• 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

    The P-1d

    By Revenant,


    1st Dollar Banknotes
    I still don’t have a P-3 at the moment and I still have that nagging hole in the set, but I recently won an auction for a P-1d – one of the highest grade examples you can ask for – a 68 EPQ Star.


    This thing popped up on my radar about three months ago when it and a 68 EPQ (no star) were put up for sale with price tags of $190 (with the star) and $100 (no star). They were up for auction and those were the starting bids.
    Buying a P-1d was a dream and a goal of mine for over a year now but getting one of these notes at those prices would have easily made the note the most expensive note in my set. I could not make myself pull the trigger on a bid even though I knew I’d hate missing out on such great examples of the note.
    Apparently, I was not alone though in that no one else bid and they went unsold, so the seller posted them as a BIN at the same prices as the old starting bids. They sat on inventory for a while after that.
    I kept expecting them to sell but they didn’t. My problem wasn’t that I thought the asking price was unreasonable. I have seen rarer varieties of the 1st dollar notes go in auctions for ~$125 before and these were 68s. I was just having a hard time convincing myself to pay that for one.
    As time went on the thought of adding one of these to my set grew one me and I was close to ordering the 68 EPQ (no star). I couldn’t convince myself to go for the start for $190 but I did like the idea of getting this scarcer variety for my set in a really nice grade. I was just waiting a few more days to pull the trigger – lucky me as it turned out.
    The Star note got pulled from the BIN listing and a few days later popped up in an auction with a starting bid price of $100 – same price as the BIN on the non-star. At that point I decided to go ahead and wait a week for the auction to end and see what it would go for. I knew the 68 EPQ was unlikely to sell in the interim with this one up for auction. So that made me feel safe enough to wait longer.
    I waited and no one bid. So, Friday night, with the auction ending at 2:30 AM Saturday, I put in a bid of $114 and went to bed hoping for the best. I woke up the next morning and found out I’d won it without other bidders.
    I was going to be out of town for a few days soon after the note ended so I casually bid on some of the seller’s other auctions and waited a few days to pay, knowing that would help make sure it was delayed shipping out and that it would not arrive when I wasn’t home to receive it. I’m glad I did because it still came just a couple of days after we got back home.
    Its really exciting to have this and to have a complete variety set for at least 1 of the 4 first series notes.

  2. Revenant
    The P-2e is an interesting note (one of a few 1994 issues, along with the P-1d). It is a somewhat rarer variety than the P-2d, but when you look at the two, on the surface, they look pretty much the same. The difference between the P-2d and the P-2e (and the difference between the P-1c and the P-1d) is that the earlier issue uses the first version of the Zimbabwe bird watermark while the later issue uses the newer, second version of the Zimbabwe bird watermark that was used in later issues, including the Series 2 notes.
    Zimbabwe started rolling out the Series 2 notes in 1994 and 1995 (and retired the $2 denomination, replacing the P-1 note with a $2 coin). So, between their replacement mid-year of the prior issues with the old watermark and their subsequent replacement with completely new designs, these notes were not in print long.
    Pictured below for comparison is my P-2c, from 1983. I don't have a 1994 dated P-2d at this point. We'll see what the future holds there.

