I've had one manufacturer out of all of those contacted state that they'll get back to me. I'm presuming they'll take this back to the office, and decide whether they can fit it along with some of their other projects.  Hopefully, they come back to me with some good news, and we can then discuss it a little more specifically. For me, its a great project to be involved in, and should appeal to manufacturers if not for being part of Bitcoin, and Bitcointalk history, but the marketing benefits that come associated with that. 

Also, from a manufactures point of view these coins are a guaranteed sale, and therefore profit to them. We'll be able to find 300 users willing to pay for the coins if we take a look at the votes, and if they can give us a good price potentially covered by a crowdfund sort of situation between a few users passionate about Bitcointalk.org

I assure you being an old user, and that fact alone isn't going to net you one of these coins if this project does become a reality.

That's an interesting idea not only for a project like this, but in general. 

Trying to stick to what the community wants, and what theymos would be likely to put the official name on it if it was deemed good enough is fairly difficult. This is also partly the reason why I don't want to be the one picking the users to get coins. I'm trying to think of a unbiased way of going about that.