My mailbox runneth over! Wanna look over my shoulder as I open some packages? :-)

Oh, yeah. Bet yer britches it's a coin!

A glance at Ken Dorney's store will give you a hint at what kind of coin, while I open the package and take pictures...

 

Item #3. The Grand Opening.

Inside the bubble mailer from @Ken Dorney, there was ...

Another bubble mailer!




Wait, wait... this isn't gonna be like one of those Russian nesting dolls, is it? A package within a package within a package?

Hm. Maybe so.



So inside that...

Oh! WOW! Thanks for all the extras, Ken! How did you know I've wanted a Celtic gold stater for a while?

But... thirty-three of them?

Wow! Generous, but just a tad over the top, don't you think?



Ha. I crack me up.

Wanna see what I really got in my Dorney package?

Of course you do.

But lunch is beckoning from the microwave. Smells good, even from a room away.

I'll go grab it and come right back, I promise.

I'll even take a picture of that, if you want.

 

Since you were dying to know, Creamy Four-Cheese Rice-a-Roni, doctored up with some shallots and extra veg.



Flash, my eternal lunch companion, is seated in his usual place at the table on the edge of the bed.

(Yeah, I'm a slob and eat in bed. So what. The table is piled with too much junk to use, 'cause I'm not the ONLY slob in this household.)




What's that?

Get on with it, you say?

OK, OK! Sorry! There's no need to shout.

I just thought you might like a cat picture.

No? Aww, OK.

So impatient! *sheesh*

I'll get back to the Dorney coin in a moment, I promise. Just let me finish eating.

 

All right. I milked that one for all it's worth dragged that out way too long. Sorry.

Without further food & cat pix ado, here's the coin I got from @Ken Dorney.




Big huge sucker, ain't it? Like a manhole cover.

If you live in an ant colony with manholes, that is.





Here 'tis, all gussied up by @Deacon Ray for my Eclectic Box.

 

Oh, I absolutely do.

That's why I shot this picture of Bean.

Flash is always around when there's food.

Bean is always around when there's laundry.



And there is ALWAYS laundry.

 

OK, where are we?

Ah. Yes. Item #4.

Uh-oh. I think I see where this one's headed.

See what I was talking about in my tangent in the OP?

Yep. It's another charity solicitation. I swear I get them every day.




Give to one, and I swear, it's like feeding one seagull or pigeon. Next thing you know, you're swarmed. Your mailbox is full of solicitations, even if you made only two charitable donations. More than five years earlier.

Now, I have no doubt that most if not all of these are worthy organizations. And if I somehow become an overnight multimillionaire, I'm gonna give a lot of money to a lot of them.

Anonymously.

 

Item #5.

A manila envelope from Southlake, TX.

There's a coin inside. And this one ain't no teeny-tiny, either.




If memory serves, this'll be a good ol' American coin, by golly.

Stand by.

Side note- one silver lining to the new 50c letter rate increase is that it gives the "Forever" stamps a nice round face value. I shipped a package this size myself this morning, and like this person in Texas, I slapped seven (now-50c) Forevers on there and launched it right from my rural mailbox.

My stamps weren't all Christmassy and festive, though. Nosiree. I used shark stamps. Yeah!

<cue ominous Jaws theme music/>

 

Here we go again. Layered packaging!

Mind you, I'm not complaining.

Envelope within the envelope...




Corrugated safety mailer inside the envelope that was inside the envelope...




Kraft paper coin envelope inside the corrugated safety mailer that was inside the envelope that was inside the envelope...




Peekaboo, Lady Liberty! I see you!

 

Item #5 is a 1901-O Morgan dollar.





This coin came in a cheapish swap. I got it for my recently-begun Dansco #7172 Silver Dollar Date Set album. That will be a casual sideline set I'll play with for a while and then sell to feed my primary "Eclectc Box" collection.

I might call this the "Greysilver Album". I'm going for a crusty, original look in the Morgans. Coins in modest (and affordable!) circulated grades, but with a certain look. A contrasting look. The "CircCam" look.

Click that first link above to see my very humble beginnings for this album, and you'll probably get an idea of my intended theme with the Morgans.

My goal is really more along VF-ish lines, so this one's a wee bit low grade, but it'll do for now, since it's "crusty" enough.

 

There are still four more packages from Friday to open, all almost certainly coins. (No more junk mail.)

Wait! Now Saturday's mail is here! And there's one more!

(Plus another piece of junk mail. A credit card offer this time. Capital One won't stop trying, even though I've ignored them for years.)

So five more likely-coin packages.



And then there's this.




That's on top of a showcase in @Aethelred's shop in western North Carolina. That newly-arrived package is a submission just back from NGC, which contains three coins from my Eclectic Box.

So you can see some submission results, too, if you want.

These are the three coins of mine that are inside that box in NC:

Turkey (Seljuks of Rûm): silver dirham of Kaykhusraw II; lion & sun, AH 638 (1240-1241)

(At NGC for grading as of 2/9/2018)

Netherlands (Gelderland): "St. John" goldgulden (florin) of Arnold van Egmond, ca. 1423-1472

(At NGC for grading as of 2/9/2018; ex-PCGS Genuine; XF details, "filed rims")

Belgium (Brabant): gold Carolus d’or (florin) of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, ca. 1521-1545

(At NGC for grading as of 2/9/2018; ex-PCGS Genuine; VF details, "mount removed")

How do you suppose they did?

I'll say this much- the submission results were a surprise.

Good ... or bad?

I really didn't intend to drag this out all day, particularly as I should be sleeping, considering I worked the 11 PM to 7 AM graveyard shift last night.

I'm physically all out of steam for now, so I'll leave the last five packages and the NGC submission results for later, if anybody's even reading anymore. I might've lost my audience somewhere back around the Rice-a-Roni and cat pictures, who knows?

 

That hat is long gone. Sold in the Great Purge of 2013, when I started the present "Eclectic Box" collection.

Well, technically the hat itself is still in the closet. The coins are gone.