    The P-1c is fairly common and cheap, seemingly almost as common and inexpensive as the P-1b, and it’s just a watermark that separates it from the P-1d – which is one of the rarest and most desirable notes in any Zimbabwe note collection. 
    I can say that with the P-1c and P-1d because I have seen P-1c notes come up for sale in 67 EPQ and sell for less than $30 in most cases 3 or 4 times now. I have hardly ever seen P-1d notes and they tend to go for more in the $120+ range.
    It’s harder to make this argument, for me, from what I’ve seen, with the P-2d and the P-2e because I’ve now seen two P-2e notes sell for $51 or less, but I have not yet seen a P-2d come up for sale.
    This makes it difficult in most cases to try to shop for a P-1d or a P-2e on the internet, in raw, ungraded condition, because sellers typically don’t include pictures where they’re holding the note up to a light to show off the watermark and it’s the watermark that makes literally all the difference - the dates and signatures are the same.
    From a registry perspective, these notes are interesting in that they are competition drivers that play an outsized role in making sets competitive (or not) in the 1st dollar category. And they seem to be more scarce on the market but their prices aren’t much higher in practice - I’m sure because there aren’t many 1st dollar collectors compared to 3rd dollar collectors and there aren’t all that many 1st dollar collectors that are crazy enough to build full variety sets or to try to hunt down the rare varieties instead of settling for the more common ones - most people probably would not care to pay extra for a P-1d and would rather just get a P-1b. The notes are nearly identical.
    A P-2c in 66 EPQ gets 45 points but a P-2e in the same grade gets you 357. I paid about $30 for the P-2c and paid about $51 for the P-2e. More, but not 7 times more.
    A P-1b gets 37 points in 66 EPQ but a P-1d gets 584 - which can make it hard to compete in the category if someone else has a P-1d and you don’t.
    The point values on these notes seems to be more reflective of their relative rarity and not necessarily their price - and we all know, per NGC/PMG that the scores are not based exclusively on price. But you also can’t draw many conclusions about relative scarceness or desirability because these things are rarely graded in general and the more common varieties are generally not worth enough after grading to justify the grading fees - so their relative numbers in the pop reports are not at all indicative of their relative commonness overall.
    This dynamic has made me keen to try to go for some of these rarer varieties when one comes up for sale and the seller is asking something close to a reasonable price. But the problem sometimes becomes that the seller is asking what I do not particularly feel is a reasonable price. And, when the thing sits unsold for months, it suggests to me that the others out there that buy these things also don’t feel like it’s all that good of an ask. But, when you’re dealing with something that only comes up for sale very infrequently - especially already graded in a very hard grade - it can be extremely hard to argue this point with the dealer or get them to come down off those asks. And then the things just sit in inventory for a year or two or three.
     


  3. Revenant

    The P-3s

    By Revenant,


    1st Dollar Banknotes
    Today I got the email from PMG that they got my submission of a Zimbabwean P-3d and P-3e that I'd bought raw to finally fill that gap in my first dollar set. The d and e aren't as desirable as the a or b but they're still quite nice.
    However, the day I was getting ready to mail those off to PMG a dealer listed a high grade P-3a and a high grade P-3b for sale starting at a low price on eBay with a 10 day timer / run. I knew I probably wouldn't win because I expected them to go for about $125 and I just wasn't willing to spend that for them right now but I wanted to know what they'd go for. I was surprised!
    The 3a went for about $230 and the 3b went for about $370. Lots of bidders. A few of them wanted these things BAD I guess.
    lol. Once again, glad I knew going in I had no chance. I mostly don't see much inflation / price increases going on with these but it does seem to be happening with the rarer / highly desirable varieties and notes.
    PMG seems to be moving fast. I'm hoping to find out how the P-3d and P-3e did at grading sometime in September and have them back home for imaging well before December. I'm going to love having a 100% complete 1st dollar registry set at last.
     
  4. Revenant

    The P-72 at last. :)

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwe Banknotes
    Today I officially got a P-72 Zimbabwean banknote for my wife for my birthday. I think it actually came right around a month ago but as of today it is officially “mine” and I can list it. Anyway… 
     

     
    It came with a circulated 500,000 note as a tag along.
     

     
    At a whopping $265 – a very high price tag for this set, making it cost about 1/10th as much as the rest of the 100-note set combined and beating the next most expensive note by a factor of ~2.5 – this was a bit of a painful one to pull the trigger on but I just had to have this or I don’t think I’d ever be able to feel fully satisfied with the set.   
    This is / feels like a pretty big thing because it finally completes my 3rd dollar banknote set by pick #. 
     
