I never received mine from them.  The ordering function probably wasn't working by the time I tried a month ago because I didn't see the charge on my card appear either, but I did get one from eBay so that I could examine it.

I'm eager for your input so PM me and we will sort something out to get you one.

Agreed.  Thank you for this.  Its on our list.  I will give it a +1 for your wise suggestion.

Things will become much easier as this project moves forward.  Soon it may do so under its own power.  We are keeping costs as low as we can to provide for some investment into these simple advances.

Here is a question for you all:
What do you think about also including the ability to create an account for one click order+delivery to a saved address associated with a personal Bitcoin payment address, or to specify a particular preferred local re-seller for swift fulfillment, etc?

In the years to come, we would like to have sufficient stores of Bitcoin Specie in all localities so that we can fulfill orders, the same day, worldwide.

This project is in its infancy, we dream of having the US national network begun by 2014.  We would like to have local pickup locations be as convenient as 7-11. 
Walk in.  Hand over a piece of paper.  Walk out with silver pieces.  There are vast opportunities available ahead.  We consider all those reading and responding to this as valuable contributors, so thank you for all comments.

Is there anyone that you can point to that claims milk crates with graphics cards are the "ideal infrastructure", or is this just a generalized snipe at all Litecoin miners?  (full disclosure, my 13yr old kid mines a little litecoin on his game computer when not playing games)
Do you imagine that FPGA and ASIC will never be made for Litecoin, or any Alt, or do you really believe that the Litecoin supporters don't want them and prefer milk crates?
Who is it that is bad-mouthing other types of crypto-currency again? 

Lets play nice.  We are all friends here.

GMU is one of the foremost feeder institutions to Washington DC.  It is well respected inside the beltway.  This will be read and attended to by folks that make decisions, whether and how they follow any of it is anyone's guess.

Some new asks HAD to turn up, the old ones were all bought.

I've had some messages come in with requests for making these Bitcoin Specie better for holiday gifting.  Christmas is a time for family and friends to gather. So many of us are the only one of our family to be involved in Bitcoin.  Or maybe one of a few in our extended family to have discovered Bitcoin and taken the time to understand its merits. If your family is anything like mine, I am a bit of an outlier.  Not really the same as the others.  
 
As much as I would have liked my closest friends and family, those with whom I share these special days, to have been able to participate in the joys of profit, and financial protection through the rest of the year, these notions are always met with much more skepticism than I often receive from strangers. Some of my own family do not even have much use for computers, but they could still receive the benefits of Bitcoin and gain the understanding that it brings.


I don't just give gifts to family but also to friends and folks I work with or employ.  I  have a small farm that I share, (which is a great way to get exercise and fresh food) some immigrant workers that help me there have been a bit skeptical about the virtual currency talk, even though they send money to their relatives in Mexico through expensive money transfer and would benefit from this more than most people. They do not have much to send and do it out of dedication and love for their relatives, and so much of it is taken by the banks.  It wasn't until I showed them the Silver Bitcoin Specie that it seemed real.  Mexico has a long tradition of silver and it was immediately recognized as valuable.  I know my friends' sons are pretty good with the computers so I asked him to show it to them.  When I saw him next, he wanted to invest in Bitcoin.


These thoughts and experiences are a part of what drives me to be making the Bitcoin Specie pieces. The is part of what went in to designing the piece, and the website, and the QR code, which can teach the novice how to use some of the very basic tools of using Bitcoin and understanding Bitcoin that we take for granted. By making it fun, not too expensive, and easy, and tangible, and dare I say attractive, the hope is to provide a way for each of us to bring our family and friends along with us on this adventurous journey that is the world of Bitcoin.

And so after some thought and some research, we have come up with some ideas that I would like to share with you as we approach the holidays.  There should be some that will see something tangible and have their families or friends helped by it.

I have contacted the maker of some of the containers and they have provided me with some samples of cases that can be used as either holiday ornaments or jewelry pendants. The results so far is that these Bitcoin Specie are not just great gifts on their own, for their educational capability, they can also be ornaments and jewelry.  Most importantly, they can bring in new people who don't know much or anything about Bitcoin.  I also had a few pieces electroplated in gold, I wasn't sure that they would make good gifts though so I wanted to get some sampling of reactions from people that don't really care about Bitcoin at all.  When I ran in to a friend at a coffeeshop and she had her fashionista daughter with her, I saw an opportunity to try it out and as a test, I handed a necklace with one of these pendants to this young woman and she immediately lit up and started posing and taking pictures of herself wearing it. It seems to have made her feel special and attractive.  I managed to snap a quick shot with my phone while she was pre-occupied.


It was fun to make her feel so good.  This is a girl that thinks nothing of spending $200 on a T-shirt and $300 on jeans and here was this very inexpensive jewelry that costs only a little more than it's metal value and to her it was the best thing she had.  If only she knew how little it costs.  When she got around to scanning the QR code she was shocked and wanted them for all her friends.  All I had at the time was the sample, but I promised her that I would have more electroplated so that she could use them as gifts.  She not only wanted to learn about Bitcoin she wanted to get involved in this project, she offered to model for them.  (Maybe its an excuse for her to get hair and makeup, but OK I have very few pictures and need more so after clearing it with her mother, I said yes)

I would be happy to get any feedback on ideas or experiences with these if any of you would like to share.  This is the sort of information that helps guide the development of this project.

