Revenant

27 minutes ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

  Went back to the old avatar.

To be honest, I'm glad the old one is back.

Is the length really unlimited on  the signature set side? I thought the 5000 character limit was set throughout.

I tend to have the same thing in the competitive set and the signature set and treat the competitive sets as subsets of the signature set, which is what I see as the "true" set / project as I define it. Your name for the set, "The REAL DEAL," suggests that you see yours similarly.

It's interesting in that you go into a lot of the finer details and security features with your descriptions. Doing that, I could easily see you getting up against the 5K limit. I don't go into that level of detail usually and stick with the broader design details of the note usually because 1) I assume it will be harder to get someone who is only casually interested in the series to read that much, 2) I don't like struggling with the character limit, and 3) with a lot of the finer, smaller details I feel like it can be hard to even see some of those things in the images we can put on the registry. This is also one of the reasons I don't discuss the watermarks and the changes in the watermarks on the Zimbabwe notes much because you can't really see the watermarks in the non-backlit images I have up. Since the thing that really draws me in with the Zimbabwe notes is the hyperinflation and the "story" of it / the history, If I go on at length it's more likely to be about the historical context / what was happening at the time that note was issued and what caused the hyperinflation - especially with the 1st dollar series.

So are you only adding notes to your signature set as you get descriptions ready? Because you have 140 slots, but hardly any notes in it (11) when I know you have like 50-60 Ukrainian notes in your competitive sets.

3 hours ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

I still say they are looking at registry sets .

I don't know that I would have felt that way until recently, but the P-7, P-9 and P-5 variety I wanted popped up so close to each other, then the P-11a, and then a P-12a pops up not too long after I talk about that being the last 2nd series note I needed and I do start to wonder. The one thing that keeps me from being paranoid is I keep seeing P-6 notes come up and I've long since now stopped caring about those after getting a 68 EPQ.

3 hours ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

Discussing notes in an open forum probably isn't the best when we're looking at going after them but I've seen more tumbleweeds here than people. Banknotes becoming more popular should be a good thing for everyone.

Yeah, normally I'd never openly admit that I want to bid on something in particular, but if you look at the open slot in my signature set and my bidding habits of late it's an open secret that I'd want the thing anyway and I think you can almost count the number of truly active regulars here on 2 hands - 100% agreed. I'd love to see that change though.

7 minutes ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

I'm with you, I'd be perfectly happy with a 67 or 68 for this note. 68's for modern world notes are usually readily available at much lower costs.

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.

18 minutes ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

Just saw a 2019 five dollar note popped up (70 EPQ),

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.

6 minutes ago, Sheik Sheck said:

Naw you're just a spring chicken compared to some of us old farts in this sport. Great note! 

Ah, yes. I know, but I wish what's left of my rapidly receding hairline did. Thanks! It feels like a big win - incidentally, I think it's the only P-23e currently graded and PMG had to add it in for me this morning so I could add it to my set.

8 minutes ago, Sheik Sheck said:

Although I hope they aren't putting that 15 year symbol on all holders.

No. Unlike most other special labels, you can get it for free and don't have to pay a $5 fee to get it, but you still have to explicitly request it on the form and I've seen plenty with and without it. The label gets discontinued in about 5 months on 12/31/2020. I didn't request it because I'm not the one that had it graded, but the dealer I bought it from would have had to have done so. I have notes in new holders with and without the "15 Years" from this same seller. I'm not sure there's any rhyme or reason to what they had that put on and what they didn't. Seems awfully random to me.

13 minutes ago, Sheik Sheck said:

How did you get the #20 list of most graded notes?

If you go into the pop report on the PMGnotes.com site you can choose to have it display the countries by "Most Graded." and it shows how many notes are graded for each country below the name of the country. From there, it's just counting (or multiplying 4 x 5) to figure out that Zimbabwe comes in at #20. It's really shocking that roughly half of everything PMG has graded is Chinese.

17 minutes ago, Sheik Sheck said:

Also, I think you should plan a trip to Zimbabwe one day. I think you might receive a red carpet welcome. 

Definitely not something I'm ruling out - though it would be nice if the country could mount something of a recovery before I do. The poverty rate is still about 90% and that just seems like it would be a sad thing to witness firsthand - all of it so unnecessary and avoidable.

