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I ship outside of the US frequently, and everything is bad, unfortunately. Your best bet might be to find someone willing to be a central hub to ship out on a zone basis. Unfortunately, that will just reduce your shipping costs a bit - you're still going to take a serious hit if you're outside the US. Shipping increases have made doing business outside the US extremely painful - I always feel bad when I ship out a box on which postage costs 25% of the item total...
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Mar 28, 2014 20:46
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Contact some other KS projects that have the Euro-friendly badge and see how they are doing it.
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Mar 28, 2014 21:10
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quote:and I've got a question about International shipping (I'm in the US). Is there any sane alternative out there? A lot of bigger Kickstarters lately are managing shipping separately for US, Canada, and EU (ie. shipping stuff together to each region, and then using local post from there). That saves a ton of money and speeds delivery, but it requires people in those places. Looking around, I didn't see any companies offering to help with that approach; there's quite a few places that offer Kickstarter fulfillment, but the ones I see just ship items separately from the US (ie. they're more focused on helping with packing and what not, not on reducing shipping costs). Might be a good business to get into - there's a lot of "peer to peer" type shipping happening now. The model would be something like Ebay's Global Shpping Program: you send your global shipping items to one place in the US (or somewhere closer to the manufacturer), they ship in bulk to different countries, clear customs in big batches, and then send locally. Someone go do that.
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Mar 28, 2014 21:21
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Germ posted:So, I'm considering running a second Kickstarter (selling resin terrain for miniature wargames) this summer, and I've got a question about International shipping (I'm in the US). Is there any sane alternative out there? For ease of use and cost, flat-rate USPS Priority has been great to me in the past, but the international costs have gotten ridiculous. Something like $60 for a medium box. My sales won't be large enough to justify any kind of bulk shipping deal, but I'd like the one- or two-dozen international folks who would consider pledging to not have to face exorbitant shipping charges. What have other folks tried? I don't know how it would work for terrain, but I read an article recently about a guy Kickstarting Board games, and he was able to ship affordably to Europe by going through Amazon, he shipped everything to Amazon in Germany and they shipped to individual buyers, he had to pay the bulk shipping charge overseas, and taxes on the wholesale value of the product (instead of retail), and then the domestic shipping to individuals. It ended up saving him a lot of money on shipping. I'll see if I can track down the website I read it on. e: Found it. How to Provide “Free” Shipping Worldwide on Kickstarter: A Comprehensive Guide Bucnasti fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Mar 28, 2014 |
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Mar 28, 2014 21:40
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Bucnasti posted:
Really great stuff! Unfortunately, given the nature of what I'm doing, each order will be different and this model wouldn't really fit. I totally agree that reliable international shipping hubs would be a huge boon!
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Mar 28, 2014 22:46
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jmzero posted:Might be a good business to get into - there's a lot of "peer to peer" type shipping happening now. The model would be something like Ebay's Global Shpping Program: you send your global shipping items to one place in the US (or somewhere closer to the manufacturer), they ship in bulk to different countries, clear customs in big batches, and then send locally. I'm on another KS where they went with Amazon to do their distribution/fulfillment.  OK so Amazon will carry our poo poo. Can you fulfill the shipping to all our KS backers, US and international? Hell yeah bitch, send that poo poo over cause that's what we do *later* OK all the crates and crates of hardware are delivered to Amazon HQ, do your thing! Whoa whoa whoa ... ship international? Bitch, we don't do that.
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Mar 28, 2014 23:55
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Germ posted:Really great stuff! Unfortunately, given the nature of what I'm doing, each order will be different and this model wouldn't really fit. I totally agree that reliable international shipping hubs would be a huge boon! There's always sea mail if people are willing to wait 2-3 months for a slow boat, surely not even USPS could be charging a stupid amount for that
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Mar 29, 2014 00:25
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NTRabbit posted:There's always sea mail if people are willing to wait 2-3 months for a slow boat, surely not even USPS could be charging a stupid amount for that Unfortunately, USPS got out of the non-priority shipping business. It's not that they charge too much, it's just that they don't do it at all anymore.
