Cold hard lindens are now available, sort of. An IBM employee, avatar name of Davidovic Dean, has minted his own coins that are worth 1 linden apiece on Tender Island. He minted the coins to commemorate his island coming online, there are 25 silver coins, that will be for non-commercial purposes, and 50 made out of nickel, some of which have already been sold and are being sold on eBay, here.

The latest: an IBM employee with his own private island in Second Life has had some coins minted that are each worth one Linden dollar. That’s right, you can now hold the Linden dollar in your hand and actually spend it — if, that is, you’re on »Tender Island«, which has been owned by IBMer David van Gent since March.

The coins come complete with an “SL” mintmark, and are “accepted as legal currency on Tender Island.” Before you get your knickers in a twist over who’s allowed to mint coins denominated in a particular currency, keep in mind that in the U.S., at least, creating your own tender is perfectly acceptable — you can print all the money you want (as long as you’re not counterfeiting dollars), it’s just a matter of whether you can get anyone to accept it. Linden Lab, of course, is not a government. But their rhetoric (”I’m not building a game, I’m building a country“) indicates there shouldn’t be anything objectionable in Tender Island coins.

A few of the coins were made available on eBay, where they went for $26.61, although I can’t tell how many were included in that auction. In any case, only 75 coins were struck, which means that the eBay buyer is paying collector’s prices, not foreign exchange prices. Van Gent (SL’s Davidovic Dean) is now considering other series of coins. I doubt this is much more than an interesting experiment and something to do with some spare time and cash, but it’s still very cool. Source: Cold Hard Cash: Second Life Coins Available

I can imagine a lot of people would like to be able to hold their lindens, but with only 50 being available, that will be hard to do. Myself, I would like to see Davidovic send me one, but wouldn’t we all. Here is how he described the marking on the coins.

X,Y-1058, 1160 represents the location of Tender Island on the Second Life grid. This is a so called Second Life Island 3 type. It measures 65,536 square meters (about 16 acres). Building on the island, includes above the island. There has recently been ‘built a castle in the air’ with a sky box on top of one of the 4 towers, and a ‘romantic garden in the clouds’, aka as the ‘Elysian Field’ of Tender Island. Round the lake in the middle of the island you find all kinds of constructions and entertainment.
Under the embossed ‘1′ you will find a ‘SL’ mintmark.
This coin is accepted as legal currency on Tender Island.

The reverse of the coin features our family coat of arms, depicting a Northern Gannet (Morus Bassanus). In Dutch we call this a ‘jan-van-gent’ bird. Source: Second Life Tender Island minting

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