dflye

I have heard stories/rumors of the factories overseas using the dies from prior runs for illicit purposes after hours once it is known what will fetch a fast dollar on ebay. Then again, I've heard the same thing about pretty much anything produced in China that is a highly sought after item....the first and second shift workers produce the legit item, and then after the factory "closes" the third shift comes in to make the "replica" items on the exact same factory line....so you aren't really buying a "knock-off" item, you're just supporting the underside of the Chinese economy when you buy that Louis Vuitton handbag on some side-street in NYC!

Ok, I almost wet myself catching up on this thread when I hit that shirt picture! Too bad my local team isn't in the playoffs this year, at least they got to kiss Lord Stanley's mug a few years ago for the first time! (Ahh, the playoff drunken debauchery with the fans of the various Canadian teams we beat is only a fond memory at this point! ) Now as to the pics of me driving our goalie around town on the parade route, well, those are top secret (i.e., before I got a haircut! )

Ah, and here we hit a marked difference between the coin world and the real world! While a King book 20 years ago may have had an initial run of 10K, his current books may have a run of 1M or more (numbers largely pulled out of the air, I'm not a true book collector, more like a book black hole...if I buy a book, I ain't ever going to let it go free! ) So his initial volume for new releases likely went up a hundred-fold or more over the last 20 years, I'm guessing, between the time of his first books that were mostly unknown versus his current pop culture popularity. I doubt you can find ANY coin that has gone through a similar increase in popularity, given the compressed timeline. Even while the 100 or something of a Moun10Bike v1 coin is insanely hard to get, if there were 100 times that many in circulation of the upcoming v4 (i.e., 10,000 of the little buggers) there is absolutely no way that they'd ever sell out within a year. The coin collecting side of geocaching is an extreme niche market to start with, and the visibility is next to nil, even within the geocaching community. Anything with an initial run of more than 1K coins isn't likely to sell out instantaneously without SERIOUS hype.

A book collector looks at several things when buying a book. What printing it is, what condition, etc. There are many items out there that we just buy, like books and CDs, LEGOs etc, that have a serious collectors also buying these items. Ah yes, but you're talking about older stuff not brand new fresh from the factory. No, I think MustangJoni is talking of the exact same phenomena, only on a compressed timeline between initial purchase and "collector" status of a given item. The LEGO, CD or first printing hard-bound book you buy today for a relatively few bucks may well be worth a small fortune in the future if the movie the LEGO is based upon, band behind a CD or author behind a book reaches the stellar reaches in their field over the long term. I think the difference here is that in geocoin land, going from unknown to top 10 artist takes all of about two months, compared with years or decades in other fields!

While I don't directly care about the numbers minted when purchasing coins, as I've yet to foray into the ebay space for selling, and have only purchased ONE of my 1K+ keepers from ebay (and sold none), so online resale value isn't really a factor in my coin purchasing decisions. I do sometimes purchase extra coins in available finishes based upon hype that leads me to believe they have abnormally high trade potential. For coins where I'm reasonably sure I can unload them in an even trade in the next year or so, I'll pick up an extra of each finish, and if it doesn't unload soon enough, it either gets drilled to travel or donated to an event when I realize it is still hanging around in my trading binders. For coins where I'm not sure which of several/many finishes I'll actually like, I'll buy one of each finish, keep one or more, and attempt to trade the remainder. For coins that have a LOT of hype, knowing the minting ahead of time lets me know how seriously I need to stalk the web site for when the coins actually go on sale (as compared with the posted sale time! ) to pick up extras for trades. This has at times paid of for highly anticipated coins like the ROT13 dragon spinner, but when that coin was reminted in high volume for the RE, my untraded extras at that point sort of lost their legs. So knowing if a coin will be reminted in an existing finish is definitely a plus. Coins that come out initially in more than 2 or 3 finishes are a pain, deciding whether to buy all flavors either to collect or to trade. Then when even MORE flavors come out in several batches over time, I get a bit irate and stop purchasing them at all (regardless of how nice they look), as it is obvious that someone is milking the collecting audience a bit more than other vendors. A single remint with a pre-sale is fine with me, as the earlier versions of the coin aren't diluted in worth too much. It is the never ending remints in unending flavors that send me screaming to the exit.

The new USPS rates are supposed to offer discounts for online and volume shippers, although that may be mainly targeted for Express Mail and not for Priority Mail (which is a steal when sending a bunch of coins in a flat rate envelope compared to any other method)

Or you could do the reverse, attach a mini-cache to a traveling coin, which is something I've released with reasonable success (where sometimes another coin or swag will hitch a ride in the mini lock-n-lock attached to the coin when the coin moves from cache to cache): dflye's Cache Movers Coin and Mini-Cache Not exactly a locationless cache, but pretty close!

