Doctor A

OK, well thanks to some input from some people on the forums, I found a much more affordable way to get mailers, and so have decided that I'll offer four coins of each finish here on the geocoin forums, with the following prices: $13 for first coin shipped to the US, $11 for each additional coin If you're an international person, email me through my gc profile and let me know what country you're in- I'll have to figure out how much postage would be individually for any country outside of the US. As for trades, I've been trying to not accumulate quite so many geocoins since I went kind of crazy, like everyone does, when they start collecting, and seriously over-bought. But I have always wanted a grodan and fiabus cat geocoin in copper and one in nickel, and also always wanted one of the cammo ammo cans in pink. So if you have any of those unactivated geocoins and feel like it'd be a fair trade, I'd certainly consider any offers. Please send me an email through my gc profile letting me know if you're interested in buying any coins and how many of each finish you want to get. I apologize if anyone thinks the prices are out of line. I do understand if anyone who posted that they were interested decides not to purchase based on the price. As I shared, I'm trying to make it so that it's (hopefully) considered reasonable, but also that I do a little better than breaking even.

Thanks for all the positive feedback everyone. To answer one question, yes it does have it's own icon- the same picture as the coin, using the coin in the colors with the grey kitty and the white kitty, so just basically that coin shrunk down to icon size. The icon hasn't been fully set up yet, so right now it still shows the generic icon, but the artwork has been sent in and it's been paid for. I activated one coin under my profile so hopefully soon it'll show the icon. Also, the coin is a 2" wide coin- I wanted to make a larger size coin so paid the extra expense to have it that size. Now as for selling it, I have to admit I'm having something of a dilemma about that. I know we all have some idea of what coins cost to mint, so it's not a big secret, but basically I know that most people don't want to pay more than $10 a coin- I'm the same way, that's sort of my standard price that I'm willing to pay. But if I sell some of the coins for $10 a coin and then charge $1-2 for shipping, by the time paypal deducts fees of about 60-70 cents or so, and if I have to buy small padded envelopes to ship them in (which I priced at $1.50 at the store today) and make trips to the PO to mail them, then at best, I'm breaking even on the cost. I'm not out to make a bunch of money, but I figured that if I sold a few, it'd help recoup some of my investment so that my total out of pocket cost wasn't quite so high. I certainly don't want to lose money, but when I did some quick calculating this afternoon, it seemed like if I charged that $10 price, I might literally only be breaking even. So I'm looking for feedback here- I'm not a coin "seller" by any stretch of the imagination, and this is certainly not a business for me, so I don't have things set up to have purchased things like mailing supplies in large quantities, I don't have any streamlined system for processing orders quickly and easily, so I'm wondering what people think is a fair price, if you're willing to share?

I designed a geocoin that I had minted through CHQuality Coins (who were great to work with by the way), that is basically a tribute to my family. My sister (greykittes) first found out about caching and started doing some. She introduced my parents (vaetanone) to it and they in turn managed to get me hooked. We all are serious cat lovers and so I wanted to design a coin that reflected that, and also had all of our caching names on it. So this is what I came up with. I had it made in 6 different finishes, and while most of the cats are grey and either white or black, I made the one coin just for fun, in funky colors, similar to my favorite colors of purple and teal. The main intention of these coins is for my family members to have them to share with special people, I didn't mint them to try to sell a bunch or really make any money off of it, since this was my Christmas present to my family. But I am considering selling a few, like maybe no more than 4 of each finish. Haven't decided yet how I might do that, by selling them here or via auction, but please post and let me know if you would be interested in one.

For some reason I can't see any pictures, but it seems like other people can?

Well I understand what people are saying about the purple probably not being the most "authentic" color, but it is my favorite!

Whoo-hoo!!! Got number 011 in the mail today! Thanks so much Mr. Gray, I love it. I am curious as to what the extra item was that never got delivered, so I guess some early receivers got this, but not all of us? Anyone able to share a picture of this other-worldly device?

OK, I have NO idea what they're saying in this news story, but it's about geocaching and my Christmas geocoin is shown quite prominently, starting about 1:10- it's made it all the way to Slovakia and made it onto the news there! I feel famous! The person who picked it up was kind enough to send me the link to the video, which I sure appreciated, since I would never have known about it otherwise. This is actually the second of my geocoins to travel to Slovakia this year- apparently they like to go there, and I don't even have too many out travelling. This is one of the things I love about sending travelers out, the chance to get to hear about places I never even knew about, see other cachers interacting with my coin, and know that it's visiting someplace I'll likely never get to visit.

Glad you liked it! Actually, it was partly because of your encouragement and a suggestion that it probably even got made at all, so you had a hand in it and I probably never thanked you for that, so thank you very much! At a time when I was thinking it wouldn't happen, your email spurred me to take some action that led to it getting finished.

That is a cool coin- this was the first I'd seen of it, but I'm glad to see the picture. It's been awhile since I made a late night caching run, but I've certainly been on many in search of that elusive FTF. For some reason not too many caches have been hidden in my area recently, so therefore my need to go out night-caching has decreased. but who can forget the fun of black widows at night, or careening out of the garage and coming only about an inch away from hitting your significant other's car when you forgot he was even over... Night caching can be cold, but quite rewarding! Congrats to the recipients of this cool coin! I love the front in particular- so clean!

