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Revenant

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Journal Entries posted by Revenant

  1. Revenant
    I hadn't realized until recently, when Dena / PMG made posts about it, that PCGS Currency had shut down. I also hadn't realized, until I read the announcement on the PCGS Currency page, that PCGS Currency wasn't run / operated by / part of Collector's Universe. If I'm being completely honest, I never really spent any time looking into PCGS currency, so I don't know if my lack of knowledge in that department was from my lack of effort or them not advertising it / publicizing it much. I never bought a PCGS currency graded note so it just never came up for me.
    The thing that's particularly interesting to me about this is, you're not seeing this shutdown reflected in listings in at least some marketplaces - eBay in particular.
    PCGS Currency graded notes are still being listed with prices / premiums that don't seem to take into account the changed status of these notes and the guarantee they maybe used to have.
    One listing I can even up even now for an PCGS Currency graded note says nothing about the shutdown / shuttering of the service. Quite the contrary - it just lists some boilerplate, copy/paste language saying:
    "On 3rd party professional graded notes: we are selling what that company says it is and not what the buyers or sellers opinion of the grade(condition of the note)  If you don't know how to grade please contact the grading company or look at their website to understand their grading standards."
    Anyone that goes to the PGCS Currency page expecting to see information about grading standards is going to be disappointed.
    Based on NGC's post, I'm sure those with high-end notes graded by PCGS Currency are mostly aware of this shake-up and are doing what they feel they need to do - that is mostly out of my depth anyway. I shop and live in a different part of the market - lower cost modern notes that are graded because I want to have them graded, not because the value of the note justifies the expense of grading them. It's going to be interesting to see the extent to which the closure of PCGS currency will be felt on this lower end portion of the market - will these already fairly low-value notes actually start trading at a discount against similar PMG graded notes?
    I'm expecting that the notes in these cases will probably stay in the PCGS currency holders and will not be crossed to PMG. Paying to crossover a rare and valuable note makes sense, but, with things like this, like my Zimbabwe notes, most of them didn't make sense to grade in the first place and it really doesn't make sense to pay more money to cross them. The value of the grading with these things is mostly in the holder and the protection that the holder conveys for long term preservation and handling. The PCGS Currency holders satisfy this need, probably to roughly the same extent as the PMG holder would.
    For what it's worth, I'm really not trying to dump on PMG graded Zimbabwe notes - I really like my set and I've been working hard to build it up. But I'm not unwilling to acknowledge facts and math - most of these notes sell for $3 raw and about $16-25 graded in the range of 66 EPQ to 68 EPQ. So, even if you get a great grade on the note, you're barely going to recover your grading and shipping costs if you try to sell the note later - at least under current market conditions. Maybe that'll change one of these days.
    Just a bit of an evening ramble I suppose, but I'll stop there for now.
  2. Revenant
    Mike and I have made quite a joke in the past of the people buying 70 EPQ Zimbabwe notes on eBay for hundreds of dollars but I got another example recently.
    Last year my wife gifted me a 68 EPQ 20 Trillion note that was a great step up from the 65 EPQ I'd had before. I think she paid about $110 for it after shipping and taxes. I was looking on eBay recently and the same note in the same grade is now available for about $50-55, in part because the same seller got more of them in that grade.
    It's quite an interesting reminder of what the risks can be when the only thing that makes a note even remotely rare or scarce is the number on the label. And it's the main reason I never really liked paying top-dollar for the highest grades when building my Zimbabwe set. I wanted a complete set of notes in really good / solid grades - usually gem uncirc grades in the 66 EPQ + range, which, in the holders especially are almost indistinguishable from 67 EPQ, 68 EPQ or 69 EPQ examples. Sure, I'm sure there are differences, but they're so subtle that I don't think most people would notice or care. Building the set this way let me do what I wanted at a budget level I was okay with, going on the assumption that I'd probably never be able to fully recover my costs if I ever had to sell. I approach building that set on the idea of being happy / okay with it if I took a total loss on it and never saw any of that money / value ever again, so I didn't have to worry or stress about future value or resale - easier to do when many of the notes I got to fill out the 2nd and 3rd dollar sets I spent $8-12 a piece getting, already graded.
    Possibly more on this later, but that set, which is now a Registry award winner, only cost about $2,000-2,500 to build. Proving that this isn't always about who has the most money to throw at the problem.
    I sometimes wonder if someone that recently came into the Zimbabwe notes registry in a big way is ever going to regret the large amount of money they dumped into their sets to get really high grades on everything in a short period of time. Maybe they have the cash and they can spend at that level and have similar feelings to mine with regard to not having to worry about ever getting that money back out of it. Personally, that would have made me cringe, based on what I can guess and infer about some of the prices they must have been paying.
    Short of winning the lottery I don't think my Zimbabwe sets are likely to ever dominate the #1 rankings again just because - short of money just becoming no object - I'm unlikely to ever spend thousands of dollars to win a slap-fight over labels and condition rarities. Still, with what it has achieved and what I still have planned, its still going to be one of the bigger and more complete Zimbabwe currency collections I've ever seen, and it's going to get a more fully realized and flushed out coin arm in the NGC Registry later this year - the coins are getting ready to be submitted. But more on that in an NGC journal later. I'm also still not completely closed to some limited upgrading when it can be done at a reasonable price point - I have some 64 EPQ and 65 EPQ hole fillers that I wouldn't mind upgrading to 67 EPQs if this can be done for more in the range of $25-35 / note.
  3. Revenant

    New Set for the Bond Notes and New Notes!!