Depending upon the coin, you may want to bolt the cache down as well so that it doesn't wander off with the coin still attached.

Now we're talking! I can see Chip & Dale stealing geocoins from a TB motel to stash in their tree!

Any coin with the face of a politician on it.

TTUMS here ~Well you are just the sweetest thing! Thank you so much for those kind words. I thought that the WA County coins were just a dinky blip on the radar. I had quite a few other county coins designed but the interest just wasn't there. I couldn't even get enough pre-orders for a minimum of 100 cions so I quit making them. Had I made them trackable they would have sold out evey time but I'm not a fan of trackablilty for several reasons. Thanks for remembering my coin series. It must made my heart skip a beat! Hmm, if you ever worked on a Cowlitz county coin, I'll pay whatever it takes to bring it to market, still holding out for a coin from my birth county! Perhaps my fondness for WA county coins is due to my current location waaaaay far away from my home state; perhaps it is due to the crisp, clean and uncluttered art of the coins without the need for paint to tart up the artwork to lure in buyers.

I couldn't pass up any all-metal coin that TTUMS was involved with, they harken back to the day of the WA county coins....only how many more coins to complete the series? I'd like to lobby for a "WA county coin of the month" club and sign up folks to fund such an effort! I know I'd be pulling out my wallet in a heartbeat, and doesn't have to be every month, could be a "whenever-the-next-county-is-available" club! Unless someone is going to say that counties outside of the greater Sea-Tac area are too dull to deserve a coin, what's an impediment to such a coin club?

Sorry, didn't mean to confuse comparing pictures of actual produced coins against the real thing versus attempting to create the real thing using a photo printer before the mint makes the proof. Most ink jet printers using plain paper won't provide even remotely close to the real detail that you'd get using a photo quality printer with good photo paper. My point is that at some point early in the design process, someone needs to do a sanity check in high quality printed media to make sure that both the detail the artist desires is truly visible to the naked eye and that the tracking number is legible without digging out a magnifying glass! There are any number of other coins where either the badge used to engrave the tracking number was horribly undersized, or where the entire coin concept was lost on compression to a smaller diameter die to save a few bucks. Personally, I'd rather pay a few bucks more and see the image the artist intended as large as could be. Coins like the recently released Quadrant show that you can make very large diameter coin without increasing the price all that much.

Had to fire up an external drive to track down pics from a few year back of the Goofster himself meeting our family, when he was lounging around in Florida in his fishing attire trying to convince our son that he was friendly! When a guy about 4 times your height approaches, no wonder there is hesitation on the shorter side of the meeting, but the Goof knows how to make things equal, got down and by the end of the encounter had our son fondly waving goodbye! Hope to see you again soon, Goofy, you're a real pal!!

Not duped, and there is indeed a great amount of detail on the coin, just hard to see with the naked eye. And while the coin may be 1.75 inch in diameter, what would you guess the average width of the surviving metal is? Maybe 0.25 inch? I'm thinking if I put the boomerang on my postal scale and compared it's weight against a typical micro, it would bring a bit less mass to the contest. My boomerang is buried somewhere in a pile of coins I'm trying to catalog and sheet this weekend, so can't measure or weigh one myself. I've got no problems with the coin designer or the coin itself, just wish there was a bit more metal to the 1.75 inches worth diameter to enhance the viewing of this coin. Kind of like those pics on some coin tracking sites where the picture is taken and then squeezed into a square format, leading to a misrepresentation of the coins actual dimensions. Not saying that was the case with this particular coin, mind you, I'm just nattering away here....

Great Geo Leprechaun!! Wonderful in fact!! I will be watching for that thread. Wearing of the green and liting a few guinnesses to toast you and the spirit of the giving of the coins!!! I'm a-watching for this wonderful coin to show up on my radar, and I'm already a-drinking my Guinness tonight!! Trying out an award winning chili recipe tonight that I found online to use for a competition at work on Monday, need something to put out the fire!

LOL.... after all the hoopla and frenzy I'm surprised this is the only post about how people felt on getting their coins. I was shocked when I got one in trade. It's a micro and I bet it wasn't sold as a micro!! The person I had traded with was also disappointed. We 3 (including Smily) can't be the only ones feeling a bit duped. Well, I got one in trade so at least I didn't herniate myself trying to survive the initial online purchasing hurdles, but it is still a bit on the tiny size to say the least when it comes to total volume of metal involved in making the coin. Any coin where I have to get out the loupe to read the tracking number and decipher the details is in my mind too small. And since I'm reading the micro print on things that my wife can't focus on anymore, I'm pretty sure it isn't my vision that is at fault! Would it kill the coin vendors to actually LOOK at a printed to-scale sample of the coin artwork being submitted to the mint on a photo quality printer to determine if the dang thing will be readable by mere mortals? Some tiny coins do this right, look at the "Rhody" quahog coin, I can read those tracking numbers from a distance on a coin that is a micro-micro! Other vendors apparently either have better than 20/20 version, or could give a ____ if we can read the tracking numbers or make out the details the artist intended to be in plain sight.

