Is there any chance the coins will be available through a distributor in europe at some point? I'd buy a couple as presents (and one for myself because they're awesome) but not if I have to deal with customs. The last time I had to was when I bought some merchandising from the U.S. You wouldn't believe the amount of documents I had to send in before I finally received the parcel. And then the postman who delivered the parcel and collected the customs fees didn't have any idea if he needed to do anything special, like letting me sign some extra paperwork, so after a minute or two he just gave me the parcel reluctantly.

Thanks But that wouldn't help. I would still have to deal with customs because of the children's books. I don't want to dodge taxes on the bitcoins or anything, I just don't want to deal with the customs office because their bureaucratic process is way too sadistic for my taste.

i just received my order.  FANTASTIC!  Beautiful looking!  checked the balance of the first 4 and all had the one btc.  i don't need to check any others.

Thank you, Casascius.  Very cool.

after getting home tonite i've had a chance to inspect them even more closely than at work. i missed the point that the holograms on the back are 3D.  difficult to appreciate w/o the correct lighting.  looks very cool.  these are true works of art.  i'm just as proud of the fact that they are Casascius coins as they are physical Bitcoins.  

Darnit, I guess I'm too late to vanitygen that address for firstbits and put 100BTC on it!

Loading them after arrival confirmed by customer also means you can be sure the value isn't lost if the coin is lost/stolen. Which means you could use lower cost shipping like air mail.

On the other hand there's no reason why the customer couldn't load the value after arrival and just pay you for a blank coin (has address+key), removing that whole process from your workload.

Either way, only by looking in the block chain do you know what value the coin actually holds.

I would be interested in these, but only once the two issues with the misspelling and the bad latin are fixed in the next batch.

Suggestions for the latin thing:
"vires numeris" or
"vires numerorum" (power of the numbers) or
"vires per numeros" (<- not sure about this, my latin reaches its limits here )

.

A stolen or lost-in-transit unloaded coin would still be a "zero-value intact physical bitcoin in the wild". If coins were illegitimately obtained, we must still be able to trust their value (just like real stolen bitcoins ). Looks like he's doing it right in not letting them get out without being loaded. If you wanted to, you could send more money to the coin though!

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I have my own set of questions...

- what does a peeled coin and it's prize look like,
- how does a tampered coin look after best efforts to replace hologram (remove with hair-dryer, replace perfectly),
- what does the private key look like, is it on the back of the hologram, or a little piece of paper? base58 or ?
- does a coin survive a trip through the washing machine and dryer?
- how are the keys/address printed, does a printing company also get these numbers, are they printed out on another sheet you use to load the coins, and when is that destroyed, etc. A clarification of how many eyes have seen the key.
- are you making sure the address is a unique firstbits before loading?
- what 3d features to look for in original hologram (vs Chinese counterfeit - and don't think they won't fake anything of value. Counterfeiting these coins would just be buying them, redeeming them, and putting them back in the wild with a counterfeit hologram. If they will fill gold bars with tungsten, they will fill coins with BTC good only for the PayPal dispute period)
 
Such questions might be better answered on the ordering website for that "secure" feeling.

Although you're probably not looking for design by committee, I have a few ideas for v2.

- The next round of holograms could have "casascius.com" instead, so a recipient knows to go there and see info about the coins.
- The hologram field (where the misspelling is) could be less 'brand-heavy', such as the words "tamper protected secure"
- The word "original" (especially if peeling alters this) could be "genuine" "authentic".
- Your website could have a "lookup your coin" feature to see the full address and balance, or a form that submits the coin to firstbits to get the full address.
- We assume the coin mainly circulates un-redeemed due to the higher cost than face value, but if someone wants to import and use the digital currency, some instructions for importing might be useful.

I can also see a clever programmer coming up with a website/gateway where you can input a private key, another bitcoin address, and amount to send, and the website can send the bitcoin to that address.

I would suggest striking out the value or other stamping on the front with a die on sample coins for the above counterfeit concern.

Edit: Previous post shows this is a peeled coin:

Boussac,

you're wrong, I don't want to start a new thread about this issue; if you search the forum you'll find a long thread about this wrong motto that keeps coming out.

Cheers.

spiccioli.

If it is limited in its release, then the variation may have numismatic value. We would think that the US Mint wouldn't be so incompetent that they would strike one side of a dollar coin with the die for a quarter, but they did, and the coins that got out are now worth over $50,000.