• Standard: Very small things are permissible (such as dust), but generally these are very solid pins without large errors. You will not see underfills, or scratches larger than 3mm in this category. 
• Standard-LOW: Light errors or bubbling (not in the face area) may be present, but the errors in this case are not noticeable without a bright light. 
• Secondary-Alpha: Small underfills, issues with the screens, and slightly more obvious scratches/bubbling can be present, and some small breaks in metal. No missing enamel or tarnishing or excessive metal breaks. Texture warping is permissible, if small.
• Secondary-Beta: Larger underfills (not large sections) and visible metal breaks are allowed, though not common. Also can include: Texture warping, enamel miscoloring, tarnish, issues impacting facial areas, very VERY small missing enamel, frayed screens, misprinting, etc.
• Anything more heinous than that, or a multitude of the listed potential errors in “Secondary-Beta”: c-grade bins they go!

• Seconds are being sold at shows; thus, a few of the counts listed are short because (thank god) they have sold to some degree and helped recoup costs. Otherwise, we honestly couldn’t have afforded the remakes this campaign has incurred. We’re still sadly not close to breaking even yet, but it's now less daunting than the original figures we were staring at.
  
  
• Basil, Nightshade and Moss will each have 15 standard pins available since they had a high initial standard rate and no remakes; all seconds have been consumed by conventions or are being held for them. For people on the hunt for a singular shipment, this is for you.
  
  
• These are not promises on future stock. Because of insurance on packages and anticipated shipments, we are still holding some standards/standard-lows just in case. They MAY be released at a later date if they’re not needed, I may cycle them into con-stock, or they may be reserved for other things. As of yet, I don’t know the answer. In the “Highest Quality” Column, I tried to place the highest quality I knew, for certain, would eventually be available, assuming no restocks would exist in the future and insurance/buffer pins disappeared and were not added to stock.

• In the Standard Column: “Yes” means there absolutely will be standards. “S-Low” means that there likely will not be near-perfect standards, but “Standard-Low” pins will be available; Alpha means that “Secondary-Alpha” (very good seconds pins) will be available, but nothing in the Standard ranges. 
• In the “Seconds #” Column: Red means that under 10 exist. Orange is under 20. Green has more than 20.

For any orders placed, I will likely get to them after I return from my next convention mid-month. If you have any shipping-combination requests, I’m happy to do so, just email in the request and I’ll email you a confirm as applicable.

Some photos of some of the crazy packing for ... literally one of every pin lol:

• We are just over 80% complete now with packages! The remaining <20% is a mix of both big and small packages, and, in the last month, we’ve done a fair bit of pre-sorting to make packaging easier where almost all packing slips have pins pre-allocated. With grading largely finished outside of an oddball smattering, the largest part of the time commitment is currently just unbacking pins, assembling them on cards, packing them and getting them secured.
  
  
• We did not manage to work out a resolution with the original manufacturer for Venetia’s pins, so we’re basically out the cost of all of those defective pins. Obviously none of these pins are ones we’ll use for fulfillment, and I had them remade on my dime while trying to recoup funds at shows and small seconds sales. The whole thing was and is an unfortunate situation; we have however made some of that money back through the last small seconds sale and convention seconds being sold.
  
  
• The initial plans for Jess to come up mentioned in the last update fell through due to life hectic-ness, so my sister and I have had more sporadic packing days when time has allowed. As such, we didn’t have a drop of standards quite yet.
  
  
• As mentioned in previous updates, once you get a tracking label, that means the package is fully prepared and about to be dropped off. 

• If you’re international and get a label, that means it is going out within the next shipment cycle (usually within a week). Please watch customs! Domestics are dropped off within 1-2 days after label generation.
  
  
• All domestic packages have automatic insurance; all packages that requested additional insurance on top of that had insurance added in addition (and/or were placed on Priority packages instead). If you have an issue with a package, please make sure to contact me within enough time to process claims.
  
  
• Turn in your gold stamps y’all!
  
  
• If you have an address change and have not gotten a label, you're welcome to email in. If I can change it, I will - [email protected].

• Right now, we stand at about 63% done with packages. We've started hitting some of the massive packages; we timed one of the bigger packages and assembling it (not counting grading time) took about 29 minutes just to punch the pins into cards, sleeve them, get them into the assembled box, write up the clearances and tape/label the box. As such, we slowed down a fair bit from the initial while starting to handle these. (It's just Mel and her sis working on these, currently.)
• We are dancing timewise a bit between spring cons - each show itself is about a week since there's setup and travel, plus any time needed to prep for the show itself. In the last 5.5 weeks since the last update, there were two shows, so the remaining 2.5ish weeks of time we've done as much as we could (alongside finishing other shop tasks like pin club, braving business tax season, working with manufs for other ongoing designs - always a lot going on).
• Almost all of the truly terrible pins have been graded; what remains are the better (and/or remake) ones that were delayed while wading through the (literal) thousands of bad pins. This is concurrent with packing.
• We're still waiting on the Prince/King Lich remakes that were mentioned in the last update, but anything else outstanding has arrived with us. We're hoping that this is the last of the remakes we need.