Anyone only having ten coins shouldn't be spending so much as to make them go broke and end up living in a cardboard box underneath a bridge. I've certainly not a thing against someone who shows the restraint to only have coins in the double digits, regardless of budget! Buying several hundred if it stretches your credit to the max and you skip paying bills, well, that my dear is politely called an obsession and probably should be termed addiction with a 12 step program (seen the coin, just haven't signed up yet! ) People who only see potential resale value in gifts have a very shallow set of values. Thankfully, I think this group is extremely small, and the collector that this whole thread was launched due to their sales is in dire straights (one would assume, but haven't heard other than rumors from 3rd hand sources) is therefor hopefully NOT in this group of low-life. If the proceeds were going to a known charity or person who has admitted to some need other than greed, I'd bid on a few of the coins I don't already have.

It does seem a bit odd to use ebay to liquidate assets, given that it isn't exactly an instant payout. And selling a handful of coins like the ones currently listed can't drum up THAT much money, not like what you'd get by taking a loan out against your 401K, borrowing against the equity in your home, selling more liquid assets like stocks/bonds, etc. I'd have to agree that if you are using geocoins as an "investment" with money that would normally be going into something slightly stabler like a 401K or an insurance policy, you're in over your head. While I may be in WAY over my head in geocoins, I've got plenty of other assets to liquidate before I'd be hawking my regular geocoins, let alone my mystery coins, on ebay! I'm sure I'm coming across as an elitist snob, but I guess I'm just puzzled as to why the mystery coins would be listed first of any collector's large collection. Perhaps under the assumption they would attract the highest bids and it is easier to list 10 coins than a few hundred. As to the personal attachment to coins, for auto fanciers out there, you know that scene in Ferris Bueller where the classic sports car goes sailing out of the garage window and crashes down below? Yeah, that pain you feel for the car is how some folks feel about their coins.

I saw the thread title pop up and was wondering how the heck I missed a thread with that title for so long judging by the number of responses....guess I hadn't! I've given away plenty of coins in a variety of ways, such as gifts in a trade, at events to friends, donated to charity, etc. What the person does with the coin(s) is their business, if they want to keep it, toss it, trade it, sell it, melt it down to make a bullet, whatever. That just comes with the territory on giving someone a coin, it ain't yours anymore! However, if I was the benefactor behind a mystery coin, I'd be a little irked to see one turn up for sale by someone I'd directly given a coin. If the coin had been traded away from the original recipient to someone with less of a clue or less scruples, no real foul on the part of the original recipient there in my mind. Regardless of HOW the person selling the mystery coin acquired it or WHAT the situation involved that caused them to need/want to sell the coin, if the sale was started without contacting the mystery benefactor, in my mind that person wouldn't exactly be a good candidate to receive future mystery coins!

Well, in theory the coins were purchased from USA Geocoins by the ebay lister, so they "own" the coins, but since they hadn't yet been "grabbed" from the FHG profile that activated the coin, kind of hard to prove "ownership" versus just lifting a coin out of a cache. Unless USA Geocoins has a database that matches coin codes to purchasers, not much one can do to prevent the sale of pilfered coins from caches that don't yet have any logs. Not saying that the ebay lister pilfered the listed coins, just saying there isn't any way to prove either way.

I've had issues in the past in dealing with traders who have extra heavy defense on their inbox, with spam filters that apparently must remove 99.99% of their incoming mail! As long as they wade through their spam folder once a week or so looking for the misidentified mail, there is a chance for a trade to occur versus just getting lost in the weeds. Whenever I make an offer based upon a trade request in the trading thread, I make sure to post a quick note to the thread to indicate I sent an email or PM so that the onus is on the other person to indicate if they didn't receive the msg.

Oh yeah, the image I saw in a cointest thread earlier, I was so focused on the flags I didn't even think it was a different coin!! Now where did that first cup of coffee for the morning go....

Woo hoo, ordered some lighthouses and pins as well! Now I'm wondering what this snippet on the web page is about (didn't see reference to it in the newsletter, but didn't so much read it as go "Oooh oooh oooh, time to hit the store!!" ) Do tell, how many and how often?

Woo, got me some guitars and picks! About had a panic attack when I got to the paypal checkout, as it wasn't letting me change payment to my CC! Eventually smacked my head when I realized it is now the 1st of May in GMT, and was time to update my CC info!