Hello, everyone!

Just a quick note to say we are now at 99% complete on fulfillment! Whew! 😅

The remaining shipments are for backers who have not completed their surveys, have errored credit cards, or are now in the queue after updating their information. If you are still waiting for your pledge rewards, make sure to drop by the Pledge Manager to see if we're waiting for information from you!

Visit the Pledge Manager

It has been another fantastic week of fulfillment here at Mini Museum! We are past the midpoint on fulfillment on MM5 and still moving quite quickly. It has been wonderful to see them arrive in homes and we want to give a major thank you to backers who have shared photos of their new museums!

If you want to share a photo of your own, send it to us at [email protected]!

Now, we have a special word from our cofounder Jamie to share on the status of MM5! Take it away, Jamie!

Jamie here reporting in from the warehouse with an update on shipping.

Right now, we are at 70% complete on shipping. The warehouse team has been working hard to inspect and prepare shipments, so I thought I’d give a behind-the-scenes look at the process.

Like everything we do, there are many little steps, each carefully considered to make each Mini Museum the best Mini Museum it can be. And, as you might expect, preparing Mini Museums for shipment is no exception. It’s all part of running a business where everything is handcrafted.

Before Mini Museums arrive at the warehouse, they are inspected twice: once after casting and polishing, then again during the laser etching process when they are individually wrapped and packed into small, white boxes for shipping. After they arrive at the warehouse, they are inspected yet again and then placed into their microfiber pouches.

While this is happening, the team is also prepping Companion Guides and Certificates of Authenticity for inclusion in the final packaging. Each Guide and Certificate are slipped into clear plastic bags to protect them from scuffing during transit. This step also provides protection for the Certificate so that it doesn’t get bent by accident.

I can tell you from experience it is a little challenging to put the Guides and Certificates into their little bags until you get the rhythm. The Fifth Edition Guides are also a little thicker so that’s been fun too. :D

Once all the components are ready, the Mini Museums are queued up for final packing. Display Boxes are inspected at this step, and each Mini Museum is carefully placed into the custom-cut foam insert.

We also make sure that the little cinch ball on the pouch fits into the knockout slot so that it doesn’t bang into the acrylic during shipping.

When I’m packing Mini Museums, I often think back to the First Edition when we designed this foam insert and the lively discussions we had with our manufacturer.

With the Mini Museum tucked safely inside, we add the pre-packed Guides and Certificates, seal the box using the magnetic clasp, apply a numeric label to match the Mini Museum, and then place the box inside a custom bubble wrap bag.

Now the Mini Museum is ready to ship, but the adventure is just beginning because our warehouse is somewhat… remote.

This region of the Appalachian Mountains is home to dramatic rock formations showcasing the ancient Iapetus Ocean. Formed during the Silurian Period roughly 443,000,000 years old, the ocean floor was twisted 90 degrees through powerful geological processes similar to the formation of Uluru in Australia. Exposed through erosion, these rock faces run all along the mountains here, and the most famous is Seneca Rocks.

Seneca Rocks is sometimes referred to as the Yosemite of the East. It is a beautiful place to visit and every Mini Museum leaving our warehouse pays this crag a visit as it heads over a very exciting mountain road.

I’ve driven this route myself several times, usually in the daytime, but two weeks ago I came over at night. It was absolutely spectacular, but also a little spooky since I didn’t see another car for nearly an hour.

This far-flung location wasn’t selected by design, but rather, it was the outcome of searching for a partner who cared as much for our Mini Museums as we do. As you can see above, just packing a Mini Museum is a careful process and it was important for us to find a partner who could treat our product with care and love.

We’ve been working together down here for almost ten years now and we really wouldn’t have it any other way.

-Jamie

Today marks the end of another week of MM5 fulfillment! We have been shipping pledges for the past three weeks and are already 1/3 of the way through. Better yet, we are picking up speed and expect shipping to move even faster next week!

As a reminder, when your pledge is ready to ship, you will receive a notification that your card has been charged for shipping, followed by a tracking confirmation email within the day!

If you'd like to show off your new museum when it arrives, send us a picture at [email protected]. We always love to see Mini Museums out in the wild—backer photos are one of the best parts of crowdfunding!

Today, we'll also be distributing digital downloads for the MM5 Companion Guide PDF—you should receive this in a separate email, or you can download it at the link further below in this update.

That's all we have on the fulfillment side of things today, though we do have one more thing to share… it is our tenth anniversary! Jamie, one of the co-founders here at Mini Museum has a special message to share with all of you who have helped us on this journey.

Hey, folks!

This week I finally made it to the warehouse to pitch in on Fifth Edition shipping. I would’ve been down earlier, but unfortunately, I picked up COVID while in Tucson for our annual buying trip in January. It went through our entire household in February. It was pretty rough for a while, but everyone is better now!

