I bought physical Bitcoins from Memory Dealers in early December to give as gifts to co-workers. I paid via credit card. Because of the CC fees, shipping, etc (all of which is fair for MD) they cost about $6.10 each. Bitcoin at the time was about $3 (my memory may well be wrong).
But it was awfully cool to pass out those coins and say "Bitcoin was $3 when I bought this, but now it's $6".
I see that many of those co-workers still have that coin on their desk. But we're a software shop, they know what cryptography is, what peer to peer means, and we use LOTS of open source, so I hope that at least 1 or 2 of them will "see the light".
As far as MY workplace goes, if we could get some Magic The Gathering tie in, we'd get them all!
oh nice! Glad to see people doing this.
I usually paired them with "real" gifts, but gave plenty of Casascius coins as presents this past Christmas. I also gave my niece and nephews "savings accounts" via individual wallets burned to CD, and address payment cards for easy depositing. My niece in particular was thrilled with it; I'll show her how to spend the funds when she turns 18 (although it'll be pretty cool if she figures it out on her own sooner.)
Now I'm eyeing Bit-Pay's new Deposit Card to give to a few close friends, possibly a couple of businesses. Hmmm... in particular, I think I'll get one for a friend who frequently has several folks over for Pay-per-View events. There's usually a scramble for cash and difficulty making change at the end of them. Methinks I'll skip it all and just make a direct deposit to his account (adding enough to take care of the fee, of course.)
Can't wait to see how everyone reacts to me skipping the end-of-show melee with a simple smartphone scan.