I'm sure many of you remember the idea of Coinpeople currency floating around a while back. Due to several problems with implementation the idea was unfortunately axed. Although there was alot of interest in the venture.

The idea behind it was generally Mister McDoo's, i had approached him with the idea of Coinpeople notes and asked if they would take off. McDoo being much more visionary than i, saw the opportunities it presented by giving Coinpeople it's own currency. Hopefully by having CP currency auctions, buying, selling etc. The idea though proved to be a much bigger task than was expected, and thus the idea was shelved...

...until now.


There are two initial problems as i forsee it;

1) Getting people to trade their currency and to think of it as currency.

2) Getting enough currency out there to everyone so that the foundations (groundwork) are laid for any future schemes involving actually buying and selling things with this currency.


Now i don't think i have the answers to the use of currency for buying and selling as it stands now. This is a gamble we don't know if it will work, we as members have to make it work. However, i think i have a solution that can get us half way there;

With regards to problem 1);

How do you get people to trade their currency and think of it as currency? Well i think the best way is to be comparative. People think of things in relation to other things. Now it'd be a bad idea trying to tie this virtual currency to any real currencies in any way, it just wouldn't work. But what if there were two virtual currencies running side by side with no connection to anything else but each other? That way one would be worth something in the relation to the other and trade between the two would be possible.

Therefore my initial idea stems from these questions (sounds complex) but in actual fact it isn't.

Why are we here? Because we collect.
What do we try to do when we collect? The answer is build sets.
So if you enroll for this currency and you get two incomplete sets of each currency with duplicates, what would you be inclined to do?


Trade off the duplicates to get the ones that are missing for your sets! (Hopefully)

Which means the wheels of commerce have started to turn, the notes are now being used as currency and that's the hard step sorted. We then have firm foundations to build upon at a later date.

With two loads of currency going out there problem 2) [not enough notes], will be hopefully remedied, or on the way towards a solution.


So what's the plan of action?

The plan of action is this;


Currency Number 1 = the Imperial Bank of Coinpeople's guinea notes (these things are already out there, and some members already have duplicates of those from doing trades with me, and makes sense to use what's already out there!)

Currency Number 2 = San Miguel is developing some Coinpeople dollars, known as Coinbucks. The designs are currently being worked upon and they look good so far.


The two currencies will have an equal/level exchange rate. That is;

5 Guineas will be 5 Coinbucks
10 Guineas will be 10 Coinbucks
20 Guineas will be 20 Coinbucks

1 Coinbuck notes also exist (although there are no 1 Guinea notes)



If there is enough interest from members in participating in this scheme of trading then the following will happen;

Members will be sent two incomplete sets of notes (one incomplete set will be guineas, one will be coinbucks).

Say we have Member A;

Member A gets the following;

2 x 20 guinea notes
4 x 10 guinea notes

and

4 x $5 notes
10 x $1 notes


Member B gets;

2 x $20 notes
4 x $10 notes

and

5 x 5 guinea notes


The only way to get a full set of each is to trade. Bear in mind there'll hopefully be a few mints in operation, so there's the following to watch out for;

mintmarks
serial number matching sets (ends of serial numbers)
errors that might turn up (guineas already have some out there)
colour changes (Series A guineas have already had this)
Guineas are available in Series A and Series B (and when i send them out i'll send out mixed A's of one denomination and B's of another).


So for variety guys and gals, and for type guys and gals, and for one denomination collectors there's already some choice out there before we've even started.

Hopefully then this will lead one step closer to buying and selling with these things, because note that even after completing your sets you may still have the odd note spare.

So what do you think?


More importantly would you take part?

1 Guinea notes probably will have to be designed so people don't get stuck unable to give change!

Yes, I would take part. I think it would be fun.

Sounds good to me. Im in!

-Bobby

just a quick note-

these notes are negotiable-tender and aren't back by any hard currency. anything can be negotiable-tender, as long as somebody is willing to accept it. if a seller accepts rocks as payment, a buyer may legally purchase goods by paying in rocks.

accepting these notes as payment for anything is at your own discretion, as these have no monetary value whatsoever. in fact, coinbucks are backed by grains of sand. if you choose to redeem any coinbuck notes, you may do so and receive 1 grain of sand per coinbuck.



other forms of local currency:

http://public.fotki.com/sanmiguel/private_...lington_vermont
http://public.fotki.com/sanmiguel/private_...od_river_oregon
http://public.fotki.com/sanmiguel/private_...orvallis_oregon
http://public.fotki.com/sanmiguel/private_...ithaca_new_york
http://public.fotki.com/sanmiguel/private_...dison_wisconsin
http://public.fotki.com/sanmiguel/private_issues/toronto

This sounds fun, count me in!

Errrrr to have a Japanese dragon design to depict a buck is very odd.

Very nice designs!

