Revenant

Well, all the NGC stuff mailed 1.5 months ago hit quality control a week ago or more. I think those would all be coming home if I hadn't said 2 weeks ago that they could try to remove the residue they see on that gold tobacco dove. So maybe early July?

Yesterday I was excitedly working on making new set and note descriptions - planning out the future presentation of the Venezuelan signature set. I thought I’d hit the “download” button and not the “open” button when I got my file from dropbox and I made a mistake in saving the file, which led to a fair bit of work and tinkering being lost. This morning I got a very frustrating call from my UK Sales manager that I didn’t like. It basically put me in a very non-productive, unmotivated mood and I was agitated over the loss of that work on the Venezuela set, so I decided to spend time today working on restoring my lost set work. Fortunately it didn’t take long to restore most of what I lost and then I moved on to writing some new stuff. And I’ve been more careful this time to save my work. I’m really excited to get some of these set up because I was able to order 5 new Soberanos notes in 67 EPQ for a total of $124 - so about $24.80 a note. Basically, the cost of the notes + grading, to say nothing of shipping 3 ways (to PMG, back, and to me). So I’m very happy with that and very excited to get those in and add them to the set. That will give me all of the 2018 issues except for VEN104 and 1 of the three 2019 issues. I’m not really seeing many / any of the 3 new 2021 notes for sale already graded by PMG. I’m sure those’ll start popping up soon enough. I’m getting moving on this later than I’d originally thought but I still want to and like the idea of mostly finishing a Venezuelan Hyperinflation set before the end of 2021. I’m only going to need about 6 more notes to make that happen. My wife has this group of friends she talks to on Facebook Messenger that’s a group of moms with kids all around the same age as Sam. And… I guess she was telling them about my currency collecting and brought up my turtle theme set and one of them asked if I had a Kuwaiti 1/2 dinar note… and I was like, “No… why?” Apparently it has a sea turtle on it. It really is amazing, the unexpected ways that information comes to you sometimes. So I’ve added a slot to my Turtle set to remind me to go after that later, right along with a 20 Ringgit note from Malaysia. Maybe one of these days that set will look a little more like something / a little more impressive. Edited to add: After boxing them up the other day, the 15 bearer and traveller's checks were picked up today and are now officially on their way! So... I guess I'll know how they did in like late June or July.

I'm definitely not going to be in any rush on Argentina. I'm going to still be focused on Venezuela for a bit and maybe going for some low-hanging fruit upgrades for my 4th dollar set.

Wow. Can't complain about that!

If you mean the Venezuelan set, I feel like I'm much more torn on how to approach it than I ever was with the Zimbabwe set because I feel very torn on how to use the set description / note descriptions to balance two wants that are competing with each other. On one hand I want to do deep dives into that was going on around the time the note(s) came out and putting the note releases is their context. On the other hand I really want to go into the historical figures on each note and the endangered animals on each note. The Zimbabwean notes never had people on them so there was no person to bio and my blurbs about what was on the back tended to be shorter - like some of my blurbs about the animals. But I don't feel like I can have historical information, biographical information and talk about the animals on each note and have it not be excessively overwhelming. So I'm trying to strike a balance. I'm thinking: - the Set Description will become something talking about collecting hyperinflation notes similar to what I have in the Zimbabwean set - P-88 to P-93 will focus on the economic history and the backdrop of the notes being released - P-94 to P-99 will be about what's on the notes, but each will note about what that note was worth in US dollars when released / announced (it tweren't much!) - P-100 will go back to the historical context and the switch from Fuertes to Soberanos - P-101 to P-108 will focus on the people animals and places again. - P-109 to P-114 will place more emphasis on the economic history and the advance to the hyperinflation timeline. If I can make that work in a way that feels good I think I'll finally be happy with it. Australia has a lot of 1 oz NCLT with cool designs and when I was younger that silver NCLT was almost my sole focus. I've moved on to other things over the years in part because I just do not have the time or the budget to keep up with the many many many NCLT series out there and trying and failing was bumming me out. Lol

Cool! I'll have to mentally add that to the legacy of that set, along with the fact that it's has been used to teach kids about Hyperinflation now. The Nicaraguan Hyperinflation hasn't really at all been on my radar. I'm aware of there being various Latin American Hyperinflation events before Venezuela but the one that seems to get the most attention is Argentina, so I'd say that's more on my radar than Nicaragua, but maybe one day.

