Challenge Coins on a Budget. (REALLY?)

We have been fielding inquiries about challenge coins, and with the current cost of brass, we have been going deaf from the sound of peoples' jaws hitting the floor. The usual question is: "What do brass challenge coins cost?" That's like asking, "How long is a piece of wire?" The more appropriate questions to ask is: "I am not a close friend of Paris Hilton, so can you help me out with challenge coins on a budget?"

Challenge coins do not HAVE to be brass (which, yes, has become very costly.) My friend Dan Arakawa, with whom we do our majority of coin and pin business, suggests zinc alloy coins.

Zinc alloy is not aluminum; it does not make a namby-pamby "tink" sound when it hits a table. As a substitue for brass, instead of using the traditional spin-casting technique with cheap lead-based metal, Dan uses a super high-grade zinc alloy material in a rubber injection mold. This technique creates the same high quality look of traditional brass coins, but the cost is lower. The only difference is a barely perceptible difference in weight between a zinc and a brass coin.

And if you want a cutout inside your design, with the zinc coin they are free; with brass the charge for a cutout is $40.

Included in pricing are two-dimensional molds for both sides, a high polish or antique finish, and FREE artwork from your sketches. (If you have artwork already, Dan is happy to create the coin from that.)

500 of the 1 1/2" diameter coins at 3 mm thickness (about an eighth of an inch) are $2.86 each (plus tax and shipping, of course.) You can add up to four inlay colors for an additional 20 cents per coin per side. Again, interior holes are free.

Car Rental - REAL TIME

Saving Money - LOTS of Fun

I am one who enjoys saving a buck or so. Just checking my reservation for plane and car at BWI in May, and I thought, "$322.89 seems like a lot of jack for a Chevy Aveo for five days." This, from Alamo from whom I have rented cars for a long time, and with whom I have some kind of discount through an affinity deal.

So I punched into CarRentals.com and entered my dates. The website came up with a LONG list of car rental outfits, including DOLLAR, which has a deal where you get to the lot and pick out the car you want, mid-size or larger. The same dates with free mileage costs $157.89. Hmmmm.

Same dates, probably the same distances, a larger car (I hope) and for half the price! SOLD!

Wherever you are going, for business or pleasure, REALLY check CarRentals.com before you make a decision.

Safety at the Track? Oh?

I am one of those who watches NASCAR racing to see crew coordination during pit stops. That is a fascinating 14 seconds!

In 1996 while announcing the airshow at what used to be NAS Miramar, I was invited to go on the JATO ride on "Fat Albert", the Blue Angels C-130 Hercules. That was five and a half minutes of superb crew coordination, and as a pilot I appreciated their work.

I watched both the Saturday and Sunday races at Talladega, Alabama, this past weekend. On Sunday with maybe a quarter mile to go to the finish, there occurred a spectacular accident which sent Carl Edwards' #99 car into the air and into the safety fence which separates spectators from the track. As the crash was replayed and replayed, pieces of automobile could plainly be seen flying into the grandstand. It wasn't until the FOX TV coverage had signed off that we heard there had been seven spectator injuries plus one other "medical issue" not directly related to parts of car striking someone.

In the airshow industry there are rules providing safety margins between spectators and performers. The most common is the 500-foot separation between performance line and the spectator line. If a pilot crosses that "deadline" he (she) risks being cited for unsafe operation and suspension of airman's privileges.

Personally, I like to be as close as I can be to the flying action, if I am not announcing the show. It's the same thing with being a railfan, a fan of railroading. Yes, I watch and photograph trains. I want to be as close to the thundering locomotives and trains as I can be, even standing at the base of the rock ballast on which tracks are set to be eye-level with the rails. I want to feel the deisel power, hear the air, smell the brakeshoe smoke. THAT is excitement. I tend to ignore the fact that a piece of ballast may be picked up by the rushing wind and hurled at me, that a piece of equipment could fall off a passing car, or that there might be an actual derailment which could render me immediately past tense. There is a danger, but I choose to ignore it.

I never ignore the danger at an airshow. I am always aware of it, but the legal 500-foot "deadline" keeps me an appreciable distance from the performers. Jets, like the F-16 or the F/A-18 E/F, are kept out at 1,500 feet when performing any aerobatics. And no aerobatic energy can be directed toward the spectators. If something falls off a plane (and historically, it has happened) it should not imperil me or any of the people watching the show.

So how come NASCAR doesn't have this kind of regulation, one that would move the cars out (or the grandstands back) to give more separation? I may have answered my own question earlier; NASCAR fans want to smell the exhaust and the rubber and feel the pounding of passing power on their chests. But, as with monster truck shows, about which I opined in an earlier BLOG entry, there really should be something other than a fence to separate spectators from a ton and half of metal flying through the air at 180 mph.