You misread. Or perhaps I was unclear.
I am not arguing for this method.  I am suggesting this reason stated for avoiding it is not a good reason.
The method may be bad for many other reasons as you rightly point out.

It was offered as an example of how msc can do better at "playing well with others" and be better accepted.  It ought not have to hide or avoid censorship.  It ought be welcomed and celebrated and invited.

The FED has socialized is risk.  They don't need to be good at anything. 
They get the benefit when they are right and taxpayer covers if they are wrong.

Why wouldn't making it "blindingly easy" to discriminate between transactions considered a feature?  If msc is a net benefit for the Bitcoin network, this feature would assist in verifying that, yes?

Not arguing for this method, just suggesting that this reason for avoiding it doesn't speak well of msc.

Some questions that may help close the distance between the forks:

If this hostile fork is treated as, well, hostile; could the bitcoin network impose a minimum charge for carrying a Msc tx that be acceptable to everyone?  Or alternatively not accept Msc transactions if it were not?  (with the cost of choice being an imposed cost to the network)

Is developing the facility to recognize Msc transactions and account for them a cost imposed on the Bitcoin network for which it is compensated to their satisfaction?  

Is that cost freely negotiated or simply imposed and the compensation chosen by msc?

Msc may be a net benefit for the Bitcoin network, but how knowable/agreeable is this at this time?

Since you asked...
Resellers of our Bitcoin Specie have been getting 30%+ more USD than they pay in Bitcoin.
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?&_nkw=bitcoin+silver+MSRP what they sell for
http://coldhardca.sh/BitColdHardCash/Rate what they buy for

The bitcoin price of silver (rather than the dollar value) is the formula input on the calculation to reduce the premium based on the moving average of bitcoin.

For those who are familiar with the "move up" triggers for the Liberty Dollar (and mostly adopted by the now defunct AOCS) the formula may be somewhat familiar, however it is not based on Dollars, but on Silver/Bitcoin.

It is getting closer to potentially being triggered, and will track it in this post and in the OP.  
The 30 day moving average of the Silver Price in Bitcoin went under 0.175 on Oct 18th.  
If the 30 day moving average for silver stays under this for 14 days we discount the premium.
(OP updated with this)

Extra credit for you.  That's why I linked it without comment.  "GOLDSILVERWORLDS" edits out the bitcoin pieces
The full transcript is of course here:  http://futuremoneytrends.com/blog/?p=10062

There is this bidirectional ignorance (each ignoring the other) to some degree, their advocates poke at each other.
My personal quest is to bring together the hard money people and the bitcoin people and unify the efforts. To create allys.
Being that I have a special connection to both, based on some very personal experiences, it is something that pulls on me as almost a duty.

Rickards' criticism is very much on point though.  Pseudonymity is not anonymity.  He gives no greater criticism of it, which is itself telling, I'm working on roping him in yet further.

Now there's an idea worth money.

Its over 18MM now, hurry up!  LOL

I agree.  And all Litecoin folks should hear what you just wrote.
Truly this is probably true of all of the coins, including Bitcoin.  
What people have, they tend to have some pride in, it helps to justify the choice to one's self.

However...

There is certainly some socialisation needed among our community.  We are a tiny tiny community compared to where we want to be, and yet we compete with each other.  This is really pretty silly behavior and entirely unnecessary.  It just makes us look bad.

I mint silver and gold.  I celebrate when another minter or coin designer or anything similar comes along.  It is excellent, I hope for folks I can learn from and share stories with that can understand what it is all about.  Sometimes I think what they are doing is not great, but I am still happy they are doing it and I try to help.  If there is something I need to correct that could be embarrassing for them and it can possibly be done privately, then it should be done in private.  Since I am human I sometimes fail at this effort and I regret that and learn from it.  

We tend to be judgmental, but we ought to be helping each other, the opposition is large and organized and far more powerful than we even with all our hubris and perfect codebases.  When we see something wrong, we need to pitch in and help.  Problem identification is more common than problem fixing and though necessary, it is far less useful.

I'm not a big Litecoin guy, but I also don't want to see it torn down.  There are many alternatives, LTC is just one of them and certainly we can all learn to work together better over time.  Say nice things about each other more often, it is good for you, and good for them.

OK, so some benefit may be there.
What is the cost of Litecoin's existence that folks would see it ended?

I am happy to believe that Bitcoin will be forever perfect and that the smartest people in the world will always and forever write the code and that all the updates will also be perfect, and that the testing considers every future possibility that may break something.

But I also like a backstop.


On the contrary.  If there is some ill effect, I would prefer it happen with Litecoin.  


In our perfect world, nothing bad will ever happen, and if it does it won't matter, and if it matters, it will get fixed fast enough, and if it doesn't get fixed fast enough, a miracle will save us.
I hope the currency lives long enough to survive our optimism.  Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
My great grandkids deserve good things too.

I am sure your experience with globe spanning 5 sigma implementations is at least equal to mine, and that you also have more than 20 years in watching what was once thought of as perfect crumble, and have the confidence that the smartest people are all on our side and that nothing can stop us.  

This is so very new.  Just a bit over 10 years in the making, and less than 5 in the running.  It is too soon to strangle the siblings in their cribs.