MustangJoni

I can't wait!

Taking care of your elderly grandmother makes you a hero in my eyes. There is nothing more important than taking care of those who nurtured us when we were young! We are holding a GeocoinFest Event in Germany in August. It is an event that centers around the collecting of Geocoins. It should be a blast! http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=262708&st=0&p=4588471&hl=gcf&fromsearch=1entry4588471

Shucks! I'm so flattered! Especially since I look up to each of you! Elli - you will definitely be seeing me in Germany. I can't wait to meet you in person!!!! Scarlett and I have been in touch. Hopefully, she'll be able to make it to one of the upcoming events in the area. I really hope she can make it to my Mardi Gras event!

Hi Scarlett! I'm in the DFW area and have been collecting coins for several years. I'll send you and email and we can chat. I'd love to let you know about local events and such! MJ

I am a huge fan of his work. I would love one!

My boyfriend has several of these coins and he has given me a couple as gifts. I can tell you that most pictures just don't do the coins justice. They are spectacular! The workmanship on these coins is simply amazing! I love the ones I have!

I don't know the answer to that but I know that Michigan didn't... nor did SWPA...I thought that only geoswag had pins made I didn't know it was an option.

Ha ha! My boyfriend and I both collect coins. I check the mail at our house, and he knows this. He knows that if he orders a coin, I'm going to find out, so he generally buys one for me also!

No Day Tripper version for HH, eh? ;-) He was tempted, but they only allowed 4 colors per side. He wanted a different color in each and every area! LOL

Not really, I invited all the hosts from the 10 10 10 events. Some declined, others didn't respond. Due to the technical complexity of the coin I wanted 'veterans' to host the events (they also cost a pretty penny due to size, two-toning option, gems, cutouts etc. Each event should be complete with Mardi Gras Masks! For those of you not able to attend an event Geoswag will have a version. Also, the geoswag club coin for February will be a different version (I haven't seen the colors for that one). I believe there are a total of 13 (or 14?) versions... since California, Seattle, Michigan and Texas will have two color schemes in limited quantities. Texas will only have one color scheme.

I actually accidentally logged a DNF as a Find once. The text of my log clearly said that I didn't find it, but I accidentally hit the "Found It" button. The CO let me know about really quick, and I changed it. Several months ago, I got a rather rude email from a cacher. It was asking me why I had not yet checked on or disabled one of my caches. It was a multi with a nice hike. Not real long, but it was about a mile, and there were more caches along the way. So I looked at the logs on my cache, and the last log was a "Found It" log that was several months old. Looked like they enjoyed the cache. Then I looked at the other caches around mine. Since mine was last found, three different cachers/caching groups found all the caches around mine, but didn't find or DNF mine. Hmmmmm....maybe I would have checked on that cache had I known there was a problem with it.

Ouch, that is a delicate question. Maybe he went out to check on it and could not remember where he put it, or it moved. Yeah, that's it. He wasn't questioning you, he forgot where he put it. Or maybe he couldn't find it because it wasn't where he hid it anymore. I once had to ask the last finder of one of my caches where it was; turns out I had quit looking about a foot or two from where it had moved to. I could believe that because it was a very hard to find cache. So many people had DNF'd it. It was just the tone of the email that made me feel like he was personally questioning if I had found it or not. The only other time I had been questioned was when I wrote a DNF log, and it was clearly a DNF, but accidentally hit "Found It". That CO sent me a nice email before I had gotten done logging. I would have noticed when I was done, but I corrected that immediately. LOL

I had this happen to me, and I was a bit insulted. I found a local hide, that had a string of DNFs. I logged that cache along with the others in that park. In my log I stated that I was surprised that I had found it so quickly after so many DNFs. It was an ammo can that was in an area with alot of GPS jump, and I basically stumbled on it. About a month after I logged it, I got an email from the CO asking me to describe the find. The CO isn't some stranger, he is a guy I've known for years, so I was a bit insulted that he was questioning me. Thank goodness, I did actually remember the find very clearly. So I answered him. But I have long felt that if a CO actually wants to question a find, that is what the logbook is for. I think so many people in this area wouldn't remember it so clearly after a month. Most folks would have another 500 caches under their belt by then! LOL I'm still friends with the CO, but have never forgotten that my find was questioned.

Got mine today! They are gorgeous! No Golden Ticket... Thanks so much Yime!

I had one in my last order from Groundspeak. I don't mind getting free travelers.

I don't have a business to promote. But I do have several friends who lost between $60 - $100 on these rouge companies. One of the two companies we are talking about could have easily burned me since I regularly bought from them. I deemed them "reputable". The other company, while I didn't buy from them, they had regularly done pre-sales successfully. Right now we have a company that I have regularly bought from for years, looking like they are about to go under. I believe they offer pre-sales or reservations on their coins. We have had several complaints about them lately. If this was before your time, then you weren't here to hear the horror stories about how people lost their hard earned money to people who just skipped out and shut off all communication. You say that pre-sales are a "small disadvantage" to buyers because we have to wait longer for our coins. That isn't the only disadvantage....it also bumps up against the 45 days that paypal allows to file a complaint to get a refund of your money. I had always liked pre-sales over reservations until these things happened. My coin budget is too small to risk losing money to pay someone elses bills. I have my own to pay. I think if Groundspeak would re-vamp their "Approved Vendor" program, that could help accommodate pre-sales again. Right now, all you have to do to get on the list is make coins. I think they should make sure the companies or the people running them are credit worthy. Someone with good credit is less likely to get in personal financial problems, and if they do, they probably have the means to get out of it. While someone with a poor credit history, probably doesn't even have a credit card, and if they have a personal emergency, pre-sale funds might be their only option.