• Jess is scheduled to come up for a last day or two of fulfilment toward the end of the month, and Mel is hoping to have around 80% done before that happens. There are still a lot of big packages hanging out, so we're wanting to get those out the door if possible, but that may make it seem slower progress wise while we handle those. 
• The original anticipated date for the standards drop may be toward the end of the month now coinciding with Jess coming up. We'll follow up again before it happens via an update (so if Mel doesn't update, it hasn't happened yet).
• Because of how we're going through items, we cannot tell you where you fall in the lineup. Grading fatigue is a real thing (you stop seeing errors if you grade too long, and also give yourself bad headaches pretty easily if you're not careful), so Mel is grading in sections then packaging. We're doing our best to start as many packages as space allows so not all big packages are at the end.  

• If you have an address change and have not gotten a label, you're welcome to email in. If Mel can change it, she will - [email protected].

Hey everyone! We apologize for almost updating a bit too much now, but Mel and Jess at the Alchemy HQ have been doing fulfillment for the last 3 days fairly nonstop, as per the previous schedule (brought to you by Dunkin' Donuts and a local tea shop)! We thankfully had some family help (shoutout to Mel's sister and mom), so with exactly 120 cumulative fulfilment hours over the weekend (plus hundreds of grading hours that is a horrific fever dream of endless b grades), we're happy to announce the first packages have been mailed! :D

We worked through about 180 packages (about 40%), and we may do a few more before needing to pause today. If you have a label, it should be dropped off already, or will be tonight (last of the domestics, international).

A small little feature is the gold seals! These are random!! If you find a full gold wax seal in your pack, feel free to email us with a photo of your packing slip + your seal together, and you'll be eligible for a free seconds pin from this campaign of your choice.

Shipments will resume on return for the remaining 60% as Jess is returning to her place today, and Mel is pivoting into con prep. We're still awaiting some small remakes so when Mel is back, Mel & her sister will be handling everything up to what's impacted by those holds, but we're hoping we get those replacements within the late month. This mainly concerns a handful with Prince/King Lich (same manufacturer that caused the initial nightmare, same issues). (If you have these either of these two pins and don't get a label today and wish to swap to a different pin, feel free to message and I (Mel) can see if we have standards of other pins we can ship you.) - NOTE: We will announce when shipments are complete. Our target for finishing everything in between our convention schedule is roughly mid-April, with a remaining stock drop around then. 

Shipping reminders & notes:

If there’s something wrong with your order, you have 30 days from delivery to contact us. If it gets lost/misdelivered/destroyed by the post demons, please follow the notes below, but contact us ASAP! Please allow for 1 week for domestic mailings (contact with issues no later than 30 days - all domestics are insured at a baseline); please allow 20 days for insured international mailings (contact for issues no later than 60 days).

One main change is that Mel did end up needing to take over the United Kingdom orders that Venetia initially had. Because of the huge issues with the manufacturer, what was intended initially on being a split wasn't feasible to split anymore since pins were rerouted to the States due to error rates. This ended up being more expensive per package for us, but still less than shipping everything over to the UK then re-shipping it out. We covered this price change internally.

Other insurance related notes:

All domestic packages had a baseline insurance of $50; and if you bought additional insurance I bumped it up according to the your package price. 

International packages by default do not have insurance (are tracked to border); insurance was added on request, but I did bump packages up to insured when the difference was minimal

Packages with more than 18 pins were all insured by default. 

If insured, we can handle claims within the window above! USPS, UPS and DHL are all very strict about these deadlines! 

Other notes/clarifications:

Between everything, we are shipping several thousand pins with this campaign, and as such (especially with all the ridiculous error rates), there are multiple people helping with grading. We did our best to equalize the grading scale off of Mel's normal grading; we often rechecked pins more than once, but slip ups do happen. If something very obvious was missed, please just shoot us a message and we'll see what we can do. We are releasing the BEST of the pins we have available, no exceptions.

For the freebie D20, we did end up noting that it had a fair amount of oxidation that had occurred in the silver plating, which isn't an uncommon flaw in silver plated pins but also is something we'd normally grade down for. Due to the nature of the pin (as a free element) and the general severity (not awful), we graded specifically for scratches and underfills and really bad oxidation, but otherwise passed them.

Otherwise, things have been going fairly well in the grading and fulfilling department, and we're excited to see all of these little packages come together. A lot of the fun is having a "package" experience, so we hope you enjoy how we put things together!!

Finally - have some pictures of a cat being a supervisor while we were headed to drop things off:

With many kittens and too few braincells,
Mel, Jess (& the cheerleading Venetia)