Team 'zZZz'

Hi there, I guess most of you are familiar with the following situation: You finally see that very-special-and-wanted-by-heart coin appearing in coin trade list somewhere - but unfortunately you don't have anything that the respective trader looks for. No problem at all, if you have the contacts you can arrange some kind of circle trade. But most of the time this may be not only time consuming but also you need to find the matching partners for this kind of circle trade. For a single coin this may work within an acceptable time frame - but what if there are many more coins on your *must*have*list ?inter Let's stop the upcoming discussion right from the start - what about an international multi user trade, where a computer software arranges the possible maximum of trades for a given amount of offers and wants? This is called a math trade - a trade form that is quite common in other areas (for example in the boardgame area, my second hobby). Before I try to explain all the details about a math trade (especially with my german style english) it might be best to present two "established" links that explain the wohle thing better than I can ever do: The general idea of a math trade (simply replace the term "boardgame" or "game" with "coin"): Math trade guide and of course a link to the software itself that is used to calculate the trades: Trademaximizer I have done a math trade in Germany at the beginning of this month where only a small amount of geocoin collectors participated - but we all agreed that this form of trade is quite "effective" and time saving So the question I would like to ask here (as already stated above): Are there some collectors / coin maniacs / coin trading cachers around who would like to participate in an international math trade? If so, I would gladly start such a trade here (to speak more technically: to act as the host of this trade)! Please feel free to ask any question that comes into your mind ... I will try to answer them all (but please excuse if there's a small delay in my answers due to the time shift, my "normal" job, my family ... and sometimes caching activities) Have fun! Dirk

BOOMM-BOOMM-BOOMM ... that was my heart beat like when my eyes first flew over this post ... german cache description ?!?! Does this mean ... could this mean ... The Geocoin Fairy to visit Germany ?!?!? All right - things are clear now What a pitty for us here in Germany Congratulations Degai!!! Dirk

With a shy look to our avatar it seems that this coin is one of the *must*haves* for us Dirk

Great idea ... that's true! But I really don't think that there's a need to withdraw the public availability - there are noumerous ways to get your full postal address Given the fact that the pure number of cachers is quite small compared with "other" interest groups, I don't see a real reason why someone should start to gather cacher addresses ... (except for the Geocoin Fairy, the Great Pumpkin, etc etc ... hint!hint!hint!) Just my thoughts, Dirk

email sent ...

Typical situation here in Germany ... well, I know, in terms of the Great Pumpkin we are more or less a developing country But maybe a coin would be a great start Dirk PS: I BELIEVE !!!

quite obviously ...

... a successor of The Cachebug ??? Anyway, nice to get information about upcoming coins on a single place again! Dirk

Unfortunately none of the numerous Mystery Cachers are taking a holiday trip to Old Europe (especially to Germany) ... sigh ... Dirk

first stupid thing that came into my mind : have you found a cache in World of Warcraft ??? Okay - skip this Dirk

ok,ok,ok ... I'll stop complaining about my empty budget right now, as CM does it one more time: Look for 3 NEW Editions at the end of October !!! (Antique Nickel, Winter Edition and Special Castle Coins Edition) Boy, if the winter edition of this coin is as wonderful as the Letterboxing Winter Edition ... Dirk

Weird. I still can't pull that listing out of Ebay, even searching "fariy" under "worldwide"... Never mind, I wasn't going to bid for it anyway... Just interested. MrsB ... deleted as all was said before ...

... payment sent!

Quite right, T'n'T ... and then there are others around who really help the newbies! I remember quite well the day when I intended to do my first coin trade with a spare one that I received as a gift some months ago. I was quite keen on a personal, non-trackable coin that I've seen on an event and asked the owner whether he would trade this personal for my coin. After a deep sigh he gave his personal coin as a gift to me with the remark, that he couldn't accept my coin for his ... it was sold out long ago and quite rare in our region At least that was way my personal learning curve how to make coin trades in our community! Dirk

Received the coin yesterday ... looks even better in real life!!! Come on Ellandel, give us a hint: Which coin/country will be next??? Dirk

Great job!!! Once again one of those real funny cartoon-like coins that I need to get Looking forward to get a couple! Dirk

CM stop it !!! Please ... Another edition of this wonderful TRANQUILITY coin ... ouch ... *** need *** to *** ask *** for *** credit *** or *** start *** to *** use *** next *** years *** budget *** ... Maybe it would be best just to go to bed right now (11:50pm here in Germany) ...

