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gxseries

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Posts posted by gxseries

  1. Hi everyone, I have not been active in the forum for a while. There is a good reason - my laptop of 5 years have decided to 'die' and that caused some grief. I suspect the erratic weather caused the motherboard to short circuit. I have less idea if the data on the laptop survived but hope that they did. So far I have been managing without a computer while saving up to get a decent computer. It has been inconvenient but I guess you can always get around.
    On the topic of data, there has been a lot of numismatic related files that was on my computer. Last I remembered from a few years ago, I had more than 30gb of data in it which put me off backing up on dvd. That included a fair amount of photos, articles, coin album designs, etc. Bad call! Thankfully, the majority of important personal files, photos etc are on an external drive.
    I know it isn't really numismatic related but when you have taken time and effort to record your personal collection - make sure you spare some time to back them up!!!!!!! Just a friendly reminder. :)

     

  2. squirrel - the beautiful of using photoshop is that you can arrange any set the way you like it.

     

    It does take a bit of time to get your heads around it. Once you have it setup, it should not take too long to make one. I reckon I had that Paul I pages done in about 2 hours or so. That included retaking some photos as they were not too good in the first place.

  3. I thought I'd compile a type set of Paul I coinage of what I have. This is missing some varieties including the gold five ruble, 2 kopek with no mintmark, efimok (heavy ruble), and the "polu-poltin-nik". I guess I can always add them down the road. That said, if you group them together, they can look quite neat.

     

    What I have done is to simulate a prototype album for this series. All coins had to be measured individually as coins were not uniformly struck back then.

     

    http://gxseries.com/numis/digital_album/paul_i_page1_small.jpg

     

    http://gxseries.com/numis/digital_album/paul_i_page2_small.jpg

     

    Please feel free to post coins from Paul I era!

  4. Hello and welcome to coinpeople!

     

    Novodel is actually a term used to describe OFFICIAL restrikes from the Russian mint. However these days on ebay or other places, crook sellers abuse the word novodel and try to describe their counterfeits as novodels to confuse potential buyers. Genuine novodels especially Tsar era coinage can cost a fair bit and do not be deceived just because they are restrikes. Probably a very affordable novodel would be the 1902 37.5 ruble - 100 franc if you are looking for a novodel example as well as Soviet era novodels.

     

    It depends what era of Russian coinage you are looking to collect. I guess we can help you from there once you specify what era you are keen in. Best of luck!

  5. I acquired this album a while back and I forgot where I placed it. Thankfully it has come out of hiding. It was actually in a sorry state where the pages were falling apart. I had decided to scan it prior to taping it up.

    This album features the first ten years of commemorative coins that were meant to be circulated. Therefore it doesn't include the 1980 Lake Placid base metal panda yuan, 1982 football and 1983 - 1984 panda in brass.

    Link: http://issuu.com/gxseries/docs/china_comm_coin_1984_1993_scan

    A lot of the early Chinese commemorative 'circulation' coins are actually very beautiful and can command serious prices. In particular the 40th Anniversary of the founding of the Bank of China and Ningxia are quite scarce. Despite the mintage of 1 - 2 million, if you consider the Chinese population of more than 1 billion - you can see why they are in big demand! If I understand correctly, most of the 40th Anniversary commemorative coins were given or exchanged by bank employees, making this probably the key date. You can see on ebay that sellers are asking for a decent fortune despite being struck in base metal! (probably another question whether buyers are prepared to pay that much)

    Whether they managed to circulate or not, I'm sure when they were released in circulation, they were quickly hoarded and didn't last in circulation for too long. I have handled a couple of circulated examples. I personally like the 1986 Year of Peace coin as well as the 1987 Xinjiang (Sinkiang) 1 yuan coin. The Tibet coin is also quite nice as well.

    While the scan has blurred the photos especially near the middle of the pages, better photos can be seen at omnicoin. I should have most of the early duplicates - just didn't get around to photograph all the coins inside this album.

    Here are some of my favorites:

    1014175.jpg

    1003825.jpg

    1003827.jpg

    Please feel free to post some of your early Chinese commemorative coinage!

     

  6. Yes I have been very very quiet but for a good reason. I've been hinting that this was in the works and it's finally complete. This is a digital coin album that I designed for Japan type set (1870 - Present). I've based the design off the Dansco album 7460.

