How much should you charge for your painted coin flips?
Depends. One measure is the value of your painting. The other main factor is the actual cost of the coin you’ve inserted in the flip — not what you originally paid, but today’s market for that coin in that grade.
Categorically, “pretty okay” coins are going to measure up more or less like this:
Here’s a short list of some stuff you could make, search & find or prepare for sale:
Painted Rocks — cheap, inexpensive to make, doesn’t cost very much, and there’s not a whole lot of money involved, although with the right artwork, you can get up to $50 for a painted rock with no problem, and more if it’s in a gallery.
Incenses — Either a blend of incenses or a group of your favorites, or you could try making incense yourself, although I predict that sooner or later, you’ll end up buying and reselling, instead of spending all your marketing time making incense.
Chocolates — Never mind about them expensive truffles, although we do offer them in winter and spring shipping weather. We’ve got the ideal — a powerful 72% pure chocolate that is 100% wholesome and 100% delicious, for the price of only 25 cents per package, wholesale. You sell them for $1 apiece, you make 75 cents on every transaction, and boy, does it add up fast at this price! On the right streetcorner, you could do quite well. Forget the huge expensive chocolate samplers — too much money, too much chocolate, not good chocolate but commercial grade crap. Stay with the program, stay on target, sell these at 2 for a dollar and you’ll still make money and you’ll help the community stay in the flow!
Earrings — These are of the Czech wood variety — light, easy to make, cheap to make or wear, and they look absolutely great! The colors are wild and astonishing, and everyone will notice these earrings! They sell RETAIL for only $10, and I show you how to make them fast & easily.
Meteorites — Not very easy to obtain small ones, might be too much trouble, but these are always going to create excitement, so maybe you can work out a way to sell them at a dollar. Your cost would be around 50 cents for the stone & package.
Lucky Pennies — These are easy to find and do really well as a giveaway, with some purchase, however small it may be. I like to give them to anyone who shows any interest in the shop whatsoever — it’s a great way to get your business card into someone’s hands without pushing the card in their face.
Lucky Rodneys — These are a bit harder to sell — they retail at $10 for the capsule variety, which is what sells the best. These you don’t give away — you can’t afford it. These are meant to sell. FREE is the Lucky Penny, if you wish, and not the variety called “Double Lucky Penny”, which is always in a capsule. Figure that the capsule plus the package costs you about a dollar, so get some cash for this item. The plain old “Lucky Penny” is just a penny and the package, so the cost out of pocket is about 10 cents, including the penny. Don’t forget that you’re giving the customer cash as a gift just for coming into your shop. Reward their interest and you will be happy.
Zombie Family Hot Popcorn Topping — Our Zombie Family Popcorn Topping is what you will be offering to customers. The hot freshly popped popcorn is in half-filled paper bags inside the professional concessionaire popcorn machine. You offer a small Dixie cup filled with a bit of popcorn and a small dose of super spicy hot popcorn topping as a sample. If they like it, they can buy a bagful of hot popcorn in the paper bag. You simply tap in the hot topping on the halfway filled popcorn, then fill the bag the rest of the way and shake two or three more times on the topmost layer, and hand to the customer. The Zombie Family Authentic Cajun Hot Popcorn Topping you will sell by the table-quality shaker, at only $9.99 apiece, and you get a LOT for your money!!!
Zombie Family Hot Sauces, BBQ Sauces & Steak Sauces — These are amazing and quite delicious. They taste it, they buy it. Have samples ready for your crowd and roll them bottles out!
Handpainted Chess Sets — I do these both as a single-face and as a double-faced piece set. The singles are mounted face-up, and the doubles are mounted on a wooden base. They are painted both sides so both players can see which piece is which. The symbols are VERY easy for any chess player — they are the standard symbols, but I also make other sets with very different designs, keeping in mind that chess is a military style board game. The “castles” are actually “towers”, rolling towers for scaling walls, and the horse represents an entire mounted cavalry unit, while the bishops are the elite troops, the Queen is actually her regiment, and the same with the King. The pawns are just the cannon-fodder they always were, to be driven forward by the lances of the Royal Guard.
Backgammon & Checkers Sets — These I make with perfectly round or nearly round stones, which are uncommon, therefore the sets are not plentiful. Allow a couple of weeks for me to find the rocks before I can even get around to painting them.
By the way, all my rock paintings are signed, with the singular exception of the Flying Heart Stones, which are offered at 50 cents apiece, if you plan to resell them — the usual price will be a dollar each, but some folks will give you more, if you look sufficiently pathetic. Joke.
Those are just a few examples of the stuff you could be helping to flow out into the life of humans of planet earth.
Here are a bunch of personal notes expanded from a short stack of Post-It notes by my coin-searching pad. I hope you can use this information to gain a better understanding of the technique and liberating technology of Soul-Searching and Sweep-Searching under the 3 Aspects of Coinology which together form the triple-faced Goddess of Coinology, Solaria.
If, on the other hand, you have a favorite god-form, don’t hesitate to assume it for your searches. So, with a lot more further ado than you might like to see, here are the aforesaid previously mentioned “personal notes”, which are, as I’ve already indicated, expanded from much shorter notes written on sticky note paper and plastered by the side of my coin search table and adequate Soft-White lighting.
The biggest hurdle in coin-searching is knowing exactly what you’re looking for, and that really is hindered by studying photos. They simply don’t convey the “feel” of the coin, and once you’ve had an example of that particular error coin in your hand, you’ll not likely forget it, and you can and will SEE the error, thus giving yourself the confidence needed that you WILL RECOGNIZE that coin when it comes up in a search. No doubt about it. Continue reading →
Take an “ordinary” penny and put it into a high-energy static electrical field, encapsulate it and surround it with a permeable foamy material, and you have the start of an improvised magical weapon, which can be set up and activated with a Cloud Chamber or any imbuing device.