[Nathan Robinson]

Eleven Years Down!

Every year, August 25th celebrates the anniversary of the myArmoury.com forums. We launched in 2003 and that means we're celebrating our eleventh birthday today! For the last several years around this time, we've had a donation drive to help me pay for the annual server hosting bill.

The generosity of the membership here has offset this cost and kept me from having to pay for this whole thing out of pocket. As a means of appreciation, I usually put forth a contest to keep things interesting.

Thanks to longtime member Craig Peters, we have a contest this year as well. He turned to respected English maker, Leo Todeschini of Tod's Stuff for a really great prize. We've given away a lot of fantastic prizes over the years and this one is of course no exception.


THE PRIZE:

A 14th Century Styled Quillon Dagger and Scabbard by Tod's Stuff



This quillon dagger, styled after those from circa 1300, has steel hilt fittings and a leather cord-bound grip 90mm/3.5" long. The decorated leather scabbard has a simple folded chape. The diamond-section double-edged blade is 250mm/10" long. Overall, the piece is 380mm/15" long. It is valued at over $500 US!





Craig donated this prize to help keep this site running and came up with the terms of the contest. His idea was to limit the contest to thank those who were especially generous with their donations. Only those who have donated at least $25 during the contest period are eligible to enter. All donations are totaled and a new opportunity to win the prize is given for every $25 given.


HOW TO ENTER:

Follow the instructions shown in this button:



If the button says you can click it to enter, that's all you have to do.

If it says something else, you can click it for further info. Make sure you're logged-in before you try to enter.


ELIGIBILITY:

You must be a registered member of myArmoury.com and have donated $25 US or more within 60 days of the contest's start date. All donations are totaled and each $25 chunk donated earns a new opportunity to win. For example, those donating $50 in the contest entry period are given 2 chances to win; those donating $110 in the period are given 4 chances to win, and so on.

Donations made after June 26, 2014 are considered. Please note that anonymous donations cannot be counted.

If you're not eligible for the contest, you can click the button above for further details. Click below to make a donation:




Entrants must be made prior to contest close on Monday Oct 6, 2014 at Midnight PST. All participants will be entered into a drawing and the winning name will be randomly selected later that same day.

Thanks goes out to everybody who has given to this site. Good luck to everyone!!

Contest-specific rules and limitations:


1. You must be a registered member of myArmoury.com. Donations must be made while logged-in
   
2. myArmoury.com moderators and Team Members are eligible to win since they have been amongst the most generous with their donations
   
3. Should the winning entrant choose not to accept the prize, another winner will be selected
   
4. The contest system cannot allow anonymous donors to join the contest. We respect the privacy of anonymous donors and so do not store the private information of anonymous donors
   
5. The contributed amounts will never be revealed to the public by myArmoury.com. Contest entrants can choose for themselves if they wish to share this with the community
   
   Please read our detailed Rules and Limitations document for complete information and our disclaimer.

[Jean Thibodeau]

Very VERY generous prize given by Craig of a high end product, and I couldn't resist the temptation to click on the box to participate in the contest: Good luck to everybody else, but I wouldn't be " SAD " if I won this prize as I'm a repeat customer of Leo's work and a fan.

I might even top up my donation a bit to round out my number of chances to win the prize before the end of the donation drive ......

I don't donate because of a prize, but a prize certainly adds a level of fun to the whole thing. ( If I don't win the dagger, it looks so nice, I might even order one from Leo if I don't win this one .... )

[Foong Chen Hong]

Ah, I am pretty new and not donated. So I couldn't join, good luck to these who joined

[Nathan Robinson]

Here's a bit of a glamour shot of the dagger that is being given away!

[Leo Todeschini]

Nice promo pic Nathan; can you come and do mine?

Craig, this was an incredibly generous prize you have donated and I hope it really does help to the donation drive. Thanks for helping to maintain two of my favourite things - my business and this site - I appreciate it on both counts.