It is funny to think about in that, as much as I find these notes and this bit of economic history interesting, I doubt these notes inspire warm, fuzzy feelings in Zimbabwe and I doubt they get much joy from the idea of these dang foreigners collecting as novelties these things that are so symbolic and representative of such a miserable period for their country - which is largely still ongoing. Every time they come out with a new note they start hitting ebay in droves to a lot of fanfare and hype. It's slightly insane in some ways.

3 minutes ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

 That is a little surprising, especially since it's not just precious metals that are up, but it's metals across the board. Copper, Zinc, Tin & Aluminium all up since a down turn at the start of the pandemic. You would think that would mean "good times" for your shares.

Looking at the charts again, I'm probably just whining without good reason.  

They're not doing so hot this week - even though I'd expect them to be with the more recent moves up in gold and silver - but since I started buying in March I'm up about 30-35%, which is very respectable.

3 hours ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

Did I say gold will break 1800, what I meant to say was 1900. Holy, you know what!

And yet, my shares of gold mining companies aren't really moving all that much - they're even down a little so far today. I'm really not sure what to make of it.

On 7/21/2020 at 7:34 PM, ddr70 said:

Zowie! That's absurd.  Wait for the Kagins auction and it might start more reasonably.  Nice Richmond DB.  My VA set is in sad shape.  

eBay is full of absurd listings though. It's good for entertainment though. Recently, just for a laugh, I put in a "Best Offer" on a pair of items that has been listed at $79 each for years now. I offered $24 each because I honestly don't  think they'd get much more than that for them if they decided to put them in auction. The response was crickets. I may come back in another month or two and offer more like $35 each on them, just because I'd love to fill those holes in my set.

I agree that I haven't seen major problems with crooked notes in the newer holders / more recently graded notes with cert numbers starting with "80XXXXX-". It's nice to see.

21 hours ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

I've been to BankNoteWorld a few times, in fact that is were my two Zimbabwe notes came from. Needed to get my cart total up to qualify for free shipping.

I find it fairly hilarious that this, of all reasons, is why you have Zimbabwe notes. "Well, I'd rather have this than pay for shipping."

21 hours ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

Off topic, but I took a peek over at Banknote World while typing this and they have one add saying "Gold is at a 2012 high of $1800, now is the time to buy before the market moves higher" and another saying "Price Drop Silver Bullion now is the time to buy". I know I'm over simplifying this but striping those statements down to nuts and bolts. Which is it, buy high or buy low? I just find it amusing that they would have two seemingly contrarian statements scrolling back to back. Not that either statement is necessarily wrong.

Yeah. Typical for any place that deals in bullion - they all talk out of both sides of their mouths at every opportunity. They don't really care why or what convinces you to buy - as long as you decide to BUY NOW!!

1 hour ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

What is the "(formerly VENUNL1000a)" referring to?

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."

5 hours ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

Seems odd that they would use the same base designs back to back for the series, in different denominations. If you were going to keep the same base designs, I'm surprised that they didn't just tack three zeros onto the original notes then come up with two new designs for the 500 and 1,000. 

Were the Pick #'s changed for the second issue of notes?

Not a big fan of these old holders, the blueish green tint detracts from the note.

Yeah. The pick numbers did change each time. The 2 through 100 are P88 to P93. The 500 to 20000 are P94 to P99.

I say of of this on my Zimbabwe set but, in hyperinflations and periods of high inflation when they are making these new notes they usually don't have the luxury of taking months or years to make new designs for everything and you see designs and design elements get reused a lot.

I'm not a huge fan of the old holders for this reason either, but at lease they fixed the problem in later versions. This is one case of NGC & PMG upgrading a holder that was a VERY welcome upgrade.

8 hours ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

I wish this seller would show the reverse of the note so I could see the cert #, that would help answer the question of were these part of the last submission the seller made, meaning the first seven digits of the cert #'s would match the cert #'s on the notes I just bought. Or if these have new cert #'s, not that it would be 100% conclusive.

Not quite the same as what you mean, but a large part of my 2nd dollar and 3rd dollar sets are bought off BankNoteWorld. They submitted large numbers of various denominations - many years ago I think, some more recently, and there are a bunch of notes in my sets that have the same invoice number (first 7 digits) as each other. I've always found it slightly amusing.

