Topic: Casascius selling direct again (Read 4259 times)

Do whatever you want Mike...you have my full support...you are an excellent dealer with an excellent product and if I can afford to...I will buy again...at pretty much whatever the going rate at that time...definitely cheaper than what I can sell them for!

Cheap relative to what?

It's true I'm trying to run out of them.  They say 2011 on them.  It's fair to say that whoever buys them while they are still available will probably have made a good buy.  It's cheezy for me to be trying to get a top price for something like this, am happy with what I'm getting.  Someone might wipe them out in a single order, like what happened to the last of my silvers.  They're priced to let that happen.

Don't you worry, they will be gone soon enough.  There were 1000 made, and I'll bet somewhere like 100 were sold or given away without a hologram and will never appear as funded (I routinely gave them away without holograms, such as to guys like BitPay at their CES booth so they had something catchy to show people a "bitcoin").  So maybe the trackers will say ~900 when they're done, I don't know.  When they are gone, they are gone, simple as that.

What's up with the 25 BTC coins being so cheap?  Do people not like them, or can they just not afford them nowadays?  Also, you are still selling the 2011s which leads me to believe demand is just not there for them.

I have the actual ability to keep Bitcoin network and bitcoin price up indefinitely long. (Proof.) Why would I not buy them?

Buffett says that it makes very little sense diversifying if you know what you are doing. I do.

It's like poker, if you have A-A, you nearly always raise and always call, even if there is a chance that you lose big. Bitcoin is the A-A of monetary systems of early 2013.

The luxury is there just to speed up the process. Many in bitcoinworld do know what I do. Even I did not actually make it up, it took 2+ years from another person to make me believe it and be able to speak about it articulately in public.

PS. I really get high every time I taste good water. Even yesterday EuroTrash though I was drunk (I wasn't).

Wow we are all so jealous of your success and fancy food.  Filtered water hard to come by in your country? LOL. 

Honestly seeing you flaunt it like this makes me want BTC to crash hard to the ground (not really though because I do own bitcoin).  You are a great example of 'new money'.  You got lucky (call it what you want but there is certainly a degree of luck involved in BTC) and now have more money than you ever imagined.  The years spent looking up to people who had a little more makes you feel the need to outdo them and post about it here.  This over-extravagance is pretty cliche for a newly rich person.

Pride before the fall much?

Wow. Incredible. Really? Wow. 

The ones who expect something as regards bitcoin, are due for a surprise.

Do you believe if I say, I am just a messenger. There are more wonderful things to come...

What part did you find difficult to understand?

Yes, the most I enjoy when I do it quietly. But I am now assigned to be the forum troll, and I like it. I ate whitefish tartar with seafood and cauliflower puree, and filtered water for appetizer. Then I came back to the forum for some more trolling. Then I continued with snails á la Haikko, oven-fresh bread, chardonnay and more filtered water. And now I'm back trolling. This is my work, my private life is not for sale.

If mine is not the best-organized bitcoin conference ever, I promise to sell 1000 bitcoins!

Ah sorry, I included the face value of the coin also. No, I don't plan to buy more of the gold coins (not loaded, at least ) but I want to buy quite many of all the other coins.

Is this the same guy who complained about the luxury in my summit...?  What was the talk about the speck...

I will drop a PM soon if you are interested in selling to me also, coins for about BTC1500.

No problem - I will not be lowering the price.

I would prefer that you use my website to request a payment address.  I use an outrageously cumbersome private key management policy to ensure that targeting me for MITM and other forms of theft is difficult, since I"m an attractive target for such a thing.  Taking an address from my website ensures your funds are being held securely.  My website will issue a PGP-presigned bitcoin address if you place an order on it that isn't for a trivial amount (please make sure that it's at least 15 BTC or it will come from a lower security junk key pool meant to keep bots and test orders from allocating my secure addresses).  Please check the PGP signature before paying, assuming you're able to do so.

