, as I'm about to get to. Getting the 1955 meant I only had one more coin - the 1956 - left to get to complete the set. So getting that coin moved up my priority list in a big way after the 14th of last month. As I started looking into building a presentation for the set, one of the things I like to look at and reference is the mintage for each year. And that brought something to my attention - the 1956, the only coin I hadn't acquired, the only coin I hadn't even really seen for sale, is also the lowest mintage year with only 480,000 made that year. The next lowest had 720,000 made - 50% more - and all the other years were in the 1-2.5 million range. And, coincidentally, as I was looking at all of this and figuring all this out, a seller I've bought several of these Rhodesian coins from listed a 1956 in MS65RB. For reference, there are no coins at MS66 or above presently, there's a single MS65RD graded by NGC and only about 3 MS65RBs. So, this was one of the better NGC-graded examples. So I immediately wanted that coin, and I have some hobby money saved up and I was ready to bid aggressively to get it, since it was an auction. Because, I'm not sure how long I might have to wait to see another one this good - maybe not long, maybe quite a while. Turns out I didn't need to worry - no one else bid and no one fought me for it. But the set is now complete. I won the coin last weekend, and it arrived on Wednesday. I took some time last night to get pictures taken and edited to go with the pictures I took of the others last week. And so, here it is. I just need to get that last description finished. And so the next post will probably focus on what I've been working on now that this is done.

For Argentina, we currently have the following: Would it be possible to get "Type Set, 1992-Date, Circulation Issue?"

Back in October I mentioned that I was getting the green light to order another of my small Gold coins because of a mixture of money coming in from a bit of OT and a few other sources and I said at the time that I’d probably order a Venezuelan Gold 20 Bolivar from the early 20th century / pre-WWI era. Well… 5 months later, I finally ordered it. I was holding off for the longest time because we were simultaneously spending a fair bit of money on things we needed for the house, we were spending a lot on Christmas, and we also had some medical costs and upcoming Vacation costs. We got past most of that, and then my wife changed jobs and got a big raise, so I was finally feeling very happy with the finances as we came out the other side of all that spending… and then it was time for us to go on our vacation, and I didn’t want to order the coin in the run-up to the trip because I didn’t want an expensive coin arriving while we were on a trip. We just went on the trip and got back on the 5th. So… having waited a few more days, waiting for the billing cycle on the credit card to close and therefore locking the CC company into giving me a free 30 day loan, I pulled the trigger on the coin. Our personal finances and making sure that we always maintain very healthy cash levels was only part of it. I’m being honest the coin was a little more on the expensive side – usually I’m buying things more in the $550-600 range and this one was $675. So I had been hoping that maybe another seller would list a similar coin to the 1911 MS64 I was looking at for a better price. I’d also looked into other coins and other options, trying to see if there was something else I wanted in the form of a small world gold coin that I felt was priced somewhat more favorably. But… it had been 5 months, and the price hadn’t come down, no others had come up for sale at comparable grades from reputable / established sellers, and I hadn’t seen or come up with anything else I’d rather get… So I decided to pull the trigger on it. If I’m being honest, I decided it was time in at least in small part because my wife had turned it into a running gag whereby every time it came up she’d poke fun at me and imply that I was just going to waffle forever and talk about it forever and never actually buy the thing. When the wife is actively poking fun of and ridiculing your inaction, I guess it’s time to do something to shut her up. I sat down in bed with the laptop and ordered it right in front of her while she faked protests about how I was ruining the joke and now she’d have to find something new to tease me about. “Exactly! That’s the whole point!” In the course of looking for this, I had looked at and also seriously considered getting one of the 1930 Gold 10 Bolivar coins. I had considered getting that and one other small thing and having two smaller gold coins – maybe to pair with my Swiss 10 Franc – instead of 1 slightly larger one. But, clearly I decided against that. However, in the course of looking at that I was curious about the fact that I was ONLY seeing the 10 Bolivar from 1930 and I wasn’t seeing it from any other dates like I had the 20 Bolivar. After looking into it, the 10 Bolivar was a 1-year coin that was minted to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Death of Simon Bolivar – his death, not his birth. It was a 1-year circulating commemorative of which only 500,000 were made and only 10% of these were released to the public. The other 450,000 were kept in the Central Bank’s Reserves and partially released to investors. However, because it was a “circulating commemorative” and not a “commemorative” or a bullion issue, and because mintage of the 20 Bolivar stopped in 1912 – before / at the start of the first World War – I think this makes the Gold 10 Bolivar the last gold coin that Venezuela struck for circulation. I stopped spending most of my hobby money and stopped looking at eBay for the most part around October or November because I didn’t want to spoil any surprises from my wife. I’m glad I did. However, this means I have been hoarding my collecting budget for several months and I have bit of a wad – which is more than enough to pick up a MS65 10 Bolivar to go with the 20 Bolivar, and I may well do just that. Where they exist (because they don’t for Zimbabwe, at least, not when it was called Zimbabwe), I like having these old gold coins to hold next to the more modern coins from the same country. This ties back to my interest in collections on Hyperinflation and currency debasement and devaluation. I think it’s very cool to be able to hold up an Italian Gold 20 Lire from 1885 and a Brass Italian 200 Lire from 1986 and think about how the currency, it’s value, and its representation changed it 100 years. It’s fun to be able to hold and look at a Venezuelan Gold 20 Bolivar or a 10 Bolivar from 1930 from 1911 next to a steel-core 10 Bolivar from 2004, just before the first redenomination (and the switch to the Bolivar Fuerte) in 2007. Pairing them together can just make for some awesome tangible expressions of the change and what was lost in that 100 years and I hope to be able to show and talk to Ben and Sam about these things in the years to come. In my recent silence I feel like a duck on the pond - you're not seeing much from me right now, but my feet are working under the surface. I hope to have more to share soon, but this entry is enough for today.

In fairness to NGC I feel the need to correct myself, the 2021 Eagle was an MS70.

"Overall Achievement" is given to the collector and when they win all of their sets get that "Overall Achievement" ribbon / tag. If you're looking to win for a particular set (which I totally think you could do with something like this), I think you're aiming for a "Best Presented," as I don't think you'd win a "Best US" or "Best World" or "Best Modern" or anything like that with a label collecting set (totally not dinging the set, just a commentary on the types of sets that normally get those awards). However, if you end up collecting enough of these odd-ball sets, NGC might give you an "Overall Achievement" as a collector for all of them / all of your projects / collecting accomplishments - completely subject to the judges' tastes and feelings. I agree with you though in that it's about doing what you want and having fun - I've joked that my Zimbabwe Type set may forever be #1 just because I'm probably the only one crazy enough to "waste" over $1000 and hundreds of hours building it. Same thing for my 500 Lire set and maybe my Venezuelan coin set now. But I agree with the others that anything linked to NGC registry points is always a risky gamble because points change all the time - sometimes because people request it, sometimes because NGC reviews them on their own periodically, sometimes because NGC has a policy change and something that was 0 points or non-competitive isn't anymore.

Started with the 2020 awards like Mike said (which were sent in early 2021). The 2020 awards came with a S-mint Morgan from the 1880s in MS64. The 2021 awards had a 2021 American Silver Eagle in MS69 (IIRC, haven't looked at it recently but I don't think it was an MS70). And now the 2022 awards had a Common-Date Peace Dollar in MS64.