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Mar 29, 2014 00:59
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Germ posted:Unfortunately, USPS got out of the non-priority shipping business. It's not that they charge too much, it's just that they don't do it at all anymore. What the gently caress kind of standard postal service doesn't do sea mail 
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Mar 29, 2014 01:06
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The kind that is running out of money
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Mar 29, 2014 01:14
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There's an already-funded campaign to make blind-accessibility add-ons for board games that looks cool as poo poo. Right now they have enough to do print-on-demand kits with braille card sleeves and reference sheets for a bunch of games:quote:We will initially support a few titles and increase our catalog as we are able. We will initially plan to offer accessibility packs that are compatible with Love Letter, Tichu, Lost Cities, The Resistance, Coloretto, Phase 10, Uno, Guillotine, For Sale, San Juan, Race for the Galaxy, Skip-Bo, Bohnanza, St. Petersburg, Pairs, Eminent Domain, Pixel Lincoln, Council of Verona, Dominion and more. Their next stretch goal is braille dice for RPGs and a couple of other games.
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Mar 29, 2014 01:27
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Mystic Mongol posted:The kind that is running out of money The kind that A) Has a Congressionally-required mandate to deliver regularly to tiny super-rural addresses all over a huge country without charging anyone an extra fee for those specific addresses B) Has to pay for itself, e.g., isn't subsidized by taxpayer money The USPS has been proper-hosed as direct-mail advertising volume has been rapidly shrinking, the use of the mail system for private letters has been shrinking, and the availability of taxpayer money has disappeared completely. It has to make all of its money handling packages, because that's the only thing that it can actually charge for, and that postage has to subsidize a lot of necessarily inefficient postal routes. It's also significant that the USPS is still the cheapest option for a lot of different kinds of mail, and the only option for some destinations. That's because the for-profit companies can't (or don't want to) compete in those spaces, despite corporate efficiency. I don't know what specifically has pushed international postage up so dramatically in the last couple years, but if UPS or FedEx or DHL or whatever is still more expensive than USPS, that says something about the actual costs involved. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2013/07/23/postal-service-mail-delivery-to-your-door-could-soon-end/2580645/ quote:The Postal Service spends about $30 billion annually on mail delivery, losing $15.9 billion last year alone. It does not receive federal assistance, getting revenue from postage sales, delivery services and other products. But mail service has dropped nearly 25% from 215 billion pieces delivered in 2006 to a current volume of 160 billion, says Postal Service spokeswoman Sue Brennan.
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Mar 29, 2014 01:29
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Pretty sure that oft-quoted 15.9 billion "loss" was because it was mandated that they had to have in the bank, now rather than in the future, enough money to cover all benefits for retirements and poo poo forever for everyone on the books. No other agency (or corporation) has to do that, and it was basically foisted on them all of a sudden. So it's like, okay, all of a sudden you have to be sitting on enough money to pay out retirement and medicare and everything for all your previous and current employees from now until the day they die. Imagine if any business had to do that, or if they suddenly had to do that. Pretty sure they'd post a pretty heavy loss that year, too. Or something like that, I definitely don't remember all the details.
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Mar 29, 2014 02:26
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Leperflesh posted:It has to make all of its money handling packages, because that's the only thing that it can actually charge for It shouldn't have to make money, it's public infrastructure. 
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Mar 29, 2014 02:32
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Lemon Curdistan posted:It shouldn't have to make money, it's public infrastructure. Not according to Congress. They've been a private company since the 70's. Kwyndig fucked around with this message at 02:39 on Mar 29, 2014 |
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Mar 29, 2014 02:36
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Bad Munki posted:Or something like that, I definitely don't remember all the details. So uhh, in non-political news, Bacterionomicon has 3 days left and is going strong with some add-ons: interesting posters and...a dragon?
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Mar 29, 2014 02:56
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Bad Munki posted:Pretty sure that oft-quoted 15.9 billion "loss" was because it was mandated that they had to have in the bank, now rather than in the future, enough money to cover all benefits for retirements and poo poo forever for everyone on the books. No other agency (or corporation) has to do that, and it was basically foisted on them all of a sudden. So it's like, okay, all of a sudden you have to be sitting on enough money to pay out retirement and medicare and everything for all your previous and current employees from now until the day they die. Imagine if any business had to do that, or if they suddenly had to do that. Pretty sure they'd post a pretty heavy loss that year, too. It was actually profitable until they had to prefund retirement. Congress at work! See, Republicans are really about small government by crippling a national agency to promote UPS/FEDEX so UPS/FEDEX can use the USPS to deliver to unprofitable locations in the middle of nowhere. *EDIT: I'm pretty sure the bill was supported by Democrats too, I'm just being snarky.* Super Dungeon Explore posted a rules update: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1257458293/super-dungeon-explore-forgotten-king/posts I'm used to the old version, so I have no idea if the new cards are actually easier to read for new people. I would vote "not really".