How about $1000 over spot?  2-factor included free (and if it's 2-factor, it also includes the option to not actually fund the coin...ever...if you so desire...for reasons I've explained elsewhere)

I realize that's quite a jump over my original starting price, but it's still half the markup as measured in BTC as it was months ago.  The flip side is, if I end up establishing that the market is willing to bear this USD price, and I am able to sell off my 2012 supply at it, I suddenly have a business case for another big run of gold coins, which up until now is running at a loss (save for gains related to BTC exchange rate itself, which keeps me happy but won't help me justify another gold coin run by itself).  The folks I have minting the coins don't like doing gold in anything but a big run because they essentially have to deep clean their entire production line twice to switch it from silver to gold and back so as to not compromise product purity...but they'll do it if I'm willing to place a healthy order, and I'll do it if I know that the price I"m charging essentially insulates me from the risk of volatility and covers the relatively high initial production costs.

If you want to place orders and calculate the price using gold spot and MtGoxLast and order them through the auction feature on my website, I'd be willing to accept the order immediately.  Please send 2-factor intermediate code in notes.  2-factor is mandatory if you won't be funding the coin, but you also don't need to send me 1000BTC in that case.  It's also a terribly good idea in any case (just pretend trust only goes so far...for the sake of limiting my own anxiety, I don't want to be trusted with hundreds of millions of dollars in value, honest!)  Suggestions for the passphrase: imagine you might engrave the passphrase on a trophy nameplate and make it part of your presentation display for the coin...something neutral (like X5Ab3kZF1W) or a phrase praising Bitcoin ("It was Satoshi's genius vision in 2008") will maximize the appeal to a potential second owner.  I will provide digitally signed certification of the BIP38 confirmation code so you can prove to a secondary buyer the correctness of your passphrase.

How much you asking for the gold coin? PM ok.

Help me understand - did I actively refuse to accept your order, or did I just drop the ball on getting back with you?  I suspect it's the latter.  I have never formed any intent to make anyone go through "resellers" to get the gold coin, if for nothing else, it makes absolutely no logistical sense whatsoever.  I have not actually defined anyone as a "reseller", I have simply (at this point) imposed a minimum order quantity of 50 coins for the small-value coins only.  Have I said anything anywhere that might be interpreted as asking you to buy gold coins through a reseller?  If so, I am terribly sorry for the misunderstanding.  Actually, this is true of nearly all of the items I've ever made and sold beyond the 1BTC coin.

I needed resellers because it's not sensible for me to be shipping numerous orders for single 1BTC coins when it actually takes longer to create the shipment than it does to create the actual coin, to the point it actually decreases supply substantially because it takes up a good chunk of my "bitcoin time" (and you can understand what kind of effect that would have on the price).  But this is a problem that only applies to coins like the 1BTC coin, an item I've produced at a rate of a few thousand per month on average.  Clearly you can understand I don't need any of this sort of "help" shipping an occasional gold coin of which only 50 were made.

Yes, I think it's very reasonable to expect me to fulfill the order at the current price when able.  I appreciate your acknowledgment that the issue is not the price.  Yes I would sell you the gold coins directly.  I would appreciate you linking me to or copying me on any communication suggesting I wouldn't, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt and apologize for having represented I wouldn't.

I think Goat is being very reasonable.

That makes sense, and it's generally what I practice when possible in the bitcoin world.  I've paid for everything I can in btc, and accepted btc as payment for everything I've done.

However, I'm simply a very small scale exchange for a small set of people.  This means for every bitcoin I sell to someone, I need to replace it or end up cash heavy and bitcoin poor.

In this sense, for my limited market, physical bitcoins are competing against digital bitcoins for US dollars.  One of many products I may offer.  Someone very well may choose to pay a $20 above-spot fee for the security and novelty of the physical coin itself.  The same market dwindles quickly (remember, these are not hardcore believers - simply users of the bitcoin economy) when those per-coin fees get higher.  Use your own values for higher.