Hmmm... More drama and intrigue than I would expect in such an arena. 

7 hours ago, Sheik Sheck said:

They are gorgeous notes. I have been a couple of times to Venezuela. Once on the election night of Chavez in 1998 and again a few years ago. The country is falling to pieces and the people have been desperate for some time now. Such a beautiful and rich country falling into the throes of hyperinflation is a crime. You are point on in collecting these as it's a great set at a great price! I'd go with the wife's suggestion. She is always right. 

Thanks! If you're interested in the set yourself BankNoteWorld has 7 of the denominations in grades of 66 EPQ or 67 EPQ for about $14 each. They have a couple in 68 EPQ for $30-38, but I have a hard time justifying that with these.

Yeah... Not a lot of those graded really -  just north of 1,400 total for Ukraine. So I can totally see you getting excited when one you need just pops up in a high grade and you can just buy it instead of taking a roll of the dice on a raw note.

Something funny to think about but, the ~62 graded notes you have in your registry are over 4.3% of all the PMG graded Ukrainian notes in the world at the moment. You own more than 1 in every 25.

Venezuela is doing slightly better at about 3,650. Zimbabwe looks a lot bigger at 13,100+, and in some ways it is, but over 6,000 of those are just the 100 Trillion note that everyone is obsessed with. 

If you've been making out with some deals lately like you alluded to in your prior post I doubt they're making all that much money off you though.

On 7/6/2020 at 5:13 PM, Fenntucky Mike said:

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.

Thanks! I agree they were the logical next step for me, but I'd also be interested in getting into some of the Argentina notes from the hyperinflation of the 1970s and 1980s in that country and that had been an alternative.

USPS tracking is saying that all of the notes (in 2 packages) will arrive on Saturday. I'm really excited by that, but, if I follow what we've been doing to minimize virus risk, I won't get to open them until Tuesday.

18 minutes ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

People being born now or who have already been born, may not ever use physical money in there life. My 14 year old nephew got into my 1996 Ford F250 and asked me how to roll down the window, I pointed to the window crank/handle and the look on his face was one of disbelief. As was the look on my face, when I realized he had never seen a manually operated window before. He had no idea what to do, as far as he was concerned that truck might as well have been equivalent to Fred Flintstones footmobile. Not that he would have understood that reference anyway. 

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.

I'm not sure what the situation is in the rest of the world , but the paper money at least isn't going away until they find a way to resolve the issue of the "unbanked." There's still a good chunk of the population that doesn't have a checking account or a credit card and they don't have easy access to a bank. The situation is or is going to get worse for some people because banks are increasingly going online and encouraging people to bank exclusively online - even cashing checks, when you actually get one, with an app on your phone. If you switch to requiring people to have electronic money which they are going to be required to monitor and access electronically you're then going to have to deal with the idea how internet connectivity / smart phones / data plans as a basic right or something people absolutely have to have in order to function within the society.

We're not going paperless or cashless yet. 

I found myself in a very similar place around the same time, not just because gold spiked, but because premiums for anything physical went insane. Like you, I've hit the notes hard. I was really thinking about branching out into Venezuelan Bolivars but when these 1st dollar notes started coming up I had to go for those instead.

The first series is a great choice in that it isn't a 27-32 note series (unless you start getting into varieties) and they just have more character and history than the 2nd and 3rd dollars. Every new attempt to relaunch the currency tries to make callbacks in the designs to the 1st dollar series because they desperately want the populace to associate the new currencies with that brief period of glory.

If you've been watching the recent eBay auctions on 1st dollar notes you've probably seen a lot of me slugging it out with one other bidder that has come onto the market for 1st dollar notes in a big way recently. Based on the fact that their feedback is over 3600 I suspect that they're a dealer or associated with one - they might be trying to pick these things up for resale, which would explain why they consistently give up once the price starts going past about $40-50. I also saw a 68 EPQ P-6 note get sold recently and then pop up later with another dealer that has a large stock of Zimbabwe notes - a dealer that I honestly hate just a little because he slaps insane prices on things, makes false or misleading statements about the pop reports in his listings and generally tries to over-hype and over-pump these notes because he wants people to pay $140 for a $35 note.

