THUMP. The coins have landed!
10 months ago – Wed, Jul 05, 2023 at 06:19:30 PM

Citizens of Absalom!

The coins are here! Here's what a big pile of loot looks like. We expect Mengkare to fly in through the roller door and take a nap on it any day now. (That might be a problem. The roller door fits a Honda Jazz, I'm not sure about an ancient dragon.)

Because everything always happens at once, Jackson and Maddison had to do our End of Financial Year Stocktake first, in which they have to count. all. the. coins. However, thanks to Jackson's advanced Shopimancy (and extensive use of Summon Barcodes) it was done in record time. We're now getting the coins ready for picking and importing the data into our website. Packing starts on our next shipping day, Wed 12 July (we work two days a week on our mail order, as a small company of part-timers).

We'll send weekly updates as to our completion status, starting on Thu 13 July.

Best,

Mark, with Andre, Jackson & Maddison

Coins complete, locking addresses on 25 June
11 months ago – Mon, Jun 19, 2023 at 03:34:36 AM

Citizens of Absalom!

The Grand Bazaar is open, the Vault of Abadar is fully stocked, and the treasure chests deep in the Abomination Vaults gleam with promise.

In other words, the coins are all packed and ready and ship to Australia tomorrow, where we will unpack 290 kg of metal (or 640 pounds if you insist) and then start shipping it out to you.

Our completion date was longer still than last predicted. It wasn't just being sure the coins were finished perfectly, but also packaged correctly: we have Kickstarter edition coin sets with bonus coins, regular edition coin sets with no bonus coins, 10-packs, change packs, Hero Point Tokens and more. It's one of the most complicated productions we've ever done.

So, because this all took far longer than we promised, we are going to air freight the coins so that you don't have to wait for a ship to dock. We won't lie to you, the freight bill did 1D6+2 damage to our budget, but you've been more than patient. We'll get them here soon.

Important dates

25 June - in one week's time we will lock all addresses in BackerKit. If you have moved, or will move soon, please log in now and check that we have the right address, as that is where we will send your coins. If we send your parcel to the address provided but it's not the right one, we cannot send you a replacement until your missing package is returned to us, and we will ask you to pay the postage again. So, for your sake, for our sake, please check it now!

1 July - the next Kickstarter update, give or take. We'll send a photo of the coins on arrival.

26 July - all parcels will be shipped by this date, or earlier if we can. Transit will take a week for Australian orders, around 4 weeks for rest of the world. You will get a tracking number. We'll send updates of our shipping progress.

3 August - Gen Con! With your permission, and only if we met our deadline and got all parcels sent, we would like to sell the coins at our Gen Con booth. Your coins might not be in your hands but they will certainly be on the way. It makes a big difference to our little company to be able to sell the coins at the show, so we hope it's okay with you. Now, you ask, can you pick up your coin pledge at our booth? No, sorry - we won't have any Kickstarter stock with the bonus coins in the USA, only regular edition stock. 

Shipping soon

That's the update! No pretty pictures this time, but man, this 100-row Excel spreadsheet of completed coins is a sight to behold. We can't wait to unpack them for you.

Best,

Mark, with Andre, Jackson & Maddison

Progress report: coins still in production
12 months ago – Tue, May 16, 2023 at 07:47:42 PM

Citizens of Absalom!

Another progress report: the Pathfinder Coins of Absalom are still in production.

The estimated completion is now 31 May.

This doesn't happen to us often, but when it does, it's always when make a large print run with many different molds.

Sometimes the coins do not pass quality control after plating. Electroplating is a complex process in which a few things can go wrong, such as bubbles forming on the coin surface. Defects are normal, and we always end up discarding a few coins in a regular production run, but the size of the order means that a few defects become an order of magnitude. Right now we have 6 coins that need replating and 2 coins that we need to start over again.

These coins are complete: 1cp, 5cp,1sp, 5sp, 5gp, 10gp, 1pp, compass, and all Hero Point Tokens.

These coins are still in progress: 1gp, 20gp, 50gp, 100gp, 500gp, 1000gp, 5000gp, 10000gp.

Our team are working hard to correct all of these towards our new end of May deadline. We're incredibly sorry about this, but bad coins are forever, and we don't want to send you those.

I'll finish up with a few selected photos: these are quick snaps from the quality control crew, so please forgive the lighting. These are final production shots of the Absalom Hero Point Token, the Pathfinder Compass (corrected mold), the Silver Badger and Blond Badger, the 1-Platinum coin and the new larger 10-Gold coin. I particularly can't wait to get that one onto my table.

Best,

Mark, with Andre, Jackson & Maddison

Mid-May estimate for coin production
about 1 year ago – Wed, Apr 26, 2023 at 10:18:45 PM

Citizens of Absalom!

The coins are in progress, but with the size of the order and an upcoming national holiday for our manufacturing team the revised completion date is 15 May.

As soon as the coins are ready, we'll be shipping them to ourselves for fulfilment.

We apologise for the extra time in production. In our experience it's better to take the time now rather than send out something that's not ready. We hope that you'll be using these coins for years.

Our next update will be mid-May to tell you that the coins are finished, with some production photos.

In the meantime, here's a shot (spoiler warning!) from my last Pathfinder session of Agents of Edgewatch. It will be a little while before our next session so I went all out with the table set up. In the middle, you can see the Pathfinder Metal Compass from this campaign doing sterling work to show which way is North. And yes, that's the leshy druid arriving in the North East corner. For a plant-based adventurer, they sure are fond of throwing fire around.

Best,

Mark, with Andre, Jackson & Maddison

Coin improvement and production update
about 1 year ago – Wed, Apr 05, 2023 at 12:58:18 AM

Citizens of Absalom!

This is a short update to say that the coins are all in production, with a completion estimate of 30 April. We'll let you know how that progresses.

Here's a look at the packaging for the Pathfinder Compass, by our friend Roberto.

Note that the Abslaom Hero Point Token will not have a backing card. We do those for all the full Adventure Path Hero Point Tokens as those are for general sale, but the limited edition ones are just in a plain ziplock bag. 

Here's something cool though:

10-Gold coin improvement

Just before we confirmed the full and final production, I was finally able to run my Pathfinder table game again. We started Agents of Edgewatch at last, and it was also the first time I was able to switch out all of our regular Campaign Coins and play entirely with Absalom coins. It felt fantastic! They fit the theme perfectly (of course), they really encourage shopping, and the numbers make it so easy.

But, I made a pivotal discovery: when reaching for coins, I constantly confused the 5-Gold with the 10-Gold. Even though it's slightly longer (25mm vs 24mm), the diamond shape has smaller mass than the rectangle. To be honest, it bugged the hell out of me.

As you know, we make these coins because we want to play with them, so we made a last minute change: we've increased the 10-Gold length to 26.5mm. That makes it obviously bigger than the 5-Gold. It's just a fraction longer than the 20-Gold, but again, due to surface area (diamonds vs ovals), the 20-Gold will still feel bigger. It increases our production cost a little but, well, it just wouldn't do. So we hope you enjoy this final tweak.

We'll be back at the Pathfinder table the weekend after Easter. I've got a mad layout planned for the next stage in the adventure (I've so missed in person gaming!), and Jamie is bringing his new character, a leshy druid. I mean, if you don't have a leshy druid in the party, do you even path find?

I hope you're getting in some games too. We'll be back at the end of April to let you know how the production is going.

Best,

Mark, with Andre, Jackson & Maddison