Shasties

How bout a boxful of Shastie coins. Gotta start mailing now.

First, we had 200 made: 140 antique bronze, 40 antique silver (LE), and 20 shiny gold (non trade coins). All with the same design, but different metals. We will personally never sell any of these coins ourselves although they might be used for give-aways or fundraisers. Plans are now to use these until they are gone and then look at a new design. In response to Nomad and the Librarians post - A lot of people sell their personal coins to help finance their purchase. Nothing wrong with it at all. If it's a choice of selling some or not getting your coins, by all means, do it. There are enough people around willing to purchase any and all coins that come up for sale. We had the opportunity to be able to purchase our coins without having to sell any up front. I feel we have a little better 'control' (not the exact word I want to use) over our coins by not selling them on the open market. It's less likely they'll end up on EBay making profit for someone who had nothing to do with making it. Although, the way I look at it, when I've made my trade, the Shasties coin is no longer ours and belongs to the new owner to do what they want with it. If you look, all country, state, regional, city coins and most event coins started out as a 'for sale' coin. Almost all of the coins in my collection started out for sale. As far as having enough coins to trade with, if you've got 1 coin, you've got trading material. If you're building a collection, 2 of the same coin (1 to keep and 1 to trade) has you off to a start. I'm constantly trading MiGO coins to people looking for them and they are a stock item in the MiGO store (although out of stock at the moment). Take some time to look for new coins. They are available everywhere.

I just ordered 2 and it took my money. Whether they're still available or PayPal just hasn't been shut down, I don't know. We'll see.

Like I used to tell my kids, "Better watch out, the Gypsy's are in town and they're paying cash for kids." Back on topic - Start like I did; buy everything that came up for sale in the forum, I bought a few things on E***y that were in my price range (cheap), and I found a few posts where folks had coins they were willing to sell rather than trade for (sort of like Overstock.com). I actually collected for about 6 weeks before I made my first trade. It a slow process that usually can't be hurried. I still haven't seen the Montana coin and it was an open thread when I started.

Thanks for the card and Christmas wishes Mr. Can. The same wishes for a glorious Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, or whatever your beliefs are, go from the Shasties to all of you. It's hard to believe that except for Moun10bike, USA, and Canada, I didn't even know geocoins existed until Feb of this year when I saw a Nurse Dave coin at the MiGO Winter Social. Right then I decided 2 things; I was going to be collecting these things and we had to have one of our own. Well, like most of you, it's gone beyond collecting and ours are in the mail and we expect them this week. Let's hope the new year brings peace, prosperity, and understanding to everyone. Let's pray that our mailings and coin trades to Cav Scout are all done within the USA. Let's hope that people all over the world start to see the similarities between all of us and not our differences. May you find that one particular coin that makes your collection complete. May your caching not be an 'Arduous trek' but a 'Walk in the park'.

Email sent about a trade for our coin.

Email sent to Team Nazqul.

I received my Maine coins Friday and I was fearing the worst. The end was ripped open like someone wanted in and there was only a rubber band around the envelope holding everything together. To my amazement all the coins were in the package. Without this cheezy rubber band around it, the package would be empty. It amazes me how the PO can handle billions of pieces of mail flawlessly and then turn around and beat up a package like this. Inner packing would not have helpad here. The entire end of the package was gone. This is the first time I've ever had a coin shipment even scratched much less delivered in this condition.

2 NY coins showed up in Michigan today. Great!

I have an Idaho coin engraved with 'Skinguy'. It was my first trade made for a coin. It's in the first place position of non-round/over-sized coins in my book. Probably the nicest looking coin in my collection. I think it's better engraved. It makes it more personal.

We will have a coin coming by the end of December that will be for trade only. In response to Dreamin' Eagle, this is our Christmas, Birthday, and Anniversary presents to both of us. we felt the coins had more meaning to us if they were trade only and not put on the market. BTW Mr. Eagle, we'd trade one of ours for yours when you get them.

Well, Jagman714 lives not to far from me, so maybe we'll get something on Monday. I swear the Post Office dogsleds get slower every time I'm waiting for a new coin issue.

We'd be intrested in trading a Shasties coin for your coin. I'll send an email.

It has to be on the web someplace. Try some of the free picture repositories around (Photobucket.com is what we use). Then link to that location. Mine will be here in a couple of weeks. I'd like to trade also.

Junglehair, you just type to fast for me.

