The Monster Raffle works great as it is. Individual community members pledge prizes to donate and then take responsibility for shipping those prizes around the world, wherever they are won. As a Concept this is not something that I think we want to change, however in a community where one size doesn’t always fit all I think we could benefit from having an alternative way too. Thus I want to float the idea of introducing Prize Hubs to the next Monster Raffle.
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The basic concept is that we have a reputable community member who volunteers (and is endorsed by the community) to put together a Prize Pack on behalf of 1 or more other members who want to contribute together. Those members can donate to the Prize Hub directly in the form of Silver or Crypto or indeed any form of value that is Previously Agreed and Accepted by the organiser of the Prize Hub. The Prize Hub organiser collects those donations and contributions and bundles them together to assemble a Prize Pack of Precious Metals that then goes into the Monster Raffle as a single big prize item.
I believe that this concept can effectively lower the barrier to entry for newer members and smaller stackers who might be getting involved in their first Monster Raffle and want to contribute. It also could be a good option for members who live in countries where there are stricter restrictions with customs, have reliability issues with postal services or have to deal with excessive postage expenses.
I acknowledge that these are not issues for most of our established North American stackers, who I hope will still be involved with the Monster Raffle in the awesome way that they have in the past. This idea is not an attempt to change that AT ALL. It’s about giving more people the opportunity to get involved and broaden our participation and accessibility of the Monster Raffle for stackers more globally.
Possibly the idea will flop, and as a trial I’d be super happy to see just 1 or 2 Prize Hubs given a try in the next Monster Raffle just to see how the idea goes. I have been talking with one of our members about putting together a Prize Hub for Europe, but if anyone wants to get involved and volunteer to set up a Prize Hub for their own region, or is interested in contributing directly to a Prize Hub then please reach out to me on Discord.
On a more personal level I think there could also be a tangible benefit for our community having Regional Stacker Hubs for our members to build relationships and collaborate more locally. We do already have a few sporadic, ad-hoc real-world meetups between members which is always good to see. If our members want to take some pride in their region and represent their part of the world while building some friendships locally then I think that could also be a really good thing for SGS in the long run.
What do our members think? Is a Prize Hub idea likely to work? Do you see any issues? Would you be interested in setting up a Prize Hub for your region, or even contributing to one?
Sounds like a good idea to me - a bit more risk trusting a few people but if you know them fairly well then it’s probably not a big risk 👍🏻
Yes, I think that's why its important that the hub organizers are senior community members and need to be endorsed by the community at large. I don't think it'll be a problem because SGS is built on trust and reputation and the Monster Raffle in particular has always relied on people doing the right thing.
Can you elaborate on the prize hubs? Let's say there are 5 donors in Canada, 8 in the States, 9 in Europe, and a very important 1 in Australia. I am a hub in the US, what's my job before the raffle and after the raffle?
Add anything to this that makes sense, I am just having trouble visualizing this at the moment.
Ok, let me try to do a hypothetical situation.
You are a Hub, lets call it West Coast US Hub. You have a few stackers not that far from you who want to contribute. One mails you a silver blob, 2 more you are seeing on Friday for beers and are giving you a couple of ounces in person, another is sending you some HBD and one more has agreed with you that they can send you a paypal or direct money transfer of US Dollars.
You convert the HBD to USD, put some aside to pay for postage (with tracking/insurance), add the rest to the paypal transfer and go buy a couple extra ounces of silver, stick that silver with the rest you've been given and that then becomes your Hubs prize which goes into the MR as one prize.
Somebody wins your hubs prize and so you have to post it out. Turns out postage was cheaper than you budgeted so you spend the extra postage money on some little sweeteners and add it to the package. You have all the records and receipts so you can be fully transparent on the finances and the tracking/insurance protects you from liability if the thing goes missing.
Does that make sense?
I like the idea! How many people get to brag they participated in an international silver raffle? Not many! I think it is also another fun way of bringing the SGS community together.
I'm willing to try anything you or anyone else in the community thinks will encourage more people to participate, and I'll help with that in any way I can. 🙂
Great idea it's already happened before less officially, The Hive Bullion Exchange is so down to facilitate this especially for Canadian and American members 💪 !BBH
Whether it be Hubs or something else, I'm in for helping out our Stacker community.
Seems pretty reasonable if you can get enough people who are willing to work together on it. This is a pretty decent community though, so that shouldn't be hard!
Let's go!
Wait wait... Is there a monster Raffle coming up?
If people can’t afford a prize on their own it’s a nice idea.