• When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

Revenant

Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    578

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    82

 Content Type 

Journal Entries posted by Revenant

  1. Revenant

    Surprise in the mail today!

    By Revenant,


    Registry Awards
    So I'm outside in the driveway cleaning out trash from my wife's car (it got a bit trashed when we resorted to camping out in it for warmth the week of President's day) and the mail carrier drives up and drops off this yellow padded envelope - which is a complete head scratcher to me because I wasn't really expecting anything.
    I open it up and it's the PMG "Best Presented" Plaque - just the PMG one; I'm guessing the NGC Journal one is coming soon and on its own.
    I'm really shocked at how fast NGC and PMG have been on getting these things out the last couple of years considering what I know of how long it takes to just get these things made by a 3rd party company and delivered to you. They must be getting the orders over to the award company almost as soon as the announcement is made or even sooner / before the announcement to get them out to us this fast. I was really shocked to get my Journal Award last year on March 2nd but PMG has done one better this year by getting it in just before the end of February. I'm going to be really happy if the NGC one comes early next week and they repeat last year's fast turn-around on the NGC side.
    I can't say I could at all blame NGC if they're a bit slower getting theirs out this year than PMG - they have way more to send (like 5 times more) and they're sending out those special coins this year (Side note, but I'm super curious about what that coin is going to be... Did they ever say publicly?)
    As soon as I opened it and saw what it was I showed it to Shandy and Sam was right next to her. He immediately flipped out and demanded that it be given to him and took an immediate shine to it.


    Seriously. He seemed really into it. I think because it is black and, yet, somehow still shiny.

    I eventually got to have it back...

    I gotta say, it is a trip to get to have "Best Presented" awards on the NGC and the PMG side. Maybe it's time to start some shenanigans on the Comics (CGC) side?  (Wife seems very firmly opposed to this lol)
    It has been a stressful few weeks here in Houston. This brightened my day in a really nice way.
    Edited to add:
    Also last week I got my 3rd note storage box and finally got my notes all in the new boxes, taking some time out to do that as "me time" as a break from cleaning the house. I had to cram the two boxes of Zimbabwe notes a little more full than I prefer for the convenience of flipping through so I could fit them all. I definitely need a 4th box soon / at some point. Especially with some plans / hopes to add to the Zimbabwe note set soon with some graded traveller's cheques. 

  2. Revenant
    For a couple of years now I've been saying this image of a high-rise on the back of three 3rd dollar notes is just a "modern high-rise" and that it was paired with the Great Zimbabwe ruins as some kind of past / future, old / new, "progress while honoring the past dichotomy. And that may be true... but what I didn't know until today is that isn't just any building. That is the Reserve Bank Tower... home of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, finished in 1997.




    For a long time now I've been thinking that there had to be some significance to that building - you don't feature just any old tower on your banknotes... but I could never figure out what it was. Then today I just randomly see a picture of it with the caption "Reserve Bank Tower" while looking for something else online - trying to find the origins for the word "Harare."
    Now I can get all sorts of trivia on it.
    It is 393.70 ft tall or 120 meters.
    Has 28 above ground floors.
    Construction started in 1993.
    The style is Postmodernism.
    It's address is 80 Samora Machel Avenue.
     
  3. Revenant

    Parent medicine? Alcohol and Retail Therapy?

    By Revenant,


    Hyperinflation Notes and Sets
    Today is a day that might lead to retail therapy, but I’m going to try to convince myself to not waste money on a knee-jerk purchase that I’m not going to want in the long term. The leading contender for bad ideas is a New P-114 Venezuela note - the new 1 Million Bolivar note. There's a 67 EPQ on sale for not much money but I know long term I'll want a 68EPQ and it won't cost that much more when one comes up. There is also a lot of strong cheap wine in the house... so there's that.  
    So, Sam spiked a 102 degree fever last night. Brought him home and put him to bed with Ben. He woke up this morning still running hot but still acting pretty happy. We figured he would just burn through whatever and be fine, he’d just probably have to stay home tomorrow.
    Ben, on the other hand… Ben woke up seeming mostly okay, was complaining of stomach pains by 7:30 and was puking by 8:00 AM… so off to Urgent care we go!
    Another $150 copay later… Both are still Covid-negative. Ben has a stomach virus. He’s looking at about 72 hours of misery while Shandy and I try to keep the rest of us from getting it.
    I don't think I've seen Ben decline so hard so fast since he got the flu 4 years ago.
    I'm hoping at least some of the $195 in copays I've made in the last 10 days will come back from BCBS later - at least hopefully the $75 for Sam.
    Sam, the one we thought didn’t really need to go in, the one we thought was fine, has an ear infection. He’s on anti-biotics now. He’d been acting fine but by the time we got him home he was starting to grab his ear and show signs of discomfort.
    So both kids are sick with unrelated illnesses, falling ill within 18 hours of each other. That’s parenthood for you! But since Sam does NOT have what Ben has, we need to try to keep Ben from getting Sam sick.
    I have a long list of things in my eBay watch list calling my name right now… So many temptations to go next to that P-114. I also just keep getting tempted to buy a P-109a and a P-104 in 65EPQ for $15 each but... That's a road to future regret, and I know it.
    I got the latest addition to my Venezuela set in yesterday and added it to my signature set. There’s currently no competitive slot for it. It’s a P-113.
    I got this from the mailbox last night, opened it up, opened my laptop, looked at my wife and said, "Sorry. I have to go full nerd now."

