Fenntucky Mike

Oh yeah! It's a less desirable, less valuable note that earns about 5% of the points of the other if the label is correct but PMG made a mistake! Let's pile on and act like some data-entry person at PMG hitting a instead of b makes this very common note somehow more valuable. Never mind that the note is worth about $20-25 on a good day usually. I guess there's a chance that there are slab / holder collectors out there that would like it but I have no interest personally.
A true 48a, with an AA prefix I might add.

A type B, from the same AW prefix run that the error label note comes from.

Ya know, if my prattling-on encouraged someone to dump a couple of G's in the span of 2 months just for the joy and pleasure of hammering me into the dirt on rankings, I'll take that compliment.  
I don't talk about this part much but, part of my motivation in building "Gradually, Then Suddenly" was that I really liked this series and found the history interesting but when I brought them up a couple of times on the NGC side a few people kinda dumped on them and dismissed them as "just big numbers," etc (A quote that was in my description for a while there at least, it torqued me off so bad...  Anyway...) That set was created, in my head anyway, to show just how cool and interesting that set, the series and the history could be and prove them all wrong. I think I succeeded.  

Very nice! 

Wow! That's disappointing. 
Was the estimated turnaround 62 days when you submitted, what has customer service said?

Hmm. Oh yeah, I hadn't noticed. They typically started the clock about a month ahead of the cut off.
I kind of liked the countdown clock, made it seem more urgent/exciting.

Ha! No! One 100-note project is enough for now! I picked the Venezuelan notes specifically because it was a shorter set and I could do just the Fuertes and expand into the Soberanos when I wanted to. Maybe one of these days I'll look through your galleries for some particularly attractive ones to hunt for or just see if you have graded spares you want to dump. 😆
I do however like the increase in participation that I've been seeing in several of the Zimbabwe categories though and it is sometimes fun to think that, as with you, my work and my writing might be helping to drive some of it. It's nice to see that my 4th dollar set(s) won't be alone anymore. One thing I always find interesting is the people like you and Holly that focus on the 4-6 note short sets of Millions, Billions and Trillions vs the people that open up in the 3rd Dollar P-65 to P-91 set. I'm one of the few that has sets it both it seems.

Yeah... Not happening for me either. I think I'd think about it if it got to $200.
Aww! I love the P-86. It has a good look. I like the colors and it has a special place in my heart because it's part of the story with the P-89 and my wife's "Billions" and "Trillions" confusion.
Since my wife did me the favor of getting me a new, higher grade P-89 I think I'm going to be forced, at some point, to upgrade my P-83 and P-85 and remove the rest of those old, lower grade (Hahahah, 65 EPQ is "lower grade") notes I picked up in late 2015. As the number of holes in my signature set is shrinking towards zero its getting more tempting to circle back and beef up some of the weaker notes and keep the 3rd dollar set competitive. When I got some of those in 2015 I was just picking up some of the higher denom notes for giggles and I wasn't thinking this set would turn into what it has become.

Yes, lowball!  
That should be an easy one to add and not disrupt the current registry structure.
Fr# is another good one.

Serial number and seals were printed simultaneously during normal production.  At the end the numbering head was lifted and a few sheets were printed with just the seals (no serial numbers).  These sheets were for any make up sheets  to replace damaged or otherwise unsuitable notes.  The serial numbers for make up sheets were done on separate 'paging' machines, one serial number at a time.  The operator basically eyeballed it and many times they were dead on.  We know this because one diagnostic for the paging machine is any C position note--the C is quite different from the C on the production numbering machines.  The Atlanta note is a replacement, it has just about perfect serial number positioning, but from the non-standard C's, it has to be a replacement.  The other diagnostic is the numbers looked rubber-stamped and tend to be mis-formed a little and sometimes there's ink splatter.
Some production runs will have a tilt to the serial number, but the diagnostics I show above on the Pittsburgh note stay the same (Right SN 10 mm above seal and line thru center of seals goes thru left side of 4th numeral, 28 mm from bottom of left SN to bottom of right SN).  So you can see on the Pittsburgh note different tilts, right SN too close to seal and line goes through the right side (not left).  I measured 28 mm and 10 mm from a $10 in hand and found HE TREASUR is 10 mm and SECURED BY UNITED STATES BOND (Half of the D) is 28 mm.  So I just use the picture of the note and MS Paint to cut and rotate those elements as my calibrated 'yard-sticks'.  Doesn't matter the size of the Pic, if I cut those elements out of the pic, they represent 10 and 28 mm, respectively.  [NOTE:  you need different elements for $5s and $20s to use as your 'yard sticks']
So, tilt is an indicator, but a lot of production run notes have a tilt.  The bottoms of the 0s just to the right of the 6 look incomplete and the Ds are less than perfect.  To say it looks rubber stamped, I need the note in hand to best make that call.  I think I see a tiny bit of splatter of ink, but you might see that much splatter on a normal production run note as well.  
Happy to advise on your NBNs.  Let me know what you have.  Sheik or I can probably tell you what you've got.
Below, Atlanta is a replacement, Merchantville has the normal Cs which bow inward at the tips.  The Atlanta note is in Sarasota with my Large Pittsburgh (252) note.  They want to come home so badly!

