Written 7/30

The third of four Shahiv banknotes was ending today, the 40 Shahiv banknote, and as planed I would place a lowball bid to hedge against the possibility of me being incorrect in using the Population Reports to determine the seller has another 40 Shahiv banknote that they will post soon after the auctions for the first set end. The bidding started at $43, the note was graded Choice Very Fine 35 by PMG, no EPQ designation, and no bids had been placed as of yet. Since the auction was ending early afternoon I decided to go with a lowball snipe bid, auctions ending during the day give me the rare opportunity to snipe.  As the clock wound down I placed my bid and won with no other competing bids.  I have a feeling that having no EPQ designation may have had something to do with this or have others came to the same conclusion as me? Tracking the population reports or worse yet tracking my updates.  As stated before this note has a total population of three and the note for auction had the lowest grade of the three, and was stated in the auction item description (1/2). One collector of two, whom I consider competition in acquiring Ukrainian banknotes, already had this denomination in a higher grade and the other is a very careful shopper typically only going for the highest quality.  That makes the most sense for the lack of competition on this note as there is really only three individuals typically interested in Ukrainian notes and/or where I see any activity in the PMG registry. 

Pictures are from the seller.

PMG used to put postage stamp currency in an additional envelope before sealing them in the holder, I kind of liked that, it helped to keep these tiny notes from floating around inside the holder. Oh well. The note is worthy of its grade and lack thereof an EPQ designation but it's still a fun little note and fills an empty place in my collection allowing me some flexibility for the next set of Shahiv banknotes from this seller (if I'm correct) as I'm now only missing the 10 & 30 Shahiv notes of this series. Only having two of the five notes to focus on means I don't have to worry about acquiring graded examples of the others and upgrading these is just not really important or under consideration at these prices, $300 for one of these is not what I want to spend my collecting budget on. Just one more auction to go and the first set (I think) will be done. The final note is the 30 Shahiv banknote, Top Pop of three graded an Uncirculated 62 but no EPQ designation, the bidding started at $158 and there is currently one bid. So now the question is do I bid this up a little and do a Bad Bad Thing again? 

P.S.

Bidding up a note is note necessarily a bad thing, the person who REALLY wanted to win did, the seller gets a better price encouraging them to continue to submit notes or put them up for sale meaning more notes for everyone and I could weaken my competition for the next note which could be even better. Yeah, I'm feeling less bad and if I'm right about whom I was up against/bidding up, even more so. The strange thing is that I won the 40 Shahiv, two different people won the 10 & 20 and there is a fourth bidder who is currently winning the 30 Shahiv auction, is it possible I'm not just going up against my two closest rivals?