🌟CLOSING SALE🌟 [DENARIUM] | Next Gen Physical Bitcoins 🌟CLOSING SOON🌟

[Technomage]

Capsules are the least of your worries. I hate to be negative, but the quality of these coins is just horrible. I got a silver bull coin and the brass custom coin and both are in bad shape. I am not sure how in good conscience you can ship coins that look like these.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1218530.msg14586027#msg14586027

Your assessment from your point of view is fair, but I have to say that you have received the worst of the worst. The auction silver coins have high quality variance, regarding which we've been receiving lots of negative feedback. Yours is clearly one of the worst individual coins. We can offer some form of compensation for that certainly. You can send an email to store@denarium.com and we can discuss it further.

Silver coins produced later have been polished with an enhanced process and are thus on average a bit better. But they are still polished coins, which has been receiving negative feedback overall. But I will post pictures about this next week that will prove these coins had to be polished. But we're taking all feedback into account in regard to future coin production.

Additionally the Custom coins themselves have even higher quality variance than the 1 BTC auction coins. They are generally our worst quality coins (in my opinion). I personally like the 1 BTC silver coins quite a lot in terms of quality, when properly polished. Some of the coins are bad though, that is true.

[Technomage]

The 1/100 has very bad bands across the front, which I mentioned to Henry in person in Miami.

The 1/100 there is an anomaly. The 1/100 and 1/10 coins are generally of decent quality (our best coins in terms of value-for-money) and the 1/100 coin you have is significantly below average in quality. We can send you another one of better quality free of charge. Coins such as your 1/100 are normally dismissed during our assembly process but our process needs to be improved so that coins like that are not sold. Please contact us at store@denarium.com and we will send you a new coin right away.

I do appreciate Henry being upfront with many of the issues, but I think Denarium needs to go with another mint asap as opposed to an in-house metal maker just to keep margins high.  Then to compound issues, there was the decision to polish the silvers, which is a no-no, as it left lots of scratches on my coin, and in my case, a capsule which fell right off as soon as I touched the package, letting the Silver fall out.

I need to explain the "in-house metal maker" thing a little further. The decision was not made because of cost, we don't even have a clue what it would cost to do this with other partners. We only ever started the whole business *because* we had a friend / shareholder with the capability of minting coins. Without him and his metal business, we would never have even started Denarium, most likely. We did it like this due to the natural ease of doing it with him, not really because of cost or higher margins.

We haven't really looked at different options thoroughly yet in terms of different mints. But this is changing of course. We are not going to produce any future coins unless 1) our current partner can guarantee better quality and changes based on customer feedback or 2) we have found a new partner that can deliver better quality. We are currently looking at both options being viable. Our current partner is constantly learning about the process so it's not "without hope" but we're also actively looking for other partners now.

[miffman]

Who exactly do you get your coins minted with if I may ask? I also haven't read of the other pages, so let me know if it's somewhere there.

[Technomage]

I think that is just one of the issues here from an outside perspective. BOLDED.

First off, I haven't really followed this thread only until recently. And I have to say that Denarium did deliver a product which is better than scammers like Coinographic. But...

What is disappointing is that the term "mint" is being thrown around when from what I gather the company "minting" the coins was not in fact an actual mint (not their main focus as a business). Please correct me if I am wrong.

Which is a bad move from a quality stand point.

Was the impression initially from customers that the "mint" was an actual mint or was it disclosed that they were a metal working company of some kind?

We've never promised anything in regards to the mint or mentioned "mint quality". Our main focus has in fact been value-for-money which has been clearly communicated. In this regard the 1/10 and 1/100 coins have been our most successful product.

The 1 BTC coin is a different beast though. It is supposed to be a more premium product. However I'm personally fairly happy with the quality that we've reached with the coin at the end. The auction coins were a bit of a disaster due to the serial issue and the coins being of lesser quality on average than the rest of the batch, but otherwise the batch is, to my novice eye, of good quality.

With the silver coin we had problems mainly because of the lack of experience. Like the whole polishing issue, which we had no idea about before now. But we're gaining experience with each problem and we are dedicated at not repeating the same issues at least.

[Technomage]

Who exactly do you get your coins minted with if I may ask? I also haven't read of the other pages, so let me know if it's somewhere there.

Our partner is a metal making firm focused on micro-milling. They produce specialized tools for medical science, dental science, space industry, telecommunications industry, military and the precious metal industry. They have been doing jewelry for example, so they are not without experience. Coins just aren't something they have been doing before but are doing it now and learning just like we are.

[Blazed]

I spoke with Technomage via PM and he compensated me for the messed up coin. Thanks to Denarium for taking care of it.

[Technomage]

We will offer some form of compensation for all coins that are clearly below the average quality of that particular batch of coins. And we're working hard to improve the general quality of all future coin batches. Negative feedback is frustrating but it is useful. Forces us to take a new look at everything we're doing.

[smoothie]

I think that is just one of the issues here from an outside perspective. BOLDED.

First off, I haven't really followed this thread only until recently. And I have to say that Denarium did deliver a product which is better than scammers like Coinographic. But...

What is disappointing is that the term "mint" is being thrown around when from what I gather the company "minting" the coins was not in fact an actual mint (not their main focus as a business). Please correct me if I am wrong.

Which is a bad move from a quality stand point.

Was the impression initially from customers that the "mint" was an actual mint or was it disclosed that they were a metal working company of some kind?

We've never promised anything in regards to the mint or mentioned "mint quality".

I don't think any promises needed to be verbally made aside from using the term "mint" when referencing coins.

It is apparently clear from others that using that term "mint" implied mint quality.

In any case... I commend you on taking care of your customers despite quality issues. 

