Hi everyone.

My wife is asking me for presents suggestions, as my birthday and christmas are approaching. Of course, I will put several puzzles on my list, but I would also like to put 2 or 3 shapeways puzzle on it.
So I have a few questions :
- Is it a hard work to put a shapeway's puzzle together and make it work fine, or is it as easy as a DIY kit of a more common puzzle ?
- Can you get items from different shops in the same order to save on shipping costs ?
- And which puzzles would you recommend, and for which reason (appearance, challenge, worth the price )??? I know it's all up to me in the end, but I would love to get advice of people who already own several shapeway puzzles.

Thank you

Well, 2-3 puzzles is quite a few, obviously that depends on your budget though. How big is your budget?

Not really up to me.....
It will probably be a "group" present, so the budget could be quite high, but even if she only goes for one, I'd rather let her choose between several puzzles, so she gets "involved" in my collection (could be good for the future )

Well, I would advice you look around Timur, Eric, Greg and Tom's shops (the links can be found here).

Thanks Luke, though I actually had a look on most of the shops.
Of course several puzzles caught my attention, but I'm still hoping to hear advice of people who already have some to help me settle my mind.
That, and an answer to the 2 other questions

1) Not really, and if you have any trouble, you could always ask the designer.
2) Yes, you just add each one in the shopping cart, and then in the end, make a general order
3) I own several shapeways puzzles, but I can't really reccomend any since I have none from other designers I do reccomend Eric's Royal Skewb or master pentultimate, Tom's dino 3x3 or mini starminx [EDIT: not for sale atm, any other Tom puzzle would be nice ^^], Timur's gear pyraminx or scalium, or Will's Rex RD or Copter 3x3 just because they are so cool

(if you want to know which is my favorite of my own, I'd say the Combo Curfatrhodo for solving and aesthetics, and the mini hexaminx for solvin and price)

I'd be a little more nuanced about the assembling difficulty. It varies hugely per puzzle and some require a bit of dexterity (think V-Cube 6) while others require substantial force to put together which is not for the faint of heart. Also, puzzles from Shapeways do not include screws or stickers so that's an additional challenge.

Thank you for your answers.....
I had notice the mini hexaminx for its price Though when I watched you video, I thought it must be horrible to solve with its size.... (But one thing for sure : if a shapeway order is sent for me, this one will be in it, cause it won't affect total amount very much )

I would love Eric's royal skewb, but he said he wouldn't be selling it, and I think that his elite skewb would be a nice start I have to get a look at the other one....
Tom'z puzzle are actually for sale, but I think I'd rather get 2 nice puzzles for the price of the dino 3x3x3 His Master FTO could be one of those.....

I didn't notice the scalium before, and indeed, it looks great and quite cheap..... On the list
Same for the copter 3x3... can't believe I missed this one on the forum.....

Well, thanks for your advice, I think it will help to set my first choices....

Previous message was for Greg

I'm not to scared about having to find screws on my own, and it looks like it's not to difficult to get stickers either, I was more worried about an eventual need of "working" on the pieces, such as sanding, or what you call dying (I don't get that word actually, if anyone could translate it in french, I could understand thousands of enigmatic posts of the forum ), .....
Actually assembling puzzles is quite pleasant in my opinion, I had fun assembling my tuttminx or my gigaminx..... And it helps to understand the mechanism....

Dying: to die (present tense).
Dyeing: to soak something in a colourful solution to colour the object.

Since they translate as "mort" and "teinturerie" (according to my handy french-english dictionary), I can understand your confusion... two very different words in French become almost alike in English!

Anyway, if you want lots of value, I reccommend Oskar's More Madness simply because I've heard that nobody's ever found a consistent way to solve it. (and it's only about $150, so you could probably get away with one more puzzle)

Teinturerie nice dictionnary ^^

Dyeing/to dye: Teindre
Dye: La Teinte

The mini hexaminx in the video is the bad one by the way I screwed up (so to speak) the core, since i used a dremel instead of an exato knife, but it's tighter and smoother normally

Sorry... I suck at French (and I literally just looked it up in a dictionary in five seconds).