    By Revenant,


    2019 Series Zimbabwe Dollars
    This probably has made me way way happier than it should, but I am super stoked about this:

    My new 2020 $10 note should be arriving in the mail early next week and I really can't wait to get it now! This is making me want the $20 super bad - but I'm probably going to have to wait on that because I'm working on other things and if I spend too much this month my wife may injure me.
  4. Revenant
    Most of the notes in my Zimbabwe set come to me by way of a couple of different merchants that do a lot of business and have a lot of diverse inventory for the banknotes of that country and many others. One of those two merchants is BankNoteWorld (BNW).

    One of the interesting things about buying from BNW is the fact that they send a copy of this little book with every order that includes Zimbabwe notes.

    The book has gone through at least a couple of editions that I’ve seen. The older one is thinner and doesn’t include images of the notes under UV / black light. The new edition has images of the notes viewed under UV light in order to highlight some of the security features used on notes throughout the 2nd and 3rd dollar issues.

    Because I’ve ordered from them a number of times since 2015 I’d started developing quite a collection / stockpile of these books and I ultimately sent them a message and told them to stop sending them when they filled my orders - it’s a waste of money and paper.

    The book is mostly pictures - but they’re full color pictures on good paper, which says a lot about the commitment to quality on a book they’re giving out for free. I know they’re using it to encourage people to buy the whole set and buy more notes from them but I admire the commitment to making it look and feel good.

    There is one aspect of the book that I can’t help but find disappointing though.

    There’s only one page of the whole thing that has any meaningful text or which tries to provide a narrative for the notes. That one page talks about the Bearer Checks and the Special Agro Checks of the 2nd dollar as well as the regular banknote issues of the 3rd dollar. The part of it that bugs me is that they talk about these two sets like they’re the entire story - the full set of issues made during the hyperinflation period. That’s really not true though.

    The P-11b $500 dollar note and the P-12 $1000 note were both in use during what can be considered the very first part of the hyperinflationary period. The Cargill Bearer Checks, the Traveler’s Checks, and the Bearer Check’s that span from P-13 to P-32 are all first dollar issues that are very much part of the hyperinflationary period. The 4th dollars that followed in 2009 are also rightfully part of the group.

    I know why those issues probably aren’t in the book - the merchant doesn’t have many examples of those series in their inventory. At the end of the day, the book is more of a sales document and they’re not going to spend time and money promoting something that they don’t have in stock to sell. Still, I can’t help but find it frustrating that they’ve omitted these issues and not even spared a couple of sentences to acknowledge their existence.

    It’s not exactly a definitive text on the Zimbabwe hyperinflation and its banknotes, but, again, I have to acknowledge that it is what it was meant to be, not what I’d like to see in it.

    While I haven’t done so yet, I’d love to get a copy of Philip Haslam’s “When Money Destroys Nations: How Hyperinflation Ruined Zimbabwe, How Ordinary People Survived and Warnings for Nations that Print Money.” I think that book is going to focus on the nation and the economic narrative of the event and probably not spare much attention for the Banknotes that I’ve been obsessing over, but I still think it’d be an interesting read.



  5. Revenant

    Finally scored some nice wins…

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwe Bearer Checks
    About 2 weeks ago a P-77 came up for auction. This had me super excited because it would have completed my “Millions” set and left me needing only the $10,000, P-72 to complete my 3rd dollar set… but then someone else bid at the end and the price was getting out of hand so I let it go… sadness.
    Then about a week ago a P-3 came up that would have given me a 100% complete 1st dollar set… and the bidding got so high at the end that I didn’t even bid on it…
    However, I’ve finally scored some wins that I’m very happy about and I was able to do it because I didn’t blow all of my budget and then some on those other notes.
    The first win came about 3 days ago. It is a P-21d in 67 EPQ. This gives me a complete pick set (but not a variety set) of the 3 note, 2003 bearer check series (P-21 to P-23). I’ll see when I get it entered but I think this also might just barely give me the lead in the category (by about 10 points) and give me the #1 spot for a while. Should be fun to digitally poke jeyanth7 with a stick like that. Lol

    The 2nd win came this morning and this is the one I am really happy about - and paradoxically it’s probably one of the most homely looking “notes” in the whole series - and calling it a “note” is really generous because this thing is a check. It is not a reusable, transferable, “check” with an expiration date like the “bearer checks” and “agro checks.” It is a literal, bank-issued, single use, canceled check.

    I was very excited when this popped up. When I’d asked about these previously PMG had indicated that they weren’t currently grading these and so I’d been thinking it’d be impossible to ever have these properly represented in my signature set. But this check is clearly recently graded and indicates that they’ve changed their mind and they’re willing to certify these now. I’d removed the empty slots for these from my signature set because I thought the were unfillable. I’m not going to add slots back for all of them for now. Rather, I’m going to include this as a representative piece for now and see what develops over time. On the competitive side, depending on what happens in the next few weeks, when I add this one to my set it might be the only one of these listed in the registry and anchoring a #1 ranked set or one note.
    I had been hoping to snag that P-15 for $25 unopposed - much like I won the P-21d without anyone bidding against me, but I had to fend off a sniper that bid on it with 3 seconds left on the clock. I’d been hoping to go for a 68 EPQ P-30 note tonight but I’ve decided I’m going to have to let that one go - it’s just not in the collecting budget at the moment. I’ll need to convince myself to wait a week or two before I buy anything else. That is a bit of a bummer because the P-30, with the P-21, would give me a complete denomination set of the 1st dollar bearer checks, but there is a 67 EPQ that will end in about 9 days and I may go for that instead - still a good note in a good grade while mostly honoring my agreed collecting budget.
    I've also decided for now that I'm not going to have slots for all three $50,000 issues in the 1st dollar bearer check series (P-28 to P-30) for now and I'll just add more slots as I get them. I'm pretty happy with and I think the set will feel reasonably complete if I get a P-28, P-29, or a P-30 (most likely a P-30) and I don't necessarily feel like driving myself nuts getting all three in the near term. 
    While I still have some holes I'd like to fill as I'm able, it's getting harder, and I feel like the signature set and the collection overall is getting to a pretty mature state, where it feels pretty complete and new purchases are likely to start slowing down drastically soon. But... I've been wrong about that before.