    This means the list of accomplishments in my Zimbabwean banknote collection (Gradually, then Suddenly) for 2021 includes: 
    First dollar banknote set complete by pick # - I added the P-3 at last. 
    First dollar traveller’s checks complete by pick # x2 sets 
    2nd dollar bearer checks complete by pick # - I filled in the last 3 holes, one with a top pop I sent in myself. The only thing I think that is arguably missing here is the P-46a sub-type. 
    3rd dollar banknotes complete by pick# - I have hardly ever seen a 73b, a 74b, or a 76b for sale and I refuse to pay $140 for a grade 15 just to say that I have that variety. 
    A whole bunch of raw gas coupons added and added to the set with a placeholder. 
     
    The set is complete by pick number from P-1 to P-12, from P-15 to P-23, and from P-32 to P-104. 
     
    For the first time since I expanded the set to include all the pick numbers there are fewer than 10 holes / gaps in the set.  
     
    6 of those holes are the Cargill Bearer checks – I’ll try my best down the road but… those are hard, and I just don’t feel bad about not having them! 
     
    2 of those gaps are notes that, as discussed in other entries, I’m not convinced deserve to even have their own pick numbers (P-28 and P-31). 
     
    And the last hole is a P-105, and… does anyone think I won’t get that as soon as I’m good and ready?  
     
    Looking at it, seeing that last gap in the middle of that huge, otherwise unbroken, 70+ note block… Feels nice! And I’m a little shocked and in awe. I would not have believed I’d get here in 2019, especially not in just 2.5 years. 
     
    At this point, my set has more notes and varieties and more images of notes in higher grade / better condition than many of the sites I used to learn about the collection and build mine.   I feel really good about reaching this point. REALLY REALLY Good. 
     
    But every time I hit a milestone like this though the “road ahead” becomes a steeper climb. Lol 
     
    Last night I also won a new P-46b unopposed. The P-46b in the set is one of the three notes I submitted myself earlier this year, but it disappointed with a 64EPQ. I was happy enough to get to have the 2nd dollar set, but, as I long suspected would be the case, not long after I just graded them myself the dealer I get so many of these notes from started popping up with more 2nd dollar bearer checks in high grade for cheap. They've been listing a lot of things in the range of P-39 to P-49 in 67 and 68 EPQ grades the last couple of weeks.
     
     
    I'm a bit salty over this because I got charged sales tax again this time when I haven't been charged sales tax the last couple of times I've bought from them. That brought the price up to $37.88. If I'd known I'd be hit with tax and pay almost $38 and not $35 I would have just bought the note from them through their site. It's $35 on their site and I won with a $30 bid, but I could have used their 10% discount code, not paid shipping and gotten out for $36.50... At the end of the day, it's $1.38. Not a big deal, but still mildly annoying. I'm getting tired of this on again / off again with this seller and eBay on Sales tax. Between that and the discount code on the site I'm increasingly convinced that I need to just give up on eBay wit this seller as long as that 10% code is on offer. However, as Mike has pointed out, a lot of their better stuff goes to eBay on auction, and doesn't show up on their site until much later, if it shows up at all. So waiting and hoping to see it on the website is a bit of a risk.
     

     
    It's a little funny to me that this post is focused on the two different 10,000 dollar notes in two of the series / sets that have them. There's a total of 5 $10,000 denominations, with P-14 (RARE!), P-17 (Dirty Common), and P-24 (RARE) rounding out the group.
  5. Revenant

    The person on this note...

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwe Notes
    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.


  6. 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.
  7. Revenant
    When the set was introduced around 2016 the Zimbabwean First Dollar Set Category (“1980-2004 Issues, P1-P12, Complete”) included slots for all the sub-types, so instead of a slot for P-4 there were 4 slots for P-4a, P-4b, P-4c, and P-4d. They later went back and reduced the set to just 12 slots – one for each pick #. 
     
    I can only assume NGC decided to do this on their own because I don’t think anyone other than myself has ever had a set in this category so it’s hard for me to believe that someone else (a user / member) asked for or recommended this change. 
    I made my set back in 2016 when they were first introduced to the registry. I went about two years without updating or adding to it after that – fatherhood and unemployment sucking up my time. So I didn’t notice the change in the set / slots until about two months ago when I started paying attention and building up the set again. 
     
