I have just received 150 Casascius 1 BTC in Spain, everything about the experience was great, I ordered Sunday 17th March, the order was processed the same day & was shipped on the 19th, US tracking showed it to have reached LA by the 24th where it would continue to Europe, with Semana Santa holidays about to kick in tomorrow for nearly 1 week I checked my PO box on the off chance today, the 27th, & there they were - may even have arrived earlier this week.
Perfectly packaged & declared, no customs or duty or anything, all in rolls that were vacuum sealed & with instructions, I'd already been emailed a list of all the addresses which was a bonus that I wasn't expecting, with a couple of cool Leet ones amongst them:
1337qbfsHGxvzN6wrckdFoBniMdTRyt9qE
1337YWoEf5PP4V9sbP8gXTHmt621pZgyCu
I had planned to offer 50 for re-sale, especially for people living in Spain, but have decided now to leave them all vacuum packed as they are & to order some more for this instead.
While these were paid for with bitcoins that I already had & planed to hold anyway long term, rather than with freshly purchased with dollars bitcoins, it is interesting to note that in the short time since I ordered them the $ value of the bitcoins alone has increased from $47.50 to $87.
Will edit to add some pics...
I hope that Casascius decides at some stage to make some 0.005, 0.01, 0.05 & 0.1 btc coins in the future as well as the 0.5 btc ones he's planned, as 50 cents, $1, $5, $10 (if/when the exchange rate gets to $100) I think ppl would find very useful, especially the 3 lower denominations. Perhaps start a line of Satoshi coins with 500k, 1M, 5M, 10M satoshis instead of the above bitcoin fractions.
Another way to do them perhaps is like how small, say 1 gram, gold bars are sold by some refineries/mints sealed in to hologram-ed assay cards, like these:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1667440http://www.ebay.com/itm/UBS-1-gram-Gold-Bar-in-Assay-Card-Hologram-/12108384164UBS make the best in my opinion, the coins could be made in a rectangular shape similar to how the gold bars are.
Edit to add pics. Note coins have been placed in my bank safety deposit box.
Note coins have been placed in my bank safety deposit box.
Note coins have been placed in my bank safety deposit box.