I don't think pre-sales will go over real well.

Yes, it should be in the pinned thread. But if you don't know about that thread you might not notice it. It looks like she had been trying to contact SoCal, but wasn't getting answers that satisfied her. I hate that these problems come in the forum too, but they do serve to warn others. That being said, I have no idea who is right and who is wrong.

I have disliked the LEs because they tend to be the "better" metal and color combinations. From a business point of view, why in the world would you make the best combination a limited edition? You can mint the REs in unlimited quantities, so why wouldn't you make that the very best combination or combinations? Seems like sales would be better if people didn't feel manipulated into buying a set just to get the one combination that they really like, because it is the LE.

Great job! If you do shiny, the words will be very hard to read. When I have done samples in the past, I have done at least one shiny and one antique, so I can see the results of each.

I am soooo ready for my invoice! I am going to activate one in memory of my beautiful mother, who I lost to this horrible disease! I'm going to send it out traveling, and hope it goes to all the places she dreamed of going to! Thanks Yime!

I've had three so far and I have deleted all of them. Maybe in the future, I will report them to Groundspeak. What bothers me about it is the dishonesty. Why? They clearly are very honest and tell you, that these are bogus logs. I had discoveries on my coins from someone, who couldn't have seen them, as those were coins out of my collection. Someone gave a list with numbers to others and they logged all those trackables. That was much more confusing for me, as the log said, they had seen the coins at an event. But I wasn't at that event. Nor my coins. So I wrote an email and deleted those bogus logs at the time. I'm not sure if you're responding to me or to GregsonVaux, but I'll go ahead and answer: in my case it wouldn't matter if the person were to clearly state that the logs are bogus. Lying or truthful, the logs would be bogus (in my case) if the person hadn't seen the trackable. So I'd delete the logs. Actually, I was replying GregsonVaux. I agree, those bogus logs needs to be deleted. But I don't think, those logs are dishonest. They clearly tell the story of a mislead challenge between friends. A sad challenge for sure. I'd rather collect countries or counties or even find numbers. Maybe someone, who had those bogus logs should send them a link to this thread? The log on my coin was dishonest. He says he accidentally typed in my coin number, but decided to log it anyway. Then he logged dozens of others with the exact same log. To me it looked like he was trying to make me think his logging of my coin was a one time thing. To me, that was dishonest.

Virtual logging of a geocoin (or other trackable) isn't allowed. By "virtual logging" I mean logging something as found. Virtual discoveries are sort of another matter, or so I'm gathering (though I could be wrong). But it seems to be that even if virtual discoveries don't result in a trackable being locked (as virtual finding does), that it's in bad taste. If someone stumbled on the tracking code of one of my trackables and tried to "discover" it, I'd delete the log. They didn't discover it, as in find it during an event, actually see it and handle it, etc, and therefore don't deserve any icon. If they like the trackable enough to want to actually contribute to the trackable's page, then they're more than welcome to post a log. Note, however, that this is all IMO. Your mileage may vary. ; ) My understanding is that a virtual "found" log and a virtual "discovered" log are the same thing. They both will get your trackable locked if you allow them.

What makes geocoins so different? Shiny metal preciouses. That's the only way I can describe it. I won't comment on the rest; my own philosophy is to do reservations only. An exception to this was (and will be) the Mini-Doubloon project. I do ask for money up front for those, but only when we're ready to actually place the order (after all the designing and stuff is done). So anyone whose heart really isn't in it can back out at any time up to that point. Could I pay for the whole order up front and collect money when they're ready to ship? Probably. For project coins, though, I'd rather not. They're highly personalized and I'm not sure how successful they'd be if I had a handful of, say, "Schmuckcacher" doubloons that Schmuckcacher decided not to pay for. I am liable to think that people (other than rabid coin collectors) would rather have their own personal coins, and not someone else's. Project coins are a different ballgame. I would always expect to pay for personalized coins in advance.

I'll bite... I've got to ask... If you are worried about "getting stuck with inventory" then why are you minting coins for resale anyhow? I would think it was inherant risk for anyone that wanted to mint for resale? Is there an unwritten law that says once minted they must all sell within XX number of days or the minting wasn't a success...? ...personally I've never understood the logic behind thinking this way. please explain, and help those like myself understand... I am minting coins because I like designing them. My profit on a sale is pretty slim, so if I'm left with extras because people backed out, then I'll be losing money and will eventually have to stop altogether. If I factor in the time it takes to design the coins, then I really am losing money. For me, coins that don't sell in the initial run rarely ever sell. Period. If people back out on a reservation, I will likely never sell them through my store. I don't know if people just never visit my store except when I announce a presale or what it is (I am fairly far down on the approved vendor list). Sorry, I don't buy all that... the reason you don't factor in your time should be because you enjoy designing them, you mint them for resale to make $.... The only way you could lose money is through "over minting" or not selling about 1/2 of what you do mint.... if your losing money I would suggest not minting them at all, but simple answers would be to mint fewer (start small and remint if neccessary) or feel the design out and see if it appeals to potential customers... however, if you are worried about either of those then again I ask "why mint coins for resale?" it seems having them readily available to potential customers can only help you in the long run, If someone comes to your site and sees them available then they may be back in a day/week or two to purchase. If they see they are sold out or only available through pre-sales then they may not return. As stated before it's a risk you take as a producer of coins. I don't think that risk should be on your customers through pre-sales and financing your coins before they are minted. it works on the same principle that nobody should buy a bottle of wine before the grapes are picked or buy a burger while the cow is still grazing.... You could also try submitting your design to one of the companies. That way, you have no money tied up, and you get some of your coins for free.