Brian seemed to be an idealist..BUT so often falls short of his ideals.I believe in the ideology.Have bought the Andean Cats and extolled it's many virtues to those who will listen. I draw the line at Elitism ,though. Who gives a toss what the Royalty get? Like ,they need the boon Brian seems to be losing his own plot ..Still in love with the cat though
"Royal" silver i guess is what they're getting at. I think there might be a cultural South American pride thing in it too, things are a little different in those parts. I just like the design, be keen to see one. I mean if you wanna get into ideology behind silver bullion then where does one start with the ASE? It represents everything that is broken with the Western world.
Good points. On topic.The new Macaw design looks like my sort of design...but ,then I am biased toward animal images,anyway If you want to look at bullion as a country's "flagship",then ASE's could be seen as the symbol of a decadent empire . My point was that Royal Silver seem to be BIG at the front end (promotion) and small at the back(delivering on promises) I have said it before..will never ,ever buy direct from them...prefer to take my chances on the secondary market. I am still helping to keep the wheels turning
I would be interested to hear what they have to say regarding many of the points raised both here and in comments on their youtube channel.
Anyone else read their Royal Silver Club brochure? They have a selected list of comments from this forum in there. Also, what do you guys think about the Royal Silver Club? Anyone thinking of "investing" in it?
I'm thinking there's a lack of 'good things' to put in there so they put it in? Doesn't look good at all for a company to be publishing stuff like a sale LOL.
Thanks for the heads up, didn't even know my feedback from way back when was being used in this manner, not surprising though. I actually like Brian & the idea behind what he's doing. It's the performance aspect of his business that's lacking (doesn't meet his high ideals or production / delivery schedules) from personal experience. Initially i wrote it off like many others as a business entering into a new field & a learning phase. My previous post on this thread was more a personal observation that those lessons haven't seemed to have been taken on board or implemented fully. I did have high hopes for Brian, his business & goals to be fully achieved particularly with the learning tool of past mistakes being used as a guild. I like the look of this new round, i think it's either the strike or artwork is better done or suited for a round. The cats were my first silver purchase ever (bought them more for the fact of being the worlds first .99999, first mintage etc something special not the actual cat). My tastes & experience has continued too grow since then. For the time being i still like the look of my Panda's the most from all the different rounds I've viewed & or owned but that's just my personal taste.
That's... interesting that comments were lifted from this forum without attribution, or contacting myself or any of the users asking for permission, for another company's commercial use.
if you cannot get this one to work which I couldn't " NVM; Found it here (.PDF download)" it is at the end of this one http://www.royalsilver.com/club/Royal-Silver-Club-brochure.pdf
the comments made on this forum regarding their patented product are freely available using google so is there any serious copyright issues with quoting them?
It is true they are in the public domain, however acknowledging sources is, if nothing else a courtesy. Even if things are in the public domain it is widely accepted that the source is quoted. We do it here, that is we acknowledge where we get our material from, if a direct link is not provided.
"Freely available using Google" has zero bearing on potential copyright issues - no-one posting on this forum has consented to their words being used for commercial promotion of another company's product - the posts made on this forum have been taken and used as product endorsement without permission of either the forum or the posters in question. I certainly wasn't approached about the use of the posts, and if I had been, had I been amenable to it, attribution to the forum would have been requested, and the requester would have been directed to contact the individual users in turn for express permission for their posts to be used. Instead the posts have been taken in their entirety, with no mention of the forum from which they were lifted, and apparently without seeking permission from the individual posters. Poor form Royal Silver :/
Actually I'd just prefer they followed up with the users in question and updated the PDF accordingly.
Friends: The brochure about the Royal Silver Club that used the positive comments from Silver Stackers about our product was initially written for our shareholders. It was a private communication, explaining the concept of the Club. We showed this to our shareholders in private on last Thursday, July 7. It was not meant to stay up on the website any longer than it took for our shareholders to look at it. I just now erased the comments and posted the revised brochure, now that we are going to promote the Royal Silver Club to the public. Please understand that many of our shareholders do not follow silver forums, and I thought they might like to know that our rounds are becoming known. Please don't fault me for only showing the positive comments, I dislike the negative comments--who wouldn't? I don't mind constructive criticism, but sometimes the negative postings against me personally and against Royal Silver reflect points of view taken to extremes. The Andean Cats were our first design. We've learned much about coin esthetics since then. The Macaws should quiet our critics. We also have other private label coins in the works, coins that you will never know we made, except for the fact they will be 5x9 pure--our trademark. As for price, we are searching for our niche. We obviously do not depend on retail sales for a living. We sell most of our product to an Asian wholesaler. To protect their markets we keep our online price high. But it is a big world, folks. What seems high in one part of the world seems reasonable in another. We offer the public a chance for wholesale pricing through the Royal Silver Club. Over the last two days, more than a few have accepted our offer. And time.... All of you will agree with me that time changes all points of view. (I remember being criticized for selling our rounds for $21.) Time changes everything, you will agree. What seems expensive today might in hindsight to have been a bargain. There is an artist in Bolivia named Mamami Mamani. Fifteen years ago you could have bought his works for less than $100--just enough to cover his cost of oil and canvas. Today you pay many thousands for an important piece. Time changes all perspectives. Royal Silver also struggles with production. We are a small company which has set an almost surreal standard. We re-refine silver over and over to remove infinitesimal amounts of impurity. I've sacked lab techs for mistakes in Atomic Absorption readings that would be super fine silver by anybody else's standards. The dictionary defines infinitesimal as "an indefinitely small quantity--a value approaching zero." We worry about silver that is so fine that it only has 10 parts of impurity in 1,000,000 parts of silver. This is obsession taken to an extreme. But that is the standard I set. No wonder no other mint even comes close to this level of purity--they couldn't afford it. So price is relative. And time will tell if our product will hold its status as a collectable, high re-sale premium round. Finally, about the Macaw video on You Tube. Sure I make mistakes--more so than most, because I am pushing the horizon on what I want our company to accomplish. I should not have mentioned the royal family who will receive the first Macaws--I know--but please do not look at this from your Western, First World, or ex-colonial perspective. Our market is in Asia right now. There are countries where royal families are actually humble people, loved by their populace, and revered as symbols of a by-gone age--a sort of mystic time, long removed from modern reality, but remembered in their national psyche. I cannot say more, but please allow us our own human foibles. Because you cannot imagine the pride that swells up in the hearts of our workers when they realize that their long hours late at night are to produce a thing of beauty that will be given to a "princess." Our coin minters are poor men of great spirit, living in conditions you cannot understand or appreciate--you who live in the First World--who live in rich countries. (When I say Royal Silver grew from humble beginnings, you would never guess how humble.) Our men go home to their homes in the dusty hills lit with a single bulb and tell their children with pride that now they work with don Brian and he has taught them how to make silver coins so beautiful they are given as gifts to princesses, and you can imagine their daughters gazing up at their fathers with a sense of wonder, as if hearing a fairy tale. Please allow us to give them that, without criticizing us, because if our distributor pulls it off, it will be a private source of pride for all of us who labor here in Bolivia making these coins. We live in a dusty town in a country lost in time--so the concept that our coins will be presented to a person called a princess in an exotic country far away that we only know of from pictures, that concept lifts our morale. Please allow us that small human weakness known as a sense of pride. I apologize, if any of you were offended. Thank you. Regards Brian McConnell