I've had similar problems in getting things like the P-1d for $100 when so many of the other notes in that set were had for $8-30. But it is a dang good feeling to have a full variety group of the P-1.

is there a note with a skunk on it??? Consider yourself challenged to find one! I really couldn't tell you what possessed me to go with "Bale of Turtles," and "Parade of Elephants." The idea for the sets came from my son's nursery themes and seeing those animals on my Zimbabwe and Venezuela notes and thinking, "hmmmm..." 🤔 I think it could be fun though if those sets become more than just extensions of my Zimbabwe and Venezuela sets.

Yeah. I think we all feel that pain sometimes. I just have to remind myself sometimes that they have the same right to bid and out-bid as I do. Ha. Thanks. The Zimbabwe notes are very fun and interesting to me but I think you have to really be interested in them to go nuts with building that set like I have. It's good to know you're not more competition but I don't worry much anymore. My set is mostly built. I have examples in 65+ grades for almost everything, so if prices start getting bid up I just shrug and I won't do any upgrading. I really am just so proud of what I achieved with that set, and I'm very happy with it. I'd just love to fill in a last few holes that I'm working on. But I have no shame in that set not being full of "top pops" it's a dang solid collection that achieves everything I wanted for it and more. Congrats to you on what you've done. I was happy to see your Nicaragua set win Best Presented in 2020. I feel like your sets are some of the best out there in terms of descriptions and overall presentation - to say nothing of the notes! I think you've gotten a couple of feature articles on your sets too, right? I just recently got a NIcaraguan note for the first time to go with my turtle theme set.

The Box with the Traveller's Checks is now sealed up and the postage is on it and it is now ready to go to PMG! This got me in the mood / excited to do a bit of tweaking: I added a note and link in the description for "Gradually, Then Suddenly" to my coin set on the NGC side. That set still only has a dime in it but I'm actively working on changing that now with a planned submission. I have coins! I just have to pick the coins to go in to NGC. I also went back and changed "ZIMUNL" to "ZIM101" through "ZIM104" for the newer notes, since they're now listed that way in the competitive sets. Better yet, I took the skeleton, the bones, of a Venezuelan Hyperinflation signature set that I'd made about 6 months ago and started filling that out with more than just Pick numbers. View Personal Collection (collectors-society.com) This has me getting very excited and happily building and writing and tweaking descriptions again and... this is getting me pumped to start trying to fill out some of those holes in the Soberanos set. I thought I'd be here sooner, but it feels good to come back to it after a break and feel that energy and feel pumped again. It's time to build the Venezuelan set into a proper brother for the Zimbabwean set.

Well, I had bid $45.50 and they sniped me with 2 seconds left at $46. Which is why I'm salty over the loss. That check was stamped the day before my 18th birthday and I'd wanted it. But I couldn't see going higher on it when I knew I was getting ready to submit 2 others soon. I don't know that they'll come back as 65s but I think they'll grade. And I have a hard time continuing to bid higher at that point when we were the only ones bidding above about $27.

I was going to send them in last week but then I held them up so I could order a P-40, P-45 and P-46. Those just came today. I have the submission form half done. I'm going to pop in the serial numbers, print and send them all in in one box to save on shipping. I had bid on an MS65 P-17 that I wanted and barely lost out on it to Bonezdog sniping me on it. I'm a bit salty about that.

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.

Interesting to see this slow build up in note count over time... If I had more energy and cared more I might try something similar with Zimbabwe. But then, I'm mostly done with building that set and I'm not shopping anywhere nearly as actively as I once was.

Thanks for the link! Very helpful of you. That's added to my wishlist now. We'll see if the wife bites the next time she needs to give me something.

Wow. Those would be amazingly rare in that condition. I have no idea what you could get for them if you found the right person. I'm not sure which way my preferences lean on these honestly. The pristine ones like yours are interesting to look at and rarer but they lack some of the character and history of the stamped ones.

