Lemon Fresh Dog

I never read the original thread, but a thread on cache containers exists - why not geocoin packaging? Yes, it *could* be a posting in each specific coins thread, but it's nice to compare and contrast (in a good way)

Hooray! I see they are making them to their destinations. Great news.

I would be careful with geocoins and not consider them kid-friendly. They are also not edible (okay - "mostly" not edible). I'm actually ignorant on the effects of lead - however, I am assuming you would need to ingest or touch the products containing the lead in order to be harmed. If I keep the coin in their flips and/or don't over-handle them - then I assume I am safe. Hopefully, I haven't caused a poisonous, invisible cloud in my office that is slowly killing me! (from the coins - I have many other dangers in my evil lair that are probably doing me in as I type this....)

This is an oft-asked question. Something that folks don't mention is; "Was the mission on the traveller?" If I go to a cache and see a TB without a mission attached, I take it and drop it along at the next cache I find. How was I supposed to know it was only going to caches that have the word "green" in their title? However, if the TB has a mission attached to it that clearly states it is only supposed to stay in a region, is part of a race, etc - THEN, I decide to take it or leave it based upon whether I can assist in its mission.

Generally, you can always count on PayPal (and the Credit Card companies) always take the side of the consumer and not the seller. To have a case, you'd need signatures for EVERYTHING. Signature authorizing the charge (phone orders and online are not signed) Signature accepting delivery (hence, tracking #) The good news is that 99% of folks are good and won't complain. PayPal will LOCK the account on ONE complaint. (okay..sometimes they will just reverse the payment and place it on "hold", but if they think there is something odd (against their policies) - then it's lock-o-rama! So. PayPal for pre-orders. Not a good idea unless you are very, very up-front with all buyers on time-frames.

Now that I have kids, traditions seem much more important. Here's a few that the kids like (me too!): Sleigh-ride and hot chocloate - classic! Our dog is a Husky mix (or wolf - see my profile and decide) so she used to pull the sleigh. Now she just walks along and "guards" us. Last day of school movie night. We have a "hide-a-bed" and all climb in. Kids watch, eat popcorn and fall asleep. If you are newlyweds, you can have a variation on this theme and eventually may find yourselves with kids too! And...here's the weird one: For some reason, we have a Christmas ornament that is a pickle. You know... like a Dill Pickle. Anyhow, apparently in Germany, they would hide a pickle in the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. The person that found the pickle would get a special present. We leave it out for Santa to put in the tree and the special gift is ussually a family movie (Harry Potter, SAW 7, something like that). My family are all German and think this is insane and can't ever remember doing this, but around our house it's a tradition.

Well...you could sell the pre-sell coins as a design "service". The certificate might be good. It gives the buyer proof that they paid for something if it came to a legal issue (non-fulfillment). It also increases your postal cost if you mail the certificate, but I suppose you could e-mail it. Personally, whenever I have purchased a pre-order, I "get" the fact that I am not going to see the coin(s) for up to 8 weeks or even more. I think that you have to understand this or don't order pre-sales. It's not like your payment was the magic key that automatically got the design approved, the tracking numbers delivered, the production completed, the product shipped and then mysteriously went from China to the creator to your mailbox while you poured another cup of coffee. It's all about communication. I took a brief vacation from these forums for ahile, so I understand there have been some dicey situations around here. If you need a risk-free transaction, you probably should only order coins that are already minited and/or only buy from people you know or are known to you. In today's environment, we never would have been able to create some of the coins from the past - with one coin the pre-orders were open for a month before the coin was even sent in for production! (we minted to match the demand - so we had a 30-day "open" order time). The coins then took 6 weeks to mint and deliver to be broken into packages and another 3-4 weeks to get to everyone (especially the 50+ to groups in Europe). Something tells me this wouldn't fly today before folks started freaking out about the coins! EDIT TO ADD: PayPal doesn't track when you send items out. They only respond and lock out an account if someone complains. So if folks are "trigger" happy and complain if they think the coin is taking too long - that's the real problem. If you set expectations up-front it may help to avoid this, but all it takes is one bad apple. For example, I've only ever had 1 neutral comment on eBay - it was from someone that won a geocoin and then complained that it hadn't arrived after THREE days. Sorry - small packages don't travel that fast in normal circumstances, especially across borders. Both buyers and sellers have to set realistic expectations and communicate well. Of course, if someone takes your payment and you never hear from them.... that's a problem....