This is nothing new to anyone, just pointing out the model as it makes sense from my usage perspective.

It does make most sense to price these as bitcoins though, especially on the wholesale market.  So I see where this makes sense a lot more as an investment tool than a means of quick commerce.

Sounds like the mass produced coins coupled with some stickers and my laserjet is what I'll be looking for, to serve the needs of my customers

+100

Mike, I want a refund on the $250 I paid for shipping.

Totally true, keep this in mind:  coblee is selling some vintage coins on another thread... getting bids of ~68BTC for 30BTC face value coins... so in other words he's up to BTC1.26 (above face value) per coin... wow, right?... these are coins he bought from me at a markup of $2 or $3...

think for a moment who should be complaining... he's getting almost $200 and maybe more markup, for something that he bought from me for under $3 markup... I need a waambulance.

Actually, totally kidding.  I don't need a waambulance.  You see, he paid me BTC1.85 for those coins, each, plus BTC1.75 for postal mail to get them (per order, not per coin), because he bought them at a time when BTC was at rock bottom, and that was the price.  And....I've kept all those BTC, not sold them.  I have made a killing collecting BTC for postage I paid in dollars, because it has caused me to inadvertently buy BTC regularly that I wasn't ever intending to buy.  So, dispatch, tell the waambulance they can go back home.  As it turns out, I'm in pretty good shape.  But even if I wasn't, my purpose in making these coins wasn't to get into the coin business, it was to spam the world with BTC as a concept, and it looks like it's working regardless of what I charge.

Also dont forget I have another cheap product coming out that I can sell you guys to spam the world with... I think the status is they've been minted and they are on their way to me.

Do you remember my Bitcoin "chocolates" from long ago?  Well, instead of being chocolate, this is a simple aluminum coin with "Strength in Numbers BTC BITCOIN" on the front, and then the back is totally blank.  I will have them in silver, gold, and a couple other colors.  And I am expecting a batch of these coins that exceed my entire body weight, pretty soon.  LIke maybe this next week.  The purpose of this coin is whatever you want it to be...spread the good bitcoin word.

You can put a sticker of your choice on it... whether it's just a home-printed label promoting bitcoin or whatever you want, or a QR code with 0.01 BTC you printed yourself or...whatever you want.  The coins themselves don't come with any private keys

There is a small recession in the back just in case you want to conceal a private key underneath your sticker, but it's off-center (toward the bottom) so it's not in your way if you don't want to conceal anything inside the coin.

THis is a mass-produced item that I don't have to do anything other than buy in bulk and reship so quantity won't be an issue.  That translates to a price that won't jump into the stratosphere even if there's lots of demand (I will mostly control the minimum order quantity).  When I see how they arrive, I'll decide how to price them, but I will probably be selling them in bags of hundreds or 1000 or by weight or just whatever makes it so I don't have to count coins one-by-one.  Being aluminum, it is a very light coin, an obvious weight difference as compared to my 1BTC coin.  The silver ones MIGHT come with a pretty mirror finish, but that remains to be seen (the gold and other colors won't, as they're anodized).

The coin will have, along the edge in small letters, "©CASASCIUS".  Before anyone asks why there's a copyright symbol, I am NOT asserting copyright status on the Bitcoin logo or anything on the coin, and to the extent copyright applies, I grant public domain status to the artwork and it may be freely used by others (other than my name, of course).  I think most people would desire my name on the coin, and by displaying the © symbol, I'm adding it in a manner that suggests I am responsible for the design, and one that avoids suggesting that I am the originator or the guarantor of whatever promises someone might have printed on the back.  This coin does not have any year marking on it, and this was intentional.

I realized that I said "make fun of stereotypes" not realizing that there was someone posting on here with the handle "stereotype".  That was not directed at you man.