    Just thought I'd use some screen caps to show how I'm restructuring the signature set for now. The P-15 and P-21d are going to drop into adjacent slots once they arrive.

    I am very happy with how my 1st dollar collection has improved and shaped up in the last 6 months. It feels awesome.
  6. Revenant

    A P-11a!

    By Revenant,

    Somewhat to my surprise a PMG-graded P-11a popped up for sale in an eBay auction the other day and I decided to go for it.
    I say "somewhat" to my surprise because the P-11a, like many / most of these, isn't especially rare but you don't see every variety pop up having already been graded as a high uncirc grade every day. I think this is actually the first PMG-graded 11a I've seen and it's only recently been graded based on the holder.
    The auction ended at 10:15 PM Sunday night so I stayed up just a little later than normal (kids get me up early) and watched it end. I put my bid in with just a couple of minutes to go and won it - went to bed and paid when I got up this morning.

    I wouldn't have expected to be here a couple of months ago but I think I now have every variety of every pick number in the 2nd series of the 1st dollar except for the P-12a. That'll make the P-12a a priority for me if I ever see one pop up.
    Now that I have both P-5s and both P-11s and I'm starting to have more varieties in my 1st dollar series I'm thinking about making a new signature set that will be just the 1st dollars with varieties - something to showcase all of the 1st dollars and just the in one set. I love my full 1980-Date Zimbabwe signature set but I do worry some days about it seeming overwhelming now that it's up to about 90 notes and over 110 slots.
  7. Revenant
    A couple of weeks ago a pair of P-23 notes came up for sale - a P-23e and a P-23c, ending in that order, a couple of days apart from each other.
    I have not seen a lot of P-23s come up for sale over the last few years. One of the few I’ve seen offered is one that has a “Pick-Unlisted” label that was graded years ago, so you don’t know from the label what variety you’re getting and the seller wanted $200 for it - which has always and still seems insane for that note. This probably explains why it still sits unsold. Anyway…
    These new notes had starting bid prices of $29 - which was very reasonable.
    I was hoping to snag both if I could get them cheap, but I ended up having some competition for them. I decided to try to snag the P-23e and let the P-23c go for now. I ended up being glad I did. I won the P-23e for $38.88 + shipping + tax (set me back $47.50). The P-23c sold for about $75 before tax and shipping - two other people wanted that one bad, I guess.

    It is very nice to pick this one up though. This P-23e, with the P-22b I got in a lucky win earlier in the year, is finally giving me some in-roads and progress on a segment of the complete Zimbabwe series / collection that I’ve been pretty weak in up to this point.
    This note has one of the new style holders with a 15-year label. That got me thinking a little…
    The note itself is from 2003. It’s only 17 years old and it was made only 2 years before PMG got started.
    This realization got me thinking about the fact that the 2nd Dollar series was released in 2005 and 2006 and that PMG was just getting started and was a “cool new thing in the industry,” right at the time when the Zimbabwe hyperinflation and the collection craze over these notes was entering into its peak phase. PMG was only about 3-4 years old when the 100 trillion notes hit the street. This makes me wonder a little if this coincidence of timing helped power Zimbabwe into being #20 in the list of the countries with the most notes graded by PMG.
    This has my interest a little piqued to see if I might be able to get one of the 2005 dated 2nd dollar bearer checks in a holder with the 15-year label on it for my collection. I just can’t help but think that would be neat to have. I’m not sure what dollar value that novelty is going to have for me or what I’m going to be willing to shell out to make that happen but it’s definitely going to be “on my radar” now.
    Incidentally, 2005 is also the year I graduated from High School… and now I realize it has been 15 years since I graduated from High School… and… dangit… now I just feel old.
    Dang it! … I am old.
  8. Revenant
    Leading up to my birthday a couple of weeks back I became aware of a 100,000 Bolivar Fuerte (VEN-100) note coming up for sale and ending on my birthday. On the big day the note hadn’t got any bids. I showed it to my wife, and she told me to just bid on it and call it an extra birthday present if I won.
    I bid. I won unopposed and took it for $24.99 after shipping. Normally I don’t know if I would have popped on a 66 EPQ at that price but the VEN-100 is one of the more desirable notes in the set it seems – much like the 100 Trillion of the Zimbabwe notes - and I wanted to fill a hole in my set. As it is, this is one of the highest point-getting notes in my Venezuela set now.

    While I was waiting on that to come in the mail I saw a VEN-93 100 Bolivares Fuerte note come up for sale, this time in 68 EPQ. This note had a starting bid of $28.99 on it but I thought it could still be very worth it if I didn’t have many opposing bids and I got to get a great note to fill the last hole in my Fuertes set. I did end up winning it – on November 3rd, election day. The auction ended at 6 AM. I don’t know why the seller does this but they do, so I woke up to find out I’d won.