'dem bones are on the way (unless your neighbour is both funny and crimminal!) I quite honestly have no idea how long they will take to get to the US destinations though. Especially this time of year, but they went out en mass last week (and a few the week before actually). They arrived at the "doghouse" the first week of December (or was it the last week of November?) - around Dec 2nd anyhow. They then were packaged up over the next few days (3rd-6th), and then sent to the magic postal place to be stamped and mailed. So they have been on the road for a few days now. Opps...all except the "gift" ones and the "travellers" - these are going out this week, but they aren't the ones folks bought - they are the freebies, promos, and such. Of which there are only a few to folks I know - like my sister. See...you even get them before family!

Amongst several obsessions I have is my love of the classic works from Carl Barks - comic books. I'm only a very few issues away from a complete set of Uncle Scrooge comics as he was always my favourite. Actually, I like many comics, but shhhhhh! - I don't want anyone to think I'm an oddball. I'm often fond of saying I am a parody of a characterature of myself.... I like computers, comics, aviation, science....sheesh...I sound like a geek! (although, to my credit, while I *like* Star Trek, I don't *love* Star Trek...at least as much as the folks that dress-up do... In fact, one of the reasons I was thinking about starting this thread (remember that!), was because I have a way of displaying some of my favourite comics and am looking for something similar to do with my coins (and my little airplanes - that's another story). Too often, I see colletions in deep "storage" where they don't get proper enjoyment. What a crime! In some of my other "forums" (Archie, comics, planes) - there are threads with titles like "Show us your comic room". Does anyone here have a "Geocaching Room"? Or some such monument to idle time I have the "geo-shelf" and the "geo-drawer", but that's it for me. Once I get some display cases for the coins though....

Nice! PM me your address and I'll send you one of my new personal coins. Anyone that like Uncle Scrooge is okay in my books. Oh...and when I say "anyone" I mean the first one and that one is done!

It's currently -40 degrees here. Any snowballs would be considered lethal weapons at this point. As for the person throwing these "snowballs" around "na-na-na-na - can't hit me! NA-NA-NA-NA!"

I thought it might be nice to share some ideas on how to enjoy your coins. Then we can all steal from each other. Here are some of mine: 1) History. I've been trying to keep a little better history on each coin I have. What this means is that I am creating small index cards for each coin that explains how it came to be in my possession: gift, trade, purchase. Maybe with any "extra" information as well (for example, I have a "Screw" geocoin, it was a purchase, the origin of this coin comes from the time when there wasn't a separate geocoin forum and a poster in the "regular" forums got fed-up with all the geocoin talk. This poster created a topic called "Screw Geocoins - go caching!" and someone made a Screw geocoin! (there are a lot of coins in the early days that have funny stories) 2) Display. Here's what I am thinking of doing. Haven't done it yet, so I am looking for anyone that may have been down this path. I want to create small "groupings" of similar coins (personals, CITO, etc). I thought of taking two picture frames, some quality foam and then cutting the shape of each coin out of the foam, and "sandwhiching" them together - sort of a very shallow shadow-box there both sides can be viewed. Ideas? 3) Sharing. Once I have more of an ability to display coins then bringing various themes to events would be fun (the entire collection is just too much to bring to every event!) 4) Activation. This is something I just started and wish I had done all along (it's sort of like #1). I am asking people that have personal trackables to activate them and set their mission to be in my collection. (I do the same with mine). This way, I know I recieved the coin directly from the individul and it's a little for fun for me (and enjoyable). Other than that, I like to dive through my coins like a porpoise, throw them into the air and let them land on my head.... (anyone who gets that refernce is extra cool!)

weird time-shifted double-post o'rama!