Lemme elaborate;

$1 is Dragon (Oriental flavour)
$5 is Miss Liberty (US flavour)
$10 is Britannia/French Liberty (European flavour)
$20 is Athenian Owl (Classical Flavour)


As you are aware the guinea notes are of a British and Roman flavour.

Hopefully this emphasises a little that the Coinpeople forum is an international one.

Will any of these notes be only in green and black ink on white paper so they might be more familiar to us Yanks?

wrong shade...but at least it's green!

Not if i can help it!

We've tried to be original.

I don't quite see how this could possibly be called an international flavour with just 4 banknotes, or rather just a sad representation of the world. I mean, there is Africa, South and Central America, Middle East and Oceania.

I'm just hoping that there will be more designs...

Nice idea! I think you'd need to add atleast denominations of 2 and 50 Coinbucks, perhaps even 100 and 500. A ½ coinbuck might be convenient too.

It is going to be a huge pile of sand

i was only asked to make a series of four notes, so that's all i've made. future denominations/designs are certainly possible. that said, it was never my intention to represent the whole world. we could have 100 different notes, and the entire world would still note be represented. i chose world coin designs to keep these notes from being too us-centric. i suppose calling them "bucks" doesn't help, but i'm a big coffee fan, and coinpeople coinbucks has a ring to it. keep in mind coinpeople.com doesn't have an africa, middle east, americas, etc. section either.

the old series of coinpeople dollars had each denomination themed after specific members. i've themed my designs after coins, and out of everybody here, i probably know the least about coins.

When i referred to international flavour i was thinking more representing members on this forum.

Americas (done), Europe (done), Australia (now included).

Do we have anyone from Africa and Asia currently reading the boards? If so we'll add those. Antartica too if there's enough members here from there.

I really want to keep the amount of notes produced down, no need for $100 and $500 this would just lead to inflation. I want you guys to think of 20 as a lot!

The real reason for not including the higher denominations though is practicality. If enough members take part in the scheme just printing of the required numbers of 1s, 5s, 10s and 20s is going to be a big task (and for me fairly expensive since i don't have my own printer). Just there there's about what 400 notes? Maybe 500?

If we add any more denominations, i'm just not going to have the time and the resources to do this at all!

Anyone with a colour printer though who fancies participating as a 'mint', please contact me. I hope to spread the printing burden between a handful mints if i can, work as a team for the team. Each person who is allocated as a mint will be sent the necessary files, the serial number sequences and a mint letter.

Obviously this is a position of trust though and you'll have to be agreed upon by both myself and San Miguel as this is a team effort.


So do you fancy making CP history?

Count me in too please. Sounds quite interesting. I can probably help a little with the printing if needed.




I never did ever see these in person though.

I would like to participate as a Mint

Would we have our own mint marks?

And as a participating Mint would I be able to do a fractional currency? I would make my own 1/10, 1/4, 1/2.... notes and have CoinBucks backing them? Just an idea I had, thought I would throw it out there.

-Bobby

Wait, I am an Asian

Of course I would love to help out printing! I have an A3 printer if you wish to make an insane A3 sized notes or multiple notes for auction purposes...

Of course, CP notes will succeed

Of course you are! Sorry i keep think of you as Australian! Me bad!

Well the $1 note has a Dragon theme, that's an oriental theme. So we kinda do have a bit of Asian there.

Africa is missing though as far as i remember. But do remember this is only the first starting points of this new experiment, if we make it succeed then we can expand upon it, make new denominations and have redesigns. Think of this as PCI, lets just get it up and running and then we can iron out the problems as we go along and sort out anything we're not happy with. From experience that's generally the best approach. Quite good if we mess things up a little or don't get things quite perfect it'll be an incentive to do better next time!

So the preliminary list of mints (yet to be confirmed) are;

Ætheling (operating as S)
Bobby Coin (operating B )
Sir Sisu (operating as H)
Gxseries (operating as X)


San Miguel is the designer of the notes but i don't know if he's printing any or not.

I think that's enough for the purposes, best not to have too many.

Present!
I have an idea: The Mintmasters can send the images of the everybody's notes by e-mail in .pdf format (to avoid the changing of serial number) and everybody can print his own lot of notes.

It was considered but they'll be alot of variation between all the notes then! Different types of printers, different types of paper etc.

Your idea certainly has an advantage over the current idea (especially when it comes to the posting out of all the notes). But i think there should be some form of centralised control?


The serial numbers will change Banivechi, no note can have the same serial number, we're trying to make this a real as possible.


Should McDoo resurface in future and say take this idea further then having everyone printing the notes off themselves might hinder future expansions on the project. I.e inflation.

Most definately an ingenious method. But with the pdf file format, currently there is no control over how and who can print it, as in, one could just print 1000 pages of the same page (I know it's silly) and he could just forward the same pdf file to others and the rest could just print the same page. Of course this is the fastest way to spread the file but there is zero control over this.