    Having won that, I say that there was a P-102a* (66 EPQ) and a P-106 (67 EPQ) up for bid ending within a few hours to a few days. They were from the same seller and the seller combines shipping, so I decided to wait and see what I could get. I snagged both for $19 each.


    They were paid for all together, but I won the auction for the P-93 first, so I think this counts as keeping my promise to finish the Fuertes set before starting on a Soberano set. The also gives me something to put into the Soberano set so now I can stop feeling guilty about bugging Ali and PMG to make a category so I could have an empty set.
    Somehow I managed to load up on all the "100" notes in rapid succession with this, which is a little funny.
    I really like the Soberanos. The Fuertes notes look nice but the Soberanos are very bright and colorful and even my wife commented on it with the VEN-106.
    Maybe more on this but the VEN-93 and the VEN-100 drive me nuts. The VEN-100 was the only one where they didn't put all the zeros on it and, with the coloring added in, the VEN-100 looks a LOT like the VEN-93. See the VEN-99 below for how the VEN-100 should have been handled:

    My Fuertes set is now complete but I don't get a 100% complete registry set out of it because PMG wants to include the old Bolivares notes that were issued after the change in government / constitution in 1998 but before the redenomination to the Bolivares Fuertes. So they're in this registry set but these notes have a different ISO currency code, they're part of a different series and look completely different. And I have no near-term interest in picking them up.
  9. Revenant
    ... always getting in a little over my head with eyes that are bigger than my wallet.
    I'm always amazed by how often it happens that I start with a simple, small idea and goal, and then I come up with this insane idea for a big project that's usually beyond my time and financial resources, and then I settle on another approach that's actually reasonable and achievable. This isn't limited to coin collecting in my life but coin and note collecting are certainly areas where this tendency is expressed.
    When I first went back to eBay to try to find a Zimbabwe 100 Trillion note I was only looking for one, ungraded, note. When I started looking around though I started seeing and wanting to collect all of them. I also started seeing some PMG graded notes and realizing that there were a lot of PMG graded notes available for not-a-lot of money -- some of them could be had in solid grades for barely more than the cost of grading. So then I was thinking about getting a graded note, and then I started thinking about getting a set of the 4 trillion+ denominated notes... and then I started thinking about getting as many of them as I could in PMG holders for a reasonable price. So the idea just kept on growing...
    I wanted the PMG graded notes for the same reason I'd wanted some PMG graded US silver certificates. I like the PMG covers -- especially the way they help protect the note from bending, folding and wear. I like holding and looking at the notes and having them in the holder makes me feel better about it - knowing that I'm not likely to damage the note. These notes aren't made of the best paper in the world from what I can tell so that's going against them to begin with.
    Wanting the full set went back to one of my original reasons for wanting the note: I'd always thought something like that would be cool to show a child one day to share that story/bit of history with them. While a single 100 trillion dollar note could be cool, having the whole set and be able to show them the run-up and how quickly it happened would help get the point across better. I think having the whole series would let the notes tell the story, rather than having 1 picture at the back of the book so to speak. By the time I was doing this shopping I knew I was actually going to have a kid soon that I could show these to -- and the prospect of showing all of these things to him, in holder that will keep him from damaging the notes for the most part, really appeals to me.
    So, long story short (too late!) I ended up ordering 5 notes from a seller that offered them graded by PMG, mostly in the 65-66 EPQ grade -- none of which were the 100 trillion dollar note I initially went into this looking for! I had more trouble finding the 100 trillion note graded by PMG in a grade I liked for a price I liked. I ultimately won an auction for a 67 EPQ a week or two later.
    So far I'm up to having about 8 of the ~27 notes in the series, with all of the trillion+ and most of the billion+ denominations acquired. I'm hoping to get away with ordering 3-5 more of the notes in the set in a couple of weeks if the wife and the budget allow.
    It'd be really great to have a complete set in PMG 65-67 EPQ -- probably mostly 66 EPQ. I don't know if I'll pull it off or not. It'll depend on the availability of notes and cash of course. I'd also like to go for a full 4th dollar set. I'm not currently planning to go after the Barer Cheque series but I guess I could change my mind later.
    To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.
  10. Revenant

    A 2009 AA Block $1 FRN

    By Revenant,


    Federal Reserve Notes
    Perhaps proving that I have no self-control or perhaps that I just lie to myself a lot, about 30 hours after saying I was going to try to not buy anything for the next 3 weeks I bought something.

    I was looking around on eBay and saw this. I'd been wanting a $1 FRN note for a while for two reasons: 1) I wanted one for the "Currency of my life" signature set I want to keep working on as time allows and 2) I wanted one for my Zimbabwe signature set.
    That 2nd one might seem fairly odd - I'll now have about 5 US FRNs in a set about Zimbabwe - but I feel like that set needs FRNs in it to cover the period from around April 2009 to 2016. This is the period after the 4th dollar was officially suspended but before the bond notes (pegged to the US dollar) were released. During this period the US dollar and Federal Reserve Notes were the defacto currency of Zimbabwe and many people / banks had accounts denominated in US dollars. There were other currencies used at the time under the "multi-currency system" but all indications I've found say that the US dollar, as the world reserve currency, was far and away the dominant one of the group.
    This note arguably is kind of a "meh" grade - it feels strange to call a 66 EPQ "meh" but I just know that 67s and 68s are quite common for modern notes. But the note was priced accordingly and at $19 it was cheap enough for me to treat it was random impulse buy. More importantly, there were two things about this note that really sold me on it. 1) It's a 2009 dated note, so its for the "right" year for the purposes of the set. 2) It's AA block - and AA is the prefix used by Zimbabwe for most of the 3rd and 4th dollars and the first series of the Bond notes and the New series notes. Unlike the 4th dollars, the new notes and bond notes have been in production and circulation long enough to have AB, AD, and BB blocks among others. I've never seen a 4th dollar with anything other than an AA prefix. Yeah, I guess there are a few ZA prefix replacement notes but that's different. If I ever found or heard of a legitimate AB prefix 4th dollar I'd be shocked half to death at this point.
    The note also happens to be relatively contemporary with the Great Financial Crisis of '08 and has the signature of Good ol' "TurboTax Tim."
    I see there being at least one more $1 FRN purchase in my future because I have a different set of wants for the "Currency of My Life" Set. While I might include this note in that set as well, I'd like to have a 1988 note from the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank - just because my wife and I were both born in Texas in 1986 and the 1988 series seems to be the first series from after we were born.
  11. Revenant