    Honestly, I like the change. It makes the set a lot more approachable and significantly easier to build – which was probably what NGC had in mind when they made the change. Collecting a full set of the pick #s for the first dollars is easy enough but building a set with all the sub-types would be expensive and hard. In particular, the 1980s notes that list the name of the Capital city as Salisbury instead of Harare (they changed the name of the city in 1982) seem hard to find. They just don’t seem to pop up very often. 
     
    Now, since I just need a P-11 and I don’t have to care about it being a P-11a or P-11b – unless I want to. The set becomes easier to build – and a lot more fun too if I’m being honest. The whole thing just becomes less daunting. 
     
    This change did hit my set a bit in that I’d bough both a P-4c and a P-4d at a time when they could both be listed in the same competitive registry set together. Now you can’t do that – not with a competitive set. But you can do it with a signature set and that’s exactly what I do these days. That is, after all, the beauty of this place with the signature sets. 
     
    My P-4c and P-4d are both in my newly re-done and re-imagined signature set. I may yet have more instances in the future where I have more than one sub-type within a single pick. I think getting some things like that has a great potential to add depth to the set and strengthen it, but it’s great in a lot of ways to feel like I don’t have to. 
     
    Part of the impact of this, at least to me going forward, is that it makes getting a new pick # that I don’t have an example of a lot more appealing than getting, say, a P-5b when I already have a P-5a in a comparable or better grade. I could definitely be interested in one day getting as many of the different sub-types as I can, but I think that will mostly wait until after I’ve acquired what I want and can find of the different pick #s. 
     
  8. Revenant

    The two hyperinflation signature sets.

    By Revenant,


    Hyperinflation Notes and Sets
    The Box with the Traveller's Checks is now sealed up and the postage is on it and it is now ready to go to PMG!
    This got me in the mood / excited to do a bit of tweaking: I added a note and link in the description for "Gradually, Then Suddenly" to my coin set on the NGC side. That set still only has a dime in it but I'm actively working on changing that now with a planned submission. I have coins! I just have to pick the coins to go in to NGC.

    I also went back and changed "ZIMUNL" to "ZIM101" through "ZIM104" for the newer notes, since they're now listed that way in the competitive sets.

    Better yet, I took the skeleton, the bones, of a Venezuelan Hyperinflation signature set that I'd made about 6 months ago and started filling that out with more than just Pick numbers.
    View Personal Collection (collectors-society.com)
    This has me getting very excited and happily building and writing and tweaking descriptions again and... this is getting me pumped to start trying to fill out some of those holes in the Soberanos set.  
    I thought I'd be here sooner, but it feels good to come back to it after a break and feel that energy and feel pumped again. It's time to build the Venezuelan set into a proper brother for the Zimbabwean set.
     
     
  9. Revenant

    The VEN 104 is starting to get.... annoying...

    By Revenant,


    Venezuelan Bolivares Soberanos
    I'm starting to get frustrated and impatient for some VEN 104s to pop up in good grades. There's a 65 EPQ and a 66 EPQ that keep getting relisted and going unsold because... no one wants those. Anyway...
    I'm getting tempted to just snap up that 66 just to fill in the hole in my Soberano set that keeps taunting me but I know that's a mistake.
    The rest of the set just came together so fast and so easy and now that one gap is taunting me and graded examples of the new 2021 notes still haven't hit the market yet to distract me...
    I want a 67 EPQ or a 68 EPQ. I just paid to get a 68 EPQ of the 102a to replace a 66 EPQ 102a*. I just put money into bumping a 66EPQ VEN91 to a 68EPQ in the competitive set... I don't want to buy any more 66 EPQs right now! Even if it is cheap!
    I'm probably ultimately going to try to make all the 66 EPQs in my Venezuela competitive sets 68 EPQs, but I'm going to try to get different varieties to simultaneously build up the signature set in a fun way. I'm not going to start actively chasing variety sets, but if you're upgrading anyway, why not at least get different varieties so they build-on / expand what you have instead of just making redundancies?
    I have money to spend and stress shopping to do... If these notes don't pop up soon I may start upgrading Zimbabwean 3rd and 4th dollar notes and then the wife is really going to be looking at me sideways...  
  10. 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…
  11. Revenant
    Looks like, while I've been distracted by the birth of my 2nd son, the government of Zimbabwe and the RBZ have been busy. The announcement came on 2/19/2019, one week after my son was born.
     