The good thing is that the team in the warehouse is moving along well without me. As noted above, we are roughly 1/3 of the way through all shipments and we are accelerating. Funny enough, in terms of when pledges were actually placed, we’re still just 10 minutes into the campaign!

Shipping a new Edition is always a real joy for me. I love seeing all the familiar names and thinking about where our collections will go. Many of you have been with us since the First Edition, and I am so grateful that we’ve been able to continue this journey together for so long.

It was a true joy to work on the Fifth Edition, and I am so proud to share the excellent work of our team with all of you.

Describing the last ten years of Mini Museum seems like an impossible task. So much has happened, I really ought to write a book. We’ve had adventures and fun, the thrill of discovery, and overcoming so very many challenges. There have also been so many deep moments of reflection and more than one or two instances of wondering just how I got into this in the first place :D

I suppose this is all part of making something rare and unusual like the Mini Museum, but to me it feels like there is so much more.

How do I describe the feeling of spending weeks looking through a microscope lens at the surface of Mars? What picture do I share that conveys the way the night air feels when bandsawing by moonlight? What is like to look back on ten years and see your family working beside you just like they did during the First Edition?

These are incredibly special memories for me, and so is seeing all of your names once more. Frankly, I can’t imagine a better way to spend a decade of my life.

As always, thank you once again for your generous support and please do share pictures of your Mini Museum when it arrives!

Fifth Edition museums have begun to ship! Last week, we sent out our first wave of pledges to backers and we've gotten word that they have started to arrive!

Currently, our warehouse is fulfilling pledges on Tuesdays through Fridays. Keep an eye on your email inbox over the coming weeks, as you can expect a notification on when your pledge ships there. First, you'll receive a confirmation that your payment for shipping, tax, and add-ons has been processed. Then, the shipping confirmation email indicating your pledge is being packaged and sent out!

We are preparing waves of pledges each shipping day and we can't wait to see the museums in your hands!

If you'd like to show off your new museum when it arrives, send us a picture at [email protected]. We always love to see Mini Museums out in the wild–backer photos are one of the best parts of crowdfunding!

We've got a quick and exciting update for you today!

As per our last post, we will be locking orders today! Once this begins, you will be given a final call to make any necessary changes to your order. This window will only be open for 48 hours, after which all orders will automatically lock.

Once this is confirmed, we will begin charging cards for all post-campaign funds (shipping, tax, and add-ons). Once your card is charged, we will prepare your shipment! This will be done in waves and we'll have a further update once it begins soon.

If you have not completed your survey already please do so soon! We are still waiting on a few backers to submit their shipping information!

As we speak, the warehouse team is packing museums and getting them ready to go out the door! You can expect another update once shipping has begun!

The final component of the Fifth Edition has arrived at our warehouse! That's right, as of this week, the Companion Guides are in hand!

The guides look fantastic and have ended up being our largest ever in terms of page count. That's not unexpected though, especially considering this is our biggest edition ever!

We now have everything needed to begin final assembly and fulfilling pledges for the Fifth Edition! 

This week, our shipping team will put the final touches on assembly. Next Monday (February 12th), we will begin locking orders and collecting charges for shipping, tax, and new add-ons. We expect to begin shipping later that week with pledges going out in waves over the next few weeks as the final batches of Large castings come out of production.

We're at 88% backer completion on the pledge manager surveys. If you have completed your survey already, thank you so much! If you haven't, there is still time.

Check your email for the message "Response Needed — Get your reward for Mini Museum 5." Open this message and click the button that reads "Click Here to View Surveys." From here, you can see the status of your survey. As always, you can also reach out to us at [email protected] for help!

We'll share another reminder later this week to complete your survey for all backers who have not done so. We'll also be back next week with another update to announce the order locking and the beginning of shipping!

The Pledge Manager for the Fifth Edition is now live! Check your email now for the link to your survey where you can enter shipping information, check out new add-ons, and confirm your pledge details!

In this update, we'll share step-by-step instructions on how to complete the pledge manager, photos of the new add-ons you'll find, and timeline details on shipping & fulfillment!

Note: The survey may take a bit to appear in your inbox, but if you don't see it before Tuesday (1/16), let us know at [email protected] and we can help!

We're always excited to go above and beyond for our projects and we have tons of new items to bring your Mini Museum to the next level!

During the campaign, we ran a poll to see which specimens should get their own pin designs. We're excited to share these six incredible pins and stickers based on the backer vote!

These designs were made possible thanks to the work of friends of Mini Museum Ellis Nolan & Christian Baldo, as well as our guest artists in the crowdfunding world, the Snarky Company, Corviforms, Aspenhearted, and Jason Furie! 

