Woof, it's been a while - good afternoon, criminals!
I'm not going to beat around the bush here. A member of my family has been declining, and we ultimately made the choice to let her go. It's been a very hard few months, where most of my "free" time - not free, but, freelance HUSTLE time - went to managing her end of life care and medical appointments.
Spending my Mondays driving out for lab tests and cleaning up accidents was briefly a time for me to re-establish a routine and start seeing a therapist. I want to thank my wholesale customers, and my charity partners I've met through this process, for keeping me afloat both emotionally and financially.
But, all things considered, things went as well as they could have, and it's time to get back to work.
Let's catch up a little.
All domestic CRITTER CRIMES orders, without CUSTOM CRIMES or CREATE A CRIMINAL tiers, are shipped. If you didn't get your pins yet, please contact me - we have about half a dozen labels printed that had some address or order issues. I'll be going back over them this week to see if it's an issue I can remedy myself.
As of now, if surveys aren't done or payment hasn't been covered, I am cancelling ditched pledges.
International shipping should start in the next week. I bunched these guys up with orders withheld for CUSTOM CRIMES hoping international shipping conditions would get better. Anyways, they didn't, so, we're doing it now before "my president is having a tantrum" fees go even higher. Make sure to double check what mess my country has set up for you in terms of tariffs and duties, and know what to expect on delivery.
We're waiting on CUSTOM CRIMES to be completed for a few orders - then, those will ship too. I'll start printing completed badges soon, and custom backers will start seeing packages. I have 12 CUSTOM CRIMES left to do. I'm, as always, chipping away at those, with a couple of 'em a week between my work shifts.
A bunch of CUSTOM CRIMES sketches are out, but I haven't heard back from their buyers. I know it's been a while, so emails might have gotten lost. If you backed for a CUSTOM CRIME badge, double check your email! Let's get your criminal cleaned up.
I don't have an exact timeline for CRITTER CRIMES finishing all shipping, but, I'd like to have everything stocked by mid November. At this point, all A-grades for pledges are set aside. If you'd like to snag a few CC or PRIDE PARROT pins for the holidays, and I haven't got off my ass and put them on the shop yet, drop me an email!
Speaking of: remaining PRIDE PARROTS will be going up for holiday sales, so we can make our final GMCH donation. We're still in the $450 ballpark after Anthrocon... can we get $500?
After CRITTER CRIMES wraps, I'm taking a brief hiatus until January. I have a CVS receipt of a waitlist for custom work, and, after the past few months, I'd like to tackle it and start paying down some medical debt.
For January, though.... unfortunately for everyone else, I am participating in Pintopia 2025 with...
I'm offering small, antiqued gold 1.5" challenge coin pins of some of HUSTLE customers' favorite parrots and wildlife.
Here's a few of the usual suspects... plus, a production sample to see exactly how these guys will look in-hand. CHALLENGE COIN CRITTERS' pins are a 1:1 color match to GOLDEN AGE PARROTS.
It had to happen eventually: the golden age animation style is back at KEN'S PIN HUSTLE. And, this time, I'm honored to announce I'll be collaborating with Henrieke Goorhuis. Henrieke is an OG of vintage animation in the furry sphere, and an artist I can't believe would even speak to me after the things I've said on the internet.
Henrieke is running THE HYENA FAMILY, a pin set honoring some of the world's most misunderstood, charismatic carnivores. Plan to buy pins from us both: if you do, you can have this hyena mega pin, plus this girthy fat cockatiel.
If you're early to the show, or you're a repeat backer, there are extra freebies to claim. Click the banners above to join the notification list for both projects now!
That's all for now. If you're not American, or you've got a criminal being convinced, watch for notifications in the next week or two.
It's been a week or so since the last update. Not a lot's changed, we are still slowly but surely getting packages out. Things are... not going fantastic, over here, so it's slow, but hopefully going to steady out soon. I don't want to jump the gun, until Tuesday, but I'm potentially about to get some really shit news. I've honestly been getting a train run on me by life this entire year, and unfortunately, it's accelerating.
You're not here for that, though, you're here for pins: domestic A packages, up to the first half of Cs, are either in the mail, or waiting to be dropped off at the PO. If you got a "shipped" notification, yes, you are packed and ready to fly.
The shit news mentioned above is going to come with a vet bill, whether it's shit or even shittier, so I want to preemptively let you guys know that I'll be running a sale on all store stock next week. We're looking at 20% off all regularly priced pins starting on Memorial Day.
