Revenant

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.

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. 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.

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.

The notes I ordered about a week or so ago have arrived and they’re starting to clear our quarantine period so I’m finally getting to take a closer look at what I bought… and the are not 2016 bond notes. The bond notes actually say “Bond Note” and that’s the one modification / omission these 2019 issues make (other than the date) that separates them from the Bond notes. I’m laughing to myself because this is 100% my bad for not noticing. The seller’s listing listed them as “P NEW 2019.” The pictures and the labels said 2019… I just was assuming and taking for granted that all the notes that looked like this were the same and were all bond notes and I’d been completely unaware of the fact that the government / RBZ actually did release these like they said they would but they re-used the design of the bond notes – something they never did before. I talked about this with the 3rd and 4th dollars. When the 4th dollars were rolled out (even though they were VERY short-lived, even by Zimbabwe standards) the government significantly changed those designs and made sure that the new notes had color schemes that were very different than the 3rd dollar notes of the same denomination to make darn sure that no one would get the two mixed up or use them interchangeably. I never would have expected them to do this. That said, even though these aren’t bond notes, they’re basically identical, and I’m finally getting to look at these designs in person, with the note in hand, and, dang, I think these are pretty. This really just makes me even more bummed that the $10 and $20 notes keep not getting released. I would have loved to have seen what they had planned for those. How dare the people of this poor, long suffering, country get in the way of my collecting fun, right?!? First World Problems, man.

Somewhat inspired by ddr70's recent post about lowball sets, I thought I'd share this today, just for a laugh. My new P-5b, P-7 and P-9 notes finally came out of quarantine today and I finally got the certification numbers to add to my set(s). With the addition of these notes, my 91-92% complete set now finally beats Muzzer42's 8% complete set... by a whopping 3 points. Muzzer has a P-1d note in MS66 EPQ. The P-1d is the rarest and most valuable variety of the P-1 note. It's the only P-1 variety that I don't own. I'm "winning" so hard he could go out at any time and buy any non-P-1 1st dollar note on the cheap and be beating me again. MKMITTAL79 continues to curb-stomp me with a 16% complete set that combines the relatively rare P-2e and P-3b. I still don't have any P-3 (only one I lack completely) and I have the much more common P-2c. Now that these notes are out of quarantine I need to get them and my new 68 EPQ P-6 CD-prefix and get some pictures up soon. Signature link for my main 1st dollar set (check it out if you want and haven't already):

To the extent that they aren't as expected it's my fault for not paying attention to them being 2019 issues and not 2016/2017 issues and not noticing that they don't say "bond note" in the top corner. So what I thought was a bond note is actually a newer issue I wasn't previously aware of.

Yeah. I definitely feel your pain there increasingly with my 3 first dollar sets, the 2 sets each for 2nd, 3rd and 4th dollars. We'll see how many I end up with! You both have a lot of great Nationals. It's not ideal but it's not the worst problem to have!

Okay... Per a conversation I'm having today in the PMG Registry forum... It's looking like I did NOT get my Bond notes this week, but I'm going to have to look at the notes more when I get them in the mail soon. Still happy with the purchase. Still happy to have them... but... It's starting to look like what I thought I bought and what I bought are 2 different things.

I suppose I hinted at this in my previous post by posting pictures of both of them but I didn't bring this up because I didn't close / seal the deal on the 2nd one until this morning. Over the weekend, about a week after I lost the auction for that P-100 note the seller offered me a 2nd chance offer on it at my max bid price - which happened to be the initial / starting bid price. This offer, combined with some other things that happened towards the end of those auctions, increases my suspicion that some shill bidding occurred. I went ahead and accepted the offer, because I did want the note and it was a good price for the grade in my opinion (which is the only one that matters in this case). While I do suspect shilling, even if I'm right, it only cost me $2-5 on $150 in purchases so I decided I'm just going to choose to ignore it for the most part. In the course of dealing with that I noticed that the seller had listed some P-99 notes for auction as well. The first one was ending today in the early morning so I decided to go for it. Unlike the auctions from a couple of weeks ago I waited and big until close to the end. Curiously, I bid and won unopposed this time... A lesson for the future with this seller, I guess - assuming I choose to give him any more business after this. While I suspect shenanigans, I think I got good prices, and picked up Superb Gem graded notes for less than it would have cost me to buy raw and get them graded myself. So I'm going to call it a win. I have to laugh at myself just a little 1) for going ahead and getting the P-100 just a week after I "let it go," and 2) because, for a while now, I've been thinking that when I finally got one of the bond notes I would probably get both at the same time or very close together. With a 2 note set, it just feels wrong to only get one / it's too tempting to not get both. The appeal of having the pair - especially as a matched set in grade - is just too strong.

I feel like NGC gets all the love because that side is so much bigger (13,000 vs under 1,000) and they do more business over there. But things seem to have picked up with PMG in terms of submission rates in the last couple of years. I'm hoping PMG will get the new-registry treatment and that both PMG and NGC will get a new, updated signature / custom set system in the new registries, and I'm hoping that will help make this place a little more appealing to more people. I think you get a cart and horse / chicken and egg problem though. It's hard to argue for them to make major investments in this place when it gets no traffic and doesn't drive much revenue, but unless they invest in it, it isn't likely to attract traffic or drive revenue - the r/Currency subreddit seems to get more love and traffic than this place some days and it's sad to me because Reddit tends to be pit. "Front page of the internet." Riiiiiight… talk about talking something up.

The challenge with getting new competitive sets here would seem to be showing that there's demand for it and that the category will get participation. The more narrow you make a set, the more niche it is, the less likely they are to make it. With that in mind, I think your first ideas could work but I doubt they'd make the state specific ones and you'd have to just implement that yourself - as you basically already have in 1902.

I read last year that Zimbabwe was going to have ANOTHER new currency coming to replace the RTGS dollar but then life and work got busy and I never really went back to look into the developments. I've been making updates to my set(s) lately though and looking into the getting the P-99 and P-100 Bond notes and this got me thinking about the fact that I haven't been seeing or hearing anything about new notes or a new currency even though it's been about 6 months now. It seems like they haven't released now physical paper money but they did roll out a "new" currency to replace the RTGS dollar..,. and it's called... The "Zimbabwe dollar," currency code ZWD! Which happens to be the same currency code used by the "1st dollar" that replaced the Rhodesian currency in 1980. So, this gives us: 1st Dollar, ZWD (1980-2006) 2nd Dollar, ZWN (2006-2008) 3rd Dollar, ZWR (2008-2009) 4th Dollar, ZWL (2009) Bond Notes - 1:1 USD peg (2016-2019) RTGS Dollar, ZWL (2019) … because, I guess just calling it the 5th dollar would just be sad and they even re-used the old currency code... Zimbabwe Dollar, ZWD (2019 - Probably DOA) Some people clearly just don't know when to give up... ZWD, to ZWN, to ZWR, to ZWL, and finally back to ZWD. We are full circle - and they still have crazy-high inflation. Wow.

How uncharacteristically unreasonable of him. 😆

Thank you! I think that's the nicest thing that can be said of a registry set. It's amazing to me that you have, among other things, a radar note from 1902.

I know you're dealing with 120 year old notes that are far rarer and more valuable but I got a bit of a laugh about "see if you can get lower than .. an average of 360.67 pts / note." Most of my Zimbabwe notes only get 37 to 50 points a note for 66 EPQ to 68 EPQ notes. I think I only have 2 notes in my ~85 note set that get more than 300 points for 1 note. But that's how it should be - those note are super common and easy to collect if you have any kind of decent budget and a little patience to not let dealers fleece you with their pumping rhetoric.