I think that the crux of what is going on is that Mike is not really set up to supply merchants with a wholesale model.  He just does not have the capacity to do that right now based on demand.  What he is really doing is whatever he can to keep his head above water and maintain quality service and product.  Raise prices and force quantity to lower his customer count and make sure he is not spending all his time shipping.  This is exactly what he should be doing and the only real problem is that everyone is using the misnomer "wholesale" and we carry our own understanding of the concept of wholesaler into our expectations.

Mike is not a wholesaler unless he can scale supply or the market proves that it will bear the individual coin markup to justify Mike's markup as reasonable for a wholesale model.  So really what it may boil down to is we need to stop appending the label of "wholesale" to what Mike is doing.  We want him to be a wholesaler, but that does not mean he is.

As a side note, I find it interesting when people convert bitcoin to $ when talking about the markup.  Mike absolutely has it right.  It is a bitcoin product purchased with bitcoin.  You can't fail to increase value if you keep it in one currency.  When I was nursing dreams about a wholesale model with casascius coin I was going to keep cash in an exchange to purchase bitcoin with whatever cash was being used to buy the coin on the spot.  At the end of the day I would always have more bitcoin.  When you do that only the percentage matters.

Fun thread

Kudos to Mike for tying to capture as much value as possible from his product for himself.  This is great, and he's the person (not resellers) everyone here should be wanting the most success for.

That said, the current website pricing is out of my market range.  I felt the previous auctions of 55-57 btc per 1btc roll were priced about right (that's around $15 per coin above spot price atm) but others are going to put their value where they feel it should be.  Right now that is higher than I think it is, thus I'll wait for the price to drop or do without.  Certainly with website pricing I couldn't get my money back reselling them in-person to friends/co-workers as I would like to do.

Pretty simple stuff here.

Mike - great job on these!  You are an extremely valuable part of the Bitcoin "movement" and when I had multiple random family members who've just heard of bitcoin ask me about the physical pieces, I realized just how important this service actually is and decided I need to help support this when possible.

PHEWWWW!!!, and I thought it was just me!!! and YES, English is my 1st and ONLY language!!!! Again, I am not trying to pick a fight with anyone on here. We all have our own opinions and viewpoints. I will readily admit one thing: I WAS NOT AN ENGLISH MAJOR, NOR WILL I EVER BE OR PROFESS TO BE!!!!! LOL! I like you JUSTJAKE!

JustJake. Your comments are lost on me, mate. Sorry.

Once again, thanks for the transparent response, particularly, the paid sales mentioned. I don't expect to find out the answer, but i wonder who that 'market' was/is, who think that is current fair value. Coming from a very small scale re-sellers point of view and experience, the retail market appears to have a cut off point at x2 face value (UK), where x1.6/7 sees decent conversions. So maybe there is a new floor in the price of Casascius coins, or maybe those orders are from corporate interests from recent publicity, or "these noob trend followers with money to spare" which JustJake mentioned above. Point being, the latter two 'markets' are distorted and/or what rpietila said earlier....elite.
If you are considering the wider Joe Public retail market, then you will understand that some interested re-sellers are feeling squeezed out.

If you do intend to scale up production, you need reliable, and consistent re-sellers, where they take care of price, and you worry about reliable and quality manufactured supply. Thats how healthy symbiotic markets work, and it works for the benefit of all.

Hey, we all have our own agendas, and i know nothing.

Ha!  You could find a deep end to go off of in a baby pool.  Is English your first language?  If not all is excused because it seems you are not picking up on the colloquialisms.  Everything you are complaining about follows the phrase "in our heart of hearts" which implies self reflection and is best displayed through hyperbole.  I was making fun of stereotypes.  Something that might be evident if any of my previous posts or even the first part of that post was taken into account.