I took this comment to mean he was asking how to get just the coins he wants, not 'buying every coin in sight' like most of us collectors do. It's an honest 'Coin Noobie' question. "How do I get started?" I didn't take the meaning to be theft of travelling coins. The MiGO coins can be either traded for or they're also sold in the MiGO Store. They are presently out of stock but should be in soon. The Iowa coin will have to be traded for or find someone with an overstock who would sell it. A lot of traders post on the Geocoin Trading Forum. You can also find traders at TheCachingPlace.com Coin Trading Gallery or at Cointracking.com. You might find someone at any of these places willing to sell a coin rather than trading. Good luck with your search.

Got 2 today. Thanks.

This has been great so far. I sent 3 coins over for a 'European Vacation' and they've been moving like crazy. And they haven't landed in a collection. I encourage others to forward a coin or 2 in that direction or use one of the Stargates (as mentioned in an earlier post).

I believe they've been released to local cachers only so far. If there are any left they will probably list them somewhere. I have one coming in trade already.

Got 2 of each. Thanks Ladycacher. Now the work begins.

I like the idea of the lock on the coin. Makes it a little harder for the 'collectors' (or should I say 'bandits') out there to snag it up. I put out a MiGO coin (early non-trackable style) with a hole drilled and a TB tag attached to it just to see if it would go. The first person that came by picked it up. It was their first cache and first TB. So far, even after an email ("Don't worry, we'll get it back out very soon"), they have not visited another cache since. Part of the basic problem is indicated in the posts I read here. Doesn't matter if it's a Mountain Bike, John Lacey, or solid gold - It's not your coin!. It's a TB and it belongs to someone else. Just because it's collectible and hard to find, doesn't give someone the right to claim it for their collection. And the people who are holding on to a trackable coin or TB that's not their own, moving it from cache to cache to event, are just doing the same thing - keeping it for themselves. They've just tried to justify in their own mind, the reason they're holding it for so long. TB's are meant to travel. Go from cache to cache, person to person following the directions the owner wants. If you're not interested in doing that - Leave It Alone and let someone else who will do it properly take it. I'm not trying to convince the people who pick up coins or TB's with 'cute toys' attached to them and keep them for their collection or 'Poor little Bobby/Betsy just can't give up that fuzzy little animal', not to do it. They're going to do it whether I think it's wrong or not. That just teaches the kids that it's OK to take what they want without trading up. My thoughts here were to tell that new person, who is just starting out, to play the game in the spirit in which it is intended.

10pm Sunday sale will get everyone in the U.S. trying for the coins at that time. It will be 5am in central Europe. Will U.S. people wait for the second auction? - No. My thinking is that it's better to try for the first sale and if you don't make it, then try for the second (if you can get to a computer). Just the nature of the coin collector. Try for it as soon as you can. The 10am Monday sell will be 5pm in central Europe. Seems to be a pretty good time for people who get out at 4pm, although not-so-good if you work until 5.

I received my peaches and Stone Mtn coins today. Thanks.

I'll also say that buying the lighthouse coin through Ebay was VERY easy. Most of the negative posts I've read involved people who didn't necessarily know how to do an Ebay search; or at least didn't know how to optimize their search. I use Ebay a lot, so it was pretty easy for me. Posting the Ebay hyperlinks to the auctions on the GC coin thread was a great idea, but I don't think most people were looking for it. I wasn't. Announce that there will be a link posted on the thread, that way nobody gets 'lost' on their way to the auction. Make that the only way to find the auction (don't tell where to find it on Ebay) and it makes a foolproof way to get there. I know several people said they got error messages from Ebay. In the hundreds of times I have paged through Ebay auctions, I have never had an error message. Not to say that some didn't get it, but that may be a pretty rare occurrence. That many people hitting a single auction may also cause this. It looked like Ebay was also a good way for people outside the US to get their chance at the coins. Just make sure you check everything that needs to be checked to allow international orders (if that's your intention). I also absolutely LOVE the idea of limiting the LE coins. 2 is good - I would be happy with only 1 per person. Limiting them distributes them to more people and I feel they end up more in collections rather than for sale for $50 on Ebay first and then to a collection. Good luck. I'm going to try to be at a computer when this starts.

After reading this thread I just wanted to say what a great job JMBella did with this. Being the first one to try something is always a risk, but all in all I think most of the people didn't have any problem. Yeah, it sounds like there were a few problems, but the system seemed to work at holding the sale to the right number of coins and working worldwide. Sounds like PayPal was a major glitch again. So far I think every coin sale has had their problems in one way or another. This seemed to be better than most. BTW, the coin looks really nice. Any idea how often you'll be issuing one from the series? You should also take a look at Michigan Lighthouses. There's a bunch, very nice looking, and caches at many of them.