    I’m thinking that, unless they go all-in with the digital bolivar and don’t issue any more notes, they really need to change the design up after these. It is getting hard to get excited about these things with them all looking… oddly the same, shall we say.
    My wife likes to poke fun at my Zimbabwean P-1 type set - which is basically a signature collection - but other than color and numbers there may be even less difference between these Venezuela notes. At least the P-1 varieties have different signatures and (sometimes) different watermarks.
    Below we have P-108, P-109b, P-110a, P-110b, P-111a, P-111b, and P-113a.


    I was looking at my comments for the Zimbabwe 3rd dollar set recently and I think I might try to go back soon and bolster those with some more information on what’s shown in some of the images on the back of the notes. I'm thinking about building in references or links to other notes in the set (1st dollars) where I talk about the Zimbabwe Ruins in more detail, adding information on St. Mary's Cathedral and the Parliament Building....
    It’s a little funny to me in that I was very happy with where I’d gotten that signature set to heading into the awards last year - and it did win! - but now I’ve done such a massive expansion and revamp of it and I feel that it has really been kicked up a notch this year.
     
  4. Revenant

    We're back! Woohoo!

    By Revenant,


    Venezuelan Bolivares Soberanos
    That was a long outage... but.... I have returned!
    Just in time too. I have a fun new note coming in a week or so to talk about... and more on the way me thinks!
  5. Revenant

    The questionable future of the "STAMP CANCELLED" designation

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwe Traveller's Checks
    When I bought a P-15 note off a dealer a while back it just had "Exceptional Paper Quality," no "Stamp Cancelled" designation.

    So I was surprised when I submitted my 12 traveller's checks and all 12 got the label.

    The new P-17 I just got, which has a cert# indicating it was submitted after mine were submitted and graded, does not have the designation.

    So, I'm really not sure what this means... I'm not sure if they just forgot to include it on this one (which I think was one of 4 or 5 the seller submitted with this group) or if they aren't sure if they're going to keep using it or not, or what.
    But this introduces the idea that my 12 are the only ones that have this label / comment and they may stay that way.  I wonder if that would make them more or less valuable?
    The joys of trying to build registry sets over time and with notes you bought and which were graded by others over a longer span of time.
    Side note, but you can really see that Zimbabwe bird watermark (or at least the outline of it) when you look on the back of these things, at least in my scans.
  6. Revenant

    The newest Zimbabwean note, the $50, P-105.

    By Revenant,


    2019 Series Zimbabwe Dollars
    In other news, Mike pointed out to me that the $50 note, the P-105, finally dropped after about 6 months of talk.

    That statue on the note is the statue / monument to the unknown soldier, which is in the National Heroes Acre (which is actually about 57 acres). This is also where the "Eternal Flame of Freedom" / "Eternal Flame of Independence" is - you see that show up in a few different places, including on the old P-3 notes I'm grading soon, the P-99 (&P-101) and the P-97.
    No clue yet who this person is supposed to be.
    I like the color on this one though. It looks similar to the old P-40s - only talking about the color here. Those notes (bearer checks) look nothing like this.  
     You get different values on this thing depending on what you reference. Some articles put the value at US$0.59-0.60 based on prevailing official bank rates and some put it at US$0.35 based on black market rates. Other black market rates I see would put it at about US$0.13-0.14. In either case, it isn't worth much.
    If they had any sense they would have skipped these completely and done $100, $500, $1000 and $5000 IMO but they're afraid that releasing new notes too fast will spook people with memories of 2006-2009.
    But inflation is still running at 106% (down from ~800%).
    They are again allowing the US dollar in parallel with the ZWD so you're back to dollarization.
    The new note still won't buy a loaf of bread - it takes two of them. You still need a huge wad of bills to make any reasonably sized purchase.
    People are already worried about the fact that they are seeing 1 or 2 new, higher denominations every year.
    People simply aren't this dumb.
    They're already talking about the fact that more, higher, denominations will probably be coming in articles announcing this one.
    The RBZ might be thinking that releasing new denominations slower is going to make people less alarmed and have them not remembering 2006-2009, but, they remember. The kids know about it. The fear and the awareness is there.
    This is now the 5th design in the new series and the 7th issue / slot (if you have the P-99 and P-100 bond notes separately like they are in the world catalogue and the registry here). The 4th dollar had 7 designs and denominations and included a $100 and $500 notes. I think we'll get both of those and have the new dollar equal the run of the 4th dollar within a year and we may see a $1000 note and see the new series exceed the run of the 4th dollar by late 2022 or early 2023 at the rate they're going. I guess we'll see how long they stick to their guns and keep denying facts.
  7. Revenant

    Upgrading my P-93 $5 note.

    By Revenant,


    4th Dollar Banknotes
    A couple of nights ago I was able to win a new TOP POP (for now) 67 EPQ P-93 note that can upgrade / replace my 64 EPQ that I got last year as a hole filler just to have the set complete. I spent about $36 all in and decided to this rather than go for a $51 68 EPQ 10 Billion note for now.
      