Yep, very good additional points! And also one of only two AE coins that will be sold. Only other way to get an AE coin would be to beg or steal from my mom or sister or me!

Auction has about a day and a half left on it so I wanted to give this a bump. It's going to help out a member of our community who I know has done good deeds for others on the forums before, so think of a bid as a generous gift, that earns you a coin to boot!

Glad to see that this coin is still finding it's way to worthy recipients. I walk by my curio cabinet everyday and it frequently catches my eye!

When these coins were made, there was a limited number made in the Artist Edition finish, satin nickel. One of these is being auctioned off on ebay right now. This one is offered for auction as a thank you to someone who did a good deed for me earlier this year when I was diagnosed. There is one more of the AE coins that may be auctioned off on ebay, but aside from those two, all of the coins in this finish are staying with me or my immediate family. So if you're interested in having this coin in this finish, please check out this auction. Both of the two that will be offered for auction are being offered to help out two very good causes/people, so please consider bidding: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=200542816458

Darn, now I've gotta do some math and figure out the alien clock time to see how often I can guess! But I know I'm safe making a first guess, which will be... an alien decrypter that can detect messages from Mr. Gray's home planet... but it'll look like an innocuous poker chip with an alien insignia on it.

Not sure if anyone else got their coins today, but my sister just called me to tell me that she got hers. I was hoping to be the first person to see them live and in-person so was a little bit jealous when she told me that , but was glad to hear how much she liked them. She said she was "quite impressed" and that they were even nicer looking than the pictures! I hope to hear from other people about what your impression of them is!

Mr. Gray is indeed a fascinating man!

I'd just like to add that even though Jim doesn't mention it in his info about the coin, it comes packaged very nicely- not just in a coinflip. I wasn't expecting that, so was impressed when I opened my coin and saw the extra effort that went into the packaging of the coin. He also was great about communicating with me and very personable in the communications, all for the sale of one geocoin. That made a positive impression on me as well, because it was good customer service, even in the face of a large fund-raising task, to which my purchase was contributing only a small amount.

Cherokee Bill, I'm sure sorry about your cancer diagnosis, and the diagnosis of anyone who gets diagnosed with ANY form of cancer. It's not something anyone should have to deal with. I'd venture to guess that breast cancer probably does get more publicity than other cancers just because of the prevalence rates- anything that affects more people is likely to garner more publicity. That doesn't diminish the cancer that anyone else is dealing with. Personally, I know there are worse cancers I could have been diagnosed with- if you want to look at impact on life, pancreatic cancer is probably one of the worst, but again, the prevalence is fairly low compared to something like breast cancer, so we don't hear as much about it. I do hear a fair amount about prostate cancer, since many people are diagnosed with that. There was another geocoin earlier this year that was devoted to other forms of cancer, so I wouldn't say that other cancers are ignored in the realm of geocoins, and even though I didn't read back through this thread, I don't think that anything posted here ever implied that breast cancer was the only cancer, or that there was anything more important about breast cancer than any other cancer. The reality is that what geocoins are made in tribute to is based on who decides to design a coin, pay for a coin, etc, and so if there happen to be a lot of people who have the ability to design a coin who are affected by any specific illness or condition, you're likely to see more coins devoted to that condition and more focus on it- that's a function of where people choose to place and expend their resources. So this thread started out about my personal question about breast cancer specific geocoins, because yes, that's what touched my life, and then it transformed into a thread about a breast cancer geocoin because yes, that's where I decided to focus my energy. I'd imagine that there would be support for a geocoin focused on bladder cancer or prostate cancer or almost any type of cancer and I'd encourage anyone who has been affected by such cancers to consider whether designing a coin would be therapeutic for you and perhaps, like this coin as well as the other recent breast cancer coin, generate a donation to support that cancer specific charity. I'd prefer not to see this thread degenerate into negativity or any sort of argument about what cancer is more deserving, more important, what cancer might have been cheated or ignored or neglected, etc., and I really felt like your post, together with the angry face, is taking it in that direction. We should all support each other in dealing with whatever cancer it is, not let it turn into feelings of anger or resentment about who gets the most attention/support/etc. Please keep this thread focused on the breast cancer angel geocoin.

I heard from Eric and the coins arrived yesterday. He let me know that orders that were pre-paid are now shipping out! He'll be sending out invoices for those that did reservations instead of pre-paid orders, shortly. Apparently there are some people who did pre-orders but haven't paid yet, so if you fall into that category, you might want to check and see if you have a paypal invoice that still needs to be paid?

Gotta love anointest having to do with cats: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...=179135&hl=

Another one that I didn't participate in, but based on the 23 pages that it took up, it must have been fun for those that did: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...=188507&hl=

This one just looked hard- trying to figure out what someone did on their vacation: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...=178151&hl=

I didn't participate in this photo one, but it sure looked like fun: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...=234404&hl=

Here was another fun one, where you had to share your found a cache phrase- fun just because it was funy to hear what other people used: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...=255035&hl=

Well someone already used this one, but hopefully a duplicate fav cointest contest can still be counted as an entry for this cointest. So my favorite was the first cointest I ever won, and one that really had a good message behind it- drneal's Valentine's cointest. And the coin was so beautiful! http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...=240536&hl=