January's coin will be pretty cool! It's a name tag Geocoin which features a new design with a silver satellite and a flashing LED (the red dot) to draw attention to you. The background is white so you can easily use a sharpie or clear mailing label for your name display.

This will go out via email to everyone as well. We are sad to report a delay in our December delivery. We expected to receive the coins from the factory just prior to Christmas for an early new year surprise for most subscribers, but on 12/31 we were notified the first coins off the line did not meet our quality expectations and the factory had opted to re-make our mold. As many know, December will be our first spun-cast full pewter coin. This is a new process and while we expected we had given ourselves plenty of time to complete the project, the "growing pains" of a new process have surfaced and have impacted our delivery. At this point, we expect December and January to ship very close to each other and will keep you updated. You should not be concerned about whether or not you will receive your coins - you will. Tentative delivery to us is 1/16-1/20 and we will ship immediately upon receipt. Thank you to you all for your patience. In the mean time, here are previews of the coin from the new mold. These are gesso samples, which allow us to evaluate mold quality before the full run is conducted. The final coins will be very similar in appearance.

Hello everyone, Just a quick note on the progress of the December coin. It's in production but will not be ready until the end of the month. We expect to ship just after Christmas this month. This means most will get their coin very early in the new year.

The January coin is in production also and we expect an early delivery in January and February is also going into production for mold and samples. We do apologize for this unexpected delay in delivery for December. We are back on track in January and February.

December is a new process with a new material and we ran into a few production challenges that we have resolved but did not expect. The December coin will be a full wrap-around 3D coin spun cast in Pewter. It will be VERY cool and very much worth the small wait.

It’s been asked recently “What’s up with those guys?  Are they still around?”  Heck yeah!  And we’ve been working to line up the next half year of coin designs!  Coming soon you’ll see some of our most innovative and “daring” design and production work yet!

And, as a result, it’s really scary to show a design before its time.  We have blueprints, dies and samples running for several months and designs and all of them have “TBD” for usage on them except for October (shown below).  So take this parade of designs as a taste of things to come, but with a few grains of salt (to taste) with regards to when they will be used and keeping in mind these are all design previews meaning actual production constraints may require some changes to the designs.

OCTOBER 2008

For October, we wanted to do something mildly Halloweenish.  If you’ve been a long-time member of the club, you know we prefer to avoid point-blank holiday related coins, preferring coins that are mildly related or completely unrelated as the selection of good holiday-centric coins in the free market abound and we want to give our club members something a little more unusual.

This coin fits that bill!  Taking a risk, we opted to use die casting for this coin to achieve the full potential of this 3D.  It is being produced by the same factory which did such a great job on the July “Beast” coin so we have very high hopes for the 3D work on this coin.  Born from the mind of Mr. Chris Mackey, this spooky design should be another “must have” in the coin world.  The date text will be on the edge.  Here are some highlights:

• Monster 9mm total thickness to allow for incredible relief in the 3D detail while preserving traditional 3.0–3.5mm edge thickness


• Use of special enamels to make non 3D aspects of the coin really come to life (2 glow + 2 trans enamels + soft enamels)


• 1.75 mm diameter

NOVEMBER 2008

We actually had a different design in mind for November, but as we sometimes do – we changed things up a little.  We think this is going to be a cool Geocoin.  The design itself is a classic by Chris Mackey and the concept for this coin is part of a series of coins we will ultimately offer between the club and store.  The series is titled “Pocket Change” and is a play on words.  The idea with this coin (besides of course, looking beautiful) is to help us all achieve a more positive outlook on life.  Those who have been with the club for a long time know we like to put out a “functional” coin in January – something you could, conceivably, put to use.  Last year was a bottle opener, the year before that was a range finder, and our first year was the ROT13 decoder coin way back in ought-six.  We had this coin earmarked for January as it would do the double duty of helping us all achieve a possible New Year resolution and it is “functional”.

The idea behind this concept is that it is generally accepted (and also generally debated, but I digress) that it takes 21 days to form a habit – good or bad.  Running with that idea, this coin’s purpose is to help you have more positive thoughts.  We affectionately refer to it as the “Harmony Coin”.  This coin (and others in the same vein) were also inspired by my days in the Boy Scouts where our motto was “Do A Good Turn Daily”.  At one stage, I remember my Scoutmaster giving me a gold coin (admittedly - nowhere near as nice as our Geocoins)  which was a simple coin, but which you were supposed to use as a reminder.  You placed it in your right pocket in the morning and upon doing your good deed, you transferred it to the left pocket.  It was intended to serve as a reminder of your goal and obvious mark of success or failure.

We’ve applied both these concepts to this coin.  You may choose to place this firmly in your collector’s binder, but if you dare – place it in your right pocket.  As you go through your day, you will be able to reach into your pocket and the braille printed on the coin will serve as a tactile reminder of your self-improvement mission.  The coin is being colored using imitation hard enamels and similar transparent enamels so the overall effect will be a smooth surface except for the braille reminder area.  Will you be a better person in 21 days?  Who knows?  It could be worth the experiment to find out   The date and track text will be on the edge of the coin.

DECEMBER 2008

The design for December is complete but we are working through specs and pricing with the factory.  Once we have finalized the design we will post it for preview.  It’s one of our most original and impressive concepts to date.  We’re excited to announce it.

JANUARY 2009

January’s coin’s concept is complete and is in design.  The design will be posted as soon as available for preview.

FEBRUARY 2009

Yep!  We have the design schedule set clear to February.  But most of these later date coins are too rough to post.  But soon we’ll be updating this post to include design previews of these later issue coins.

On their way to everyone, the SE should be up in the store by the end of the week and October’s design will be posted for your preview here soon! 

They are in, look great, and will be shipping out this week.  Stay tuned for the September design now in final blueprint stages

They are being packed and shipped actually starting yesterday and should be completely out the door by tomorrow afternoon.

Look in your shipment for the newsletter which this month features a little info about the upcoming Geocoin Fest 2008 event taking place in Pittsburg, PA.  Check out the event and register to attend at http://gcfpittsburg.com