    At this point I don’t know if it will arrive here or if mail forwarding is going to send it to the new house by the time it’s all said and done. We have 15 days until we move. Given past experience with this seller I think it will arrive here within a few days of the move.
    I'm still debating how far I'll ultimately go and how much I'm ultimately willing to spend to upgrade the Zimbabwe set. The few 64s and 65s I have are definitely up for upgrades over time as 67/68 examples come up at reasonable prices, but I'm finding that most upgrades I'm seriously willing to consider have to be 3 point upgrades for $40 or less.
    This is only about the 3rd time I’ve done a direct upgrade of an existing note in the set - and one of those was bought by my wife without me knowing what it was. There have been 2 or three times though were I had a replacement and got a regular issue in a different grade that earned me more points - or vice-versa.
    I find anything for $50+ or anything that is only a 2 point upgrade a lot less appealing. I have almost no interest in 1-point upgrades, especially when I already have a 67. The cost / benefit just isn’t there for me as a 67 is already a superb gem Uncirc and a dang fine note for any collection.
    The ZIM93 is kind of the poster child for why I'm reluctant to buy anything below a 67 or 68 for the VEN104 - I actually think about this note every time I think about giving in and buying a VEN104 in a lower grade. At the time I bought that 64 EPQ I already knew that it really wasn't what I wanted - I already knew that I really wanted at least a 65 or preferably a 66, but it was the only graded example I'd ever seen and I wanted that set to be complete - and it only cost me about $20. Now I've seen at least 3 67 EPQs of that note come up for sale - and it has only been maybe 1-1.5 years. Not long in the grand scheme... but it did feel good to have the 4th dollar become one of my first 100% complete Zimbabwe sets.
    At least one higher grade, more recently purchased note that is likely to get upgraded at some point is my 66 EPQ P-100. It is a 66 EPQ that is in a set that is full of 67s and I don't see myself buying anything lower than a 68 EPQ for that set in the future, and I may ultimately bite the bullet and build out a full 68 EPQ set of those. 
    This P-93 also probably will not be the last upgrade to the 4th dollar set. I have a P-65 P-94 and P-95 that will probably both get bumped up to 67s or 68s down the line when the opportunity comes up and my P-92, which is a 66 EPQ, may get replaced with a 68 EPQ at some point because 68s of that note can sometimes be had for just $30-35, like this P-93 I just snagged.

  8. Revenant

    The Venezuela Set is looking solid now!

    By Revenant,


    Venezuelan Bolivares Soberanos
    My P-110 arrived last week and today brought my new P-109 and a new, higher grade P-102 (that is not a star note like the last one).

    With these, I have mostly rolled out / executed my plan for my Venezuela signature set. I still need to scan the two new notes. I still need P-104 and the new 2021 notes. I have a description written up for P-104 that will go up as soon as I have the notes. But that description focuses on the person and the animals / locals on the not and not on the historical narrative for the set / series so It doesn’t hurt my plan / narrative much to have that gap for now.
    I’ll use the descriptions for the 2021 notes to extend the historical narrative for the series, as I can. I’m still working on those.
    I really need to teach myself to pay more attention to watermarks with notes. I often overlook this aspect of note collecting because it has no analogue with coins.

    The Bolivar Fuertes notes have a watermark of the person on the note. Interestingly, the Soberanos don’t do this and just have a watermark of the new Portrait of Simon Bolivar that was used on P-108 through (now) P-114.  I’m not sure what made them switch to using the same watermark on everything.
    Maybe it was to save money. Maybe it was just to get the notes out faster. Maybe it was to give them more flexibility on what denominations they printed with any given paper delivery.
    It’s interesting that there are three men that appear in / on both series. Two have different portraits used in the two different series, but the third uses the same portrait in both series in two very similarly colored notes. This makes the P-104 kind of obnoxious to shop for. You see that portrait as you scroll through, get excited and... it's a P-98! 


    Ddr70’s comment that “Received” is the purgatory of grading is being proven out. I think the Traveler’s Cheque and Bearer Checks were received in the mail on 5/18 and opened and marked as received on 5/24 and they are still… “Received.” Turnaround time on world modern notes has been hanging 21-22 working days, and, if turnaround times really do start when the box hits the mailbox then I’m still hoping I can get the grades on those around 6/22…
  9. 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."

  10. Revenant

    Getting Better Organized Now Maybe

    By Revenant,


    Note Storage
    My collection of graded notes exploded in the last couple of years as I've worked on building the Zimbabwe collection. My storage and organization has lagged far behind with the notes just in large plastic sleeve that hold up to 8-10 notes and having those stacked up.
    It actually made things a bit of a nightmare for me when trying to look through and enjoy the notes because they were just hard to manage like this.
    My wife and I exchanged Valentine's presents early this weekend and she gave me some graded note storage boxes that look like old books on the outside.


    They are different colors (I think they're available in 4 colors) but they also have a small label pocket for saying what's in each one.

