I sent off a second submission of specimen notes to PMG and I have to say that the team at PMG did a fantastic job as the notes arrived just prior to hurricane Ian and were sent back shortly after Ian passed. Even though PMG had to shut down due to Ian, the submission was processed well under the stated turnaround time. Amazing job! 

Unlike my first submission, in which all the notes straight graded, it seems that I had a few problem notes in my second, one I knew of and two I didn't. In addition to the low points there were also some "high notes" which are worthy of celebrating. I'll go through all the notes in the submission with some short comments on each, and a dedicated Journal entry on one note to be forthcoming. 

Right off the bat the first note in the submission was body-bagged.  It was labeled as QA (Questionable Authenticity).  I have a request into PMG to see if there were any graders notes for this one and I'm also waiting for two more of these notes to arrive from sellers in the U.K. and the Czech Republic which I recently picked up. If you haven't already guessed I'll be writing about this one later once I have more info, for now it's a note that PMG won't encapsulate. Ouch! I was not charged the grading fee for this note. 

Next up was a note that finished out the Control Coupon registry set that PMG has. It's always a good feeling to finish out a set!  I'll have more on these notes later and what I think constitutes a complete set, including varieties. Hopefully I'll get PMG to agree to adding a few, unlisted at the moment, varieties and expand that set even further. The back of the note is of the same design as the note above but in green ink and with the numerical denomination 50.

Notes 3-5 were all additions to my 1991-'95 specimen set, specifically the 2nd through 5 series coupons, all three received numerical grades in the range I expected with two being towards the high end and one being graded 68 EPQ! Sweet!  There was one slight disappointment in this group though, the 1994 100,000 Karbovantsiv note came up short and did not receive the EPQ designation.  It's a tough note to find and the condition wasn't on par with the others, but I was hoping to squeeze out an EPQ designation on this one. It's the only note in the set without exceptional paper quality, I'll be keeping my eye out for another example, but it will probably be a long while before this note pops up again. 

Pick # 97s2 has the same back design as the note above, 96s3.

Now this is one sweet note, one of the very few Ukrainian specimen notes with the specimen overprint on only one side. Pick 98s2 in my set is also graded 68 EPQ making a matching set, quality wise, for me.

The rest of the specimen notes are denominated in Hryvnia and are the first such notes I've submitted. Again, there is some highs and lows in here but nothing as dramatic as the first five notes above. All in all not bad, but I need to pay more attention to what I send in for grading. Gotta hone my skills a bit more.

Not a great result on this one but more are easily had and are relatively inexpensive.

Note #7, not too bad. 

Notes 8 & 9 are duplicates, the note with the "Tears" annotation was a little disappointing but I should have caught that one. Serves me right for being in a hurry and not examining the notes further prior to submitting. Live and learn.

Notes 10 & 11 are of the same series but different signature varieties. The grades are on par with the rest of the Hryvnia denominations.

Finally a couple of 20 Hryven notes from the same series with signature/date varieties.

All in all, not bad results and it'll be interesting to see what PMG says about the first note, that is if they say anything, but if I could change one grade it would be to give P97s2 an EPQ designation. It really bugs me to see all the EPQ notes in that set and then run into this one none EPQ note, it makes the set feel unbalanced.  I'll just have to live with it for now. On another note, I managed to find a 100 Karbovantsiv specimen note to bring me closer to finishing out the 2nd - 5th coupon series notes and I'm contemplating sending in some of my older Ukrainian notes to fill out the front half of my type set. We'll see when I get around to that though as I'd like to see some changes made and I'm not sure PMG is going to agree with me on them, probably not.