Naomi, please accept my deep sympathy ... Dirk

HELP !!! Can someone please stop CM from publishing such wonderfull coins en masse?!?!!! I'm out of my budget for the rest of the year but each time CM starts announcing his wonderfull coins I'm getting weak again ... And by the way: WHAT A GREAT JOB, PAULA !!! Oouuuccchhh ... have you seen the LB Winter Edition ?! ok - resistance is futile ... as we all know Thanks for those wonderfull coins (even if the Tranquility copper was "stolen" from my shopping cart!) Team 'zZZz' - one of those addicts from Germany

Just out of curiosity: how many of the LE chrome coins have been really minted??? Coin description states that "only 15 coins" were produced - but this is at least a typo as the "coin counter" on the web page told me that there were 29 available when I ordered my LE coin ... and that was a few hours after the sale started. Cheers, Dirk By the way: An absolutely _wonderfull_ coin !!! Can't wait for the "Spirit of Geocaching" coin to hit the shelf as I suppose this coin to be of equal beauty ...

The same is true (including the values of 22 Euro / 45 Euro) for Germany. It needs to be mentioned that the 45 Euros only can be applied if NO PAYMENT IN ANY FORM has been done for the goods. And at least my customs office interpretes a trade as a form of payment (well, ok, they are right - but I'm not the one to agree on that topic in discussions with them) ... BUT if customs is interested in an inspection of the shippment then we (as buyers) have to show, that we are the exeption mentioned above. And that's usually the tricky part of it (especially if a message card comes out of the letter saying "Dear customer ..."). So maybe it's no a so bad idea to send a "bill" with the coins where our friendly customs officer can see at the first glance that the goods have a total value of (approx.) $25.

Maybe you are interested in some experieces from the buyers side After having some trouble in the last month with german customs here are some recommendations that seem to be valid for most/all shippings from the US to Europe. Please note that the following points are correlated to each other ... (and if you find some explanation strange due to the wording please feel free to use your brain to get my sentences working ) Customs form Try to avoid it whenever you can. If you have to use it, try to mark the shipping as "Gift" with a value of approx. $2 for each coin. The term "novellity tokens" is nice - but most custom officers simply don't know how to deal with it (boy, that was much talking at the customs in order to explain the meaning and use of the coins!). I would expand the term into "novellity tokens / collector items of low value" Packing Try to pack as flat as possible! Sure, it's nice to see how much effort has been done in order to protect the coins - but unfortunately that blows up the envelope to a much bigger size (height). 2 bubble-mailer in a single bubble-mailer really makes customs curious! I would sugest to try to use card-board instead as this works also well to protect the coins against scratches ... Messages in the shipping Of course it's nice to find a message like "Thanks for buying our coins. Activation codes can be found ..." - but that is really a "point-black" for the customs . Reword the message and avoid the terms "customer, buyer, buying"! You are doing a trade? Fine ... if its for more than say 4 coins, do your trading partner a favour and put a small message in the letter and let him (and customs) know what the trade looks like. Maybe a sentence like "seems to be a trade of $20 vs $25 ..." will make life much more easier at the customs Ok, as you can see it's mostly about avoiding custom taxes - with 19% taxes here in Germany I think it's quite worth to think about it Have fun, Dirk edited for the most obvious spelling errors

Yime, seems that you are much to logical for this thread

... ok, it's now nearly 1 am here in Germany ... time to catch some sleep. Good luck everybody out there & thanks for the entertainment!

for the first time I see the coin listing and it says "sold out"