If you're interested in grabbing stuff, either now or when the sale hits the store, shoot me an email and I can combine shipping with your CC order and refund you the US flat shipping cost. Deck out your back-to-school bags or lanyard with some bird drip. Or, just, get yourself a little treat and prepare for the dread.
One single lucky CUSTOM CRIME got done before my aging dog fucked my finger up last week, but, I'm hopefully going to be in a state to finally end this long-running joke and get them out soon.
Hope to talk to you guys shortly. Hopefully with the better version, of shit news, and another 5 letters of the alphabet ready for the post office.
Thanks for being here, and enjoy your long weekend.
Good evening, criminals! Hope your weekend's been off to a good start.
We've had an interesting couple days. A friend has been over splitting time between helping me grade the last two pin batches, and helping me fight my PC. The PC, until this afternoon, was winning. But, with a butter knife and two cans of Walmart compressed air, we made it.
...kind of. We still had to cannibalize the wi-fi card from the last one. I digress, the computer and thermal printer are on speaking terms again, so, we can continue!
I'm sacrificing my living room to you people again: the first 25 packages have officially been packed, sealed, and thrown twelve feet away into a USPS box for dropoff Monday.
We are officially in the fulfillment stage: hopefully, most orders will be going out within a week or two.
Do you have an Arson DRAGON pin in your pledge? Have you responded to my email yet? You get a FREE pin.
I'm going to sleep in like crazy tomorrow, but, I'm making myself do 5-10 CUSTOM CRIMES sketches before I let myself get groceries. We'll try to get cracking on these ASAP. I think at this point I have emails from everyone who bought them.
Off to get a fourth coffee and print more labels. See you guys around!
I need another coffee before I get back to cleaning my house, so, here's some photos of grading. We're about 75% done with CRITTER CRIMES grading. We have an unfortunately high flaw rate on this batch, ranging from 25-49%. Please ignore my eternally-present coffee cup. No I will not remove it before I take pictures. I need it for moral support.
Emails went out to all DRAGON pin backers asking what B-grade pin you'd like in your order. Even if I didn't respond - I got you! I'll be going through emails as I fulfill packages and making sure we get the right bonus pin in there for you.
If you backed for an Arson DRAGON and didn't get an email from me, reach out when you can. You're entitled to a free B-grade pin of choice. And trust me... there's a lot.
I don't have a new estimate for when CUSTOM CRIMES will start again, or when fulfillment will be beginning for real.
Good evening, criminals! It's almost the weekend, hang tight.
So, it wouldn't be a KEN'S PIN HUSTLE project without some deeply unfortunate, pain-in-the-ass problem.
The TL;DR...
There's a serious manufacturer error on our ARSON DRAGON pins, the current shipping climate means getting fixes is going to be damn near impossible, and I am shipping them as-is and comping backers with a free pin.
During grading, I noticed that there was an out-of-place horizontal line all across the lower half of the dragon pin's artwork. This is, as we can see in campaign art and stickers, not supposed to be there.
So, I downed a couple coffees and went digging. The long and short of it, is that, proofs on my end don't have this, and it was a serious vectoring error on my factory's side. I want to apologize for this, and I want to clarify, this is not from any sort of AI "misstep" creating artworks - it's probably a vector line that wasn't trimmed right.
Mold making and pin manufacturing means this is going to be a difficult, expensive fix, and one I may not reasonably be able to ask for. And, as we all know, with de minimis being removed, and the tariff reprieve expiring, it could be an equally-messy situation to get any replacement pins into the country.
Dragons were a CREATE A CRIMINAL tier, so after getting some input from friends, the first place I went was to their sponsor. He wasn't too bothered by the defect, and doesn't think it's worth remaking them.
We are going to ship ARSON DRAGON pins as-is to backers. If you backed for a dragon, you are entitled to a FREE b-grade pin of choice on top of your fiery little fuckup.
Grading and packing is going to continue, and I'm going to take my lunch break and reach out to all dragon-purchasing pledges this weekend. My CRIMES b-grades are $8-10 depending on their quality, and, silver lining, this batch of pins seems to have very very minor defects for b's.
I may or may not hit mold costs for a revised, line-free dragon once the economy picks up its pieces, everything is up in the air right now. I'm sorry about this.
Fulfillment is continuing behind the scenes. If you're a dragon backer, expect an email from me soon.