You know you're a geocoin addict when everything you own smells like plastic flip holders.

By-the-way. The travel industry deals with this problem through a process called "over-booking". It can be very annoying if you get bumped from a flight and/or a hotel room. The do it to protect themselves from unsold inventory. After all, you can't sell last night's empty room today. I'm not suggesting that coin makers do this. I'm suggesting open-minting editions and a business model that takes basic inventory management into consideration instead of being a victim when someone fails to follow-through on a reservation. Having 1-2% of those making reservations pull-out shouldn't cause devastation and no listing of names here would be required. If someone wishes to reserve a significant percentage of the total production, then I think a deposit is both warranted and advisable.

Well...I didn't mean to get off topic I guess the question - what makes a customer delequent might be in order. The topic of reservations and failing to honor a reservation seemed to have come-up. This is where I was trying to aim my analogy (the travel industry). Does this make a customer "list" worthy? Should we publicly list the names of those that make a reservation and then don't take the coin? In that case - it isn't a reservation per se. Let's call it what it is - a guarantee and/or a pre-order with delayed payment. Regardless. The communication has to be up-front on both ends. For example, if you reserve this coin you are guaranteeing to buy it and it is guaranteed to be produced and delivered at such-and-such a time. If there is any potential for misunderstanding, then I would be hesitant to start listing names. I'm not in favor of a list posted where customer's behavior is a subjective assessment of what constitutes bad behavior. Maybe we need a geo-court? The world needs for lawyers and conflict!

Years ago I worked in hotels. During the regular season, we took credit cards to guarantee your room. If you didn't show-up, we charged you. Most of the time, folks can dispute this charge - no signature and the credit card company will always find in favour of the buyer. During ski season, we required a 100% deposit 60 days in advance. What does this have to do with geocoins? Well. The vendors need to decide. If they take reservations for a coin, they can request pre-payment, they can request a deposit, they can take the risk. It will depend on the vendor. Customers can pre-pay or wait until the coin is minted. Of course, the easiest solution is to not have limited edition coins. If coins were minted and then offered for sale, then re-minted as demand dictates, then I actually think the number of unique coins would decrease, but the quality of designs would increase. Here's why. If a vendor develops a compelling design and continues to remint coins in batches of 200-500 as demand dictates, then there would be "best sellers" - these would be the coins that satisfy demand for many cachers. Stepping back. As the following: Why do reservations even exist? Do they exist because those that collect coins don't want to "miss" a coin? I think so. Do they exist because a vendor doesn't want to "over-mint" a coin and not sell them? I also think so. The second reason is a bit of a problem for me. After all, if you don't believe your commercial design is good enough to sell 200-300 copies - why are you making it? Conversely, why should cachers or vendors stop production on a quality design? If it turns out your design is so good that everyone wants one - then mint and re-mint and mint again! This would have the extra bonus of making the "rare" and "cool" designs less of a target for coin thieves taken them out of cache circulation. It also protects everyone. Cachers don't risk money on a coin that doesn't exist yet. Vendors don't risk the lost opportunity to remint their "hit" coins. Hit coins offset the duds that only sell 25. The whole hobby is healthier as the focus will be on design over limited edition mentality. End of rant.

Opps. I should add. The custom icon isn't there yet. It will be, but at this point it still shows as the little "personal" coin icon. It will change to the one posted here in a little bit.

They really, really turned out well. I'm obviously biased, but they have the same nice "heft" that they original has (heavy coin). They are all on the way to you as I type - so please let me know as they arrive.