    1 Million Bolivares...

    By Revenant,


    Venezuelan Bolivares Soberanos
    My first love of hyperinflation is a bit quiet and dull lately but Venezuela is not disappointing. They've announced new 200,000, 500,000, and 1 Million Bolivar notes to be released soon.
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/hyperinflation-pushes-venezuela-to-print-1000000-bolivar-bills/ar-BB1ei8Dj
    The 1 Million Bolivar note will be the highest denomination Venezuela has ever issued - they always re-denominated the currency before they got to that number before - but it's only going to be worth about US$0.53.
    Like in Zimbabwe, the economy is becoming increasingly dollarized - I bet the anti-Washington government in Venezuela LOVES that - and the economy has shrunk in inflation adjusted terms for 7 straight years.
    At some point I suppose I need to get more serious about building a Soberano set, before it gets too far away from me.  
    This note suggests that Venezuela is not going to try to de-throne the Zimbabwean 100 Trillion note for the "most printed zeros" title, because they're just going with "1 Million."

  12. Revenant

    My Wife and This Freakin' Note.

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwe Banknotes
    So today is my bday and my wife gave me my birthday gift last night.

    This journal is going to come in two parts:
    1) Why it is freaking hilarious and kind of perfect that she got me this.
    2) Why I'm actually happy with it this time.
    So in the long ago days of January 2019 my wife was pregnant with our 2nd child and looking for a way to surprise me with something I'd love for our anniversary. It was a stressful time for us. She was in a high risk pregnancy. There was a very real risk that she'd die and that this could be the 4th and final anniversary together. So she goes on a website and sees my wishlist and buys me a 20T note. Thing is... I didn't have a 20T note on my list. I had a 20 BILLION note on my list, but who can blame her with all fhe freakin zeros, right? That note was also ungraded and it just didn't do anything for me with my already graded 65 EPQ. I felt bad at the time because she tried so hard and she was so pleased with herself but I couldn't hide my confusion when I got it. But we laughed it off, we got to return it, I bought a (much cheaper) graded 67 EPQ 20 Billion note for my set and even one or two other notes with the difference. Her getting me that note reignited my interest in this set after it had lain dormant for years after I was laid off in 2016 and that present became the launching point for what has been a 1.5 year obsession with building out this set. I've said before that building this set was a big part of how I dealt with the stress and anxiety of Sam's birth...
    And here it is again. She didn't even remember it / that it was the same note. That fact was lost in the fog of the craziness of that. It was just too funny.
    So here's why I'm happy with it this time (in addition to it just being hilarious).
    1) This note actually was on my wishlist because that old 65 EPQ was kind of an under-performer in my 3rd dollar set and I'd been thinking that the 20 Trillion would be a priority for upgrade if I ever started upgrading. This 3-point move up is pretty fantastic for what is one of the more important notes in the 3rd dollar series. Since it was a present and since I don't see myself wanting to drop big cash for a 69 EPQ I see this one staying in the set long term now.
    2) This note is in a new-gen holder and doesn't have the darker tinted plastic that the old one is in. The new note, while it isn't a "low serial number," is much lower than the old one (184955 vs 298832). The low serial (and the fact that it is a 12 year old note in a new holder in pristine condition) has me thinking that this note spent the last decade in an unbroken bundle / brick and someone must have broken a brick to cherry-pick for some gradable examples.

  14. Revenant
    PMG posted my P-3 submission as "shipped" and posted grade results today. Received on 8/3/21 and Shipped on 8/12/21.
    9 calendar days, folks. That is a turnaround.

    A 65 and a 66 are solid, especially for 1st dollar notes and very consistent with my set overall. A 67 or 68 would have been GREAT. A 63 or 64 would have disappointed me. This is kind of a literal shrug.  I looked at it and just nodded a little and was like, "Not bad."
    The seller I bought them from advertised them as "gem." A 65 or higher is gem Uncirc, so... as advertised. Can't complain about getting what you paid for, right?
    Since the cert#s are active in the system already I've already plugged them into my competitive and signature sets! I wasn't excited about getting to fill those holes at all!

    Competition-wise these additions are far from game changing but I'm still happy to see 100% on that set, and it is just going to be what it's going to be until and unless I decide to drop big-bucks for a P-3a, P-3b or P-3c to smackdown with the other 3 in the top 4.

