FIXED – USPS Update Causing Problems

UPDATE (Jan 6, 2011 1:08am): I have made corrections at this point and our site again appears to be speaking to the Post Office server fine. This means it can now get rates for shipping when placing orders. If anyone experiences problems ordering, please let us know and I will look into it as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience and thank you to those of you that emailed us to let us know there was a problem!

(Original posting on this follows)

In an excellent start to the New Year, our shopping cart is currently not working. On January 3rd the US Postal Service updated its shipping API and when it did it broke multiple small merchant’s shopping carts. Unfortunately, no one at the USPS felt it necessary to tell merchants that it was updating anything, so we discovered this when a few of our customers were nice enough to email us and we started looking around at message boards online. Right now, I am working to get the corrections in place that will allow our site to connect to the Post Office server again. I’m not happy with this, but overall the USPS has always offered good service to us and I think as a whole they do a great job. I just wish this particular department of the USPS would invest a bit more in communicating with its customers so we could prepare for these changes before they happen.

I hope to have the fix in place and tested very soon. I will update this message when I have that complete. Until then, if you have an eBay account we do have our store there as well. Please accept our apologies for this inconvenience. Steve @ g2ch

Happy Holidays to All!

We will be taking a couple of well deserved days off, back in business as usual on Monday.

Along with the announcement, I want to take a moment to thank each of you for making our little family business a success. We’ve been selling online since the year 2000. We started out off and on through eBay long ago. Then in 2003 we went full time and haven’t slowed down since. At this point, we’ve had the opportunity to serve and interact with many people all around the world and the experience and relationships we have built have been incredibly rewarding. Thank you for your vote of confidence in our business, your trust in us to take care of our customers, the connections to your lives that you share with us, and everything else too numerous to name. It is an honor and a pleasure to serve you all. Thank you.

We wish you all the best for the holidays and your preparations for the New Year!

Just a Few Days Left

We are down to the wire. According to the US Post Office the last safe day to ship (inside the United States) with any chance of receiving the package by Christmas for First Class Mail is the 20th, for Priority Mail it is the 21st, and for Express it is the 22nd. If you need an express shipment, please contact us to arrange this.

We’ll be moving continuously for the next few days packing and shipping. Our shipping is dropped daily at the Post Office by 5:00 pm EST. Getting the packages to the local Post Office by that time ensures that they go on the next truck to the sort facility outside Columbus (and start moving as quickly as possible). Anything that comes in by 3:00 pm EST will go out same day. After that, it gets harder to guarantee but we’ll try as long as we have a shot of being there before that truck arrives. Note that this routine shipping time only applies to First Class and Priority Mail. Express is a whole different game and that is why we request contact on that.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Holiday Ordering Dates

Thanksgiving is over and it is just 30 days to Christmas as I write this.

At this time of year a question we hear a lot is one of the variations of, “By what date do I need to place an order and still have a chance of receiving it by Christmas?” A link that comes in real handy for us is the USPS’s Holiday Shipping Cut Off Dates. In our experience these dates should not be taken as an absolute guarantee that your package will arrive in time for Christmas (unless using Express Mail), but they are useful for planning. And to give credit where it is due, the USPS generally does well with delivering on schedule.

For international customers it is important to remember that the customs department in your home country will definitely factor in some more time as the package clears and is then passed on to your local post office for delivery.

I hope some of you find this useful information as you are planning your online orders. Best wishes to all for the next few weeks of holiday rush. May you find everything you need for the holidays with a minimum of effort! Steve @ g2ch

Wargame Sale (Buy one, get 20% off of second)

On a complete whim we have decided to run a wargame sale. It works like this: Order one game from the wargames category at full price and get a second wargame at 20% off when you order at the same time. The way the software is set up the discount will calculate off of the least expensive game and will not show until you reach the confirmation page of your order. I’m not sure how long we will keep this running. It just feels like it is time to reduce some inventory to make room for new items. This sale only applies to the website.

Post Origins Quick Update

Back from Origins with new products and a restock of several items.