I insist on minimum order quantities so as to differentiate resellers from individuals wanting to collect a coin... I don't have the resources to go into an in-depth evaluation as to who will do what witih their coins, nor to police anyone to make sure they are doing what they claimed they are doing.  I am sticking to a policy that I will not sell under 50 coins to anybody at a time, and this is a deliberate decision to make resale sustainable.  Take a deep breath though... the whole Bitcoin space is still such an open land grab it doesn't make sense to be worried about turf.

So, thats your problem!? Others are coming onto "your" turf and you dont like it that others who have money and want to make money are buying from Mike and reselling them to the "noob trend followers with money to spare"?  The "rest of us", as you stated, I assume had the market cornered and were the only people who had the "goods" and were making a KILLING. Maybe not you per se, but others here who have posted. Now that Mike has opened up the vault door for others to buy from, it's rubbed some people the wrong way. Competition is great. Monopolies die hard and fast.....

It's a shame, but them are the facts of life.............Again, no offense to you or others. I applaud Mike in giving myself, Joe Blow, and Harry the Hippo, the opportunity to buy DIRECTLY from him. I can store them like others have in a vault for 50 years or re-sell them via a # of places online or to local people in my area. The choice is ours, thats what makes it great!

Mike, I don't know that anyone was expecting you to comment.  This thread was data for you.  But thank you for commenting.  In the end the real data point is sales and it is definitely interesting that you are transparent about that with us.  I am glad you are still moving coin.  If you are still just keeping up with demand then more power to you.  I will be watching prices on your site and watching for auctions as I am definitely interested in getting more of your product.

I find it funny how demand can "kill the magic" just as fast as anything else.  In our heart of hearts we are all hipsters that remember the good old days before these noob trend followers with money to spare came in and ruined it for the rest of us.  You hear me Johnny California?!  Stay out of Austin!

I don't want the magic to die either.  This is how the problem looks in my mind: what kills the magic more, being eternally out of stock, or having a price most can't afford?

I put the price on my website intending to either get orders, or not get orders and be forced to lower it or do auctions.  This isn't me trying to jerk you guys around - discovering the market price is an essential function of a sustainable market.  Nobody is complaining when people put in BTC sell orders on MtGox for $500 $1000 or $1000000, everyone recognizes that these prices simply won't get paid until the market decides they are correct.  Me doing the same is nothing wrong.

I am sure there are many watching this thread who will be disappointed to know that I have received paid orders at the listed price for a number of rolls in the double digits (in other words, at least 10) in the day and a half it's been listed.  So, the market is saying, at least for the time being, that that's an acceptable price.  Nobody knows what the future holds and maybe this was pent up demand that will wane, I can't know for sure.  But I plan to hand-make coins at the same rate I've always been making them, and since I can't do much with them just having them sit in inventory, will lower the price if they stop selling at the listed price, all while I look into automation and hiring to increase the possibility for more output.  Scaling this is something I think would be the best duty I could ever fulfill with the extra windfall the higher market prices bring.  Meanwhile, I anticipate competition...I'm not doing anything to discourage it...(other than insist they do a damn good job and not to give phyiscal bitcoins a bad name).

Fundamentally I believe in honoring one's commitments and I recognize the frustration.  I didn't know I was going to do something different with my products - something different had to happen because the worldwide interest in Bitcoin shot up through the roof the day Cyprus started talking haircuts.

Part of me says I should go ahead and honor the February price and just simply accept the deal now at the prior price and chalk it up to simply me being slow (something I readily admit).

If I did that though, I thought I might point out that you would actually be paying more than I would be charging for the coin now.  I mean, BTC shot up 10x, and yet I haven't raised my markup on the gold coin 10x, and at any price I'd charge today I'd be getting 1/10 the BTC in exchange for my gold, meanwhile the reason for both increasing is the same: worldwide interest in bitcoins.  So, in effect, by me not taking your money in February, I have foregone a potential big gain, as you have actually enjoyed the opportunity for its value to appreciate tenfold in your wallet instead of mine, before expressing your frustration that I have failed to deliver your coin at the negotiated price.  I'm not going to be comparing February's bitcoin price to February's gold spot price and charging you that today... you'd condemn me as crazy.  While my failure to stay engaged and complete the deal we were discussing is not excusable, are the circumstances really that lousy and have I really left you with the short end of the stick to the point the total disaffection you're displaying here does me justice?