    Of course, it would be wonderful if one day I could collect all three of those rare varieties and achieve the same thing with P-2, P-3 and P-4 that I've achieved with P-1. That would be INSANE! Such a mind-blowing achievement to me. But that's for later.
    For today, in other news, Mike was nice enough to point out to me that he's trying to "ninja" me in the Billions short-set. So this one is for you, Mike:



    A 3 point upgrade, bumping my 65 EPQ (in an old gen holder) to a new 68 EPQ. Just so you can work just a little harder, my friend. 
    I'll have to work on bumping up my 1 Billion P-83 and my50 Billion P-87 later and even then I suspect you may one-day over take me, but you will have to bring an A game.
    I am REALLY curious though to see if the note that comes is really going to be an AB prefix (The seller has more than one, so I don't consider this guaranteed). But an image of a 67 EPQ they have for sale also shows an AB prefix and so I'm thinking the seller got a wad of AB prefix notes and cherry-picked and sent in several so I'm hopeful. Anything other than AA is pretty rare in the later 3rd dollar notes (purely in my subjective experience) since they were in  print for such a short time. If this note IS an AB prefix it'll get added to my sig set and the AA prefix 65 EPQ will stay too. If is an AA prefix I'll drop the 65 from the sig set - like I did with my new 20T replacing the old one. 
    I also (to save on shipping, naturally) picked up a new VEN111b for my Venezuela set, to compliment my VEN111a.

    Since I have the a and b for VEN110 and VEN111 now I've also added a slot for VEN109a in my signature set and I'm going to make that an official goal - a and b for all three of those.
     
  15. Revenant
    The Zimbabwe sets we all wanted. Well, the ones I wanted anyway.
    So I'm at my desk today and I get an email from Ali listing a bunch of new Zimbabwe note sets including a bunch of sets for the Third Dollar or the Trillions series. The email said they'd be coming "soon" and I was wondering when exactly that would be, but when I checked the site I saw that the Third Dollar sets were already up! The Bearer Check, Agro Check and other sets aren't out yet but honestly those aren't the ones I was hoping for anyway - I'm not collecting those series - yet.
    The funny thing was that I just made a signature set for these yesterday because I wanted an internet accessible way of tracking what I had - I came dangerously close a couple of times to buying a 10 billion dollar note I already had - I thought I just had the 1 billion dollar note. I'd scanned all the notes in for the signature set and so now I have all my pictures up.
    I'm loving that there's a full set for the 1 dollar note through the 100 Trillion note and a set for just for the 4 notes denominated in the trillions. I can actually have a 100% complete set of those! Never thought that would happen with a banknote set. I'm only about 33% on the full set.
    I think the best part of all of this is that just yesterday my wife gave me a 66EPQ 500,000 Dollar note as a belated Father's Day present (got held up in the mail).
    Now I just need to get the 20 billion and the 50 billion to finish the top 10 denominations

    To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.
  16. Revenant

    A P-44a...

    By Revenant,

    So I tried to add a new P-44 note to my Zimbabwe 2nd dollar set and it said the note wasn't eligible / wasn't allowed in the slot. The slot seems set up to allow a P-44a... P-44a. I've never heard of a P-44a. I can't find any reference in any of my research / shopping / looking around to a P-44a or a P-44b, just P-44.
    I'm assuming this a / no a thing is the reason why the system / slot is rejecting the note. I'm assuming / hoping this was just a mistake but it's a bit of head scratcher for me as to how it happened if so.
    There IS a P-46a and P-46b and a P-48a and a P-48b. Those are the 10,000 and 100,000 dollar notes in the series, with the a and b variants differentiated based on how the digits in the denomination are grouped. The P-44, the $1,000 note in the series, to my knowledge, has no such variation. 
    I've seen cases in the past with these sets where the slot just hadn't been populated with scores at all before and cases where the scores where entered for an "a" variant but not a "b" or a normal version but not a star / replacement note version (or vice versa) but I've never had a slot calling for something that didn't / doesn't appear to exist.
  17. Revenant
    This just came in the mail today and I just thought it was a little funny - thought I'd share.
    The vast majority of the coins and notes I buy are from sellers / dealers in the United States. I very rarely buy from international sellers, it's not often I get a package with a customs declaration form, and this one in particular is a first for me - Croatia. The seller is located in the capital city Zagreb, which I did not know was the capital until I looked it up.
    I ordered the note about 2 weeks ago on March 1st and the delivery estimate was between March 11th (which seemed optimistic honestly) and March 19th, so their guess wasn't bad. They were definitely in the range.
    The note in question was a Zimbabwean P-2c 5 dollar note from 1983. Another very nice addition to my 1st dollar set.

  18. Revenant

    The P-1d

    By Revenant,


    1st Dollar Banknotes
    I still don’t have a P-3 at the moment and I still have that nagging hole in the set, but I recently won an auction for a P-1d – one of the highest grade examples you can ask for – a 68 EPQ Star.


