Okay. Time to reopen this topic (see atlanticgeocaching.com/index.php/forum/3...403-2011-lcc-geocoin for the earlier discussion).

I had originally planned to talk about this back in the winter/spring to have the coins minted for distribution during my return in April/May, but time slipped by and ran out. So, I thought I'd reopen the topic now. The plan would be to get the design finalized have them minted for pick up when I return in December.

To quickly recap for new people, this is a group coin project for cachers who live (or used to live) in Lunenburg County. The design is a 1.5" non-trackable coin (to keep the cost down), though it is numbered and has the year. We typically do 3 or 4 different metal finishes, and each year we highlight a different community/feature of the county. So far we've done:
2006: Lunenburg Country Cachers - Home of the Bluenose and Canada's First Geocache
2007: Old Town Lunenburg - UNESCO World Heritage Site
2008: Mahone Bay - Historic 3 Churches
2009: Chester - 250th Anniversary
2010: East River - Home of Canada's 1st Geocache

There are questions that need to be answered with regards to the design details. First and most important:

1) We had talked about doing Bridgewater this time. Are people still up for doing this? Is there a reason to do a different community instead? (e.g. I think Chester ended up being the 2009 choice due to its anniversary.)

Assuming "yes" to question 1....

2) What "feature" do we want on the coin? On the coin draft I submitted back in the late fall I suggested "Home of the Maritime's First Mega". Technically though, the Mega was in Dayspring, not Bridgewater. Close enough? Any suggestions? Does Bridgewater have a tagline?

3) Do we want to keep it non-trackable to keep the cost down? For trading, people prefer trackable coins, but I think most people who get them give them away or keep them rather than trade them

4) Do we want to open this up to others outside the county to take part, or keep it local like in the past? I haven't chased people much this time, but the order really needs to be about 100 coins to be affordable, and the number back in the fall from people interested in taking part was only about half that. Alternately, if people were okay with it, I could try and sell the unspoken for coins on Ebay and through Island Buttons (but non-trackable coins are not that popular these days).

5) Pictures. I had taken some pictures when I was home 2 years ago of the town & river, and put one in the draft.



There's lots of time, and summer is a good time for taking pictures. So people can submit pictures to me, I can drop them in the mock artwork, and we can vote on the one people like best like we've done in past years. The biggest thing to remember is the picture will be on a round coin. Sometimes you might have a really nice pic, but when it's cropped to a circle you lose details at the edges and it doesn't look as good, or if you shrink it so they fit in then the picture is really small.

Right now I have a fair bit of free time, so I thought I'd reopen the discussion early before fall comes and I get really busy again. As I mentioned, they'd be distributed when I get home in early December.

For those Lunenburgers who are interested in the project, post your thoughts on the questions above.

1. I think Bridgewater, after all it is the major community in Lunenburg Co.

2. When i think of bridgwater and its main feature/calling card, i think of the Exhibition. Although a good pic of a river scene would be great as well. After all Bridgewater was named that due to the bridge there.

3. I use them for swag myself and give them away quite often. So non-tracking is what i like best. They are more of a collectors item anyway and i don't see tracking as necessary.

4. I kind of like the exclusiveness that only allows Lunenburgers to purchase it.
However, if the numbers aren't there then it could be opened up on limited basis first come first served basis.

5. I like the pic, but am not enthusiastic about the "Mega" thing. Maybe one of these would be more appropriate:

Home of the Ex since xxxx
Commercial & Industrial centre of Lun Co
Incorporated 1899 (Feb 13)

Bridgewater also has it's own flag en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgewater,_Nova_Scotia , and has it's own seal as well. Probably require permission to use that though.

Count on me to order probably fifteen minimum.

What past coins do you still have in stock?

I still have some coins from the 2010 run I believe, some 2-tone coins from the original 2006 design, and some of the trackable GeoTags. It's possible there are a couple left from other years but I'd have to check; I know I have some left from what I ordered since I haven't done much trading in recent years.

I believe, some 2-tone coins from the original 2006 design

I'm interested in those. That is actually my favourite one. How many do you have, at what price?

eastriver wrote:
I have around 10 in my non-keepers, and they were $4.47. I also still have a few of the copper ones that were for dropping in caches only (they were $3.97).

In hindsight, perhaps I should have paid to have them ship us the moulds. Down in the "Fan Zone" at Euro 2012 there were guys there making metal tokens. They had bags of metal blanks in different finishes, a few different dies, and a holder set on something like a wooden chopping block. You picked which dies you wanted, they put them in the holder with a metal blank in between, then hit it with a sledge hammer. Out came a token with the artwork impressions on the two sides. I couldn't help but think about how it might be possible to make geocoins that way.

Islander1988 wrote:
I have actually been thinking of that myself. I would really like to go to one of the SCA events as a vendor some year, but they are strict about who they let in. If you produce products using period techniques you stand a better chance. So, I'd like to learn how to strike coins someday.

I'd be REALLY interested in seeing those 'holders', as that is my real stumbing block at the moment! It isn't quite 'period technique', but you'd ruin a lot less blanks than by trying to hit the blank square on with your die welded to the hammer!

Anyway... sorry to hijack your thread.

ECplus3 wrote:
LOL. I actually shot some video of him doing it, since I thought the geocoin people here might find it interesting. I'll have to try & upload it to YouTube so I can post a link.

I seem to recall someone who did pay to get their geocoin dies after the run was done, but I don't remember now who it was, or if it was even a local or someone from away (I might have read it in the geocoin forums). You could use it to make clay tokens too. If you made a small die that could take an old copper penny (like a squished penny machine), you'd have a cheap source of blanks. You could even give them different finishes with a little home chemistry:

Anyway, if I get the video up, I'll open a new thread. Now, back to the LCC discussion.

"I have around 10 in my non-keepers, and they were $4.47"

Put my name on them and I'll get them from U when U get back.

Greetings! I just signed up for the forums because I found the Chester coin in this series that I am pretty sure I got at the 2010 Maritime Mega event and was having trouble activating it. After I registered, I found this thread and realized why. I must have known they were untrackable, at some point, but had since forgotten.

Thought I'd let folks know that I've used GeoKrety.org, to make it trackable. GeoKrety is a free trackables service that allows you to create trackables that can be logged thru caches on a variety of geocaching listing sites. I need to keep a small tracking info sheet with the coin (and others I've done this with), but now anyone who has a GreKrety account can discover them.

Dudley's Chester - 250th Anniversary

Are any of the other coins in the series available, at this point?

Okay, I had planned to get back to this several weeks ago, since I'd hoped to have the design finalized & off to the mint by now. But, life always gets busy. But if we do want a coin for this year, it's time to get it under way.

I like ER's suggestions as alternatives to the mega reference, in particular mentioning the Big Ex, since it has been a long time part of Bridgewater (a quick web search indicated in started in 1891). So, here again is the general design.



And here are 4 possible backs using ER's ideas. The 4th simply uses the Big Ex idea again, but adds the date of Bridgewater's incorporation on the picture (similar to what was done for the Chester coin a few years ago). I'm not sure if that makes it too busy though, or might lead to confusion having 2 different dates on the coin.



So, thoughts? Are people still interested? There was hardly any response when this topic was originally posted, which again makes me wonder if there's still a market for selling 100 coins.

And, if the design people like is the one mentioning the South Shore Ex, here are 4 possible wordings.