Funny that you mention that because you see the stuff about them buying paper for a 100,000 bolivar note and then they didn't even print it / saved the paper because it wasn't worth it! I never know what to expect and I don't put a lot of expectations on these things because you never know what these crazy governments will do. I was shocked there were no new notes in 2020 really. I was expecting more sooner and here we are. When the new Zimbabwe series started I was both excited and filled with dread at the possibility of another 27-32 note set.

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."

I will be THRILLED if they come back with 60+ grades. We'll see. I mostly just want something reasonably nice for closing this gap in my set and the story I want to tell with it.

Ah well. Give it time.

I got one of the BNW lights as a freebie over the holidays but haven't messed with it yet. I need to try to look at the uv features of my Zdollars! Lol Cool stuff as always, Mike.

It'll come in its time. My 2nd and 3rd dollars are increasingly in the same state.

I've seen canceled examples get grades in the 63-67 range so I don't think PMG dings them too bad and looks at the condition of the document while almost ignoring the writing from a "damage" perspective.

The seller was on the ball about getting these mailed out and they look pretty good for things that were supposed to be used once and thrown away nearly 20 years ago: I'm on the fence at the moment about whether I want to 1) Submit the P-15s or not since I have one of these graded already and 2) Do I want to submit both of each or pick one and go with it / hope for the best. There's a part of me that says "Gradually, Then Suddenly," only needs one each of these and that I could use some of that grading credit to grade fuel coupons and such instead. There's another part of me that finds these interesting with the different dates and stamps and different banks / branches canceling them and thinks that a deeper dive into that could even be fodder for a signature set of its own. For instance, most of these are canceled in 2003, with some in 2004, but one of these P-16s showed that it was canceled in 2005 - what's the story there? And then there's just the other little things about these - how some where stamped on the front versus the back and some were stamped upside down or how some are dated in pencil and just all the little quirks that these things acquire from having been canceled. Mike had indicated that he was interested in playing a little guess-the-grade and so below are front and back scans of all 12 checks, starting with the P-15s. There's a P-19 stamped on 10/18, like that graded P-18 I saw a while back. Dang. Just not quite hitting it with that date.

So I've had my mental health break - I don't think I bought a single piece of Zimbabwean currency or pseudo currency in the three month period of December, January and February. I don't think I've gone anywhere near that long (or even 1 month) since Jan 2019. But I'm feeling a bit recharged and refreshed now having spent some time messing with other things. I think getting the plaque in the mail has helped stoke the fire and get me motivated to move forward with buying some things, using that grading credit and rounding out the set a bit / filling out the new holes I added in January. I've known for a while what this purchase would be. I've wanted to load up on some of the traveller's cheques (P-15 to P-20) for a submission but I didn't want to pay $8-9 + $5 shipping per check for these. I had found a seller offering sets with all of them from 15 to 20 for $22 each and he had multiple sets. This auction didn't promise uncirc or a-unc checks like some other listing but the condition looked okay in the image and I'm not sure I need these stamped and canceled checks to grade 60+. I could be quite okay with examples that grade a little lower and have a bit more "character." That said, I did go ahead and ask if he'd be willing to look and give me the nicer examples he had. He responded saying he had some nicer / better condition sets he'd been holding back and, for $30/set, he'd give me the 2 nicest examples of each one that he has. I agreed and he said they'd ship out no later than today. I figure $16 + tax is fair for his time and attention (responding to me in the first place and not just grabbing from the top of the pile and calling it a day). I'm looking forward to getting these soon. I'm going to be looking at these for any fun dates. There was a graded P18 for sale a while back that had been stamped Oct 18th - painfully close to my birthday of Oct 19th. I pointed out to Shandy at the time that if that had been stamped the 19th I would have needed to get it - budget or no. Lol It would be so cool to have one that was canceled on 10/19 or another important / significant date to me - like the birthdays of my sons or my anniversary. I'll be scanning these but also trying to get them sent out to grade soon. I'm going to try to not let this linger for months like I have with and NGC submission - which will be going out by registered mail soon once I find a good box and get it over to the PO. I'm also again considering buying some lots of Zimbabwean coins and submitting some of those - maybe keeping the less promising ones in my binder of 2x2s - more on that soon I hope.