As with previous campaigns, we're releasing several specimens as individual collector items with a custom card and display case! You can find the Empire State Building, Kennedy Space Center, and Amelia Earhart specimens all available!

This new acacia wood cutting board is laser etched with a coelacanth design based on a 3D scan of the same fossil in MM5! We were so excited to work with Carly K of Mythic Management to bring this prehistoric cutting board to life!

Check out the pledge manager for the full list of add-ons, like the Fifth Edition Crowdfunding T-Shirt, Large LED Stand, books, and more! These items are all offered at the special backer discount too!

P.S. A quick note here for backers outside the USA… we do not collect sales tax, VAT, or import duties on pledges for Mini Museums. Your import duties will be due upon receipt when your Mini Museum arrives. If you've backed a Mini Museum project before, you already know this.

We are still on target with the production and assembly timeline we shared in our update last week, so make sure to fill out the Pledge Manager soon. Once the shipping surveys are complete and the museums are fully assembled, we'll be able to start fulfilling pledges!

We have a lot of information to share with you here in the new year, including details on production, the release of the pledge manager, and our Coelacanth Cutting Board! Let's get started!

Per our last production update, all MM5 Small, MM5 Touch, and MM5 Educational Museums are out of production and in our warehouse.

Here are the details on the remaining major components:

Custom Display Boxes and Microfiber Pouches - Complete. We now have all of our packaging in the warehouse, and what an adventure that was. As noted in the previous update, inspections looked good so we will be ready once the guides arrive.

MM5 Large - In Production. As noted in the last update, the first batch of MM5 Large Museums was scheduled just before Christmas. They arrived safe and sound and the second batch is due to arrive this week. We are currently at 500 units and expect to bring in an additional 250 per week going forward.

Companion Guides - In Production. While reviewing page layouts, we found a few technical errors with the book files. Thanks to some quick work by our designer, Christian Baldo, we were able to adjust the entire book and deliver it before our press date. The pages are now in the finishing shop for binding and will ship to our warehouse on 1/19. If that holds, we should have them the following week to begin final assembly and shipping.

So, with all MM5 components in hand or scheduled for delivery, we're ready to open up the Pledge Manager and start collecting all of those final details!

The Pledge Manager will open in two steps:

Inside the Pledge Manager, you'll provide your shipping address, pay for shipping and any applicable sale taxes, add additional Mini Museums and accessories, and get the first look at several brand-new add-ons!

Once the Pledge Manager is live for all backers, we'll share another update with step-by-step instructions to complete it. Many of you have been through this before but If you have any issues, please drop us a line at [email protected]!

P.S. A quick note here for backers outside the USA… we do not collect sales tax, VAT, or import duties on pledges for Mini Museums. Your import duties will be due upon receipt when your Mini Museum arrives. If you've backed a Mini Museum project before, you already know this.

Finally, let's take a sneak peek at the incredible Coelacanth Cutting Board!

We worked with Carly K of Mythic Mgmt to help bring this board to life, and we couldn't be happier. The 16"x7"x1" acacia wood cutting board is laser-engraved with a rendering of a fossil coelacanth, based on a 3D scan of the fossil used in the Fifth Edition!

One side of the board features the Coelacanth engraving, while the other is a clean cutting surface. A leather hanging strap is also included on the cutting board's handle.

Stay tuned for more awesome add-ons available in the pledge manager, like our pins, stickers, single specimens, and more, all at a special backer discount!

That's all for now, keep an eye out for the full pledge manager update next week!

We're approaching the holiday times here at Mini Museum HQ and we've got a short and sweet update for you today on MM5!

First, the print & fold announcement cards for MM5 are now available for download! If you are looking to share the MM5 as a gift, you can download one of these cards from the site, print it, and let the recipient know about the awesome collection headed their way!

You can download both these cards in the shop:

The first batch of Large Fifth Editions is set to arrive at our warehouse this week for quality checks! The production photos have looked great, so we're excited to get our hands on the first complete MM5 collections! Once they are here, the museums will be inspected to ensure they meet our standards of quality and then prepared for packaging.

The MM5 companion guide files are in the hands of our publisher and we're expecting the books to be printed soon. This is the final component necessary for the Fifth Edition, which means...

Keep an eye on your inbox, because the pledge manager will be live soon! We have a few final checks to make to ensure it is all running correctly before we send out the "smoke test." Once we confirm everything is correct and the smoke test is successful, the pledge manager will be opened for everyone to confirm their pledges, select add-ons, and enter shipping information!

We'll also be collecting shipping costs & tax at this time, so we can start fulfilling pledges as soon as the museums are set to go!

That's all for now! We'll send out another update once the pledge manager smoke test is live and again when it opens to everyone, which will include step-by-step instructions for completion. For now, happy holidays from the Mini Museum Team!