Looking forward to seeing you the next time we encounter one another regardless.

From Casascius Sir

If I make an international order. Do I have to pay tax in addition of this price?
I think so but I'd like to be sure.

No it's otc only. You can buy one (2013 cas. BTC1) from me for BTC1.7998 incl shipping to US. But don't order from me, I will always be the most expensive dealer to order anything from.  Except silver, that is cheap.
Send me PM and pay to:
17neXTeRQswdV1Hr6csmssJL2HpFz5bGoi

if still interested although price is high.

I am interested in ordering a BTC1 coin for BTC1.50 if it's including shipping (US). Feel free to PM me details, order wallet address and anything else I need to know.

Well put.

You can always make your own   

This is for bitcl1234oinfever and it is not meant to be sarcastic in any way.

From my experience (and I see it in Mike's comments) it is really hard to put the correct value on your own product.  You want people to buy but you also want to make sure you are maximizing your own value.  It is really easy to make incorrect assumptions about what people are thinking and the hardest customers to read are the ones who did not buy anything.  There are so many reasons to not buy something, most of which you have no hope of addressing.

Now I could have just sent a message to Mike myself about my concerns but the issue with that is I am one data point with my own whims and fancies and you can't just cater to one data point.  I thought I would create this thread to consolidate feedback from multiple people.  I was fully expecting some people to chime in saying, "no, this actually works and here is how."  I was also expecting people to chime in with varying levels of emotional baggage.  Whatever, it is all feedback and I am pretty sure Mike is the kind of guy who knows how to parse and use feedback.  This stuff is gold for a business.

In any case, I hope that Mike is able to use this.  For me, his rolls of coins don't make mathematical sense to purchase as a wholesaling option.  I think others have agreed.  I am sure Mike has other feedback in the purchase rate of the rolls.

Good that you mentioned, I will have to contact you by some other means available, every day until the wire clears, and every week/month thereafter, just to make sure you are happy. Unlike the other two guys, I really want to serve my biggest customer and there is no excuse.

Oh yeah, I am also not angry with Henry, he can serve his smaller customers and piss on me if he wants. But for some reason I don't feel good about it and thought I wanted to let you know, and perhaps he wants to join in the discussion since he likes to chat by computer and not over the phone.

Your frustration reminds me of what I have been experiencing locally with Technomage. He is running this business, which used to be the bitcoin company in Finland. I started buying bitcoins from him last September, and everything worked smoothly until about March. I have bought many bitcoins from him, and I was definitely their largest paying customer. Then he starts to ignore me, and spends more time talking about me in their private chat, than talking to me, their largest customer. He has not called me, nor answered to my call, for 3 weeks now.

Now that is not a way to handle your biggest customer. He [me, the biggest ex-customer] ends up making a better system, overtaking your business just for the indignation ("vitutus" på finska) that he is not being served. They actually had a broker desk that I could call at will, back in March! Now, WTF, the person I am assigned with to be helping with my business, is not picking up the phone for THREE WEEKS. HOW THE FUCK DO YOU THINK I CAN BUY OR SELL BITCOINS OR ANYTHING IF YOU DON'T PICK UP? It is all right if you want to be sent email, but I have almost finished using it, did not read my main business email address for 3 weeks - if you have sent an apology there I HAVE NOT READ IT, I want to be served by voice.

Oh I see, I was exposed for not reading my email. Perhaps it would have been all good if only I had opened that one (I still haven't). We are all stressed over having so much to do, the difference is that you generally should not make your biggest customer as angry as Goat is over Mike or I am with Henry.