I’ve just posted the first of several new items we picked up at the show. We finally found a series of chainmail dice bags that we felt measured up to the kind of quality we wanted to see in products we carry. We even had the opportunity to meet with Khat Jackson (the artisan) and discuss the way he makes his bags (fascinating to hear about how mail is made). The bags were a beautiful find and I am very pleased to be adding Khat’s work to our store.

Over the next few days (with some time out for family on the Fourth of course), we’ll be posting more mail bags and several other items we picked up as well. For now, take a look at the large coif pattern mail bag. Expect more soon. Steve @ g2ch

(Edit) I set up a Facebook page for us. Several long term great customers have asked about this so I decided it was time. I’m not sure what exactly I’ll put there, but it seems a much easier thing to quickly update than the blog site (never really been much of a blog anyway). I’ll keep the blog because it makes a nice store announcement point, but I like the Facebook format. Check us out here and follow us on Facebook.

Origins – 35 Years

Origins Game Fair is coming soon. If you love games and have some vacation time, Origins in Columbus, Ohio is the place to be between June 23rd and June 27th. I always have a great time here looking at the new games and also digging around in the used dealers booths for older titles I have always meant to buy. I also have enjoyed attending many of the seminars offered each year, especially the War College seminars. And of course, there is a little bit of gaming going on too. : )

If you have the time and extra cash, I would highly recommend it. Check out the Origins website for more information. Steve @ g2ch

Update – Classic RPG Items Posted on eBay

We’ve been meaning to get around to this since before Christmas and then things got busier than expected. So finally, we’ve begun posting out some items on eBay, mostly old school titles from gamer collections. All are firmly in the used category and all show definite signs of wear. The short of it is that these are playable items, but not collectible. Check out the link below if you are interested (each link will open in new window).

Star Wars RPG 2nd Edition and 12 Supplements (West End Games) SOLD

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG + 5 related titles (Palladium Books) SOLD

Heroes Unlimited and Villains Unlimited (Palladium Books) SOLD

Beyond the Supernatural and Nightbane RPG (Palladium Books) SOLD

Four Deadlands Dime Novels (Pinnacle Entertainment)

Three D&D Spelljammer Boxed Sets (TSR)

Two Planescape Boxed Sets and 6 Expansion Books (TSR) SOLD

Greyhawk Adventures Wars Boxed Set (Unpunched) (TSR) SOLD

D&D Expert Rules Set (blue box) (TSR) SOLD

Macross II RPG (Palladium Books) SOLD

D&D Basic Rules Book (Erol Otus cover 1981) (TSR) SOLD

3 to Thanksgiving – 32 to Christmas

Am I the only one who thinks this year has gone fast? It seems like it was just Halloween and now suddenly we are just 3 days until Thanksgiving as I post this. And as I noted in the title that puts us only 32 days from Christmas. That’s kind of mind blowing (for me anyway).

We’ve been working on updating and posting a few new things both here and on eBay (mostly in the board / tabletop games category). And I’ve been on a personal mission to dig through a back stock of used items and figure out what to post out to auction on eBay. So far I’ve found a nice collection of West End Game’s Star Wars, TSR’s Planescape, an old copy of Chaosium’s Thieves’ World Boxed Set, several old Palladium Book’s titles, and a stack of TSR’s Spelljamer boxed sets to name a few. All of these are things that we either bought as pieces when found or bought as collections from gamers getting rid of older items. I should be posting these out within the next few days to auctions or to our store on eBay if anyone is interested. I’ll update with links here when these get posted.

In other news, I added a new feature to the product pages that allows people to post items to their Facebook, Delicious, Digg, Twitter, etc. I’ve tested it, but if it gives any problems to anyone let me know and I can go back in and take a look at my code to make sure I did not miss anything.

To all of you who celebrate the holiday, hope you have a great Thanksgiving!

- Steve @ g2ch

See the update to this post here.

Happy Halloween

Seems like an appropriate time to point out the various shades of orange and black RPG dice that we stock. Picture is of my pumpkin this year (edited for effect of course). If you’re interested in seeing the mentioned dice, click one of the previous underlined colors. Or if you would prefer one list containing both colors just click the pumpkin pic. Steve @ g2ch