Oh totally, but I think you will be waiting unless I surprise myself because upgrading that set isn't my highest priority even for note collecting right now
One of my uncles once got a box with a brick. Under the brick was a new wallet with a $50 bill. I once got the box to an alarm clock. It was stuffed with paper and had a $50 gift card inside it. So we do stuff like this. I once had Ben show up on mother's day with a shirt that said, "Happy mother's day. I'm your present. Dad says you're welcome." 😆

Delayed gratification is a bi^ch but I do try my best. Your dilemma describes the pain of collecting to all of us very well. But, every time I have delayed that gratification and saved the shillings for that one beauty, I never, ever have buyer's remorse. I look back 3 years later and say, I loved that note for a reason, and I am so glad I waited and pounced. That's my 2 shillings!

I can't make journals right now and I'm getting errors when I try to update my note descriptions, but I'm working on a major re-work / update to my New ZWD set to factor in current events (and make note of the Sep 2019 death of Mugabe). I have the following written up in my master Word file and i thought I'd share:
 
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe announced in mid-May 2020 that new $10 and $20 bank notes would be released at the end of May and the first week of June, respectively. A Boeing 747 arrived in Harare from Leipzig Germany on the morning of May 14th 2020 and unloaded 66 tons of bank notes – think about that! 66 tons of cash! While the RBZ doesn’t disclose who does their printing, it is speculated, based on this, that the Leipzig Branch of Munich’s Giesecke & Devrient is making these notes for the RBZ. An “official request” from the German government compelled the firm to stop making banknotes for Zimbabwe in 2008, but the company has been doing printing for the country since 1965, when it was still Rhodesia. 
 
Inflation (in ZWD) reached 785.55% in May 2020, according to official statistics released by Zimstats.  
 
The government stopped trading on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE) on June 29th in a move geared towards protecting the currency – which was still taking a beating and described as being “in free fall.” The closure lasted for more than a month and trading did not resume until August 3rd.  
 
In late June 2020 the government increased the salaries of civil servants by 50% and gave them a “Covid-19 Allowance of US$75 (I think this is monthly). Yes – the allowance they were paying to these government workers was in US dollars, not local currency. Even if you use the official exchange rates (75 ZWD to US$1), the salary for these workers is only US$40, meaning that this “allowance” is worth more than their salaries. If you use unofficial rates their pay would be much lower in US dollar terms. Government pensioners were to receive a US$30 monthly Covid-19 allowance, tax-free. 
 
Officials have called the measures “transitory” and blamed it all on Covid-19 – not their fault, of course. A member of the central bank’s monetary policy committee, Eddie Cross, called the announcement “crazy,” and said he didn’t even think the country had enough US dollars / money in the bank to pay for it. He also called it "retrogressive" as it violated a “dedollarisation” program which was already facing resistance. Prior to this, the country had already started paying mine workers in US dollars and was now expanding this to the largest group of workers in the country. Cross believed this would lead private workers to demand the same. Jonathan Chew of Imara Asset Management Zimbabwe said the current multiple exchange rate system might be able to limp along a while longer but that this would ultimately lead to a “redollarisation” of the economy (a return to using the US dollar as the de facto medium of exchange and currency of the country). 