I get your point and I cant speak for Mike but I can only THINK he doesnt want a few "people" to corner the market. Thats how I would interpret it. I dont think its all about the money with him. I am sure he has made a pretty penney already and is set for life or maybe close to it. I really think he wants a lot of people to be able to have bitcoins and not have to always pay extra as in ebay or however else most resellers would sell them. I could also be totally wrong and out in left field. Just my 2 cents.

I think Mike can offer to sell them at whatever price he wants to. People here seem jealous of him. He's the one who makes them, he can price them as he would like to. If you dont like the price, its very simple, you DONT BUY IT!! Why make a thread and call him out?

If you want a porsche and the dealers is asking X amount and you think its "absurd", move on......Stick to your escort or jeep or what have you. To say the Porsche dealer is charging way too much, well, its quite obvious that in the first place you couldnt afford it so you come down on them, and in this case, Mike.

Next thing I will see is "your a newbie, wtf do you know?", just wanted to get that in before someone else did.

You can't develop a collector's value for them if you have them all...

Is the supply of them capped?

Here.

My experience on 1btc sales kinda showed a sweet spot of around 1.60-1.70. The price correction/crash saw that reduce significantly, along with interest. If someones selling for x2, where do i buy their sales technique?!

Tough one  Molecular says he does not want to charge BTC1 and I also think it's excessive. His idea was .85, don't think it is a good one..

But there is no sweet spot sub-1 except .75 which would be akin to giving them out at cost. If I had them, I would perhaps go for 0.9 or keep it as a strict collector's special at 1.

IMO those prices are spot on for a retail buyer. How much would you charge for a 0.5 coin?

Ive got no business telling anyone how to do it. Mike will do, and has every right to, charge or do whatever he sees fit. All i can do is question over-all value, decide what value is left for me, and judge what value can be passed on. Like others here, that question has obviously been answered.

I think the same, how about join forces? I think Casascius can better position himself to the elite collectors' coins market for now. Elite is always good if you can get there, and I think Mike has his business in a good order now!

If the demand for coins for this price will be well below Mike expectations, he will probably lower the price. If there is still reasonable demand then the marked has decided.

+ I am routinely selling non-collector (2012/2013) casascius for about the following:

BTC1 = 1.50
BTC5 = 6
BTC25 (2011 but with correct hologram) = 28.5

Just please tell him (to Mike), how you (the critic) would have done it??  

This one guy is overwhelmed with the demand and realizes that his services are worth more than he previously asked for them.

I also raised my prices when I felt the pressure, now I am able to make one deal per day (+the aftermath) and still take care of my daughter...

Those prices kill any chance for so called 're-sellers' to make a market.

1.52x? Thats way over the recent Casascius auction ( ) prices, so 'letting the market decide' does not seem to apply here.

In any event, and like i said in his thread, theres a risk of damaging brand Casascius. The latest actions, for me, just chip away at the magic, and i say that with huge regret.  
 

I was going to buy too, but 1,26x when you're buying 50 coins is too much... It's nearly $40 on each $145 coin.
At that price maybe i would buy 1 for me, because casascius is doing a good work and it's a nice thing to spread the word... but no more.

I got the announcement that Mike is selling Casascius direct again but at a minimum of 50 coins.  Then I saw the prices.  Wowza!

Let me say right now that I am a huge proponent of letting the market decide the price and I certainly don't begrudge Mike on his choice of prices.  I am interested in the general sentiment.  Are the prices too high for other people?  I want to resell these as individual coins and I don't think I will be convincing individual buyers that my margin plus Mike's margin is worth it.  Right now it sits at 1.26x for the 1BTC coins and 1.52x for 0.5BTC coins.

Mike's coins are excellent products and I did order a 25BTC coin because the margin was very reasonable, but when I made that order I actively decided to not get any of the roles of coins.  Take that as feedback Mike.  Hopefully others will chime in.