Owner Comments:
Mintage: 35,585
This coin was the 6th purchased for the set, acquired on February 12, 2018 (arrived in the mail on the 16th). Getting this coin was a major event for the set in several ways.
It is the Key date of the series with the lowest mintage -barely over 35,000 made that year. It also has the lowest population of NGC graded coins. And, just my fantastic luck, when one of these comes up for sale, it happens to be an MS65 - the grade I made the goal for the set, and the 2nd highest grade available. There's only one NGC graded MS66 out there at this time.
This is also the coin that put my set "over the hump," making it over 50% complete - a big milestone for a set that I thought might never get past having just the 5 common date coins back when I started building it.
This was the first coin bought for this set after a long, hard, period of unemployment. I'm not going to belabor the point here, but, going a year without a job is a hard thing to endure, especially early in your career. Even if the cause of it is market conditions and a major downturn in your industry, it isn't fun. I spent a lot of time during that period dreaming about getting the job, feeling good about our finances and the direction of our lives again. Continuing my collecting in general and getting to add a new coin to this set in particular was a big part of that hope.
In early February 2018, just four and a half months after securing a new job that I love, that treats me and my family well, and which leaves me much more happy and fulfilled than the last two jobs, this coin popped up for auction, starting at just $400 - a very reasonable price. I had to do a bit of pleading, but my wife agreed to let me go for it. If it was anything else I think she would have balked but even she said later that she knew from how I talked about it that this set was important to me and that this coin was important to this set, so she wanted to let me go for it.
I watched if for days - it was a 5-day listing. That was torture.
With just 2 minutes left I was winning the coin for $493 + shipping as the final sections counted down. My wife was sitting right next to me in bed. I think both of us were afraid to breathe. I was sure a last second sniper bid was coming, and I was so afraid that after all this watching and waiting that I was going to lose the auction and the coin. That feared bid never came. I won the coin for a total cost of $500 after shipping.
After the auction closed, I was pretty much bouncing off the walls. My wife joked that she thinks I was much more excited in that moment than when I found out she was pregnant with our son.
Last Rev: 09/2019