I'm personally very wary of getting into this, as much as I want to get back what we put into components. With that said, Colin has offered to design a PCB for around $2k. This will bring up the price of the 2nd gen miners a bit, but since it's a fixed cost I'll try to spread it out over however many orders we get (if there is interest) in order to minimize the impact.
At any rate, given that there are zero bids on the Tradehill website, I'm inclined to think that we'll see the chips again soon at a lower price point. Unless enough people disagree with me to drive this thing forward, I think we should wait this first auction out.
Thoughts?
It's worth a try. I'm not gung-ho either, and the first auction (of Avalon Minis) saw two deadline extensions and minimum bid drops before the auction actually happened -- the initial minimum bid was 9BTC, then that dropped to 6BTC, then 2BTC and in the final auction they sold for 2.21BTC/ea, which was a great price. We don't know that that will happen again, but a price drop would certainly make the chips more appealing, especially with all the inevitable delays that will come with setting them in boards.
Does the new board require significant changes? Could my initial Klondike order be reapplied to these (still-hypothetical) boards?