Announcements

4:00pm- Chis from Northeast numismatics is donating a nice graded coin for a future giveaway. Thanks Chris!

added 12:26pm-I swear it’s posts like this that keep me going. It came to me but is obviously directed to Rob, under the heading of Purchase 1 share of your adventure….‏ : Hello. have read many of your Collector ‘s Forum posts and would be honored to help support your trip to the old world. My Collector’s forum ID  Heavymetal -love your hat.  Another valuable pledged share of $15. Like grains of sand, with the right wind, they can add up to a mighty force…

We’re off to a nice start in our 2nd half push to send LordM to England. I’d like to thank these new contributors for their support:

surfinxHI 1 Share $15, lkeigwin $150 10 Shares, JCMhouston $15 1 Share.

The donated Kennedy half dollar sold for $35.57-a great effort! The gold Type 1 dollar is up to $75 on silent auction (we will be closing that in a few days I think). The ASE will be moved to eBay on wednesday the 17th if it garners no bids here. Other donated coins to follow soon.

Thanks to Don Willis of PCGS who allowed 3 update threads on the forums yesterday-many thanks!

LordM is currently digging the Black Banks (I believe he told me) and should have an interesting story or two to tell in the next couple of days. I really envy him the weather that allows MDing at this point in March.

We’ve had communication from some English Cousins, the Swansea Metal Detecting Club in South Wales, UK which is offering to assist LordM in any way they can when he gets to England. Nice folks!

Our latest giveaway, the Yellow Trip Smiley on the World Coin forum (which could use some additional participants) will be closing on wednesday. If you like Vatican coins or a Turkish mint set or a slabbed French Comoros, or even an Ancient, you’ll be well-served with this giveaway.

I’d like to say the fund-raising is all downhill from here but I doubt that. The 2nd half push will require great effort and generosity from a number of people. Luckily we have a couple of months to do it in; we just need to maintain momentum. Thanks again to all who have supported and will support this endeavor.

We are pleased to list Nederveit as our latest contributor! 1 Share $15.

Silvereagles 82 wants to up his shares from 2 to 4 for the 2nd half of our push for a total of $60 -Congratulations!

Welcome to Black Mountain Coins (Danglen) our latest contributor with a generous $50 store credit for a future giveaway! We’ll keep you posted. 

Congratulations to pakasmom who increased their shares from 1 to 3!

12 days into March and we’re halfway there; who’d a thunk it?

We’ve hit the $2000 mark in two weeks! An absolute testimony to the generosity of the PCGS forums! Some folks have thought the trip was off because of the way the first thread was deleted and are now delighted to see the effort is alive and well. Pakasmom was one of those who increased their shares upon discovering this site.

When we first started I thought it would take at least a couple of months to raise the trip money and I still think so. I just didn’t think the halfway point would come so soon! And when I say halfway, that’s the absolute minimum-it would be nice to have a cushion. We’ve got great giveaways coming up for all who have contributed so far and hopefully these will attract more contributors.

Now’s the time to gently urge others to take part who haven’t, or to increase your shares as we get closer to the goal.

In the donated coin category (this will raise the money for the Metal Detector Giveaway) we are at: $65 for the Type 1 gold dollar, $0 on the ASE (these two on the forums), $15 on the slabbed Kennedy (on eBay). These three coins will  be joined by others and this mini effort should soon bear fruit. We are putting together a very nice little package that should absolutely delight the winner.

LordM knew that Wayne Whatley (newbiecollector) would have loved to see this enterprise take shape and would have been one of our first contributors. (Quick story here-when we were raising money for a birth coin for 1Jester’s new son, Wayne PM’d me and said that if we reached $200 total in our small effort that he would match that amount and wanted to remain anonymous about it. It shows you what a heart of gold he had!)

In memory of that fine gentleman who was taken from us way too soon, LordM bought a memorial share in his name-I thought it was such a great idea that I followed suit. We want him along for the ride! We will also be having “The great Shipcoin Giveaway” in his memory further down the line. Watch this space for details.

 On Sunday I have permission to return to an old house site that was very good to me when I hunted it twice in 1999.  There were  plenty of older coins (including some nice silver) found at the time.  I’ll leave it at that, except to say I’m very optimistic.  I doubt I even “scratched the surface” back then, and I have a more advanced metal detector now.  I’d put my odds of finding old coins and/or silver fairly high.  Of course there are never any guarantees in this game- even when the time comes for me to dig in England for a week.  I only hope that I’ll do you folks proud, both this weekend and when the trip across the pond happens.

Since one of the goals I have for this trip is to dig at least one Roman coin, no matter how small or crude, it’s time to give such a coin away.  I have here a small Roman bronze coin or barbarous radiate.  (Sorry, there’s  no picture of it at present, but it very much resembles the one at the top of the page here.)

I think the portrait on the coin resembles Tetricus I (270 to 273 or 274 AD), the last ruler of the Gallic empire that broke away from Rome  for about fourteen years in the mid-3rd century AD.  The joint reign of Tetricus I and his son Tetricus II ended when they were defeated by Aurelian and the breakaway Gallic empire was brought back into the fold of the greater Roman empire.  (In a rare example of imperial clemency, Aurelian spared their lives- the fate of defeated usurpers and enemies was usually far more grim. )

On these coins, the emperor wears a “radiate” crown, which looks like sun rays coming from his head (I believe this had something to do with Sol, the sun god).  That is why this particular type of coin is sometimes referred to as a “radiate”, or the local imitations as “barbarous radiates”.