Haha, awesome! 
Glad they included the Bond Notes, that made the most sense to me as well.
Enjoy the #1 set while it lasts. JK. When I do enter my set, in the descriptions I'm just going to write **See the Pittman Family Zimbabwe Dollars Reborn set for descriptions.**, I'll never be able to top them.
Nice to see they fixed the typo in the Set Type description, although Royal Bank of Zimbabwe does have a nice ring to it.

Being number 1 with 160 points is an achievement, no doubt about it. Don't worry about the wife, mine quit speaking to me years ago. She just grunts and snorts when she hands over the cardboard envelope that we both know what the contents are (once she has doused it in disinfectant). Funny how she checks the serial numbers of all her notes and gets excited when she spots a star note. She wasn't too thrilled when I created a note from her home state.  

Now I want a descending pairs SN :-)  

Ha! I wish I had duplicates! I wish I had the budget for a lot of duplicates! This set is so dang huge, if I was sinking a lot of money into duplicates and upgrades right now I'd be in trouble with the misses.
One of the few things I'd count as an absolute duplicate is a P-98 that I wouldn't want to give up because my two P-98s are sequential serial numbers.

Great note, love those NBN value back's. Let us know how she grades. Do you think it will grade VF and/or receive an EPQ designation?

Note to self.
Tried it and it was disturbing, it looks even worse when shrunken down. Some creepy, shrunken, floating head. Weird.  Went back to the old avatar.

Yeah. It's usually not too hard to get 68's for a lot of things for not much more than the cost of grading.
Of course, my Zimbabwe set leans on a lot of bulk-graded 66 EPQs that I got at bargain prices, but I'm usually pretty happy to have a 66 EPQ. I'll take a 67 EPQ or 68 EPQ if I can get it for a reasonable price. The other thing I find is that, once I have a 66 or a 67 - especially with a 67 - it's hard to convince myself to drop money on an "upgrade," even when one pops up at a good price. I am giving some thought to going back and swapping out some of the few 65 EPQs I have later on though.
Side note but I think there is a 68 EPQ for that note up for sale right now if you're willing to drop about $50-60 for it. There's a 68 EPQ of the new $10 notes that I think I'm going to go after. I got handed my head on an auction for a P-77 I wanted yesterday so maybe I'll win this new note instead.

Wow. Yup. I had to go looking when I saw that. I'd seen a 69 but not that 70. That's intense. Puts my 67 EPQ to shame I guess but... I'm okay with a 67. I think I'm going to have to watch that one just to see how much it sells for though. I think there was a 70 EPQ for the 100 Trillion note that someone actually agreed to pay about $12,350 for. I.... struggle to comprehend that price for a condition rarity of a note that is common as sand on the beach.
The 69s and 70s are impressive when they show up and I've seen 70s appear for several pick#s in the series at this point. If anyone could ever pull together a set of them one day that would be crazy impressive and they'd have mad-props from me, but I don't think that will be me - not any time soon. Probably not this decade. I think if I do start trying to upgrade any of my existing notes any time soon my wife is liable to get rather cranky with me.
I am rather pleased / proud of the set I've put together on the whole though with a fair number of 68 EPQs now and one solitary 69 EPQ. This set is just so dang big that just trying to complete it in reasonably good grades just gets hard.
I think there might be a bit of a lag / time delay before things make it to the pop report and this seller keeps submitting new notes for grading.

Note to self.
I may have to make that jumbled up portrait my new avatar.

When a note is graded before they have a pick number for it they write "Pick unlisted" on the label of the holder and it's listed as "VENUNL$$$$$" - "Venezuela Unlisted (Denomination)." My 2019 Zimbabwe notes are "ZIMUNL2a" and "ZIMUNL5a."

Nice,
Nothing like striking while the iron is hot and being able to nearly complete a graded set in a days time. High grades and reasonable prices no less, can't beat that. 
Sounds like the Venezuelan Bolivars were a perfect choice for your next set.

I hear ya. I do.
My 4 year old had trouble understanding recently that my laptop - which was bought 3 months after his birth - did not have a touchscreen like his tablet and you have to use the keyboard and mouse.
I am soon to be 34 years old and I have received my paycheck as a physical check precisely 1 time in the ~16 years of my working life. When I was on unemployment they mailed me a pre-paid debit card and they just loaded my benefits onto the card every 2 weeks.