Revenant

I've seen a lot of pretty world currency lately, a lot of which makes our current designs look so ho-hum by comparison.

The 2nd series of designs for the Zimbabwe 1st dollar, issued in the mid-1990s, used an image of some flowers that I think are supposed to be Flame Lilies - the national flower of the country.

At some point I would like to get a submission in to NGC, but I don't have any mylar flips - just the cardboard ones - and that's not how NGC wants them sent in. Even if I could get those flips, I'm not sure I could get a box / packing material together.

That's the custom set I made to combine all the smaller competitive runs

What is your motivation in having them graded? To increase value on resale? To preserve them and prevent further damage over time from handling? To prove they're genuine? If you're wanting to prove / be sure they're real or prevent future damage, get them graded if it's worth it to you - though it is potentially expensive. If you're trying to increase resale value, you'll need to look at each note, the grade you expect, what you can sell it for now and what you think you can sell it for after grading. I have my Zimbabwean hyperinflation note set. At current prices it makes zero sense financially to grade them or to try to build a graded collection of them, but that's how I decided to approach it.

I found someone selling the last 3 notes I needed for the 4th dollar series. One of the notes was a hair lower on grade than I've been wanting to stick to for this set but I decided to go for it, get the three notes as a group, so I could have the set complete. I'll worry about upgrading things later, if I feel like it at the time. I'm now about 92% complete for the hyper inflation set (2nd, 3rd and 4th dollars) and 75% complete for the 1st dollar banknotes. The 1st dollar check series are a bit more difficult to deal with but overall the collection has come together quite well and these sets enjoy the #1 rank in the 2nd dollar bearer checks (P-33 to P-60), the 2nd dollar agrochecks (P-61 to P-64), the 3rd dollars (P-65 to P-91), and the 4th dollars (P-92 to P-98). I need to get pictures taken of the recent additions to the first and 4th dollars but I'm feeling super proud of how this has come together. I have 71 of the 100 pick #s in my overall collection (including P-13 through P-31, which are not easy to get and may be nearly impossible to get graded). I have more than one variety of the P-1, P-4, and P-48 and several replacement notes. :)

The other day I was watching "Storage Wars: Northern Treasures" on Netflix, mostly using it as background noise while I took care of feeding the boys breakfast in the morning and keeping everyone happy while Shandy is working on the boys have been feeling under the weather. I was temporarily distracted and not really paying attention to the TV when Shandy, who had come down for breakfast, told me to look at the TV. A couple of the "geniuses" on that show had found a bunch of circulated Zimbabwean notes in a mattress in circulated condition and they were going nuts over them. They were getting really excited and I'm just thinking, in that condition, most of the notes are just worth a dollar, maybe two, as a novelty. There's too many of most of those notes in uncirculated condition and even the uncirculated notes are cheap - usually $4-5 each. There's just not much demand in the market for circulated notes because of that. Still, kind of interesting and funny to see. Shandy picks up on these things now, now that she's had to endure a solid year of me talking and obsessing about them after she made the - perhaps, in retrospect - foolish choice of trying to give me one as an anniversary gift and re-igniting my interest in building the set in January 2019.

I know. Never doubted that it would be resolved really and the issue automatically goes in the queue when the attempt is made to enter it, but it was still somewhat novel event, as I said. When I looked the other day the slot had been set up to allow a P-44 or a P-44a. It looks like the P-44a is gone now so I'm guessing I'm right and there is no a and b variant for that pick number. The P-44a was probably put in there initially by someone who thought it did have an a and b because the 46 and 48 do, which would make sense. But the fact that those variations exist and just for those two notes is one of the funnier quirks / facts about the series. It's also funny and strange that P-47, right in the middle, wasn't impacted and doesn't have an a or b either, now that I think about it.

If you check the pricing / "Services & Fees" page, you do get a discounted price for bulk consecutive notes. It's $12/note for US from the looks of it. https://www.pmgnotes.com/submit/services-fees/pmg/

https://www.pmgnotes.com/services/Submitting.aspx

I think this is what happens any time you get heavily specialized in something that not many people do. In the course of buying up so many of them you can almost make an artificial shortage, which can drive up prices on you while you're buying, which can then reverse when you start to sell and end up flooding your own market.

So I tried to add a new P-44 note to my Zimbabwe 2nd dollar set and it said the note wasn't eligible / wasn't allowed in the slot. The slot seems set up to allow a P-44a... P-44a. I've never heard of a P-44a. I can't find any reference in any of my research / shopping / looking around to a P-44a or a P-44b, just P-44. I'm assuming this a / no a thing is the reason why the system / slot is rejecting the note. I'm assuming / hoping this was just a mistake but it's a bit of head scratcher for me as to how it happened if so. There IS a P-46a and P-46b and a P-48a and a P-48b. Those are the 10,000 and 100,000 dollar notes in the series, with the a and b variants differentiated based on how the digits in the denomination are grouped. The P-44, the $1,000 note in the series, to my knowledge, has no such variation. I've seen cases in the past with these sets where the slot just hadn't been populated with scores at all before and cases where the scores where entered for an "a" variant but not a "b" or a normal version but not a star / replacement note version (or vice versa) but I've never had a slot calling for something that didn't / doesn't appear to exist.

It's not "fancy," if that's what you mean.

That is interesting and a nice catch.

What has you deciding to sell?