Revenant

I wouldn't be surprised if they helped you out but it might be hard / interesting to see how they slot them in and categorize them if they don't fit into the Pick system. You might get what you want in a way you don't much like.

I agree, 100%, which is why, even though for a long time my goal was a pick set, I just largely shrugged at the idea of not having these. I only had separate open slots for them for a while now because they are, technically, for now, different pick numbers that I didn't / don't have. But if you think I didn't know I was a prefix collector you haven't looked at my GTS set close enough, or the fact that for about a year now there have been 2 P-6 notes with different prefixes. While accuracy counts for a lot, if it isn't what PMG goes by I don't know how helpful it is for the registry.

I don't know... All I can say, in the politest way possible, is that the SCWBN is not always... entirely... internally consistent... it feels like? So... P-28 and P-30 have different dates of issuance with one being 10/1/2005 and 2/1/2006. But P-23 has varieties a, b, c, d, e, AND f and the only difference between e and f is the redemption date. And they would have done that with categorizing 23, I would think, before categorizing this as 28 and 30... With 29 at least it seems likely that they had a different printer, but I haven't found a source that confirms this for me. But that still leaves me wondering why we don't have P-28a, P-28b, and P-29. I'm wondering if they Printed the 28s themselves, then printed the 29s through G&D, and then printed the 30s themselves or had someone else print them for them, and they decided to split the 30s out into a new pick number because of the shifting back and forth.

I was just messing around online and on eBay and I saw that one of my favorite dealers, who has been powering my set's (and my competition's set, and Mike's thrice cursed upstart of a set) towards completion, was listing a 67 EPQ grade copy of the P-29 note. It isn't competition for the 68 EPQ note that someone has in their set (not that I'm much competition for them grade / pointwise these days anyway ) but it's still a great, superb gem copy of the note that was available for sale at a reasonable price that I could just buy and didn't have to have a slap-fight over and lose at the last second to a sniper, so I took it. I got it for $33.80, which I think is solid for this one. The P-28 and P-29 are two notes that you need for a complete pick set but I haven't been overly concerned about them - I've been okay with not having them in the set because they are almost identical to the P-30, which is far more common. The main differences are the serial number prefixes - the issue dates and redemption dates are the same. The P-28 has an earlier issuance date (Oct 2005) but prefixes starting with A like the P-30. But, with this one popping up, I wanted it, I can afford it, the price seemed reasonable, and so I just got it. Getting a P-29 takes a small bite out of the last major hole in GTS, which is dominated by the oh-so-hard to get and oh-so-expensive in any condition Cargill Bearer Checks. At one time I'd collapsed 28-30 and 31-32 into 2 slots instead of 5 just because they were such low priorities for the set. But... we're coming to the end. And the set can't truly be complete without them. I showed my wife an image / screencap of the whole set, just to show off how far it had come and I was super proud of it and the first thing she says is, "What are all those up there?" pointing to the big, gaping, hole. My P-32 was the first note from this group and it was a 66 EPQ that I got for cheap. I may convince myself to bump that up one day to get a 68... but I'd rather add a P-31. Near to the end folks... About time for the RBZ to start pumping out another 25 note series!

Given that the tomb of the unknown soldier is in the National Heroes Acre, I'd be surprised if there isn't a statue to her somewhere in that same, very large, park. No clue why they decided to use here or that statue here though. The tomb / memorial to the unknown soldier is only shown 1 other time, on P-81.

I finally found a reference that names who the person on the back of the new $50 note is supposed to be... Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana, aka Mbuya Nehandra A female hero of the “Chimurenga,” or what is now called the “First Chimurenga,” which was the war of the native Africans to fight the British South Africa Company in an attempt to stop the colonialization of Rhodesia / Zimbabwe. She was a spirit medium and spirit leader of the Shona. She was captured and executed in 1898. It is believed she was born around 1840 and she would have been 45-50 at the time of her death. In the lead up to and after independence (the war for independence became the “2nd Chimurenga“) she was honored by Zimbabweans with statues, street names, naming hospitals, songs, novels and poems. I'm wondering what they based the image on. I can't imagine there are many surviving photos or portraits of someone who was born, lived, and died in pre-colonial Southern Africa, but I could be wrong about that. By 1890 photography was getting more accessible. Wikipedia just shows the one image: It looks like there are a LOT of statues of her in Zimbabwe based off this one image but it does look like there are others.

I may not / probably won't actually implement it as links. Probably just, "Go look at this not for more."

So August was a crazy month with the move and both kids starting new schools and Shandy starting a new job and the cruise. September hit with sickness, covid scares, dead car batteries... So the news of the Digital Bolivar hitting around August 6th was pretty much perfect timed for me to completely miss it. What time I did devote to coin and currency collecting mostly went to obsessing over my Zcoin submission. Yes! The BCV timed the release of this leak to thwart me! I do not overstate my own importance with this post at all in any way. This announcement of a Digital Bolivar seems like a disappointment and a mess rolled into one... these 5 new notes all using the same portrait of Bolivar that they have used for the last 7 VES notes... Talk about phoning it in... Also... A coin!!! I wants it! I'm gonna get it! While they did essentially change the colors and reprint from the first to the 2nd series of the VEF, when they did the 2nd redenomination and rolled out the VES you got a new 8-note series with mostly new portraits (mostly) and new back designs. When they reused the portrait from P-108 for P-109 to P-114 we at least got a new back design. I haven't seen the back of these yet but I'm REALLY hoping they at least changed the back to a new image / park/ landmark. The articles I've seen suggest that there will indeed be new physical notes for the new "Digital Bolivar," which honestly makes almost no sense. I just read this and think, "Why?!?" How is it even a digital currency if you print notes? There's been some confusion from what I've seen on if the new Digital Bolivar will be blockchain based or not but I just can't imagine why they wouldn't make it block hair based - the petro was going to be, if it had ever really gotten off the ground. I guess we'll see if this one does better than the petro. I kinda doubt it. But if this tanks they'll have tainted the name "Digital Bolivar" forever. About 3 or 4 months ago I'd rather foolishly drafted out comments / descriptions about some of this for P-112, P-113, and P-114 notes, wrongly thinking that there wouldn't be more major developments until 2022 and I'd get to buy those three notes and have those comments be reasonably current for a while. Well, I now own 1 of those 3 notes, and those comments have been dated for almost 1.5 months. Back to the editing room...

