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2012 UK Mega Event - Website and Shop now open!


muttoneer

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Hello,

 

I would like to update you on the planning of the 2012 UK Mega Event, which is to be held in the North West of England.

 

The NW Mega Committee are pleased to announce that our website is now fully operational, and will in time give you all the information you'll need concerning our plans for 2012.

 

http://www.mega2012.org.uk/

 

You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter! Links to both are on the 2012 website.

 

The newest part of the website is our online shop, which is now open for business!

 

At present we are selling two items, all of the proceeds from which go directly towards paying for the 2012 UK Mega Event:

 

Lightweight_Trackable_MED.jpg

The Northern Star - a lightweight trackable in the shape of a star, priced at £5 (+P&P). These also have their own icon at geocaching.com and make a nice alternative to travel bugs!

 

NW_pin_MED.jpg

A very cute NW Caching pin badge - only £1 (+P&P)

 

You can expect more goodies to appear on here as we get closer to summer 2012!

 

Finally, if you wish to get involved in any way with the NW Mega Event, please contact me or any other Committee member. You can also donate to our fundraising effort at http://www.mega2012.org.uk/content/donate.html.

 

All the best,

Muttoneer

(Chairman, NW Mega Committee)

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Not wanting to cause trouble or anything (as if I would :huh:), but I thought that the etiquette for promoting a/the UK Mega event was to keep it rather low key until the current/next Mega event is out of the way so as not to steal their thunder and fundraising opportunities. It seems a little unfair to be promoting the 2012 Mega when the 2011 committee are in full swing trying to promote their Mega.

Edited by Mad H@ter
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I can only add that this was the courtesy we afforded the Scottish Mega Committee. By keeping in the shadows left them free to gain support of the entire caching comunity, but of course this is at the discretion of each committee to decide.

 

kind Regards

 

Tony( Mega Wales Committee Chairman)

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£5 for what is essentially an individual cachekinz item?

 

They sell in USA for $3 ... you must have paid an awful lot of postage :huh:

 

It's a travelbug isnt it??? Or did I read that wrong? In which case the cheapest we've seen them here is £4.50 so a 50p markup to raise some cache (ooohhhhh did you see what I did there!!!) doesnt seem so bad.

Edited by 4 and The Dog
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We fully support the 2011 Committee and have been very open with our decision not to do any overt fundraising outside our region until the Perth event was over, to give Mega Wales a good head start on their fundraising.

 

I'm afraid it just isn't feasible to leave our fundraising for 2012 until next summer, not with the deposits which need to be met before then. What we won't be doing, however, is ramping up the publicity to the extent that it eclipses Mega Wales, which is of course the Mega that everyone should be concentrating on right now.

Edited by muttoneer
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£5 for what is essentially an individual cachekinz item?

 

They sell in USA for $3 ... you must have paid an awful lot of postage :huh:

 

Postage, vat and customs unless your dishonest. Oh and the whole point of raising money for to fund the event.

 

VAT and customs duties don't turn a £2 item into a £5 item. There's also nothing dishonest if the package is properly labelled and HMRC decide not to charge import duties - it's not unheard of that for lower value packages they don't charge anything at all even if the package does have a full and accurate valuation attached.

 

Personally I'd rather see a request for donations than something being sold at what seems to be a silly markup. But then that's just me... if I want to support something I can make a donation and if I don't want to support it I won't pay a silly markup for something I can get elsewhere for half the price.

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£5 for what is essentially an individual cachekinz item?

 

They sell in USA for $3 ... you must have paid an awful lot of postage :yikes:

 

Postage, vat and customs unless your dishonest. Oh and the whole point of raising money for to fund the event.

 

VAT and customs duties don't turn a £2 item into a £5 item. There's also nothing dishonest if the package is properly labelled and HMRC decide not to charge import duties - it's not unheard of that for lower value packages they don't charge anything at all even if the package does have a full and accurate valuation attached.

 

Personally I'd rather see a request for donations than something being sold at what seems to be a silly markup. But then that's just me... if I want to support something I can make a donation and if I don't want to support it I won't pay a silly markup for something I can get elsewhere for half the price.

 

If your buying just the odd coin or tag you won't get charged vat and customs, these are commercial quantities so will attract the charges.

 

As for the mark up it is probably no where near what has been suggested. The cost of manufacture can be quite low per piece when you are ordering large numbers, if as is likely they are not ordering in large numbers the price per piece is a lot higher. Unless they have gone directly to the manufacturer there will more than likely be third party costs to pay as well. It all adds up so to sum up, it is in my opinion a unfair comparison.

 

As for donations, I am sure if you prefer not to have a tag and just make a donation they will happily take your brass.

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£5 for what is essentially an individual cachekinz item?

 

They sell in USA for $3 ... you must have paid an awful lot of postage :yikes:

 

Postage, vat and customs unless your dishonest. Oh and the whole point of raising money for to fund the event.

 

VAT and customs duties don't turn a £2 item into a £5 item. There's also nothing dishonest if the package is properly labelled and HMRC decide not to charge import duties - it's not unheard of that for lower value packages they don't charge anything at all even if the package does have a full and accurate valuation attached.

 

Personally I'd rather see a request for donations than something being sold at what seems to be a silly markup. But then that's just me... if I want to support something I can make a donation and if I don't want to support it I won't pay a silly markup for something I can get elsewhere for half the price.