    She got me 2 to start out but I'm going to get to add a 3rd in a couple of days and take advantage of 5% eBay bucks at the same time.
    I'd initially been linked to these on eBay by another reddit user when I saw a post by that user showing one. I've had the impression that my wife might have / might be getting me some of these. This paradoxically in the short term made my organizational practices even worse - I lost all interest in fighting my old system to try to get things in order and sort in new notes when I knew these might be coming in a week or two. And, they would have been coming, because if she hadn't bought them for me they probably would have been the next thing I bought myself.
    I got really excited when I saw these in that reddit post and saw that the price was reasonable ($20/box). I've been wanting something like this f or a while and prefer something like this to albums and pages.
    I clearly haven't finished putting all my notes in them yet but I can already tell they're  going to make life so much easier when dealing with my notes.
  11. Revenant

    Okay.... So I may be walking back some of those ideas...

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwe Traveller's Checks
    So, I knew going into this and in making my other post that the old Travellers checks are pretty out there and common and available...


    As long as you don't insist on them being uncanceled / unused... (Geeeze! That is a heck of a lot of money!)

    But I'm finding that the Cargill Checks (P 13-14 and P 24-27), may just only be available much more rarely and at prices I am just 100% not willing to pay for them, short of me winning the Mega Millions.

    However, the more I look at them the more excited I get about the idea of buying and collecting some of the old fuel ration coupons from ~2005. And if PMG is willing to grade them I could see them either being included in my current "Gradually, Then Suddenly," and / or becoming the focus of a new Signature Set / Collection. These are very interesting to me as much as anything because you have the Reserve Bank issuing ration coupons and not the government or some other part of the executive branch. So I feel like that makes these very much adjacent to the Bearer Checks and Agro Checks as collectables.



     
  12. Revenant

    How much more could you want?!?

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwe Notes
    I was talking to my wife tonight about the fact that, having built a nearly complete pick set from P-1 to P-104, I'm probably going to take a break soon and slow down a lot - move on to other projects for a while.
    She looks at me and says, "yeah, but how much more could you want at this point?!?"
    "Well I could work on building out a set of 2003 traveler's checks, get more into replacement notes, specimen notes, fantasy notes... I could branch out into the fuel ration coupons..."
    She's looking at me in horror, like I've lost my dang mind. "Okay. Nevermind."
    "See. You really shouldn't ask me these questions." 😆
     
  13. Revenant
    So we're about 17 days away from the cut-off for consideration in the 2020 Registry Awards. The ad campaigns so to speak are in full swing - I've gotten the emails, seen the Instagram and Facebook posts. It's hard to miss when you follow their social media and spend time here. Anyway...
    This has gotten me thinking about how far the Zimbabwe set has come in the last year - something I take a lot of pride in. While my 3rd dollar set has been largely static at 92%, this year I think I've brought my 4th dollars from about 45% to 100%, my 2019-present series from 0% to 100% (as soon as the $20 comes in the mail in a few days) and made by biggest strides by far (IMO) in building out a 1st dollar set with an increasing number of varieties. I think my signature set has gone from having about 65 notes and about 90 slots to (soon) 104 notes with 110 slots.
    But I'm kind of kicking myself for something - I never screen-capped or made a record of what the set looked like at this time last year.
    PMG, unlike NGC, doesn't seem to save and post an archived record of what the #1 set in each category is each year - not that this would have completely solved my problem though because not all of my sets are #1 ranked. But it would have helped.
    So, I'm really kicking myself for that. Because I can't help but feel like it'd be cool to be able to see how the set grew and developed from Dec 2019 to (soon) Dec 2020, not just in terms of % completion but all the work I've been putting into refining my descriptions - including attempts I've made in some areas to reign myself in and make myself say less and not go on unnecessary and self-indulgent tangents too often.
    Side Note: But as my Venezuela hyperinflation set starts to flush out with a full set of Fuertes notes and some Soberano notes, I think I'm going to make a Signature set for those next year so I can present that set the way I want to. I'm also going to have to decide what i want to call it. I've considered naming the sets "Gradually, then suddenly: Zimbabwe" and "Gradually, then suddenly: Venezuela," but I'm not sure I like that and I'm not sure that the referenced quote fits Venezuela in the same way it fits Zimbabwe (purely IMO).
  14. Revenant
    I finally finished up the last description I wanted to write for my Venezuelan Bolivar Fuertes set and posted all of the new text to the set.
    I did most of the writing for these weeks ago but then life came up and my focus shifted back to the Zimbabwe notes again and I never finished them and I wasn't sure they were "just right" yet.
    I finished the first one and said "good enough" - get them posted and work / polish from there. It had reached the point where it was bothering me to have all of that 80-90% finished work sitting on a Word file while the set sat bare. So now its up!
    Also: My wife apparently ordered my birthday present yesterday. She was trying to keep it quiet but then Ben saw her and wanted to "help" and gave it away in a big way.
    I'm thinking there's at least 1 Zimbabwe note that makes up part of the present. I guess we'll see.
    Given this, I'm trying to commit to making no coin or note purchases until she gives me my present in 3 weeks / 22 days and I know what that is and can proceed in that knowledge - but there is one big / important Zimbabwe note that I'm seriously thinking about just biting the bullet on because of what it would mean for the set, even though part of me does think I might be overpaying for it just a little. I'm increasingly feeling like it might be worth overpaying for. I guess we'll see how it all comes out.
  15. Revenant

    Grades on the Checks!