One nice idea that I thought of is that IF the person who wants to get the notes happens to want some other items from the person who is producing the notes, great, this will solve quite a fair bit of problem. But chances are, not every person printing will have items to sell or rather, have the items that a person would want. Another alternative that I thought off would probably be a slightly painful option, which is the first person sends let's say 10 copies of the notes. The next person who receives it will get one copy out of that lot and sends the next 9 left. The next person will get another copy and sends the next 8 out etc.

Of course this would be benefiticial, I mean because of the various locations of the prints, it would only make sense if let's say, I print my note series here in Australia and send some sets off to a single person the US for the purpose of spreading 10 other sets in the US alone and if he distributes it, that alone will probably save quite a fair bit on the postage.

The question lies upon, is everyone willing to sarcifice a small postage stamp and how trustworthy everyone cab be. Of course I am not doubting anyone, but assuming if a horrible mishap like a mail loss happen, it would just be tragic for those who haven't received it yet. Or it could be possible that the notes get damaged somewhere in the middle.

Of course, I am happy to pay for the print costs even if it can get quite expensive but unfortunately, postage fees are ridiciously lame when it comes to sending more than 10 people.

I like that idea of distribution GX, kinda like Short Snorter!


This will have to be thoroughly dealt with. Anyone with better ideas on note distribution, or grievances on suggested methods please speak up now.

We would like a forum consensus on this.

With four mints in operation though (and possibly 5) then break up the following (based upon 20 people subscribing, with a few spares);

Guineas (at S and H mints)

20s = c.40
10s = c.40
5s = c.50

S mint alone;

20s = 40
10s = 20
5s = 25

(95 notes)

Based upon a distribution ratio of;

20s x 2
10s x 4

to 10 members

and

5s x 5

to the other 10 members


That makes a total of about 15 shipments for S mint and 10 for H mint. Or 2 a piece if doing it the GX way.


Obviously the figures will be altered to reflect the amount of people interested. Based upon 20 subscribers then the dollars fall as;


20s = 40
10s = 40
5s = 50
1s = 100


Which will be split between either two or three mints, which means there'll be less shipments to make if it's between three.

Distribution ratios will be;

20s x 2
10s x 4

and to the other half;

5s x 3
1s x 10



I figure that should sort it?

That should give everyone a combined total of 105 of the currencies each. Who ever gets high denomination coin bucks get low denom guineas and vice versa.

Forever the monarch!

I don't have a Richard II avatar for nothing you know!

Some might be questioning already, why all the mints then?

Well when this idea takes off i expect it'll grow (especially if people take to collecting by mintmark, or notes of each series), thus with 4 or 5 mints around the world any shortages in the system can be swiftly dealt with.

Obviously a quota will be set to prevent inflation. But we'll keep mintages down for the trial run incase it doesn't take off as we hope.

Geez, that's quick.

Ætheling...

Are you going to be keeping track of all the notes in circulation?

I dont see that this has been brought up yet. My thought is there should be a spreadsheet with each note noted with its serial, denomination, mint and who was the first recipiant. I personaly dont see a counterfieter coming into play here but you guys have brought up the thought. This would help in security and also investigating if this does come into play.

-Bobby

I'd be happy to give that a try Bobby.

Problem is there's some of my notes already out there. The old designs don't count in the equation much, but there's a decent pile of them here left which will no doubt find their way out there too sooner or later.

I know for a fact some members already have several spares on hand anyhow, so i'm gonna need to know where they are now.

I don't want to restrict things too much Bobby, i want to give a bit of leeway so that people can collect these things in any way they chose. I deally most people may want a full set of the two currencies (ignoring mintmarks).

But someone out there may take a fancy to the 20 denominated notes and decide to put together a set of 20s off all types, from all mints and trade off their others to do this. I'm perfectly fine with people doing this, but it won't be easy and you'll be begging for more notes!

But i think a tracking thing like Where's George might be fun. It might also be useful as some peope might want matching serial numbers for their sets and they're going to want to know where the other one is!

E.G

CPGA 20608 (20 guinea A)
CPGA 10608 (10 guinea A)
CPGA 05608 (5 guinea A)
CPGB 20608 (20 guinea B ) S mint
CPGB 10608 (10 guinea B ) S Mint
CPGB 05608 (5 guinea B ) S mint
CPGB 20308 (20 guinea B ) H mint
CPGB 10308 (10 guinea B ) H Mint
CPGB 05308 (5 guinea B ) H mint


There's so many ways to do this.

If you need help printing these things, I have an HP Color LaserJet in my office. High quality, prints fast and the toner is "free."

Well, I have miss a lot I see... I never received/seen any of the notes in circulation yet... I thought that the whole thing was canned and none where done...

Only people that have done trades with me have recieved notes thus far, and that was before i thought about resurrecting this idea.

I know not much has been said about this for the past few days, but i'm still progressing on it.

The notes are steadily being printed out. So we're one step further than we were last time!

I am in! Let me know when, where, what and why? Sounds like fun to me!