Curious to know since I am a newb in all of this, are these physical coins loaded or something? Or just showpiece replica? Either way, it'd be a cool thing to "win".
What krog raffles are completely just for fun and do not have any real world value(I assume). He is doing this completely for the sake he is in good mood. Hence this should be kept only as a showpiece.
Whereas what it gets sold in Auctions and in sites are real physical btc. They do have hologram tampered priv keys. Some like btcc, the prestigious Casascius, satori coins, and some others come pre funded with btc. Whereas some like Kialara come unfunded and we can find them if we need. You can even buy funded/unfunded coins from Denarium website.
Note that once if we fund bars like Kialara, we need to break the complete masterpiece artwork in order to retrieve our coins. Hence most of the collectors won't involve in such a activity of funding them.
Since they are very limited in number during production, they rise in value as time passes due to their rarity.
You can win auctions in collectibles section and collect these coins which may appreciate in value in future. For instance, mike was the first one to design the physical btc. While he sold his coins funded, they were very cheap and the price of owning them has risen 10-15x the price today.
Same with Kialara too. Last yr 1 bitcoin moon bar and suite unfunded was sold in Kialara official website for 2000$. Since the total production number is just as little as 21, it is being auctioned at a price of 3-10
BTCAll in all, it's better to collect physicals rather than shitty altcoins
Hope you got answers
Edit : After krog pointed me out to his really very informative thread on
Bitbills, I learnt that Mike wasn't the first one to create the physical btc but was popular enough.