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwe Traveller's Checks
    My grades came back for the 12 Traveler’s Cheques (2 sets of 6) and the 3 Hole-filling 2nd Dollar Bearer Cheques… and I am thrilled!!!! They did significantly better than I’d been allowing myself to hope for. I’d been thinking I’d be extremely happy if Fenntucky Mike was right, and they all came back with grades in the 61-63 range. I was mentally bracing to get a bunch in the AU50-55 range. Instead, I got the following.

    I’m not a note grader. I don’t at all know how to grade these and don’t claim to know. This was a shot in the dark for me with the best examples I could find at a reasonable-feeling price. This is one of the reasons I normally would not want to self-submit notes because I just don’t know what makes a promising bet and what could be a deal-breaker. So, I was just trying to cross my fingers and come in with what I hoped were reasonable expectations and this blew me away.
    11 out of 12 got the EPQ designation and 9 out of 12 came back at 63 or above.
    A 66 EPQ a P-17 and a P-19 has me over the moon and a 65 EPQ for P-20, combined with the P-15 in 65 EPQ is enough to make a very strong set of these checks, with a 63 EPQ and 64 EPQ to round out the set. It is a tiny bit of a bummer that both P-15s came back at 64 EPQ, below the 65 EPQ on the one I have, so on paper that arguably was a waste, but those are still very solid grades that just barely missed the other and I wanted P-15s as my -001 on the invoices.
    I split the traveler’s checks into 2 invoices so I’d have two groups of -001 to -006 – maybe two competitive sets with all the same invoice number. Because all the higher grades didn’t land on one submission and because the P-15s didn’t beat the other, if I want to make the best competitive set I can I’d have to mix and match, which would defeat the purpose of paying the $10 to split the two invoices and submit the P-15s. I’ll decide later how I want to deal with that – go for style or go for the strongest possible group of 6.
    I’m thinking I may have to contact the seller and tell him how this turned out and thank him. I’m definitely feeling good at this point for paying the extra cash to have him pick and pull the nicest examples he had.
    On the bearer checks, the 64 EPQ on the P-46b is slightly disappointing, but the 67 EPQ top pop on the P-40 was great, and this gives me a complete graded set for the 2nd dollar, which is what I wanted out of that. I'll be in no rush to upgrade or try for an upgrade on that 64 I think.
    The "Stamp Cancelled" comment is interesting in that it IS in the comments on the back but it seems to be new. My older P-15 - which is still in a new gen holder - doesn't have it.
     




  16. 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.
  17. Revenant

    My new P-17, and going deeper down this rabbit hole.

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwe Traveller's Checks
    I didn’t get a chance to dig into this as much as I wanted to during the move, so this post has been somewhat “on hold.”
    In late July I noticed a seller had a P-17 note for sale - a 64 EPQ - starting at $12 + shipping and it popped up in my saved search email. This doesn’t sound like something that would get my attention normally since the two I graded myself got 64 EPQ and 66 EPQ and so I don’t really “need” this, and it doesn’t upgrade my set. HOWEVER! This P-17 was stamped 18 Oct 2004. That’s the same date stamp that was on a 65 EPQ P-17 I lost out on when Bonezdogg sniped me with 2 seconds to go with a bid about 55 cents higher than my max. He won that one for $47 + shipping + tax - maybe tax. I was seriously so mad when I lost out on that by such a narrow margin. I was salty about that for days when what showed up in their set and I knew who'd beat me. 


    While I already have one in that grade and one in a higher grade, I wanted and still wanted that note for the date stamp. So, I decided to watch it… but then I noticed the seller had a 65 EPQ P-17 starting at $20. So, I watched both. I decided I’d try for one or both depending on how things were looking.
    The notes were ending at about 3 AM Monday so when the 64 EPQ had picked up a bid and the 65 EPQ hadn’t I put in a bid at like 11 PM Sunday night and went to bed. I woke up to see that I’d won the 65 EPQ unopposed for $20 ($27 after s&t) and someone else walked off with the 64 EPQ unopposed for $12 + s&t. I was pretty stoked about this! At the time I lost out on the other one I was frustrated to have lost out on such a desirable date stamp (to me) but I knew I was barely willing to pay want I’d bid and I knew at the time I was better off just sending mine in and seeing what grades I got and I got that confirmed when I got my 66 EPQ. But I still wanted that date stamp! And now I’ve won this one in the same grade for half the price.
    Sometimes patience does pay off. The note has made it to the US from the international dealer and should be in-hand in a few more days - the first note the be delivered to the new house.

    The nice thing here is one of the notes I graded myself was also stamped on that 18 OCT 2003, that one a P-19:

    I also have a P-16, a P-17 (or 2), a P-18 (or 2), and a P-19, all stamped as PAID Inward Clearing by the RBZ on 08 Dec 2003. That’s 4 of 6 notes for a set of Traveller’s checks stamped on that date. This is probably not surprising given that I got all of those from the same seller who probably got a bunch of them from the same person / place, and they just got a bunch from that day / batch. But it still raises interesting possibilities - date sets / sets that have all the dates the same, branch / location / stamp sets where all 6  notes come from the same branch / location with the stamps or sets of the same note from different branches. You could really go nuts digging into this just playing with the stamps and dates.
    Also, incidentally, the stamps on for 08 Dec 2003 in the checks below are all upside down.  




