MnGCA

[dmnrec]

[Arcticabn]

[PassingWind]

GC tracking and a custom icon would have solved any sales problems you would potentially be facing right now.

Also, e-mail the geocoin purchasing groups, they buy 100's at a time.

PassingWind

By the way, here's the link to the finished product for the San Diego Geocoin with its custom icon.
http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?id=256384

[celticwulf]

As for sales for Members, I know I'm going to get a couple at least myself, but I'm waiting til this weekend when I can figure out how many I want before I put in my order...I'm just a standard procrastinator

Celticwulf

[Arcticabn]

[fidian]

Ok, I know this is a very old thread, but I thought my questions would be best placed here.

How much extra does it cost to engrave non-sequential alphanumeric tags on each coin? If they were given in an Excel or a text file, could their system handle that?

I just contacted Groundspeak and they said that coins could be trackable if we paid $1.50 per tracking number, 1,000 minimum. Nothing at all was said about a setup charge, and I did ask about it.

What they did mention:
* Coins have a 2-character prefix and then have 4 random alphanumeric characters: MN8H50J
* Codes are sent in Excel or text format and can take 1-2 weeks to generate
* Use of the geocaching.com logo is not required
* Only text required is "Trackable on Geocaching.com"
* Coin design must be approved ("this is a family friendly site, as you know")
* $1.50 per coin, minimum of 1,000 coin codes


I did actually read this thread, so I know that there are people against using geocaching.com. I also know that people will steal/keep these coins, and that others think having the coins trackable are a waste.

It is late in the game, and I read that there was a sample coin (or maybe it was just the artwork) that was floating around out there, but perhaps it isn't too late to change the logo if others think that this is a good idea. If needed, I'd chip in a few bucks to help offset the cost, because I would much rather have these coins trackable.

[RubberToes]

[dmnrec]

[Arcticabn]

fidian,


I and I'm sure the entire geocoin committee appreciate your input.

The coin design is locked in and we have authorized the making of the die. At this point we are waiting for the sample coin to be shipped to us, but the design and die are a done deal. The only thing left is to place the order for quantity and that will happen early next month when we close the presales period (31 Dec 05). As soon as I have the coin in hand I will take pictures and post it on the Geocoin Sales forum page.

There are many reasons why our coin is not trackable. Mostly it has to do with our ability to anticipate sales and not having a guaranteed revenue up front to guarantee trackability. Additionally, trackability is not the only cost. Originally quoted from Groundspeak it was a minimum of 1500 numbers at $1.50 per number plus an additional $200 for a unique icon ($2450) total. Our guarantee was very impportant to us as it represented doing what we said we would do. We didn't want to promise a GC.com trackable coin, presale it and find out we only sold 3 or 400 coins and either had to refund everyone and start over or figure out how to pay for the difference and deliver what we guaranteed.

Secondly there is an additional cost of unique serialization on the coin. All of the manufactues had a price for sequential numbered serialization. Random numbering was significantly higher. Not impossible but double the cost of a serialized coin.

We were not sure of how many coins we would sell, had no up front funding and therefore didn't want to guarantee something we could not deliver. After nearly a month of presales we still have not hit that magic 1000 coins sold mark. Let alone the idea of an original 1500 coins. Do I think that if the coin was trackable it we would have sold an additional 50%. No I don't think so.

It appears to me and this is a personal opinion. People are not really interested in buy a coin and releasing it into the wild so that it can be tracked. They want a trackable coin WITH ICON so that they can log it and get a new ICON on their stats page. It's one of the ways the coin collectors are demonstrating their collection to others. So I agree with dmnrec, if you want to send the coin into the wild put a TB tag on it.

Remember that we were designing a coin for the MnGCA and Minnesota not for the rest of the geocaching community at large. It was not intended to be a big market though it has exceeded our expectations nearly two fold. As for a little bit of stats, we had 51 members vote on the design, however only 38 members/Minnesotians have actually placed orders. The significance of the numbers to me is that we were pretty much on target with what we set out to do.

This response is not intended to be defensive and I hope that anyone reading it does not take it that way. I believe in sharing our information and our reasons for doing what we did. If we (the MnGCA) decides to mint a second coin in the future we take our lessons learned here and apply them to that project. Moreover, maybe a few more members will take an active interest up front in the development and decision making process.

Arcticabn

[fidian]

Roger. Just thought I'd throw that out there since I only recently signed up with the MnGCA. I'll have to try to get in on the next discussion for coins.

Thanks for the explanation!

[King Boreas]

FWIW

I haven't ordered any coins, but if they were trackable, I would have ordered 10.

[PassingWind]

[dmnrec]

This doesn't look good...

http://forums.groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=117270&st=0

I didn't notice it until I got sent the email saying my $ for a coin from another state was getting refunded due to Paypals' no pre-order policy....

[sir_zman]

As long as no one tells Paypal we should be ok....right?

[dmnrec]

that's the way it looks