Nice!  I have something similar from a couple months ago, and indeed they are great for educating others.

"we can only ship within the USA at this time"



Why is it hard to ship internationally? You can just put it in an envelope, no?

Thanks for the feedback.  I wasn't sure what kind of interest there would be for something like this, but there's definitely a lot of room for new/alternate card designs.  These cards aren't mass produced, so I do have the flexibility to print any design.  Theoretically, the check out page could offer a choice of several designs or even include a JPEG upload box to use your own.

Sorry I can't do international shipping.  If it were just the postage cost, I wouldn't mind but the USPS makes it a real pain to send anything out of the country.  You have to fill out a customs form and then wait in line to personally hand your item to someone at the desk.

For the checkout system, I have two servers interacting with each other.  One server runs the bitcoind daemon and the other server hosts the web site.  When the web site processes an order, it sends a request to the one with bitcoind to ask for a new address.  It displays this address on the screen as both ASCII and a QR code, and it logs that address in an SQL database along with the other details of the order (customer name, shipping address, quantity, order total, etc.).  This database entry also has a field for order status (values are either pending, paid, or shipped).  Every two hours, a cron job runs on the web server to check the balance of the addresses of all pending orders.  If it spots that payment to an address has been received, it updates the database entry for that order to "paid".

The purpose of using two servers is first for added security, and second so that the same system could potentially be used to manage payments for a bunch of different web sites across an array of different web servers.

I'll post a more detailed explanation up on the site a little later.

I send international all the time without going to the post office window.  I am using Stamps.com for postage, and it puts the customs form right on the shipping label, where necessary.  If I were just mailing plastic cards, these are documents to me... I'd stick them to a piece of paper with double-stick tape and mail them the same way I'd mail a letter.  You don't have to fill out a customs declaration to mail a birthday card, these can't be much different.

  Anyone wanting this outside of the U.S and not minding the few days extra wait to get reshipped, I will gladly order and mail to you for .1BTC (about .48 cents). Pretty sure it will cost me
 2 to 3 stamps(currently .53 cents each) at the least to get it there but am more than happy to eat a few stamps for fellow Bitcoiners outside the U.S.

edit; International option added! 

  And I would definetly like to see a page of design or custom design options if it is workable easily enough for you, m8.

Wow. You seem like you're really on top of this. Looking forward to an image upload button.

I'd suggest maybe a simple file chooser upload with a brief statement of specs.
eg. JPG 637x900 (300 dpi 2.125" x 3") or whatever your machine requires.

A confirmation of the uploaded image would be nice to help avoid corrupt/mistaken uploads.

I guess a second (maybe better) option would be to overlay the QR code on the server and just upload the background. This has the advantage that you could have an option for "share design" to allow user contributed backgrounds to be shared in a library so that new customers could quickly choose from many designs without you having to design them. I know I'd be happy to do a couple designs and give them away.

Without some way to position the QR and address you would be rather limited in layouts - which seems to imply some meta data needed, perhaps in one of the the file headers which are easy to set in Photoshop? Just an idea.

Question about your card printer: does it use dye sublimation for the colors and resin for the black?

(for the benefit of others): I have printed cards in the past. This is a common setup for card printers, and what this means: dye sublimation does a great job of shading colors without any little "dots", but a terrible job of edges.  The dye sublimation colors adhere to the card sort of like smoke, and edges aren't crisp like they are on laser or inkjet printers.  on the other hand, the resin does sharp edges, but is exactly one color.  Black.  Each card gets 3 dye sub layers (cyan magenta yellow) followed by 1 black resin layer.  With dye sub colors, you get mediocre results on edges of colors, sharp color transitions, and non-black text unless the text is outlined in black so that the dye sublimation transition is hidden.  Based on his sample, his use of black appears to optimize the card for the best appearance (all text is either black, or surrounded by black - nice job), but when considering different artwork, this weakness should be kept in mind for best results.

Have you ever noticed that corporate ID cards always look a little "dingy" compared to bank cards?  The difference is that ID cards are printed on blank white card stock using dye sub printers, typically by people who don't understand its weaknesses.  The photo will look great but the company logo and text is invariably awful, only because it's in color.  In contrast, bank cards are printed at the time of manufacture using different methods, which does fantastic results on color and text, but is only economical for large runs of the same art.

The good news is I was able to scan this with a normal handheld laser barcode scanner, which keeps it cool.

The bad news is that, due to the previously mentioned problem regarding dye sublimation ink, the colored portion might not turn out very well on a plastic card.  The color ink in most card printers is excellent for printing photos, but not well suited for the sharp edge transitions needed in a QR code.  It certainly can't hurt to try, but don't count on much.

Depends how big you print it, but I dont foresee a big problem. Try blurring the above image, my android phone still picks it up.

Using a graphic library (php/perl/cgi) you can directly impose the address and a QR code automatically based on what they put in text field, so you can have them upload any image and alter it before you even see it, and can preview it to them. So they can download a template and just leave the space of bar at the bottom and a section based on a dropdown of where the QR goes, the rest can be their design then and no work for you after that point.