    The same seller had a P-15 in 65 EPQ but I didn’t go for it even though it got no bids, and I could have snapped it up easy - it is the same grade and has the same stamps with the same dates as another P-15 I bought from the same seller. So I feel it adds no value to my collection of these.
    I have been checking and watching the pop reports for these and I did see a small uptick in the populations for P-15 and P-17, but just for those 2, not for the others. So, I’m guessing this is the result of this dealer submitting these for resale. This also has me thinking there’s no value in buying raw checks from this dealer because they’re already submitting what they have that seems promising and this also makes me think this dealer doesn’t have any good / promising notes for P-16, P-18, P-19, and P-20. Maybe I’m wrong and they’re just taking their time. However, very interestingly… they got a new 66 EPQ P-17. Mine isn’t the sole finest anymore. But I haven’t seen that one offered for sale… yet.

    It's a little funny to me that I'm doing such a deep dive on these but I'm largely ignoring what I thought would be my "next thing" for the Zimbabwe set after my pick-set was done, that being getting more Replacement notes or more non-Replacement notes to compliment my existing Replacement notes. But I just find these / these stamp and date variants oddly interesting and I'm going a bit nuts but I'm enjoying it so much.
  18. Revenant

    Another P-3 explodes at auction on eBay....

    By Revenant,


    1st Dollar Banknotes
    So after a 66 EPQ P-3b went for about $370 last week, today, a 67 EPQ went for a whopping $761 + $10 shipping. That... is... something.

     
    My P-3d and P-3e, which where only acknowledged as received 5 days ago, are already scheduled for grading... So PMG seems to really be on it and I'm hoping to get grades on those by the end of the month maybe.
    Even if they grade well, they're still a d and an e, so I won't have struck it rich. But at least I'll have some P-3s in my set.
    Wow.
  19. Revenant
    I keep finding myself eye-balling 68EPQ examples of the P-1b, the P-11b and things like that in the sub-$40 range and I think I'm not going to be able to fully talk myself down from upgrading over time even though the practical side of me says I shouldn't.
    Collecting, ultimately, is not practical. Lol
    I keep trying to tell myself that 66EPQ notes are perfectly good, gem uncirc examples and rationalizing that the difference between a 68 and a 66 is subtle at best - especially in the holders - and that the 66s are perfectly consistent with the goals I set for the set in 2015...
    But things have changed since 2015! The 68s aren't $100 anymore. Contrary to what one dealer in Florida has been hyping for 6+ years, most of these have not held up well and people paying top dollar for 68s in 2015 are sitting on steep drops in value now.
    Which will help serve as a reminder to keep the prices I pay on the lower side and not completely forget practicality. I've paid over $100 a few times now for some specific notes and that may even happen again but I get really reluctant around $50.
    And I think a slow, gradual upgrade process may be inevitable. I just don't know that I'll be able to fully keep myself from impulse buys over time as I also work on other things and this becomes less of a major focus for me.
    To my surprise, I even find myself, I think for the first time, considering upgrading my 10G coins - getting MS66s to bump up some of the 65s and make that set just that little bit stronger over time - the 1876 and 1877 are particularly appealing for this. They're common and pop up in MS66 often enough to make it an easy and affordable upgrade if I ever decide to bite the bullet. But those will be harder sells. I suspect those will have to wait until after I get 20 Kroner and Swiss 20F coins that I want for my world gold type set.
  20. Revenant
    A recent effort in notes collecting
    I recently started collecting the Zimbabwe Trillion Series of notes. If most people are like me you might initially think that the Trillions Series refers only to the last 4 notes that are denominated in the trillions of dollars (10, 20, 50, and 100 Trillion dollars). The full series actually includes over 25 notes. The denominations run from 1 dollar to the infamous 100 trillion note. This series ran from 2007 to 2009 and come after the Bearer Cheque Series of notes that ran from 1 cent to 100 Billion from 2006 to 2007.
    If I understand the situation correctly (I freely admit I could be wrong on some of this, I'm still working on learning and reading about some of what went on and how this matches up with the notes), the Bearer Cheque Series constitutes what is generally referred to as the "2nd Dollar." The "2nd dollar" period followed after 3 zeros were chopped off the money in the first redenomination (ending the "1st Dollar"). Then the Trillion Series picked up after 10 more zeros were chopped off in the 2nd redenomination, marking the beginning of the "3rd Dollar." The "4th Dollar" (which there is a PMG registry option for - which gives me hope that we'll see a 3rd Dollar option one day) was issued in February 2009 following the 3rd redenomination -- but only for a few months. They chopped another 12 zeros off in the 3rd redenomination and then finally just gave up and stopped issuing their own money entirely in April 2009. The 100 trillion dollar notes were worth 10^27 of the pre-hyperinflation first dollars. The multiple revaluations and series of notes was a major source of confusion - for me anyway - and kept me from understanding for a long time just how bad the currency devaluation was during those few years and it still leaves me a bit fuzzy over the whole timeline.
    I've wanted to build a set like this in one way or another for a long time - basically since I started collecting coins again - in part because this set of notes and events is tied to why I got back into coin collecting. I was getting interested in coin collecting in 2006-2007 and reading articles on coinflation.com, many of which talked about what was happening in Zimbabwe at the time. For me, the coins and the paper money, the art and the beauty of it all, the gradual loss of value of the dollar and other paper currencies, and discussion of what would likely come in the future was all wrapped up together in this big interesting story that appealed to me as the son of a history teacher. I think the process engineer in me also loved the idea of looking at all of it in the context of a changing system over time and the dynamics of that systemic change.
    It really intrigued me and I wanted to at least get one of the 100 Trillion notes as a conversation piece but at the time interest in the notes was high and the notes were going for -- what I felt at the time -- insanely too much money. The funny thing is, 8 years later, I don't remember what they were going for at the time. I just remember thinking the price wasn't worth it to me. For all I know the prices I'm buying the notes at now could be just as high as what they were then -- it might just be that this time I have more money and I'm more willing to spend it on the notes. I don't know - . I wonder some days if the prices really did come down after some time passes and the interest dropped or if I'm just looser with money now. It's funny how perspectives can change, even over relatively short periods of time.
    I didn't think about it for years, but I thought of it when I started buying silver again. My wife was looking at me like I was a little crazy over the silver (maybe more than a little). I remembered these notes, remembered wanting to collect them, and realized that they might help me win her over on the silver by showing her why I wanted the silver bars as an inflation hedge. (Maybe I thought they might help me win her over and then remembered that I wanted them anyway. Anyway -- the thoughts were linked!) As it happens they actually worked really well in that regard. She was shocked when I started showing her the notes and telling her about the speed with which the money was devalued during the hyperinflationary period. Of course it helps that she doesn't really trust the stock market any more than I do these days.
    So I looked into what those notes were going for on eBay again late last year. I found that they weren't all that expensive (by my current standards anyway) and a new collection/project was born! I'll stop there for now though because this is already a little long...
    To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.
  21. Revenant
    I’ve been taking a bit of a break from the coin collecting to build up my Zimbabwe set. The merchant I normally buy from has knocked their prices down recently so I’ve been buying and building the set while the buying is good.