At some point after the weekend is up, I’ll fire up the random number generator again, and one of our shareholders will win this coin.

Edit- Hyperion won it!

William, aka “FilthyBroke”, has won all the fossils I found in the last Digs O’ The Day installment.  Since the finds weren’t all that impressive, he is also getting the large half of a megalodon shark tooth I found last summer, which is also pictured in that story.  In other words, he just won the random drawing for everything pictured in that story, with the exception of the tooth my daughter found!  (Can’t give that one away- it’s hers, and her first fossil find, y’know.)

Congratulations, William!

And again, thank you to all of our sponsors.  We’ll be giving more goodies away further on, just for fun.

A quick thank you to ca0100000, our newest contributor- 1 share $15

If you read my latest dig story, the “Bladen Road” one, I would like to do a giveaway of everything shown in the story.  (With the exception of Victoria’s shark tooth, of course.)  This means the big half-megalodon tooth fossil I found there last year, and the five fossils I found in the story, plus perhaps an additional random fossil or two.
As of this posting, we’re at 127 shares pledged so far.  Let’s say when we hit 140, I’ll draw a winner, using a random number generator, and each contributor gets one chance per share to win the fossils.  They’re not superb fossils, but maybe the big half of a shark tooth will make somebody an interesting paperweight or something.  (I do have some more where that came from, too.)

~RWS/”LM”

Thanks to docday2003, our latest contributor with 4 Shares $60. Thank you sir!

Reading Rob’s digging posts are always fascinating! This latest one no less because it involves fossils, his daughter and an accident. Check the page index for the “Bladen Road” story-lots of images.

We’ve had something of a slowdown in new pledges but members are getting their initial pledge money to me by Paypal, money orders and checks. We’ve collected about half of what has been pledged so far-time to get the rest in.  We’re also starting to receive coins we can auction on eBay to get that new metal detector for our latest giveaway-sure to be a huge success!

Ask your forum friends if they’ve supported the trip effort yet. If not, please encourage them to do so-we need this second wave of support to continue!

3.7.2010- Our latest contributors are: Grip for 5 shares,  Joan.of.art for 3 shares, and Bailathacl for 1 share.

 So nice to wake up in the morning to friendly and supportive e-mails from folks like these!

Almost every day now when I check my mail there is a cheery message title or two (or more) listing contributions or support for LordM’s anticipated trip to dig in the Queen Mothers green fields. It has made opening the mail an event I can look forward to; not a spam-destroying chore.

Every message I receive speaks of  a deep affection for LordM and a willingness to support his quest. To be fair, it’s almost certainly a quest we would all love to participate in. That is why, perhaps, the level of contributions towards this trip has been steady and strong. Rob has done many kindnesses over the years it seems, and people have long memories… and through his writings and images, he’ll make the experience come alive for all of us, and in the end we will have actually participated, part of a story that has only just begun, with an ending that still needs writing.

There has been much hustle and bustle in the background and the dust clouds are still settling- hopefully we’re going to have some trip specifics to share with you in the near future.

Don’t forget this invaluable tidbit about the importance of  living vs existing in the words of Stephen Vincent Benét who famously said: “Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways”.

We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot
Drink up, me hearties, yo ho!
We kidnap and ravage, and don’t give a hoot
Drink up, me hearties, yo ho!

3.6.2010 in the pm.  Welcome today to olmanjon, Carl’s Coins and Mr. & Mrs. Filamcoins from Manila, our latest contributors as of 1:15 on this beautiful Saturday afternoon. Thanks for flying PCGS Forum Airlines.

3.6.2010 in the am.  Now  tobacco-free for 30 days!

I’m reminded of the quote:  ”Don’t be fooled by the calendar.  There are only as many days in the year as you make use of”.

Well, we made darn good use of the last 7! My initial thought is that we are a little less than halfway home: I never thought we could get there so fast. LordM’s Gold Coin Giveaway is certainly helping. The torrent of promisory PM’s has slowed to a trickle however, as I thought it might. There’s always an initial surge of enthusiasm and like any wave that rushes up on the shore, it then receeds, taking with it the footprints newly created.

Time to establish some new footprints.

Our first giveaway will end this Sunday and to date there are about 35 entrants- I’d love to see the next one closer to 100. That’s why I think we need to give away a metal detector. This is just a generic picture-model and cost need to be determined by forum members through discussion.  

I would like to pay for this (hopefully superb) giveaway prize through your coin donations which I will sell on eBay, proceeds of which will buy the detector. All that’s required are some coins that you’re tired of.

Nothing fancy, just not junk…something that will sell, even if only for a few dollars. I’ll do the auctions and absorb those costs, I’ll even refund you the cost of shipping the coin(s).

With a little participation from forum members who would like to contribute quietly (this is your chance-we won’t be listing donors by name), and the general body, we could have something anyone would be proud to own.

This MD giveaway open only to LordM European Trip Contributors, chances to win are equal among all contributors. If you’re on the contributor list you’re entered automatically once. This should attract many new entrants who will not feel overwhelmed by previous numbers.

If we can make this fly, I’ll let you know when it starts with a giveaway thread on the world coin forum. Donors are invited to PM me or e-mail me at laurentyvan@hotmail.com.