Unfortunately, reality dictates that the tracks are not going to be rebuilt to move grandstands further away, and the race course will not be shortened. New tracks, when they are built, should have more spectator safeguards included. Perhaps depressing the track an additional 10 feet below the grandstands, or raising the safety fence and making it double or triple thick might help. The problem there becomes that it will affect the spectators' views. Some design engineer, somewhere, must have an idea.

Driver Carl Edwards, who was seconds away from winning the Aaron's 499, says he saw the fence going by while he was airborne and hoped he wasn't going into the crowd. When the #99 car stopped rolling and bouncing on the track, when he was sure he would not be hit by another car, Edwards climbed out of what was left of his car and jogged across the finish line to complete the race. Later, when he learned of the injuries in the stands, he is quoted by the Associated Press as saying, "We'll race like this until we kill somebody. Then [NASCAR] will change it."

I sincerely hope something is changed before a spectator or anyone dies.

Gotta move out those Jackets

What the Slow Economy Means to You

Promotional Products is an interesting business. It's sorta like being a dairy farmer. When the cows mooo that it's milking time, ya gotta milk them. When clothing manufacturers receive their raw materials... the stuff they contracted for a while back... they have to make the clothes and move them out. This is especially true with cotton, as I have explained before. That's why we get these "flash deals" on things like T-shirts -- sales that last only a few days.

One of our jacket suppliers has made the offer of discounts approaching 70% on some excellent clothing. Embroidery is available. These are not cheesy jackets but the kind you and your club or group would be proud to wear. This is a "While Supplies Last" offer, and when someone inquires, we call and find out the supply situation.

Remember, too, that Time can be your Friend. The earlier you make your decision, the better. Just click on the pic to be able to read about it.

The Airlines are trying to Squeeze Capacity

The Wall Street Journal is a great place to discover travel hints. Scott McCartney, who writes a regular feature called "The Middle Seat", notes in the WSJ of Tuesday, April 20th, that the airlines are parking more planes in an effort to limit the number of available seats for any given flight. This, in an effort to raise prices.

Many of these airliners, some only a few hundred hours old, are being dead-stored in Marana, Arizona, which used to be a "secret" CIA base, home to Evergreen Airlines. The maintenance personnel tape over all the openings, check the fluids, roll the tires into "bags" and maintain the planes once a week. For this (the example as used in the story) an airline will pay $60,000 per MONTH to store a 747, in addition to paying the note with the bank. It's still cheaper to do this than fly a load of empty seats around the sky.

What this mean to you is that the airlines want to raise fares. If you were not aware of it, several lines DID raise fares this past week, only to lower them again when other lines didn't also raise theirs. (That's called "Who Blinked First.")

If you plan to go somewhere this spring, summer or fall, now might be a good time to firm up travel plans and buy those airline tickets. At this moment SPIRIT AIRLINES is having a ONE-DAY SALE, a real "flash sale" with fares as low as $18. Read it for yourself HERE.

If you are looking at Las Vegas, which would be REALLY PLEASED to see you, the Las Vegas Hilton has a flash sale with prices from $50 - $60 per night (including weekends) with a load of extra goodies included. The resort is on Paradise Road just across the street from the Las Vegas Country Club, and the Monorail is right out front.

And if Las Vegas IS your destination, the show at Bally's, "Jubilee!" is discounting tickets about $35. I have seen that show three times, and it is a great piece of production.

If this interests you, the specials are all from Travelzoo, and you have to do your booking through the site links here. I'll be watching for more specials, so please come back to check.

Special Promotional Products Offers

We are receiving special manufacturers' offers every day. Among them are price specials on T-shirts of five gross (720) or more. But the T-shirt specials are good for only three days. If you are going to need T-shirts in several months, you can buy them now and warehouse them until you need them printed. We can transship direct to you, and you can have a local screen printer complete the job.

Also Bic Pens has some GREAT special offers right now, but most end April 30. If they do what they usually do, they will have a new round of specials during late spring and summer.

AS was expected....

ORBITZ announced it is waiving booking fees through May for any trips booked on Orbitz.com or Cheaptickets.com. This means that they join Expedia and Priceline as major online ticket bookers in dropping their fees. This is a big deal; those fees help to pay the rent for each of these companies.

Travelocity.com had also dropped their fees until May 31. Travelocity is part of Sabre Holdings Corp. I couldn't get a straight answer on the phone, but I think that this Sabre is the reservations arm of AMR Corp, the parent of American Airlines, the booking consortium used by many major (legacy) carriers.

Anyhow, do your homework, and remember you may be able to find better fares directly from your airline of choice. And Southwest don't play dat game. You have to check Southwest yourself. And speaking of SWA, they have been offering some killer deals in conjunction with resorts in, among others, Las Vegas. Check it out.