    I was bidding on a P-95, 4th dollar, 20 dollar note last night and I ended up having to get it go when another bidder took it just a little higher than I was comfortable paying for it at the moment. The fact that the other bidder bid three times and bid it up to that level was a confirmation to me that I’m clearly not the only one hunting and building sets of these notes graded by PMG (and I suppose others get PCGS graded notes).

    It was a bit of a frustrating loss and I don’t know exactly when another one will come up for sale, My regular merchant doesn’t have any that are graded, just ungraded notes and I don’t want to deal with submissions right now. I may go that route eventually and acquire several raw notes and get a paid membership here for submitting them, but right now there are tons of other notes for the set that I need that I can get already graded in good, gem+ grades for low prices so I’m just not willing to go there yet.

    eBay is running a 6-8% eBay bucks promotion that I want to take advantage of so I’m probably going to go forward with buying some Trillions series (3rd dollar) notes I’ve been eyeing instead since I lost this one. I may pick up another 1st dollar note as part of that. The 1st dollar notes are awesome and tragically ignored and I’m thinking when this is all over that a solid set of 1st dollar notes will be a point of pride and a strength of this set.

    I’ve joked with my wife that this set may end up being a monument to my stress and coping with this pregnancy and the NICU stay. I’ve been obsessing over it more than a bit as a way of having something to focus on as a bit of escapism and stress relief.

    Below I've included images of the front and back of my P-12b, just for fun. It's a favorite of mine.