I'm so excited to finally see the new designs released. But I am increasingly worried that the new series is going to spiral out of control and we're going to see another long series with a power climb of zeros. I suspect that the only thing that might stop or prevent that is the fact that the population has seen this movie already and they're likely to abandon the new ZWD the second it even looks like that's happening. The RBZ had better be on their best behavior.

I think if you wait another month or so you'll probably start seeing PMG graded examples of the new $10 and $20 notes pop up with a couple of dealers. I'm waiting to see if the new notes / new series is going to cause a renewed wave of interest in the older stuff that I hope isn't going to drive prices back up.

5 hours ago, Sheik Sheck said:

BTW Revenant is your man on Zimbabwe notes!

3 hours ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

You're right about that, his posts are the main reason I was sniffing around the Zimbabwe first series. 

Thank you both! Reading that really is the best feeling.

3 hours ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

PMG should have given out a door prize for # 1,000 🥳

Welcome aboard # 1,000!

Yeah. That would have been funny. I wonder if #1,000 is even aware that they were #1,000.

15 minutes ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

Agree, I'd be nice to have a set or sets for each country that have all notes and variants. But man, you'd be talking 100's if not 1000's of notes for some countries/sets. To use the Zimbabwe registry as an example, it is actually set up quite nicely with sub-sets, which would be nice goals to complete on the way to a full set. If all the sub-sets included varieties a complete set would be a little redundant, it would still be nice to have complete sets with all varieties no matter how the individual registries are structured. 

The funny thing with Zimbabwe is, while it's tempting (and the way I went, and the pick numbering is continuous) to treat the whole thing as a single continuum, the Zimbabwe sets span 4 currencies, each with its own currency code. So, thought of that way, I could see it being totally justified to refuse to do a set from 1980 to date, because, technically, legally, it's not all the same currency / monetary unit.

You'd have a similar situation in Germany with the different Marks (gold mark, Papiermark, Rentenmark, Reichsmark, Saar Mark, Deutsche Mark) , or Venezuela now with the 3 or 4 different bolivars they've had now (Bolivar, Bolivar fuerte / "Strong Bolivar", Bolivar Soberano / "Sovereign Bolivar"). 

1 hour ago, Craig R. Petersen, USCG (ret) said:

I'm putting together an Aruba set and was frustrated that they only have one note per Pick number.  Yes, it makes it easier to make a complete set this way but I'd rather have the challenge of getting all years etc.  Is there a way to have PMG create a sub-set with all the Pick Varieties to include Specimens? 

If you want it, and want it for you / to display your set the way you want and not to compete with others, I'd just make a signature set like I have with my Zimbabwe set. It's a little more work because you have to build out the set / slots on your own, but it lets you make and define the set the way you want.

7 minutes ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

Why isn't there a Zimbabwe Complete 1980 - Date set in the registry, or say a P1-12 including varieties? 110 is a lot but there are many other sets with higher counts, Zimbabwe certainly has enough PMG graded notes to support larger more comprehensive sets. 

For a P-1 to P-12 including varieties, If I remember right there used to be one. When they first added Zimbabwe sets to the registry set the category for first dollars had a slot for each variety. They later changed that and collapsed it down to 1-per-pick. I suspect the Why comes back to what NGC/PMG have said about wanting the "average" collector to be able to reach 100% completion in any set / category. Getting a 100% 1-per-pick set together is pretty straight forward. Trying to get a full variety set together is far more difficult and far more expensive. It's possible, for sure, I think. But it would be much harder and I think only the most hardcore of Zimbabwe collectors would even attempt it.

As far as not having a 1980 to date set? I think that just comes down to how people collect (or don't collect) these notes. Most people will just get the Trillions. A smaller group will collect the full 3rd dollar or the full 2nd and 3rd dollar hyperinflation set. I think most of the people who collect those hyperinflation notes - the vast majority probably - either don't know about or don't care about the first dollar notes. Those people would not be interested in a 1980-Date set. I think the people like me that would make a 1980-Date set or a 1st Dollar set including varieties are a tiny tiny minority and PMG would rather just have the smaller series sets rather than make this monster category for 1 or 2 people to knock heads in.

Just me guessing.

15 minutes ago, Fenntucky Mike said:

Nice get, by the way. 

Thank you! I'm very pleased with how that branch / arm of my set has come together and I think the 1st dollars are the star of that show now - even if I can't get above #3 in the category.