I've gotten quotes from different jewelers ranging from doing one piece for free to as much as $75 minimum to do anything.
@cadalu: Thanks for the compliment. To answer your question about hand polishing them, yes and no. The first piece I did came back great. The other 3 required hand polishing. When I sent them the photos, they did work stuff out with me to my satisfaction, but I'd still rather the silver just came back finished correctly.
My feeling is that I at least want to know which is the official shapeways finish. If it is one that needs hand polishing, than I don't feel comfortable letting SW sell the pieces online because customers will get unfinished pieces. If it is completely finished, then I am happy.
If the "polished" style is going to regularly have scratches or print lines on it, I won't waste the money on paying SW to polish, and will either do it myself, or pay someone else to do it.
Don't get me wrong, SW is SO MUCH cheaper than any other option I have found for making silver from a computer model that I still would use them to make the original. It's just a choice between 2 different business models.
I would really like to be able to let SW deal with the customers directly and leave me more time to continue designing.
I feel like SW is made up of awesome people and an awesome service. I just need some better consistency if I am going to trust running business that relies heavily on them. I feel like that is going to be the case at some point, but perhaps not quite yet.
Lincoln