     

    Original Dansco album can be seen here: http://issuu.com/gxseries/docs/japan_dansco_type_set_1870

     

    I guess the main reason why I've done this is because the original Dansco album has not been updated for nearly fifty years!!! The last coin in it was dated 1970. Many new commemorative coins have been added as well as a new era. Another reason that I've decided to go ahead is also because I disagreed over the layout and I believe the way I present it should make more sense.

     

    The new digital coin album can be seen here: http://issuu.com/gxseries/docs/japan_type_set_1870_current

     

    Some of the challenges that I have experienced -

     

    1) The format that I designed previously were at A4 size which would have made the album too bulky. This has been designed to exact specification and color. That meant that I took my albums out and measured them. It also means that if I wanted to print them, I should be able to print to scale and it would match.

     

    2) Original photos that were taken more than five years ago were not the best photos. I do not claim to be a good photographer and those were taken with an older camera. I still have to learn how to take better photos. In particular I struggled to take decent photos of coins that are aUNC with some toning.

     

    3) Layout of the coins. This was actually a lot harder than I thought! I was not aware of the history of the coins in particular the gin countermark. These were actually countermarked officially by the mints during the time where silver yen were no longer legal tender in Japan. An overlap of various denomination at certain era also made the presentation very difficult to be presented. Most certainly it would have been very easy if I arranged by denomination only instead of grouping by era.

     

    4) Translucent feature - I nearly lost my head over this! If you own a Dansco album - take a look at the hole. You should be able to see some features of the next page or the previous page through the hole. I decided that this got too difficult and gave up. Maybe in the next version.

     

    The planning and design aspect took well over a month to plan and execute. I was overwhelmed over how many size variation each coin had. I guess the file size of the entire project went well over 1Gb reflects how much work went in it. The dragon featured on the front page also took me a few hours to be cut and corrected to my satisfaction.

     

    Somewhere along the lines, it would be helpful if I am a better photographer and knew more about photoshop. That said, I'm certain put all my best effort in it. At the same time, you got to step back and think how Dansco have created this fifty years ago - the era without photoshop, computers, photography etc. It still amazes me to this day and whoever did the design deserves credit.

     

    Now I think I'll take a break away from the computer before I set off to the next challenge. Staring at the computer for so many hours can't be too great for the eyes!

  7. Counterfeits can be produced from the very day any coins are minted. Therefore it does not matter how long ago it was kept as it was a counterfeit from day one.

     

    There are more than enough signs to tell that this is a counterfeit. First the details are just too mushy. Second, the metal does not seem right. If this is magnetic, this is already a sign that it cannot be genuine. Original coins were struck in silver and silver is not magnetic. Lastly, the weight of this should be 26.9g.

  8. Something is very wrong with the overstruck coin mars. I'm certain it's meant to be a polushka overstruck over an older polushka but the details of it is just very wrong.

     

     

    My best guess is that it's a contemporary counterfeit. That said, it's pretty intriguing.

  9. I'm at the stage in life where I need to free up some cash. So far it's not too bad but it doesn't hurt to have more savings just in case something happens.

    When I look at my coin collection - perhaps it has gone out of control as I have boxes of them, ranging from mere change to bulky books. I remembered when I had to move house and when I placed boxes of coins at the trunk, it just seemed like I've loaded too much weight.

    So far I have been selling off some of the lower grade coins and common duplicates. That was easy. The real challenge comes to this - there's some coins that are easily in the range of hundreds of dollars. This would have been very easy if there was grade differences. But no, this is what I faced -

    1) Similar grade but they are softly struck - one has weakly struck image on the left side, the other on the left. Put the two together and you have one perfect coin. Ugh.

    2) One is in strong XF condition but environmentally damaged, the other in VF condition and lightly cleaned

    3) Similar condition but different varieties.

    4) Cleaned XF versus a decent VF

    5) A holed F+ coin versus a worn coin.

    And the list goes on.

    My current aim is to keep the ones that have better eye appeal. What makes it harder to part with some of them is that even if I wanted to buy them later down the road, the sales record for some of them are in between 1 - 5 on a yearly basis, if not less.

    I guess at the end of the day, I can't just live on coins (unless I become a professional coin dealer). It might be a lot easier to just sell the whole lot off and not worry about it. :)

    Have you gone through such experience and what did you do?

     

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