The Shop

The shop is where you spend your gold on real prizes: tools, 3D printers, electronics kits, parts grants, and even a ticket to our in-person hackathon. You earn gold by shipping projects, then trade it for stuff here. That's the whole loop.

You browse the shop from your dashboard. Items rotate in and out, so it's worth checking back.

What can I buy?

A bit of everything. The catalog changes over time, but you'll usually find:

Physical goods, like tools, 3D printers, and electronics kits that ship to your address.
Grants, where instead of an item you get funding (for example a domain) loaded onto a one-time card.
Streak freezes, which protect a project streak if you miss a day (see Earning Gold for how those work).
The Event Invite, a ticket to our in-person hackathon in South America (Bogotá, Colombia), August 14-16.

Each item card shows its gold price and a rough sense of how much work that is, so you can see at a glance what you can afford right now.

How do I buy something?

Open the shop from your dashboard, find an item, and click it to open the buy panel. From there:

Pick any options the item offers (color, an engraving, quantity, and so on). Some items have none.
Confirm the address if the item needs one (more on that below).
Hit the buy button. Your gold balance updates and the order shows up under your orders.

That's it. There's no cart, you buy one item at a time.

Gold is the only currency

Everything in the shop is priced in gold. There's no cash checkout and no separate shop currency. If you've got the gold, you can buy it.

Why do I need to confirm an address?

Two kinds of items ask for an address, and they ask for different reasons:

Physical goods need a shipping address so we know where to send them.
Grants need a billing address, because the funding goes out on a real card tied to your Hack Club identity.

For both, your address comes from Hack Club Auth rather than something you type into the shop each time. If the shop says you need to confirm or sync your address, follow the prompt to link or refresh it, then try the purchase again.

You need a verified identity to buy anything

Before you can buy anything in the shop, you have to verify your identity with Hack Club. If you haven't verified yet, the shop will tell you and the purchase won't go through until you do. (Grants especially need it, since they pay out real money on a card tied to your identity.)

Why is an item locked, capped, or sold out?

A few items aren't a simple "click to buy," and that's by design, not a bug:

Ship a project first. Some items only unlock once you've shipped at least one project. If you're brand new and haven't shipped yet, you'll see this on the card.
Limited stock. When an item has a fixed quantity, it can sell out. Once it's gone, the card shows it as sold out until staff restock it.
A per-person limit. Some items cap how many you can own. The card shows your count (like "1 of 2"), and the buy button turns off once you hit the limit.
Starfruit-gated. A handful of items sit behind a one-time starfruit unlock. Spend 1 starfruit to open the item up for yourself, then buy it with gold as normal. See Earning Gold for how starfruit works.
Coming soon. An item can be previewed before it's buyable. The card says so, and the buy button stays off until it launches.

None of these are permanent walls. Keep shipping and most of them open up on their own.

Why is the price different where I live? Why are some items greyed out?

Prices and availability can change by region, and only for physical goods. A 3D printer or a parts kit costs a different amount to source and ship to North America than to India or Brazil, so staff can set a per-region price (or mark an item as unavailable) to keep things fair instead of charging everyone the highest shipping cost.

Here's what that means for you when you browse:

The shop figures out your region from your country (or your manually picked region) and shows you the price that applies to you.
An item that staff haven't priced specially in your region just uses its base price, nothing changes.
An item that can't ship to your region shows up greyed out and sorted to the bottom of the grid, so you can still see it exists but can't buy it.
Grants, streak freezes, and other non-physical items ignore region entirely. They cost the same everywhere.

So if a friend in another country sees a price or an item you don't, that's the regional setup doing its job, not a mistake. If something looks wrong, ask in #macondo-help on Slack.

No item is hidden from you

Items you can't buy in your region aren't deleted from your view. They're just dimmed and pushed down the list, so you always know the full catalog.

Where do my orders go, and can I cancel?

Every purchase shows up under your orders in the shop, with its current status (being prepared, shipped, grant sent, and so on).

You can cancel an order yourself only while it's still early, before anything has been handed off to shipping or a card has been issued. Once an order has shipped, a grant card has gone out, or it's otherwise left our hands, cancelling needs staff help instead. If you're stuck, reach out in #macondo-help and we'll sort it out. Cancelling an order before it's fulfilled refunds the gold you spent.

Remember, have fun building and the rewards will follow. The shop is a bonus. The real prize is the skills you pick up and the projects you build along the way.