    On 2/20/2019 the “Zollar” “quasi-currency,” pegged to the US dollar at a 1:1 ratio, represented by the bond coins released in 2014 and bond notes released from 2016-2018, became the official currency of Zimbabwe – called the RTGS dollar. It consisted of the bond notes and electronic money. The Bond Notes and electronic money would be converted or merged into the new currency with a 1:1 parity and then they would float against the dollar. The name of the currency would come from the country’s interbank online payment platform – "Real Time Gross Settlement," RTGS. 
     
    In the days leading up to the announcement the government and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) were actively denying claims that they were looking to introduce a new currency. Some local economists called the move a “bold and progressive” step. Others saw the move as a sophisticated plan to take control of the US dollar savings held by the population. Shakespear Hamauswa, a businessman and lecturer, sued the government and called the RTGS a “ponzi currency,” used to “monetize the theft” of the US$ balances of the people accumulated in the last 10 years. Nelson Chamisa, the leader of the major opposition group, said, “The monetary policy statement is a disaster that will erode livelihoods, plunge the nation into darkness and uncertainty.” 
     
    It’s worth noting that, while the bond notes and RTGS were officially pegged to the US dollar, in the parallel / black market the “real” exchange rate was more like 4 or 5 to one. Almost immediately after the RTGS was introduced the official exchange rate fell to 2.5RTGS:US$1. The “real” exchange rate at that time was closer to 5.75RTGS:US$1.
     

  12. Revenant
    I ran across the following in my continuing research from my Zimbabwe note set. It’s from the FAQ of a website that sells the notes.


    This made me shake my head, that anyone would still think it’s possible that these things would ever be money / currency again - 10 years after issuance was suspended and 4 years after the official demonization of the 4th dollars.

    The complete failure of the 2016/2017 bond notes evidences the challenge that Zimbabwe is going to face if they ever hope to have a national currency again. The issuance of the bond notes should also provide evidence of another fact - if Zimbabwe ever does make a new currency, it will do so with the issuance of a new series of notes. It will NOT do so by making these old notes currency again. It’s just not going to happen. They can’t re-monetize that massive amount of currency that they printed and have any hopes of the new currency succeeding. If they do launch a new currency the last thing they will want is for people to be thinking about the old currency and associating the new one with that terrible episode in the country’s history.

    The response in the FAQ says it well - these are defunct. These are novelties. These are “quirky collectables.”

    Even if, by some freak event of cataclysmically bad thinking, they did decide to remonetize these again, they’d probably remonetize the 4th dollar notes, which only run up to $500 - no one is going to become an instant trillionaire from them remonetizing all the 3rd dollars. It just will not happen.

    Even if they, at some later time, gain more popularity and start to become more valuable and desirable to the collecting community, they’ll only be slightly more valuable collectables.

    They’re collectables that I happen to enjoy a lot, so I’m going to keep collecting them and building up my set, diving ever further in the rabbit hole with subtleties, nuances and serial numbers… but let’s be real - you’re not going to get rich collecting / hoarding these things.

  13. Revenant

    These were on inventory a while I think...

    By Revenant,


    Bolivares Fuertes
    I got the bulk lot of six Venezuelan notes in the mail on Thursday, and, after letting them wait / sit a while I opened them today.