    This thing popped up on my radar about three months ago when it and a 68 EPQ (no star) were put up for sale with price tags of $190 (with the star) and $100 (no star). They were up for auction and those were the starting bids.
    Buying a P-1d was a dream and a goal of mine for over a year now but getting one of these notes at those prices would have easily made the note the most expensive note in my set. I could not make myself pull the trigger on a bid even though I knew I’d hate missing out on such great examples of the note.
    Apparently, I was not alone though in that no one else bid and they went unsold, so the seller posted them as a BIN at the same prices as the old starting bids. They sat on inventory for a while after that.
    I kept expecting them to sell but they didn’t. My problem wasn’t that I thought the asking price was unreasonable. I have seen rarer varieties of the 1st dollar notes go in auctions for ~$125 before and these were 68s. I was just having a hard time convincing myself to pay that for one.
    As time went on the thought of adding one of these to my set grew one me and I was close to ordering the 68 EPQ (no star). I couldn’t convince myself to go for the start for $190 but I did like the idea of getting this scarcer variety for my set in a really nice grade. I was just waiting a few more days to pull the trigger – lucky me as it turned out.
    The Star note got pulled from the BIN listing and a few days later popped up in an auction with a starting bid price of $100 – same price as the BIN on the non-star. At that point I decided to go ahead and wait a week for the auction to end and see what it would go for. I knew the 68 EPQ was unlikely to sell in the interim with this one up for auction. So that made me feel safe enough to wait longer.
    I waited and no one bid. So, Friday night, with the auction ending at 2:30 AM Saturday, I put in a bid of $114 and went to bed hoping for the best. I woke up the next morning and found out I’d won it without other bidders.
    I was going to be out of town for a few days soon after the note ended so I casually bid on some of the seller’s other auctions and waited a few days to pay, knowing that would help make sure it was delayed shipping out and that it would not arrive when I wasn’t home to receive it. I’m glad I did because it still came just a couple of days after we got back home.
    Its really exciting to have this and to have a complete variety set for at least 1 of the 4 first series notes.

  19. Revenant
    When collecting a series, sometimes the notes / coins / denominations you don’t see are almost as interesting and telling as the ones you do see.

    I remember a few years ago when I first started looking into and trying to collect the Zimbabwe hyperinflation notes… I found the 100 Trillion note first and very easily. It’s the definitive poster-child of the series after all. I also quickly and easily found the 50 Trillion, 20 Trillion and 10 Trillion notes. Then I tried to search for a 5 Trillion… and a 1 Trillion… and a 500 Billion… and I found nothing. I tried looking for a 100 Billion, and found something, but it was weird looking, and was labeled as a… bearer check? What the…

    Of course, there are no notes denominated as 100 Billion, 200 billion, 500 Billion, 1 Trillion, or 5 Trillion in the 3rd dollar series. The 100 Billion Bearer Check I found, even though I didn’t know / understand what it was at the time, was part of the 2nd dollar bearer check series, not part of the 3rd dollar series, and so, it was almost completely different from what I was looking for. If you look at the progression of denominations used throughout the rest of the series / history of the Zimbabwean dollars, you’d expect all 5 of those denominations to exist, but none of them do. The only note of those five whose absence seems reasonable at first glance is the $200 Billion, as 20/200 denominations were often skipped in the series. The explanation for this is as simple as it is shocking – the hyperinflation in the country was so severe by November / December 2008, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe had to skip all of those and go from 50 Billion straight to 10 Trillion.

    That 5 note / denomination “gap” in the series is probably the biggest and most notable such oddity in the 100-pick series but it’s hardly the only one.

    The 3rd dollar series includes no 5,000 dollar note. The series originally maxed out with a $1,000 denomination. When the RBZ chose to start expanding the series to include higher denominations in late September 2008, they announced the $10,000 and $20,000 notes, but no $5,000 note.

    The 3rd dollar series also includes no $50 note. The 3rd dollar series was rolled out with denominations ranging from $1 to $1,000, but no $50 note, even though the denomination was seen in previous series for the 1st dollar and 2nd dollar.

    The 3rd dollar series, finally, includes no 5 Million or 20 Million dollar notes. Why these two notes where omitted when the $10 Million, $50 Million and 100 Million notes were announced in early Dec 2008 I don’t know.

    One of the things that makes the 2nd dollar Bearer Checks and Agro Checks interesting in the context of the larger series is the inclusion of “25” denominations. The 1st dollars, 3rd dollars and 4th dollars all have “20” denominations – like $20, $20,000, $20,000,000. Only the 2nd dollar series has denominations of $250,000, $250 Million, and $25 Billion. The 2nd dollar series, very oddly, has both a $200,000 and $250,000 note. The 2nd dollar does also have a $20 denomination, but I assume this is only because a $25 dollar note would have been just a little too peculiar to have been taken seriously. There is no $200 or $250 note in that series.

    The king of the oddities may be the $750,000 note of the 2nd dollar bearer check series (ZIM52). This is the only time in the entire 100 note Zimbabwean series that has a “75” fronted denomination. This note makes an interesting partner with the $250,000 (ZIM50) note and $500,000 notes (ZIM51) of the same series. Together they give you a quarter million, half a million, and three quarters of a million dollars for denominations, and this may help explain the inclusion of both a $200,000 and $250,000 note in this series.

    This is just one of those things about the series that I find interesting and maybe a little strange, and I like to think about it sometimes.

    The most likely explanations for the skipped notes in most cases is likely the same as the reason for skipping the $100 Billion through $5 Trillion notes in the 3rd dollar series – inflation had already rendered them undesirable before they could even be issued.

    The budget of the nation may have also played a role. One of the reasons for discontinuing the issuance of the money in 2009 is that the country couldn’t even buy paper / afford to print the notes anymore.  Some of these denominations may have been omitted just because the government / RBZ only had so much money for printing new notes and they elected to go for larger denominations to… get more buck for their buck?

    It’s all a little crazy to think about.