It's a half-hearted, non-committal approach that dooms the whole venture to failure before it starts. By not going all in they'll never get the population to adopt it and believe in it. The 3rd redenomination in Zimbabwe and the 4th dollar was almost 100% about the fact that computerized banking systems are not designed to deal with numbers in the quadrillion and quintillion range. They were forced into it by computer overflow errors.

Funny thing is I did 3s deliberately in an attempt to be plural because the images weren't showing in the gallery for the 3d or the 3e, which were added at the same time. But it's good. It let me test your fix on the 3e and it worked. So I'm just gonna shrug and call it good. GREMLINS!

Well, it sounds like a mixed bag and a mess. It sounds like there WILL be a 3rd redenomination that is going to remove 6 zeros and there WILL be 5 new bank notes. Some things say that this will NOT have a blockchain component and it will not be a CBDC, some say it will, some say it will be a text-message-based / phone-based payment system similar to some of the things you see in Africa. https://www.cryptopolitan.com/venezuelan-central-bank-digital-bolivar/ https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-09-19/jobs-outlook-a-guide-to-your-potentially-great-resignation https://www.btcexpanse.com/redenomination-of-digital-bolivar-plan-revealed-by-venezuelan-central-bank/ I had missed most of these announcements a few months ago. I may have to re-work my P-113 description that a wrote a few months ago and just posted. It's hard to deal with these things and making these set descriptions these days. The designs are giving me nothing new to talk about and the story from the BCV is constantly in flux and I don't think they even know what they're doing at this point.

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.

You probably just don't. How do you collect bitcoin for El Salvador?

My latest arrived today. I'm glad to finallly be seeing graded examples of these hitting the market. It looks like, this time, the dealers waited to send them in until the catalogue updated so you didn't get any "Pick Unlisted" notes this time. I wonder if we'll see the same thing with the new ZImbabwean P-105, meaning you won't see those show up graded until probably March or April of 2022. IF they release any more notes in this series without a redenomination or something I REALLY hope they change the design up in some way other than just changing the colors. It is starting to get hard to maintain excitement over these. They all look the same!

The Agrochecks aren't popular. They get more attention than the relatively obscure traveller's checks but that doesn't say much. There's more of a collector's base in the 1st and 3rd dollars. I think the new dollars are relatively popular. But the 4th dollar and anything 2nd dollar seems mostly unloved.

I picked up my 67 EPQ P-64 for about $17-18 in early 2019. If I remember right it was bought either right before or right after Sam's birth but I think Sam had been moved from the level 3 to the level 2 NICU around that time. Crazy stuff. I don't know that I'll ever upgrade that one. Just be patient. The collector community for these is thin. I think it's mostly like 10-20 people for Zimbabwe depending on the series / set.

Something went badly wrong with that brief maintenance but I'm glad to be back at last.

The scam bot accounts are getting a bit out of hand at the moment... I've never seen them stack 3 deep on a thread before.

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!

I added my P-3s to my signature set recently but, even though I've added pictures, the pictures aren't showing in the gallery screen:

As it is I'd add them in GTS between the 4th dollars and the new dollars, like I do my US notes and the 20 Rand now. I have considered splitting GTS into two parts and having the "old dollars" (p-1 to p-98) and then the "new" dollars from p-99. In that split regime the multi-currency period would be a 3rd, middle, sig set. But I haven't done that so far in part because the "new" set would be so small and then it's just sig set that does the same job as an existing competitive set. Since GTS won a major award, there's also something to be said for preserving the character of the set as it was when it won and developing/ evolving it in that context. A alot here is going to have to depend on how the new system evolves. If they do a new redenomination and make a new series starting from 1 or 2 dollars I may split it and make that new set. If they abandoned the currency again and went back to a multi-currency I could see the multi-currency notes and those notes being a fun signature set. Of course, I suppose there's nothing stopping me from keeping both the combined GTS and making new, more limited sets like what I just described.

I think the next thing I'd be inclined towards for building out "Gradually, then Suddenly," Would be adding more contemporary (2009-2018) notes from South Africa, Botswana and the other countries that made up the multi-currency period.

LAME!! Gotta get serious on this and make a prefix with P-65 from AA to AH or AJ or whatever it was.

While I am distinctly disgusted with my luck I can't say it's something that overly concerns me or interests me enough to have both of us spending money on shipping over. Thanks for a very kind offer though. I bought the note for the upgrade and I didn't really take note of the AB until after I ordered. Prior to this the highest note I'd seen an AB on was a 500 Million P-82. This had lead.me to think ABs didn't exist above this point. That note you have suggests they exist for P-83 through P-85 at least. I still doubt it on the Trillions but I'm willing to be proven wrong if I ever see an AB 10 Trillion. Now go set a challenge for yourself of building an AB set while I just sit here with my matched set of AAs.

Of course, naturally I get the AA.