    This is such a funny group of notes because, the Bolivar Fuertes series has 6 designs where 6 portraits and 6 animals & nature scenes are paired and this same sequence of 6 note designs is repeated twice in the series in the same order. This group of 6 that I bought together has an odd-ball 2 Bolivar notes and not the 500 Bolivar note that would match up with all the other notes in the sequence from 1,000 to 20,000, so you get all 6 portraits and designs, but in kind of a weird way - with one odd-ball denom from much earlier in the series than the rest of them.

    Unlike a lot of the Zimbabwe notes I've been snapping up lately these were NOT graded recently. Many of those new Zimbabwe notes in my set have 807XXXX- cert numbers and some even have the latest gen labels.
    These Venezuelan notes have cert numbers ranging from 17409XX- to 25066XX- and they're all in the older gen PMG holders. And you can tell because they're in that older polymer that has a lower transmittance and has a kind of blue tint to it.

    I'm really wondering if the seller got these things graded in bulk years ago when the notes where new (circa 2015-2017) and they finally got tired of having them. Maybe these "Medley lot" sales have just been their way of (finally) clearing / dumping old inventory.
    Don't get me wrong - I'm not complaining. I'm still thrilled to have gotten to fill out this set on the cheap, but it's still a little funny to think about what the "story" of these notes and this set might be.
    The other group of 5 notes I bought during the 4th of July sale arrived in the mail today. I won't open those until Monday or Tuesday probably.
  14. Revenant

    Time to buy some raw notes and do some grading.

    By Revenant,


    Registry Awards
    So the 2020 PMG Registry awards are in the books and PMG has paid my work / writing another very high compliment:

    The $500 grading credit that this comes with is going to open up a great opportunity for me get get some notes in my set that I don't often see come up for sale already graded by NGC and get this set more or less "complete."
    I don't have the financial resources or the facilities to bulk grade notes or to sell a lot of notes that I don't need. I'm also not all that great a grading notes and making sure that what comes back are gem 66+ notes. Given this, and given the fact that these notes often come up for sale in high gem grades at prices that are only slightly higher then what it would cost me to buy them raw and take the risk on grading myself, it just hasn't been economically viable for me to try to go it alone on submitting up to this point.
    This grading credit is going to give ma a guilt free pass to buy some travelers checks and Cargill bearer checks and  a couple of missing 2nd dollar checks and submit them for grading. i'll get to build out the last few parts of the run where I don't have much and not feel bad about "wasting money" or making a bad pick / bad "investment" if the grades that come back are less than impressive. 
    As a kind of "declaration of intent" I've gone back this morning and added some slots for these notes - bringing the total number of slots up to 124. 
    I'm still not going to add slots for a lot of sub-types and varieties that I don't have at this time. I think If I added those in I'd be somewhere in the neighborhood of 150-160 slots. I'm still interested in maybe one day getting to the point of having all the sub-types / varieties for all the notes but that wasn't part of my original goal for the set and I'd be extremely happy just to have every pick number represented - or really close to it.
    The last 3rd dollar note that I don't have, the P-72, is probably not going to be part of this effort. I'm probably still just going to leave that alone and leave that slot empty for now.

  15. Revenant

    Tiny Z dollars

    By Revenant,

    When I first started collecting the Zimbabwean 3rd dollars I thought they were all about the same size regardless of denomination.
    When I expanded my set to include more of the first dollars I started to notice that this wasn't the case with them. I was shocked the first time I held a P-1 note. Compared to the higher denominations in the series it is tiny. The shot below shows the $2 note over the $20.

    Then I finally got some low denomination 3rd dollars - P-65 and P-66 - and I realized that this wasn't exclusive to the 1st dollars. The ZWR had it too, I think the picture below was the $1 note and the $100 note.

    This was a really cool feature / realization for me.
    I'd read years ago that some people were pushing to make the different denominations in the US different sizes - it's an access issue for the blind. The argument was that the current bills deny adequate access to the blind and that making the notes different sizes would allow the blind to tell the difference between them without help.
    After reading that years ago, seeing this was just really neat.
    I don't really see any difference between the sizes of anything after about $500 or $1000. I can only assume this was because they either couldn't make the notes any bigger (They are quite big), or because they chose to standardize around a size to make it easier to keep cranking out higher denomination notes.
  16. 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.

