What the Hell is Going On?

 Welcome to April 2018. I have not even enjoyed a day out in the Jeep yet. Why you ask? Well, due to a funding shortfall, the Jeep sat thru January, February and most of March. Well, that and the damn battery took a dump. So, funding returned, it got a new battery, and then the shit really hit the fan. Old Yellow has had a wee bit of death wobble for the past few years. Twas never much, just a tiny bit of shaking between 42-50 MPH. So, to my surprise on the first trip out on a, for lack of a better phrase, test drive, I was shocked when it felt as if the steering wheel was going to come off in my hands. I took it in to Jim and Dave's and we discovered that the cheap-ass ball joints that have plastic in them had gone south for time and all eternity. In their infinite wisdom, Jeep ball joints have gone from all metal to metal/plastic ball joints. Lovely! So now, I have to purchase new ones and have them installed. The bad thing about it is that unless you buy a decent aftermarket brand, you will get another filled with plastic. The choices start at $199 and go up to $250 for the set of 4. To add insult to injury, while we had it in the air, I noticed that the mighty p.o.s. 3.8 mini-van motor was leaking like sieve. I thought no big deal, I have the lifetime power train warranty so it will be fixed for free. It just so happens that the 5 year inspection was due so I took it to the dealership. They noticed the leaks too and went to order all the parts and Jeep sent back a note saying it was not under warranty due to the fact I had not done the first 5 year inspection. Wrong! I had done it and had all the paperwork to prove it. Long story short, after the back and forth calls between me and Jeep, I faxed in my copies and supposedly, the warranty was reinstated. We shall see. This past week has been so busy with crap I haven't had time to go back and find out for sure that it was reinstated. Since we all know that bad things come in 3's, it shouldn't be a surprise that we found number 3 while on the hoist. My 14 month old radiator took a shit and was leaking again from the same spot the last replacement was leaking. Knowing the procedure, I took the fotos and sent in all the paperwork. I will say that Mishimoto is quick and helpful but it seems that they have had quite a few of the Wrangler radiators fail in the same spot. Their return letter was yes, my return was approved but I would have to wait on the new re-designed Jeep model. Again, long story short, I do have the new version sitting in my front room waiting to be installed. What pisses me off the most about this Jeep is the fact that while it will go anywhere I point it, it seems to have a lot of shitty parts that are prone to fail. I put 125,000 on my 95 wrangler and the only bad part I had with it was a jumped timing chain that cost me $600 to fix. Hell, even the brakes were still good after all those miles..........

 My next hope was/is above in the foto. I inherited 80 1884 O Morgan silver dollars from my grandfather. They are uncirculated and quite pretty. He was given these when he retired from his job the 2nd time. According to my mother, the Las Vegas office brought these to his retirement party. If you walk in to a coin shop, you can get on the average $32 per coin. But, if you have them graded, the value can go thru the roof. These coins are not from the preferred mints of Carson City or San Francisco, ours came out of the mint in New Orleans. We sent 8 in to be graded and ended up getting 1 ungraded due to surface contamination, 1 ms63, 4 ms64 and 2 ms65. On today's market, we took $256 worth of coins and made them worth $700. You are probably thinking that was awesome. It really wasn't. The fees to grade the coins totaled approximately $300 so actual profit is $400, or basically $50 a coin. It really is a gamble on grading. You have to more than double the value of your coin to make any money. Why you ask? Let me show you. If you have a $32 street value coin, and it costs you $35 to get it graded, you are in the hole $3 dollars. The coin would have to be graded to an amount over $67 to break even. The ms63 coin I have is worth only $65 so I lost $2 on the deal. lucky for me, I only had one of them. I did fairly well on the other 6 coins, but not enough to send in more coins. I am thinking of selling them in groups of 7 or 8 for $55 a coin and let someone else gamble on their value. Who knows? I only know I need to unload them so the Yellow Jeep will run again. One word to you, if you ever get a rare coin, DO NOT try to clean or polish it. That will destroy any value in the coin. Like I said, I had one end up in that category. I have no idea what they found on it. The only thing I can think of is that when my grandfather was showing them to his friends that night, someone had something on their hands when they touched it. Since that night, they have been in the coin wraps until I took them out to inspect them for grading. Who knows? If you are interested in buying some, hit me up and we'll talk. Jeep on my friends!