  22. Revenant
    Since making the decision to return that ungraded 20 Trillion note my wife and I had said we’d sit down together once we got the refund and pick out what we were going to get instead.
    We got the refund on Tuesday 01/29. With the nature of being parents being what it is, we didn’t get to sit down together until shortly before bedtime on Friday 2/1, after the Ben was already in bed to pick out the new notes / purchase.
    I’d been looking at notes / options online for about a week at this point, so I was able to pull up about 11 options I’d been considering, and we talked about them together. I talked to my wife about each one and she even provided input on which ones we should chose based on which ones she thought were the prettiest.
    One option had been getting the 50 Billion note, graded by PMG, which would have completed my “Billions Series” set now that I Have the 20 Billion note. That note was being offered for $60 by the merchant so it would have pretty much been a direct item for item swap. My wife was surprised that I wasn’t leaning in that direction just to complete the Billions set, but, for the money, they had other things that were cheaper, looked better, and would contribute more to my overall set right now. I’m not ruling out getting the 50 Billion note later but it’s always been a harder sell for me. I acquired all of the rest of these notes mostly for $20-30. If I actually got that for the price they list it for it’d easily be the most expensive note in the set.
    Instead, they had several other notes that were graded 66 EPQ or 67 EPQ for S15-16 each. I could get four of those for about the same price as the price of that 50 Billion note and I thought that path could add a lot more to my set overall. So what did I go with?
    1: P-12, the 2003, first dollar, 1,000-dollar note
    2: P-8, the 1994, first dollar, 50-dollar note
    3. P-33, the 1 cent, 2nd dollar note
    4. P-71, 3rd dollar, 1000-dollar note
    Why these four?
    I was really wanting to get the 1,000-dollar first dollar note. It looks great, it’s the last and highest denomination first dollar issue before they started making the emergency checks. I see it as representing the beginning of the end for the currency. My wife and I also agree that the first dollar notes, in contrast to many of the later issues, are actually quite pretty and intricate in their design. I wasn’t initially going to get the 50-dollar note too, but, again, they’re some of the most attractive notes of the entire series and I do like the look of it. This may or may not lead to trying to get more of the first dollar notes.
    I wanted the 1 cent note because 1) it would be the first 2nd dollar note I’ve purchased, and 2) it’s just such an odd note. Much like the 100 Trillion note, it’s one of those crazy, freakish things that only happens in a hyperinflation situation. You would never normally see a 1 cent note. This note shows that it’s not always a story of big numbers on notes. There’s a broader selection of oddities and aberrations that occur.
    The 1,000 -dollar 3rd dollar note (P-71_ was selected because I’d been wanting to get another 3rd dollar note that extended my set back into the lower denominations of that series. Prior to this my lowest denomination in the 3rd dollar set was the 500,000-dollar note. I’d also considered getting the 20-dollar note from the 3rd dollar series. I’d thought the 20-dollar note (P-68) might be a better choice to continue the “trend” or the denomination choice with the 1983 and 1994 first dollar notes I have. $20 is also a significant / prominent denomination in the US. We went with the 1,000-dollar note because the 20 just doesn’t look as nice. The coloring just isn’t as appealing.
    I think hands down the most enjoyable part of the whole process was sitting down with Shandy and talking about the notes and the history and what I liked about each one and narrowing down the list of ~11 notes to four and ordering those four. (Yup, I totally paid $15 for a 1 cent bank note, but they’re all demonetized anyway so who even cares about face values anyway at this point?)
    Two of these notes – these already graded notes – were $15 and two were $16. So, the total purchase was $62 – versus the $60 charged for that ungraded 20 trillion note, which I still and will forever think was a rip-off given that other on eBay are offering those things graded by PMG for $40 in some cases. I think the $40 is still a little steep considering the popularity of these things seems to have waned over time, but it’s a lot more reasonable.
    In many cases these notes can be had ungraded for a couple of bucks from what I can see. The lowest grading fee tier for world bank notes at PMG right now is about $13-15 dollars depending on what kind of bulk submission you’re doing. So the difference in price on a lot of these is just enough to cover the grading fee, if that, over the cost of an ungraded note. But even then, they don’t sell a lot of them at these prices – I’m guessing because I’m one of the small few that sees value in collecting these things as graded notes (and I’m apparently about the only one that feels like participating in the registry with them). I’m okay with that though. I have very specific reasons for why I want what I want with this set.
    The notes should be arriving in the mail today. This has re-ignited my interest in the set and so I'm probably going to be putting a little more money and a lot more time into this set / project this year to flush out some things that I feel are gaps in my collection.
  23. 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.
  24. Revenant
    Why I had to get the 1983 note too...
    So, some people that watch my set listings (why would you do that, you creepers... joking) or the Zimbabwe bank note categories might have noticed that I added a registry set for the pre-hyperinflation Zimbabwe dollars and added a couple of $20 notes in there, the 1983 and the 1994. Depending on how curious you are you might have wondered why I added this set and bought these notes when I've been spending all this time talking about wanting the Trillion Series. Well... even if you didn't check or notice any of those things I want to talk about it anyway so I'm going to.
    I guess the honest answer is that I saw them being offered for sale by the same merchant I've been buying all the other Zimbabwe notes from and I wanted them because I thought they'd go well with the Trillion series notes in a complimentary way. Digging a little deeper though...
    I was really surprised in reading and learning about the history of the Zimbabwe dollar to find that, when it was introduced in 1980 to replace the Rhodeisan dollar, it was initially worth MORE than a US dollar. The initial conversion rate was Z$1:US$1.47. Granted, it was probably overvalued based on fundamentals at the time it was introduced and almost immediately it started coming down fast, but it's interesting to note that this currency that was hyper-inflated to death in just 29 years started out worth more than the world reserve currency, and realizing that interesting fact made me want some notes from that period as part of this "narrative-in-the-form-of-notes" that I'm wanting to build for a discussion I hope to have with my son in 10 or so years that he'll probably have zero interest in listening to. Doesn't matter -- I'll glue him to the chair if I have to...
    It happens that, from what I've been able to read/find, 1983 was the year that the US$ and the Z$ had a 1:1 exchange rate (albeit briefly) and 1997 was the year the exchange rate hit 10:1 -- a 90% loss of value in just 14 years, with the hyperinflationary period still 9 years away. Sadly they don't have 1997 dated bills but they did have the 1994 bills and 1983's so I got what I could. ?
    The key to getting the 1983 and 1994 notes ended up being patience. When I first saw them offer for sale they were listing for $70 each. I wanted the notes but that was just more than I was really happy paying for them. Apparently I wasn't alone in that feeling because they must not have been selling. The merchant dropped the price on them to $40 each. At that point I was willing to buy them. I can't attest as to whether or not that was a "good" price, but this was the only person I knew of that was selling these notes PMG graded, I wanted them, and I was finally okay with that price.
  25. 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.