Greetings all!

Today we’re happy to announce that Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games has done something very cool. He has created 13 custom wooden box copies of his sold-out game Viticulture out of extra components he had. And rather than sell them to a select few people, he has instead decided to auction them all off to different charities over on Board Game Geek.

This auction runs until 6PM EST on Saturday, December 7th, and the winner of each auction will receive the game, plus something a little extra from Jamey & Co. You can find the auction here.

So aside from a bit of coolness on his part and us wanting to share it with you, what does this have to do with The Cardboard Republic? Why, we’re so glad you asked!

You see, each of the 13 auctions has been dedicated to bloggers and reviewers of Stonemaier’s choosing, and we are one of those 13. In turn, each of us was asked to select the charity that 50% of each auction proceeds will go towards. (The top bidder of all 13 auctions will have the entirety of that auction amount donated.)

Our non-profit of choice was The Planetary Society, a space advocacy and science education group founded by Carl Sagan. We felt that this was a good choice because space – and science as a whole – is awesome. In a world increasingly more complicated, complex, and competitive, we know the stars are in our future both literally and figuratively. We have to keep looking towards them. Science is an incredibly important subject to teach, because it teaches us to dream and to innovate. And it doesn’t get the kind of support in a lot of places that may have the next Sagan, Nye, or Tyson just dying to figure out how the world works. So we’re doing our part to help science out a bit.

But wait! There’s more!

Yes, we’ve sweetened the pot a bit for you all. We know that there’s a lot of other great reviewers on the list of 13, and we haven’t been around as long as some of them. So instead of just shooting for the top spot, if our winning auction amount is among the top 3 auctions, the winner of ours will be getting a copy of Eons, our December Indie Spotlight game courtesy of us. It’s only fitting we feel, since Viticulture was in a similar spot earlier this year.

Also, Eons happens to be about space.

Now, if we do happen to reach the top spot, we’ll have a little extra something as well. But that’s all up to you.

Feel free to check the auctions out, but don’t delay. It’s only going until Dec. 7th!