 

If your buying just the odd coin or tag you won't get charged vat and customs, these are commercial quantities so will attract the charges.

 

As for the mark up it is probably no where near what has been suggested. The cost of manufacture can be quite low per piece when you are ordering large numbers, if as is likely they are not ordering in large numbers the price per piece is a lot higher. Unless they have gone directly to the manufacturer there will more than likely be third party costs to pay as well. It all adds up so to sum up, it is in my opinion a unfair comparison.

 

As for donations, I am sure if you prefer not to have a tag and just make a donation they will happily take your brass.

 

Most people will want something physical for their money, just requesting donations would not generate the interest/awareness of the mega and susequently revenue like the tags will. I'm guessing in the quantity they had made it would have cost them more than £2 to have it made

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I'm guessing in the quantity they had made it would have cost them more than £2 to have it made

Exactly.

 

If you've never had a custom coin produced, it is very easy to get confused about how the charges work, oversimplify things and come to the conclusion that it is a cheap process... it isn't!

 

To give you an idea of the costs involved in even "cheap" geocoins such as these, here is a list of the charges that we have had to pay:

 

Manufacturing:

Basic tag fee

Die fee

Cut out fee

Laser etching

Groundspeak tracking numbers ($1.50 per tag)

Groundspeak custom icon fee

 

Import:

Shipping costs (considerable for such a valuable package to be posted from the USA)

Import duty

V.A.T.

Handling fee

 

I'm intrigued by the idea of the taxman deciding not to bother charging the hundreds of pounds of taxes due; I just wish that the same taxman looked at my pay slips. :yikes:

 

Hopefully you'll be able to see that when all of these individual charges are added up the total comes to considerably more than £2. There's also PayPal fees to consider once the items are sold. As has already been stated, there needs to be a decent mark-up as the whole point of selling these items is to raise money for the event, hence the £5 price tag.

 

I personally think that this is still very reasonable - a quick search shows that the usual retail price of cachekinz tags in the UK is between £5.25 and £6.99. A fiver is cheap then...

 

Even in the US (where they don't have all of the import charges to worry about), the sale price seems to be $4.50 to $5.50 rather than $3. If anyone is selling them for as little as $3 then I suspect that they are selling them at a loss (perhaps to clear) as this is quite a lot less than the basic cost price, even before import.

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"At present we are selling two items, all of the proceeds from which go directly towards paying for the a 2012 UK Mega Event:" :yikes::sad:

 

Without wanting to go far off topic, the 2012 Geolympix team fully support GC2921G Mega Wales 2011 (The UK's 4th Mega Event) and will happily continue to maintain a relatively low-key profile until after it. We are less happy with the misrepresentation of the NW 2012 Mega, as seen above, and would ask the organisers to pick their description with more care, both on Groundspeak sites as well as on their own.

 

Back to topic, I don't have a problem with them charging £5 (+p&p) for an item, or £50; people will see the price and make up their own minds whether it represents good value for money or not. Given any profit from the event will be going to a charity (has which one been confirmed yet? It may help people with their buying decisions) and costs and income will be transparent, folks should be able to purchase in confidence, knowing any 'extra generosity' is going to a good cause (TBC).

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If your buying just the odd coin or tag you won't get charged vat and customs, these are commercial quantities so will attract the charges.

 

They may attract the charges. My experience is that customs don't always levy charges on things. When I imported a large number of travel bugs some time back the envelope they were in bore an accurate description and valuation of the contents, and it arrived with no charges to pay.

 

It seems to be very much an issue of the luck of the draw whether customs levies a charge or not. I would always assume that they would (otherwise price comparisons break if they do and it hadn't been budgeted for) but sometimes you get an unexpected bonus.

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It would seem there's going to be 2 mega events in 2012. How close are these events together and how close are they to the Olympics? Is there a danger that one or other event could be jeoperdized by the occasion of the other?
This has been discussed at some length, lol! The date of the SE Mega aka Geolympix has been set as July the 22nd 2012; the weekend ahead of the start of the Olympic games. It will be held at a venue in the SE of England, within around 60miles/1 hour of London. The exact location hasn't been selected yet but there's been recent talk of making a 'festival' of it, with on-site camping and a suitable marque tent. I see neither a confirmed date or location on the NW Mega 2012 website so I couldn't tell you if there's a date clash. At least they'll be a long way apart geographically. Looking on the bright side :yikes:
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£5 for what is essentially an individual cachekinz item?

 

They sell in USA for $3 ... you must have paid an awful lot of postage :yikes:

 

Postage, vat and customs unless your dishonest. Oh and the whole point of raising money for to fund the event.

 

Customs charge the VAT it is not a separate entity!

 

Or at least, in the south it isn't.

 

So that is postage and VAT charged by the Customs.

 

The $3 quoted was indeed for a fundraiser too.

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I don't want to get into the same old argument with the Geolympix Committee - frankly it's been done to death on this forum and is distracting everyone from the most important Mega Event at the moment - the one in South Wales next year.

 

As such, as the original poster in this thread, could I please ask that this thread now be closed by a moderator.

 

(Oh, and Paul - as I've already promised you, the NW Mega will NOT be on the same weekend as the Geolympix. I would like both events to go ahead and be a success).

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