Tod

[Nathan Robinson]

[Jean Thibodeau]

Really nice dagger and I topped up my first donation with another to get a nice round number of 6 opportunities of winning in the draw.

I still wish everybody else good luck of winning it instead of me me me ......

[Craig Peters]

[Jean Thibodeau]

Just a little bump to the Topic as the prize is worth making a $25 donation if one hasn't already or adding an extra $15 if one has already donated $10

The fund drive objective has been reached but this covers only the " Hosting Charges "' and any extra moneys raised also get used to support the site and give Nathan the funds to add prizes plus having a bit of a reserve is probably good if there are unexpected expenses ..... the yearly hosting charge is probably the biggest single payment that Nathan has to make to keep the site running but I assume that there might also be other smaller costs involved.

Also, don't forget that Nathan donates his own " unpaid " time to keep the site clean of " SPAM & BOTS " plus occasionally in the past having to spend an enormous amount of energy and time when some technical issue has hit the site.

A few years back he seriously upgraded the " Hosting Servers " , I believe because the old servers where crashing or inadequate in keeping up with the traffic and the storage of archives etc ...... ( Note: I'm mainly going from memory here, and I also can only guess on the level of technical expertise it takes to keep this site running smoothly plus all the time needed by Nathan and the moderation team keeping this site's culture friendly by discouraging " Flame Wars " and the toxic climate of exchange that often infests the Internet and social media ).

So, a long way of saying that just because the donation goal has been met, it doesn't mean that extra moneys coming in should stop: We are very close to the $3000 mark at the time of this post.

[Nathan Robinson]

This contest will be over two weeks from today. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to this year's site-related expenses. It came at a particularly necessary time for me. My working situation has changed recently and so your contributions have really, really helped. The idea of spending that money out-of-pocket was not one I wanted to face. Thanks especially goes out to Craig Peters who really put this together.

I'll get another contest up within the next couple weeks as thanks to all. It will be open to more people, too.

Cheers

[Jean Thibodeau]

Just a reminder that we are about one week away from the end of the contest period.

[Nathan Robinson]

Thanks, Jean!

I haven't seen the dagger first-hand. It's in Tod's capable hands. He'll be shipping it off to the winner directly. I didn't get the perk this time of having an opportunity to see an item before it goes out!

[Chris Friede]

I thought the contest closed on October 6th, but the button said I was ineligible for the drawing. Went ahead and donated anyway, because I love this site. But I'd like to know why I wasn't eligible...(shrug)

[Nathan Robinson]

[Jean Thibodeau]

One last bump by me as we are entering the last weekend before the end of the contest period.

Really close to a $3,500 total donations for this year.

Thanks again to everybody who donated and good luck to anyone who donated the $25 needed to be qualify for one chance at winning the prize, and an extra chance of winning the prize for every multiple of $25 donated.

[Craig Peters]

[Jean Thibodeau]

Last 24 hours to donate, more or less depending on one's time zone.

O.K., so I lied about it being my last " BUMP ", or at least I meant it at the time.

Basically the last day to donate and at the time of writing this the amount raised is $3445, so very very close to $3500 ..... I just like round numbers.

We are about 5 donations shy of having 100 donations although a few people have donated more than once, might be nice to get over 100 people donating.

This seems to be about equal to previous years in both donation total and in the number of people donating.

[Nathan Robinson]

Thanks to everyone who donated this year. It really made a difference for me. My career situation has changed drastically the last few months and I'm scrambling to see "what's next for Nathan" so your timing is especially helpful.

For those who are eligible for the contest:

DON'T FORGET TO ENTER

Donating does not automatically enter you into the contest.


Follow the instructions shown in this button:



If the button says you can click it to enter, that's all you have to do.

If it says something else, you can click it for further info. Make sure you're logged-in before you try to enter.

[Nathan Robinson]

This contest entry period is over. The winner has been announced!!

Thank you everyone.