An alt take on grading:

Grading can be great if for no other reason than it preserves your coin in its best state. You need never worry about fingerprints, etc when in a slab.

While each buyer must do their diligence, and a coin being in a slab is never an absolute guarantee of authenticity, it does "evidence" authenticity, and for an entry-level buyer who may not have seen a cas coin in person before and has no frame of reference, having the backing of a graded coin in a slab can be the make or break decision as to whether or not someone wants to take the risk of a purchase.

I highly recommend getting coins graded by a reputable company.

Ah I see the cert now. Didn't realize some of these sets were buyer funded.

This would be a good item for ICG to note on their slab, esp since these sets are differentiated into seller funded and buyer funded.

Nice looking coins regardless, hard to get better grades than that. I'd still like to see the back 

These are unfunded? Can we see the back?

Also, I'm surprised there would be no "redeemed" note on ICG's slab...

Potential buyer in a recent post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5481250.0

Best of luck, we'd love to see some pictures!

For a contrary opinion, I've sold a few small-value items through Scarce.city, worked directly with Chris, and had a good experience.

The criticism about reserve bidding, and sellers backing out, is very legitimate. Oftentimes over the years I've had sold something at auction that went for much less than I expected, but those are the rules, and the item gets to the buyer regardless. But in this situation, I'd blame the seller more than the auction house. Taking all items in first for inspection, as an alternative, would increase their overhead greatly. The liability alone of keeping things secure while in escrow would be very challenging. Maybe this is something they can do as they grow, or figure out better guarantees for both parties in the meantime.

I just see people coming in and throwing shade at their whole operation from various angles, and just wanted everyone to take a step back and see that scarce is doing something interesting and unique, and giving exposure to bitcoin and collectibles in an industry where just staying afloat in the last few years has been a struggle.

Sold price of $312k, seems decent, except when you consider we're likely one good bull run away from this being a $ million coin.

Had several positive interactions w/ Chris and Scarce City myself. Very reputable in my book.

I'm admittedly one of these dinosaurs. I resist the digitization of things for the sake of digitizing things. What especially doesn't make sense to me is attaching a modern digital token to an older physical collectible. Maybe there's more evidence in the chain of ownership, but this is just one more thing that people will lose track of, I think, due to the NFT being secondary to the physical item.

Not to mention, Cas coins for example have been around for a while, and are swapped between people all the time - if you were to mint a token for a coin now, how do you prove ownership of someone to assign the token to?

I personally wouldn't care if I was in possession of a physical item but the not the NFT. The physical item is the thing that I see as holding value.

There was a Bitbill auction a few months back where the owner (who had nothing to do will the guy / guys that made BitBills, he was just the owner of the BitBill), minted an NFT to accompany the sale:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5357165.msg57812232#msg57812232

Since anyone could mint a token, and "minter" isn't even the artist / creator, it's tough to see what value, if any, something like that adds.

Interesting, I've never actually noted the load date of any of my coins. Had no idea that people cared.

My understanding is there were 487 total Series 2 - 25 BTC coins, which makes them less rare than the 345 total series 1 - 25 BTC coins (referencing the Ahonen encyclopedia here).

However, it seems you're referring to the "load year" of an S2 coin? In that case, then yes, only 29 of the S2 25 BTC coins were loaded in 2011.

That being said, the coin above appears to be loaded in 2012, along with 196 other coins. Do people really care about the load year, though?

Still a beeeeeeautiful coin, and still very rare. Hope it finds a good home.

I can confirm that my unloaded 500 XTZ note is now loaded. Thanks for reaching out to them again, Hhampuz.

I never peeled anything. You did send me a message saying to the effect that you wondered if it really was loaded, just that the pubkey didn't match the priv key. I suppose that's possible but I'm not willing to peel quite yet.

Also, for the record, I bought two notes in this group buy - a 1000 XTZ note and a 500 XTZ note. The 1000 XTZ note appears to be loaded (at least the public key that's displayed on the outside shows a balance). Just the 500 XTZ note that showed an empty pubkey.

I had an issue myself. The 500 XTZ note I bought shows empty when I scan the QR code, though I certainly paid to have it funded in the group buy.

