Happy to test as well.
The key to all of this is how a person will be generating the wallet.
You are 100% correct. Internally, we use an air gapped Raspberry Pi with custom UI (on top of open source key gen code).
The keys are directly printed on the polymer using an air gapped laser printer. Main benefits of doing so: safe, waterproof & seamless.
I believe that the reason why our past DIY wallets never took off outside of collectibles was because they were not user friendly.
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Just my take on it: If going for a Bitcoin or any crypto collectible, many collectors don't want DIY in general. - The BIG advantage of DIY is that you only have to trust yourself (and your skills to produce private keys) instead of a 3rd party.
However there are a handful of disadvantages coming with DIY:
- it's (quite some) extra work*
- it does need some research and effort, just to make sure your private keys are not exposed
- the collectible value of DIY seems less interesting because of two things: 1) if you keep it unfunded, it's in a way just another rare item with no direct link to crypto and 2) there is some randomness compared to factory-funded items, some people will fund them, some won't. Also, the way they apply the holo will differ.
- most importantly: if you want to resell a self-funded item with private keys produced by yourself, you need a high level of trust to be able to even find potential buyers
Your thoughts already give a clear hint, as to why DIY priv keys will probably stay very niche for another few years (until there is a TREZOR-like device with its only purpose to print out safe private keys in different formats): "Airgapped Pi, airgapped printer with special ink and paper" - Anything in that range is a lot to handle for most folks and you can't really blame them.
*I still like your challange here, you never know what comes off it - would be cool to get some creative and easy-to-use solutions as a result.
And, call me pessimistic, 'Not your keys, not your coins' - I doubt this will stay on people's mind for too long. Some yes, but the majority... Not so sure. Even after all that happened recently.