Don't get mad at the mailman! These were packaged and mailed last week and early this week. They are coming from Canada - so if you are in Canada - they would take a 1-2 weeks (Christmas and all). If you are in the US - they can take 2-4 weeks. If you are in Europe they *could* take 6 weeks even. For some reason though - my European shipments have been taking less than my US ones! Go figure. So - no getting mad! They are on the way to everyone. (I actually have 14 left of the ones I set aside to sell off). If anyone wants one or two then PM me and I'll get you a link to pay for them - otherwise, I'll hang onto them)

I've been very lucky I guess. I'm in Canada (Alberta). In all my years, the only coins I lost were a few due to bad packaging on my part, 2 traders that the person claims they never got (I sent one, then another, then offered to send theirs back!). I also once sent an eBay package and it came back after 6 months damaged - I'd replaced the item by then. I did get one package from the US Postal Service with an apology letter - you never want one of those! If they damage it so bad they need to apologize - it's not good! Unfortunately, it was original art from Archie Comics, Fortunately, it wasn't ripped, just bent - so I was able to still press it flat. In all though - the percentage of positive interactions is much higher than negative ones.

Years ago - I made the mistake of mailing the original geobone in regular envelopes - about 6-10 of them didn't make it and were lost on the floor of the post office sorting machines floor. One of these actually was sent to GroupdSpeak by the Postal Service! GeoundSpeak contacted me and asked to keep the coin and I, of course, said yes. However, that was a long time ago - could you imagine how big the display case would have to be for todays number of coins! Yipes! <snip> - wrong display. Does anyone have a photo of the display case at Groundspeak? I've never been there, but heard they had one.

Not to be a monkey wrench, but having worked in museums myself, I have a slightly different perspective on this. As an example. One museum I worked in had a very large collection of shells from around the world. The shells were amazing and some were certainly rare. However, the collection was donated with the caveat that they are constantly on display. This is a problem. Most museums are founded to show the history of a people, a place, or even a company (corporate museums). They often have way more items than display space. They also want to get visitors - so they rotate displays. In the shell case - the collection had nothing to do with the area and the space was too "precious" to continue displaying something that didn't make historical sense for the area or attract many visitors. The collection was returned to the family. How does this all affect geocoins? There is great enthusiasm around geocoins, but this is distributed across the world. If I opened a geocoin museum in Calgary, Alberta - how many of you would honestly visit? Any geocoin display would have to be part of a larger museum with greater appeal beyond geocoins. A museum of Geocaching? That's still pretty specialized. I've never been to Groundspeak HQ, but if they had the space - and really wanted visitors (which probably doesn't make much sense), then that might be a possibility. A small museum with a gift shop might work. Many companies do have this at their headquarters (I've seen the Microsoft museum and the Canadian Pacific museum, but these have far greater visitation numbers than Groundspeak - I suspect). I guess it would be nice, but a better solution might be for the coin manufacturers to form a group or image databank and share that digitally. There are many grass-roots efforts to do this, but having a professional archivist contracted to manage this collection would give it greater value and probably a better "product" Funding. Everything costs. So if the databank was to work it has to become something that is not a volunteer effort. Even community museums have some permanent staff. The databank could solicit "friends of the geocoin databank" memberships, create a special geocoin for profit and use the money, and ask the manufacturers to solicit those making coins to contribute "May we donate one of your coins to the databank?", "Would you like to contribute $20/$50 of the minting costs to the databank, we'll match X amount" Good luck! It would be cool however it shakes down.

Just run it. Have the academy. Set a deadline. Run the contest. I personally was deeply offended when "The Goodbye Girl" beat "Star Wars" for best picture. I got over it. Not all coins will be represented. Not all of one person's "picks" will win. Just have fun and see if it takes off in the years ahead.

Just run it. Have the academy. Set a deadline. Run the contest. I personally was deeply offended when "The Goodbye Girl" beat "Star Wars" for best picture. I got over it. Not all coins will be represented. Not all of one person's "picks" will win. Just have fun and see if it takes off in the years ahead.