  20. Revenant
    In a note related to the topic of my last entry, the more time goes on the more I that opinions on what constitutes a "complete" set of Zimbabwe notes seems to vary widely.
    I was on reddit recently and a user said they had a complete set of the Zimbabwe notes. I was curious so I asked them what they were considering complete.
    It turned out that the poster had a full set of the 27-note 3rd dollar banknotes series - but nothing beyond that.
    For a long time there, BanknoteWorld - while they were publishing those books - as well as other merchants seemed to define "complete" to include the 2nd dollar bearer checks and agro checks in addition to the 3rd dollar bank notes - about 59 notes and checks.
    Another vender I deal with often encourages people to try to build a complete set from P-1 to P-98, but this still excludes the newer bond notes (P-99 and P-100) and includes the 1st dollar traveler's checks and Standard Chartered bearer checks P-13 through P-20 and P-24 through P-27), when seemingly few others do.
    I think ultimately I'll have to arrive at my own definition of complete for this set / project, which may end up being whenever I just decide I'm satisfied or I'm done.
     
  21. Revenant
    A currency dealer I shop with frequently just did a "fall sale" - putting all PCGS Currency graded banknotes on sale for 30%. This has me wondering if the PCGS graded notes haven't been selling since the shutdown and their values really have taken a hit, even on the lower ends of the market - including the market for modern banknotes.
  22. Revenant

    I think I know where you bought those...

    By Revenant,


    Venezuelan Bolivares Soberanos
    A couple of weeks ago I was watching several 67 EPQ graded notes listed by Noteshobby for the Venezuela Bolivares Soberanos set. I was thinking I might try to buy them in December if they were still available. It would have been a good way to make quick progress on that set for a good price.
    Then one day they all sold along with several Zimbabwe notes I was watching.
    Yesterday, a new set of Soberano notes showed up with those notes in 67 EPQ and the same person just made several new Zimbabwe sets.
    Okay... I see how it is. I wanted those but there's more out there! 
    I am / was planning to try to make the Soberano set happen next year just because its a short set of relatively inexpensive notes that'll be fun to build now that I have the Fuertes series complete. I've also started building the bones / frame of a new Signature set that I'll use to display and talk about the set the way I want since I'm thinking I'm not going to get exactly what I want in a competitive set
    New sets popping up that bump you out of #1 less than a week before the cut-off! The sniping is very real this year!
    Lol not that I'm entirely sure what we're fighting over at this level. PMG doesn't give certificates or display ribbons for Best in Category so I guess it's just pure bragging rights.
  23. Revenant
    I found someone selling the last 3 notes I needed for the 4th dollar series. One of the notes was a hair lower on grade than I've been wanting to stick to for this set but I decided to go for it, get the three notes as a group, so I could have the set complete. I'll worry about upgrading things later, if I feel like it at the time.
    I'm now about 92% complete for the hyper inflation set (2nd, 3rd and 4th dollars) and 75% complete for the 1st dollar banknotes. The 1st dollar check series are a bit more difficult to deal with but overall the collection has come together quite well and these sets enjoy the #1 rank in the 2nd dollar bearer checks (P-33 to P-60), the 2nd dollar agrochecks (P-61 to P-64), the 3rd dollars (P-65 to P-91), and the 4th dollars (P-92 to P-98).
    I need to get pictures taken of the recent additions to the first and 4th dollars but I'm feeling super proud of how this has come together. I have 71 of the 100 pick #s in my overall collection (including P-13 through P-31, which are not easy to get and may be nearly impossible to get graded). I have more than one variety of the P-1, P-4, and P-48 and several replacement notes. :)





  24. Revenant

    Wow. PMG is on it!

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwe Traveller's Checks
    My submission of checks arrived at PMG last week and I was expecting, based on their response late last week, that the notes probably wouldn't be in the system until the end of this week or early next week. I was shocked when I checked, mostly for a laugh, and saw that they were showing as "Received."

    This has me freaking out a bit. I'm realizing I might get an answer on these a lot faster than I'd thought. So, where I'd been chill about this and thinking I'd find out eventually and to not worry or think on it much, this paradoxically has me more keyed up.  
  25. Revenant

    Time to buy some raw notes and do some grading.

    By Revenant,


    Registry Awards
    So the 2020 PMG Registry awards are in the books and PMG has paid my work / writing another very high compliment:

    The $500 grading credit that this comes with is going to open up a great opportunity for me get get some notes in my set that I don't often see come up for sale already graded by NGC and get this set more or less "complete."
    I don't have the financial resources or the facilities to bulk grade notes or to sell a lot of notes that I don't need. I'm also not all that great a grading notes and making sure that what comes back are gem 66+ notes. Given this, and given the fact that these notes often come up for sale in high gem grades at prices that are only slightly higher then what it would cost me to buy them raw and take the risk on grading myself, it just hasn't been economically viable for me to try to go it alone on submitting up to this point.
    This grading credit is going to give ma a guilt free pass to buy some travelers checks and Cargill bearer checks and  a couple of missing 2nd dollar checks and submit them for grading. i'll get to build out the last few parts of the run where I don't have much and not feel bad about "wasting money" or making a bad pick / bad "investment" if the grades that come back are less than impressive. 
    As a kind of "declaration of intent" I've gone back this morning and added some slots for these notes - bringing the total number of slots up to 124. 
    I'm still not going to add slots for a lot of sub-types and varieties that I don't have at this time. I think If I added those in I'd be somewhere in the neighborhood of 150-160 slots. I'm still interested in maybe one day getting to the point of having all the sub-types / varieties for all the notes but that wasn't part of my original goal for the set and I'd be extremely happy just to have every pick number represented - or really close to it.
    The last 3rd dollar note that I don't have, the P-72, is probably not going to be part of this effort. I'm probably still just going to leave that alone and leave that slot empty for now.