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I have received emails noting that some of the special offers listed have expired, i.e., they are no longer valid. The reason I leave them up is to help emphasize the timeliness of the postings. I write about these offers for your benefit, and I point out that they have hard expiration dates. It's like, use them or lose them. If you are new to this BLOG, you can see that I am finding great special offers for all kinds of travel, and I am giving you the opportunity to take advantage of them.

Tough for THEM is Good for YOU

Earlier I had mentioned how airlines had cut back flights, airplanes and seats in this steep drop off of business. Even with capacity reductions, the airlines are still flying empty seats. The result is airlines are competing with each other in an ongoing series of fare sales.

In the WASHINGTON POST there is a story about how far the drop off in air travel has reached. The travel booking websites Travelocity and Expedia have eliminated airfare booking fees on any trips purchased through May 31. The belief within the industry is that these "temporary reductions" may become permanent and that Orbitz may be pressured to shed its fee system as well.

Also, there are new offers being made to guarantee a "lowest price" for a given trip. While Orbitz offers their own Price Assurance program which refunds flights if a customer finds the same flight(s) at a lower price, Travelocity has a PriceGuardian promotion (also through May 31) which promises a refund if another Travelocity user books the same trip for less. Priceline is also offering protection if a customer finds a lower fare for the same trip.

It means that making decisions early MAY mean a better price and MAY mean a price even better than THAT.

What did you USED to do, Grampa?

In my previous life, waaay previous, I was "radio personality." That always sounded better than "disk jockey." Pretty lucky to have worked with some of the true heavyweights in broadcasting. Three of my 29 years were spent with the monster of all monsters, WABC New York. That's when it was Musicradio77 WABC.

That powerhouse has been talks/news since the early 80s, but Mark Simone, who holds forth on a talk show, has a Saturday night oldies show. He brings back musical stars of the era when WABC was THE radio station everyone listened to, and he talks with them from 6 to 10 PM on Saturday nights.

Some people seem to think I'm a larger deal than I think I was, and last May Mark had me on the air for a half hour, talking about what radio used to be (when it was fun.) I'm coming baaaack. Saturday night, April 11, from 8:15 PM New York time (5:15 PM in Arizona) I'm going to be back on the air with Mark. I have no idea of what we're going to talk about, but I never knew what I was going to talk about when I went on the air, anyhow. Check out Saturday Night Oldies on April 11th.

Thanks!

More Travel Specials!

I'm beginning to think I should be in the travel business. More flash sales are on the way, some very short time.

In the world of advertising specialties, we are now receiving three specials a week with deep discounting for both polos and T-shirts. In either case, if you are going to want or need either in the next few months, now would be the best time to buy them and keep them warehoused, out of sight. We are also seeing many special offers for the old basic item, pens. And these are not just the kind you steal from the motel, either. There are some great looking and great handling pens in here, including many from Bic. If you didn't know, Bic has several upscale lines, and all the lines are having specials of their own.

As for getting away, here is a deal that may disappear before you have seen it. (What a shame!) If you had ever considered San Diego, the beachfront Hotel del Coronado is having a HALF PRICE SALE! And it's for the rest of 2009! Yes, there is a catch. You have to book it before Saturday night, April 5. Coronado is that strip of sand across the bay from San Diego, to the south of NAS North Island. It is ungodly expensive to live there, and granted the Hotel del Coronado is no Super 8. But half price? If you are considering a getaway some time in the fall, make a decision and GET ON IT.

The Westin Kierland Resort & Spa on the Phoenix/Scottsdale line, about four miles from where I am sitting at the moment, has a terrific special offer for Arizona residents. $89 room rates from Memorial Day through Labor Day if you book now. The rate for the special from last summer was $200. If you have friends or family here in the valley, send them the money and have them book it for you. This is a beautiful NEW resort, and if you are a golfer, this is as close to heaven as you can get for these bucks!

US Airways, our Home Town Airline, has even come up with a bargain fare that's hard to top. From Phoenix to Hawaii used to run about $700; right now it's $385. In speaking with one of the well-known bargain travel services, we heard that even with the cutback in flights and the parking of airplanes, there are STILL too many empty seats, and the airlines HAVE to fill them. If a trip usually costs $500 and there are three empty seats, the lines may want to sell them for $200 to keep from flying "sailboat fuel" around. The bargaining services, like Priceline and Expedia, get to broker some pretty neat deals.

Southwest Airlines has thus far had more airfare sales this year to date than they had in all of 2008. And they have brought back (again) their coast-to-coast one-way fare of $99. You will find specials for Southwest only in their website; Southwest isn't even listed on the major booking networks to avoid some pretty heavy costs. The current Southwest sales ends Monday, April 6th.

I usually have something in here about Las Vegas, so here 'tis. The Mirage (not a bad place) has a $95 per night special, including a buffet credit of $50. You have to read this one for yourself.

Get outta town!