The time is finally here to get starting planning the 2018 Steem Silver Round! I know there's been lots of questions and excitement out all this project and we once again want to have maximum community involvement.

Background

I'll start with a quick background to get everyone up to speed. Last year in probably around late July or August the idea for a 1oz fine silver steem round(coin) was proposed by @sevinwilson, he was looking for interest, help and guidance for the project. We agreed to help him with the project as we have a small private mint and online bullion shop. We were able to help guide the design process, allow ordering through our website and it really streamlined the process. A design contest was hosted and the amazing design used was created by a community member @bearone and voting by everyone here on steemit. The rounds were created and distributed within around 6-8weeks and the maximum mintage of 1500 was sold out within 2 weeks, they now are hard to find and have a high premium on the secondary market.

The design for the 2017 Round was titled "community" and I'll repost the designers interpretation here;

For me Steemit is all about Community. Whether it's the Steemit community as a whole or the many groups/communities that are forming within Steemit, or what Steemit can do for the World Wide community - When I think of Steemit I think of Community in all those terms and more.

I wanted to represent "community" with the fish swimming together and community written in Latin, French, English and Tagalog (Filipino).

In this design you can see the growth progression from Minnow to Dolphin to Whale. I also like how the small fish are swimming with the big fish. It's a bit more of an accurate representation of the Steemit Eco-System.

I heard sea/marine life references in Steemit will eventually disappear, I'm not sure if that is true, but I felt if it was (or even if it wasn't), it's important to mark this moment in our Steemit history where we refer to ourselves as Minnows, Dolphins and Whales.

Of course there were a few bumps, but we've been actively ironing them all out to be able to proceed with this project. We have successfully integrated a 'pay with steem' feature on our online store and it's working perfectly and do also accept BTC. We would love to offer a full line of crypto options, but have been unable to ingrate other payment gateways with our Shopify store and it would require some manual programming (PS anyone have any experience with this).

So now it's time to start planning the 2018 Round

We're not yet at the design competition phase, but it's time to get you thinking hats on for sure. We have a few preliminary questions to answer and what to make sure we have maximum involvement for the community for this years project.

Die Details

Last year we were restricted to a 2d Die, but this year after the projects success we can certainly use a 3d die if the art requires it. This doesn't mean that art needs to created in a 3d way and in fact there's no real benefit to this. The dies are actually created by hand when a sculptor take the art and carves it into a plaster resin, thus creating the 3d effects and contours. I am going to make a post as well in the next few days explaining the process that goes into coin die creation so please watch close.

We are planning to continue using the original obverse die for the annual release, so this is the one in the one above with the steem logo. This will give the releases some consistency and make them fit better as a set. Once again this is a steem round and not a steemit round, hence the steem logo. The steemit logo is not for public and commercial recreation. (or course in any official storefront like @thesteemitshop is every interested in a project of there own it can be entertained)

Finish Details

We need to decide on a finish type for this years project. The first years release was a brilliant Uncirculated (BU) finish. This means it has the same texture through all fields, while a proof finish would have a highly polished mirrored surface. The price for Proof rounds is a few dollars higher/ coin (approx $5/round), so our preference is the keep this project as BU finish again. We would continue with edge numbering, capsules and COA's we feel this is important to keep the collector appeal of the round and keep the sets consistent.

There is the option to also release a limited run of rounds in a proof finish, but this also depend if the art is amendable to that and that is something we would need to establish when the art is created. If the art doesn't have a flat surface or background surface then proof finishes are not really an option. A proof die is just the BU die that is specially treated and polished. So once the die has been used for the BU run it can then be specially treated for use on a proof round. There is also an option to re-release the 2017 at the same time in a very small proof run, but of course we would want input from everyone. In our minds the proof run would be very small and likely limited to 1-2/customer, thus a run of 100-500Max. This is an idea we wanted to float now since it would affect the art submissions. The proof rounds would be released with a price point around $5 higher than the BU.

Here is an example of a proof finish round compared to a BU finish round. (BU-left/Proof-Right)

Mintage

This is also something we are hoping to get feedback on. We do plan to keep it a limited mintage project, but just how limited is the question. Once again we hope to have everyone's input to make the decision, we want it to be a community project. We feel we will need to increase the mintage as demand was way higher than expected and they sold out within 2 weeks. We are leaning towards the range of 2500-5000, and likely towards the higher end, but really want to know what everyone thinks. Of course the higher amount would be released in 500-1000 unit batches and may be available to purchase over a few months, we would expect the 2500 number would likely experiences a very quick sell out once again.

The other questions about mintage is if we should impose a maximum amount per purchase and if this is required. After seeing the secondary market price from the first release the question is will someone try to corner the market and buy half the mintage. It's highly unlikely but something we want to be cautious of. We did have multiple orders in the 120-200 unit range and think that possibly setting a cap around 200-250 would be reasonable if everyone agrees with this.

Design details/theme

This is another big question; are we creating another 'community' round with a community related design or theme, rr are we just creating a steem round? Thus can the reverse design can be absolutely anything or do we want to offer any guidance to the potential designers.

We are hoping to know what people want to see so we can take this into account when running the design contest.

Other details

We are expecting the price point to be very similar to last year, spot is currently a bit higher, but we are committed to keeping the price point down for everyone. This is a break even project for us and just the opportunity to be a be a part of such an exciting project is reward enough for us. In light of that we are committing the SBD earned from any posts related to this project to help fund the project. We have also started an account called @steemsilverround where the funds will be held and any donation that others want to send would be greatly appreciated. We also encourage others to repost and promote this project and feel free to also commit any post payouts that can be sent to @steemsilverround

We will likely be hosting a presale at some point, but don't want to hold funds for too long this time around. If we do end up proceeding with a 3d design the timeline will likely be around 3 months since there are only a couple sculptors worldwide that create plaster molds for coin dies. So the presale would only likely occurring 2-4 weeks in advance of the release. So please don't start sending any money or asking about commuting to any numbers or making any prepayments at this time.

Please leave any feedback and discussion about any of the questions above, if there is a clear preference from the community in the comment we will proceed with the consensus. Otherwise we may open the decisions to voting in future posts.

Hopefully that answers any questions, but if not feel free to ask. There will likely be other related posts from @sevinwilson and myself over the next few days and weeks so please watch close.