  17. Revenant
    In a note related to the topic of my last entry, the more time goes on the more I that opinions on what constitutes a "complete" set of Zimbabwe notes seems to vary widely.
    I was on reddit recently and a user said they had a complete set of the Zimbabwe notes. I was curious so I asked them what they were considering complete.
    It turned out that the poster had a full set of the 27-note 3rd dollar banknotes series - but nothing beyond that.
    For a long time there, BanknoteWorld - while they were publishing those books - as well as other merchants seemed to define "complete" to include the 2nd dollar bearer checks and agro checks in addition to the 3rd dollar bank notes - about 59 notes and checks.
    Another vender I deal with often encourages people to try to build a complete set from P-1 to P-98, but this still excludes the newer bond notes (P-99 and P-100) and includes the 1st dollar traveler's checks and Standard Chartered bearer checks P-13 through P-20 and P-24 through P-27), when seemingly few others do.
    I think ultimately I'll have to arrive at my own definition of complete for this set / project, which may end up being whenever I just decide I'm satisfied or I'm done.
     
  18. 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!
  19. 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.
     
  20. Revenant

    Well, let's just call them out on it!

    By Revenant,


    Venezuelan Bolivares Soberanos
    I found a Yahoo Finance article that takes the digital bolivar - newly born less than 2 weeks ago - and throws it right under the bus.  

    Let's just lay it all out there:


    So I guess, after a lot of uncertainty and talk and murkiness, it is official. It's not a CBDC. It is not blockchain based.
    This is like the Long Island Ice Tea company renaming themselves "Long Island Blockchain" to cash in on the hype and get bid up - which actually worked on at least a short term basis for the company I think.
    How sad... They don't even want to bother printing the notes anymore but they can't go cashless because too much of what little of an economy is left depends on cash transactions.
    Per the article, just like in Zimbabwe, the 3rd redenomination is more about banking, computers and software than anything else. Also like in Zimbabwe with the 4th dollar (now the 4th Bolivar) it is going to be large irrelevant because the economy is mostly dollarized and using the US dollar and the people are fleeing / rejecting the new currency before it even gets out the gate.

    So, at this point we're up to three redenominations having removed 3, 5 and 6 zeros respectively. So Venezuela is up to having lopped off 14 zeros in 3 redenominations in about 14 years..
    Zimbabwe did 3, 10, and 12 and removed 25 zeros in 3 changes of currency in about 3 years- making the Venezuelan's look like amateurs! Total novices, really.
    I was pretty against the idea of continuing past P-114 when I thought this was going to have a blockchain component. Given that this is just a new fiat currency with a disingenuous name, I'm a little more inclined to continue with the new Bolivares. This does kind of wreck my "Strength and Sovereignty" name...
    "Strength and Sovereignty, Blown to Digital Bits?"
    .
  21. Revenant

    Well, see, it's kind of like "Rose Red."