[Technomage]

Quick update! We were exhibiting at Consensus 2016 and it was a great event for us. In fact we had our record sales for a 36 hour period thus far. Overall the conference went better than expected. And it probably helped that we provided all the speaker gifts (loaded 1/100 coins with a customized Consensus box).

Coming soon:

- The patinated special edition of the 1 BTC Silver coin. Limited edition, only 100 coins. First 20 or 25 will be auctioned. This is a non-polished coin, generally higher quality than the regular 1 BTC silver. But it is very different looking, darker. Real pictures will be posted before the sales begin as we're no longer doing any pre-orders. All coins will be pre-assembled before we begin sales.

- Limited edition 1/10 & 1/100 brass coins with a gold finish. These are clearly our best quality brass coins. The gold finish does not come off even in heavy use, the coins do not become dark and the surface is shinier & cleaner than any of our coins so far. These will likely not be auctioned but sold directly through our website. Price TBD.

- Extremely limited edition special brass coins. Only 10 or so pieces. These are coins in which the picture and denomination of our regular 1/10 and 1/100 coins are reversed. Only around 10 were ever minted. They will all be auctioned here at Bitcointalk.

We're also looking at producing higher quality Custom coins (the ones with the BTC logo). Likely with a gold finish since that is a clear quality boost. Also the original minting process of the Custom coin has been improved and we're receiving the new test coins from the mint within 1 week.

The patinated silver coin is a 2016 edition but the others will be 2015 editions for now. They are special versions of coins minted in 2015. Brass coins with a new picture and year mark 2016 will come later in the year.

[CanaryInTheMine]

Are you using some chemical process to accelerate dark toning on the silver coins? Which chemical is involved?

[Technomage]

Are you using some chemical process to accelerate dark toning on the silver coins? Which chemical is involved?

The substance used for this is, according to the mint, standard silver patination substance called "Norit". It's used often for medals of different sort, according to them. That's all I know.

[CanaryInTheMine]

Are you using some chemical process to accelerate dark toning on the silver coins? Which chemical is involved?

The substance used for this is, according to the mint, standard silver patination substance called "Norit". It's used often for medals of different sort, according to them. That's all I know.

This would be considered artificial toning and a grading entity such as NGC/PCGS/ANACS would label a coin as having been artificially toned

[Technomage]

It is artificial toning and we're not pretending it's anything else. The coins look good though, that's for sure. We haven't really done any of the coins thus far with the focus of achieving a good ANACS rating (as we are quite inexperienced in that regard still) but we might change our approach since that seems to be important for most collectors.

That is not a black & white decision for us though, we have different customer groups and certain groups, which we are in fact focusing a lot more on at the moment, do not really care about those type of details. The most important issue for us is that the coin must look good for the untrained eye, what it is for a trained eye is another story entirely. And from what I can tell, and I would consider myself an untrained eye in this regard, our newest coins (the patinated silver coin and the gold plated brass coins) are the best looking coins that we've produced to date.

[Technomage]

Short term developments

• The gold plated brass coins are going on sale this week (the 1/100th & 1/10th coins)! No pre-orders, no hassle. Ready to go. These are the shiniest coins you've ever seen, with a gold finish that will stay on even in heavy use outside the capsule. And gold does not go dark like brass, so this is an entirely different coin.
• Our 1 BTC patinated special limited edition silver coins are going to be auctioned at Bitcointalk very soon. There will be 20 auctioned and the total production batch is fixed at 100 coins. 80 coins will be sold at the website. This will not be a pre-order, we're going to auction and sell pre-assembled coins with fixed serial numbers.
• We are about to open our OpenBazaar store! This will be a smaller version of our regular store at https://denarium.com and will feature the empty brass coins (including the ones with gold finish) and coin boxes. This is due to the very high complexity of pricing and shipping options at our regular store and the difficulty of replicating all of that to OpenBazaar.

[Technomage]

I'm proud to announce our newest product, the Gold Plated Brass coins!

These are the shiniest coins you have ever seen. The gold plating is durable. The surface is cleaner and smoother than anything we've produced before.



The price for these coins is 14,90 € (ex. VAT). Volume discounts apply. Orders accepted now at https://denarium.com/.

I will post more pictures of the coins later. These coins are very difficult to photograph since they are so shiny.

[odolvlobo]

I will post more pictures of the coins later. These coins are very difficult to photograph since they are so shiny.

Those reflections of the lake, hills and trees in the coins look fake.

[Technomage]

Those reflections of the lake, hills and trees in the coins look fake.

The pictures are photoshopped, you're right about that. We simply couldn't take a proper picture of the coins otherwise that does any justice to them. Those pictures represent the actual shine of the coins in real life pretty well. But we will post non-photoshopped pictures later as we experiment on different ways of photographing them. Stay tuned.

[TheNewAnon135246]

Those reflections of the lake, hills and trees in the coins look fake.

The pictures are photoshopped, you're right about that. We simply couldn't take a proper picture of the coins otherwise that does any justice to them. Those pictures represent the actual shine of the coins in real life pretty well. But we will post non-photoshopped pictures later as we experiment on different ways of photographing them. Stay tuned.

I can confirm. I tried taking pictures of the gold plated LuckyBit coins (not trying to hijack your thread) and it's really difficult to take a good picture of such a reflective surface.

[miffman]

I have no photographing skills whatsoever, but I found that holding up a large black or white sheet of some sort (eg paper) and aiming it at the coin helps quite a lot. No need for photoshop.

[TheNewAnon135246]

I have no photographing skills whatsoever, but I found that holding up a large black or white sheet of some sort (eg paper) and aiming it at the coin helps quite a lot. No need for photoshop.

Yeah, a black reflection in the coin helps but that'll take away the actual reflectiveness of the coin.