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Mar 29, 2014 03:24
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The icing on the Post Office derail is that Americans have a Constitutional guarantee of mail delivery - but gently caress them words that ain't about guns, right?  And in serious relevant on-topic posting, if you haven't done your Deadzone second survey you should be doing it RIGHT NOW.
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Mar 29, 2014 03:26
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Zero_Grade posted:It's because in 2006, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act was passed, mandating that the USPS pre-fund health benefits for any workers for 75 years in the future. This should be obvious as a blatant attempt to cripple the post office, a program that both worked excellently and was self-funded but yet run by the government. Yeah I don't know about the dragon, but they upgraded the book to have a fancy cover recently and they're only a few dozen backers away from adding another antibiotic or Apothecary Healers as the book calls them.
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Mar 29, 2014 03:37
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The book is cool, but I'm waaay more interested in their card game as a gift for someone  I'd back it in a heartbeat if I could get a copy of the game as well.
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Mar 29, 2014 03:40
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LordAba posted:Super Dungeon Explore posted a rules update: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1257458293/super-dungeon-explore-forgotten-king/posts I disagree. They're removing a lot of the keyword clutter, so cards should be easier to read. A shield next to Dex on the Riftling Rogue means you can use Dex for defense, instead of there being the keyword Dodge, and having to flip the card over and read "Dodge: A Model with Dodge may use it's DEX when making defensive rolls unless it is suffering from Knockdown." Also they're fixing some consistency problems. Why were offensive potions green when other attacks are red? Why were Range and Reach two different keywords when they did the same exact thing?
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Mar 29, 2014 04:26
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Baron Snow posted:I disagree. They're removing a lot of the keyword clutter, so cards should be easier to read. A shield next to Dex on the Riftling Rogue means you can use Dex for defense, instead of there being the keyword Dodge, and having to flip the card over and read "Dodge: A Model with Dodge may use it's DEX when making defensive rolls unless it is suffering from Knockdown." Also they're fixing some consistency problems. Why were offensive potions green when other attacks are red? Why were Range and Reach two different keywords when they did the same exact thing? I doubt it would be easier to teach the first go around, but I guess the icons are a bit easier to remember: now I won't have to remind people "yes missile is dex, and so is dodge". Though the worse news about that update is that the grinning Goro won.
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Mar 29, 2014 04:54
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moths posted:And in serious relevant on-topic posting, if you haven't done your Deadzone second survey you should be doing it RIGHT NOW. Is it even necessary if you aren't ordering something in addition to what was paid/setup from the original survey and pledge? I never even got a message or anything about a "second" one, just still waiting on what was supposed to come in the second one anyway (hard plastic booster for Enforcers, for one). Edit: Double checked, definitely did not get a survey through kickstarter or by email. Fenarisk fucked around with this message at 05:46 on Mar 29, 2014 |
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Mar 29, 2014 05:44
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I saw this project, Posthuman Pathways, and am curious what other people think of it. The creator has run another apparently successful kickstarter project last year and the content of this one seems interesting. However the pledge tiers are very low, even for international shipping. It seems like the pledge costs would just cover materials and postage (maybe). If you back the project you can download a demo copy of the rulebook. I've read through it and I'd probably play it but just the way the project is being run is quite unusual to me.
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Mar 29, 2014 09:13
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The entire game is five quad-fold brochures. Even at full-color and with some bleed, that might be three bucks to print in a decent run. Tops.
Gau fucked around with this message at 09:21 on Mar 29, 2014 |
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Mar 29, 2014 09:17
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Fenarisk posted:Is it even necessary if you aren't ordering something in addition to what was paid/setup from the original survey and pledge? I never even got a message or anything about a "second" one, just still waiting on what was supposed to come in the second one anyway (hard plastic booster for Enforcers, for one). If you're not getting any additional stuff, you're - this is if you want to add on some of the newer stuff. You should have gotten an email from Kickstarter with the subject Mantic Games sent you a message about Deadzone: The Sci-fi Miniatures Board Game. I got mine on January 31st, but I think they were staggered over that week. Some newer renders look better than the concept art, and a few deals got better (two-for-one striders) but it's not like they won't send you your stuff if you don't buy more.