The 500 XTZ note appears empty. tz1UTpvzShtRxv297JjEW2i3UZZ4TxpAC3uW
https://imgur.com/a/BwQxdMQ

Bitcoin Suisse said this in an email to me:

"In order to load them you would first have to have the correct amount in the respective currency on your Bitcoin Suisse account.

Once you have enough funds on your account, your can send us the security code that was delivered with the certificate (Please note that it has to come from the e-mail address you are registered with on Bitcoin Suisse).

After the reception of the security code we will then be able to load the certificate with the respective amount."

As this was purchased in the group buy with Hhampuz, I reached out to him to sort this out. He says that he did not get any response when reaching out to Bitcoin Suisse.

This was about a year ago that I noticed this, and never really followed up. The last update I got from Hhampuz after asking if there was an update was "No reply as of yet.. :/" - that was Feb 12th 2021.

There's so much positive commentary on NFTs here, so I'll offer a contrary opinion...

NFTs are currently extremely overhyped and even more extremely overvalued.

First off, NFT = Non-Fungible Token. One of the largest value props of Bitcoin is that it's fungible. One sat is worth just as much as the next sat, and the network doesn't discriminate. With NFTs, you're creating tokens which each have a distinctive, subjective value, rather than a more widely agreed upon objective value, determined from multiple global exchanges.

Nothing wrong with subjective value. To some degree, most value is subjective, but I feel like people are investing in these non-fungible tokens as if they were fungible.

The value of holding a token which is tied to some other object, whether it be physical or digital, makes very little sense to me. Okay, so you're the owner of this particular digital image because you hold the private keys to a digital token linked in some way to the image. What does that do to you? What extra satisfaction is there for the key holder?

Compare this to an original painting that one has physical possession of. The painting itself has value over a digital image of the painting for several reasons - it's a physical object, and more about the painting can be appreciated because of the nuances that can't be replicated with a digital scan - the feel and visual texture of the medium, how it looks at different light angles, etc. This I can understand. But the digital image is something so cheap with modern technology that it is indefinitely replicable for a cost that is very near zero.

Disclaimer - I bought a bunch of rare pepes back in 2017 because it was novel and fun, and a good network stress test. Though why people are willing to trade large amounts of real BTC for these digital tokens is beyond me. In pre Bitcoin world, it would be like trading a bar of gold for Pokemon cards - sure, you might get lucky, and get some valuable card you can pass off to someone else, but fundamentally it's trading real wealth for more subjective, imaginary value. Part of me feels bad when I sell a Pepe card for BTC. And I would never be buying Pepes at these prices.

NFTs may have a place in the collector's world. But this initial hype doesn't correlate to the "value" offered by corresponding digital tokens. From my perspective, this is a giant money grab from both artists and speculators looking for another way to cash in from noobs caught up in the current crypto hype cycle.

That being said, I'm all about the free market, and other people's choices are ultimately none of my business. The above is me thinking aloud and voicing my opinion. Happy to hear from people as to why NFTs give them value, or other arguments as to what justifies the current hype.

5 BTC!

This was mine that recently sold on scarce.city if anyone is wondering a ballpark price on these:

https://scarce.city/auctions/the-rarest-book

Maybe this is coming from my not understanding the value prop of NFTs in general, so I'm curious to hear your thinking around this...What's the logic behind having an NFT of the item that you, as seller/previous owner made?

A random NFT that accompanies this that was minted for the purpose of the sale is almost a negative for me. A fundamental appeal of BitBills, Casascius coins, etc, was that you don't need to have a digital token or key to the item - the value is all there in the physical item, and that aspect of it is part of what makes them so novel and desirable. An NFT just seems like a burden in the sense that it's one more thing I have to keep track of and secure... Like if I sold this 10 or 20 years down the line, is the buyer going to look at this thread and be like "Does it come with the NFT, bro?"

All that being said, 1.33 lol

1.31

1.25

If interested in a loaded 0.25 silver Bitcoin from Lealana, my first auction listing on scarce.city begins tomorrow  

https://scarce.city/auctions/lealana-silver-2013