    By Revenant,


    Hyperinflation Notes and Sets
    Anyone remember that (now, somewhat) old movie "Rose Red?"
    Remember that line, "It's finished, when YOU say it's finished"?
    I feel like that's the case with any major collecting project / journey. It's over when you decide you're done - but, it can keep going as arbitrarily long as you want it to!
    And I'm realizing that's going to be the case with the Zimbabwean set... and I'm just not sure I'm done yet. 🤣
    I posted some months back about horrifying my wife with the comment that there were more varieties I could go for and replacement notes and specimen notes... and the RBZ still hasn't given up! Just updated my P-104 description because they say they have some fight left!
    I was also thinking I could add some more SA Rand denominations that would have been in Zimbabwe at the time and maybe some of the other currencies in use during the multi-currency period.
    I'm not nearly as super-gung-ho as I was in 2019/2020 - trying to build a Pick set - but I'm still very interested in continuing to grow and build, update and evolve that set... and, like Rose Red, it may never be finished until I am. 🤣
    On a related note... I've been watching some 5 L and 20 L gas ration coupons for a while where the seller had them listed for $1.99 but with a $5 shipping charge. I knew from prior experience from this seller that they'd combine shipping for +$1 per additional item, so if I bought all four of these things I could get them for $16 or about $4 each. I just had a hard time convincing myself to do that. I'd often thought about tacking them on to another, larger order but I always forget - case in point, I could have added them to that $124 bolivar order for $12, $3 each... Anyway...
    I saw another seller listing some 20L coupons for $4 + free shipping and I just pulled the trigger. I don't even know what possessed me to do it. It was $8+tax and I just decided in that moment that I wanted it and I was going to get them after months of hem-hahing. I think it was about being able to just snap up a couple for under $10 and not make a bigger outlay all at once.
    Anyway... If I like the quality / condition the seller has some 5L,  and10L coupons for $5-5.50 that I may offer them $3.50-4.00 for to get 2 of each. They also have some of the 50L coupons, which seem less common, for $8. I think I'm going to stick to coupons with the RBZ seal and not the Amby ones... for now.
    I still do not know if these are even things PMG will grade. I may touch base with them on that, but I still like the idea of having some of these, even if they stay in a small flip-style currency album from Hobby Lobby.
    If PMG will not grade them I may use the cert#s for some of my extra traveller's checks to let me backdoor the coupons into "Gradually, then suddenly."
    But... yeah... I've officially gone beyond "notes" by getting those 1-use, cancellable checks and now gone beyond "currency" in the catalogue by buying things that don't have assigned pick numbers and gone beyond "currency" to expand into coins I'm working on submitting. The many times I've broadened the scope of this set to include something that absolutely was not part of the original plan... Like new rooms / wings on a house? 🤔
  22. Revenant
    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.
     
     
  23. Revenant
    Ever since I found out about them I've been scratching my head thinking about what to do - if anything - about the bank issued bearer checks and traveler's checks.
    They have pick numbers assigned to them (P-13 through P-20 and P-24 through P-27). In that sense, it feels like you can't completely ignore them and like they should be part of the collection.
    At the same time, they were issued by banks, not the RBZ, they could only be used / redeemed once, by the person they had been issued to, and they had to be cancelled - so they weren't really currency or banknotes in any way. They were checks.
    PMG, while they graded a few of these back in the day, says they probably wouldn't grade them currently. So, unless you can get someone to sell you one they have previously graded (and they may not come up for sale), you can't even get graded examples of these, even though there are competitive set categories for them (with no sets because the people that own those graded examples don't list them in the registry).
    It also isn't lost on me that the poster I showed in my last post shows P-28 through P-32, the later bearer checks, but doesn't show the bank-issued checks. So obviously the dealer that made that poster doesn't really think of them or market them as being part of that larger set either. The other major dealer I go through for most of my Zimbabwe notes also doesn't deal in these bank-issued notes at all from what I can see.
    So far I've included blank slots in my signature set with notes on the comments, just to acknowledge each group / set of notes with a slot to acknowledge the pick numbers, but I increasingly wonder if I just need to cut them out / allow myself to ignore them.
    In the context of the larger set, they're just odd. It just feels like they both do and don't belong in the larger set / collection.
  24. Revenant
    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):

     
  25. Revenant

    Wow. PMG is on it!

    By Revenant,


    Zimbabwe Traveller's Checks
    My submission of checks arrived at PMG last week and I was expecting, based on their response late last week, that the notes probably wouldn't be in the system until the end of this week or early next week. I was shocked when I checked, mostly for a laugh, and saw that they were showing as "Received."

    This has me freaking out a bit. I'm realizing I might get an answer on these a lot faster than I'd thought. So, where I'd been chill about this and thinking I'd find out eventually and to not worry or think on it much, this paradoxically has me more keyed up.