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Mar 29, 2014 13:13
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A kickstarter for Coup: Reformation has been launched. (with a bunch of typos and no actual description of the contents of the expansion) UrbanLabyrinth fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Mar 31, 2014 |
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Mar 31, 2014 22:07
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UrbanLabyrinth posted:A kickstarter for Coup: Reformation has been launched. We've played with the rules from the original's version of the expansion and it adds some really interesting strategy to the game. The basic premise is that you have a loyalty card that you or other players can pay into a pool to change. That money can be claimed by saying you don't have the Duke. You can only target offensive actions on players of the other faction. Once you're down to one faction, that rule disappears.
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Mar 31, 2014 22:18
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UrbanLabyrinth posted:A kickstarter for Coup: Reformation has been launched. It's a really great expansion. Echophonic has the rules above, but it really adds a good political element to it. Changing someone to your faction when they have 10+ creds is my favorite, since it means that they can't target you with their Coup. I literally spent an entire game Duking for money (bluffing this), and using that money to either change my own faction or someone else's to avoid getting smacked. God I should really play more of that. Edit: Upon inspection though, that is a really lackluster Kickstarter, which is even weirder since they've had numerous successful Kickstarters. GrandpaPants fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Mar 31, 2014 |
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Mar 31, 2014 22:42
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Is it just cards to show which faction you are part of and new rules that makes up Reformation? (Aside from the flashy KS stuff). If so I think I can save myself $15 and just use the rules.
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Mar 31, 2014 23:52
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Indolent Bastard posted:Is it just cards to show which faction you are part of and new rules that makes up Reformation? (Aside from the flashy KS stuff). If so I think I can save myself $15 and just use the rules. Yes, pretty much. You can pretty much use your Resistance Avalon stuff, coins, other cards, etc to simulate Coup Reformation.
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Apr 1, 2014 00:09
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Carteret posted:The book is cool, but I'm waaay more interested in their card game as a gift for someone Oh hey, there's a only few hours left, but you can back to get a print and play version of the game now.
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Apr 1, 2014 00:11
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Kwyndig posted:Oh hey, there's a only few hours left, but you can back to get a print and play version of the game now. Goddamnit. You got me. I guess I'll be sending the file off to get cards made then!
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Apr 1, 2014 03:22
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The third Shadowfist LCG Kickstarter just went live. If you haven't tried it before, $150 gets you the base game, the extension and the first six expansions plus two Action Packs with duplicates of staple cards for deckbuilding.
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Apr 1, 2014 08:09
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Jedit posted:The third Shadowfist LCG Kickstarter just went live. If you haven't tried it before, $150 gets you the base game, the extension and the first six expansions plus two Action Packs with duplicates of staple cards for deckbuilding. That's the Feng Shui card game, right? How'd it actually play?
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Apr 1, 2014 09:00
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Mystic Mongol posted:That's the Feng Shui card game, right? How'd it actually play? If you have Archives I did an LP last year when the first Kickstarter was on. If you don't, the answer is "excellently with more than two players". The base set gives you four complete decks and the extension adds two more; everything else is new cards for tweaking.
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Apr 1, 2014 09:54
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My copy of Paperback arrived yesterday. Nice production values, looking forward to giving it a try. It's a deck-building word game. Make words to earn money each turn, use money each turn to buy more letter cards and victory point cards, win game with victory point cards. I can't for the life of me remember where I heard about it (here, maybe?). I had totally forgotten about it, since I didn't back it through KS but in the days shortly following the KS closing last summer.
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Apr 1, 2014 14:18
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Tiny Epic Kingdoms has sent out emails with a download link for Premium backers, to pull down the Premium Print n Play, faction backstories, and PDF art collection. Unfortunately, he decided to use Google Drive and just provide a private link. It's not even 8 AM and he's already exceeded maximum number of downloads for the day. Google Drive is great, but not exactly an ideal solution for distributing content to thousands of backers.
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Apr 1, 2014 15:56
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Hubis posted:The Wasteland 6mm Wargame Buildings Kickstarter has 8 days left. He's added a few more building types (including double-height risers) and a nice set of individual add-ons for things like bunkers and attachable detail vents.
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Apr 1, 2014 16:33
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Blue Dungeon Tiles hit its last stretch goal the other day, and now the Basic backer level ($30 US, $40 Canadian, $45 International) gets you the base 48-tile set, 6 double-sided stair tiles, and one each of the 10 unlocked bonus tiles. So now you're looking at 64 total dry-erase tiles at the "basic" level, plus six pages of cut-out dungeon dressing and a carrying case all for under $50.
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Apr 1, 2014 19:47
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