Sorry about this folks! In 2019, PayPal suddenly had a disliking to our harmless (and completely legal) microscopy spore products that they shut down their payment service with us (after around 10K orders from our eBay shop in 2017, to our .com in 2018-2019 with only 2 - both unjustified - chargebacks attempted in all of that time)... We believe this was due to three USA States in which those spores were illegal, confusing their laws with our UK law!

Interestingly enough, some or all of those same states in recent years changed their laws to make "magic mushrooms" completely legal, not just the harmless microscopy spores, but their actual cultivation, sale and consumption!

Although PayPal now lets shops sell these products, we harbour a 6-year grudge with them for the treatment of our shop in 2019, after they illegally withheld our customers' payments for 180 days - forcing us to send hundreds of active orders out without payment confirmation as we couldn't see who had or hadn't paid for the order - causing us reputational damage, and to make matters worse they couldn't point us to ANY term of service we had supposedly broken. We wrote all about this fiasco in our News section back in 2019 if you care to take a look.

So, sorry customers, never again out of principle.

These internet giants rule the internet - whatever they say goes because they can. They don't give a toss about the wee people like us or you.

Our whole business is treated as high risk, and that keeps us and our competitors out of the normal ways of paying (except for the shops which cleverly sidestep the 'high risk' category by only selling kits and promoting a second connected shop for the other products with discount codes to use).

Thing is though - bank transfer is actually the superior payment choice, because the transaction is much more private and you never need to worry a hacker has fitted a digital skimmer at checkout to siphon card details.

...Which is exactly what happened to us during our time off from the business in January 2024 when we were shut and not checking our business account, after purchasing from a supplier called clearbags. Only noticing by pure luck once £10K had already left in small payments to insurance companies, Apple and Netflix subscriptions and even an HMP prison to pay for someone's phone calls! You couldn't write it. And those annoying text messages from the bank to confirm it was us making a payment, not a single time did we get one of those from hundreds of scam payments coming out - we asked the bank fraud team how they managed to get around them and they told us the scammers were clever at getting around anything.

Yes, we got all of our money back from the bank (thank you) but we spent months dealing with it, because dozens of subscriptions were still coming out of our bank. Then came the insurance companies wanting their money back that the banks had clawed back, threatening us with legal action. It was a nightmare we would never have experienced had we paid by bank transfer. Now for every supplier and new shop we purchase from, we ALWAYS ask to pay by bank transfer.

Bank transfer rules, but it also costs us a massive amount of lost business as companies try to convince people that bank transfer is unsafe when my above argument completely turns that on its head.

So we do it our own way now! Bank transfer, cash in post and crypto are all there at checkout, and every one of them comes with its own instructions by email.

Sometimes shops love their own farts branding so much they want everyone to smell see it (including your postie and your neighbour when it gets handed to them when you're out!).

No, our parcels are boring and your neighbour doesn't need to know that you bought a "King Brown" (aka King Oyster) or a "Wood ear" (aka Auricularia auricula-judae).

We have seen and received some COOL parcels from mushroom shops.. but it's not ever going to happen here.

Yes! In the UK it is legal to possess, buy and sell ANY mushroom spores, regardless of species or type. This is also true for virtually anywhere in the world (with the number of exclusions you can count on a single hand). We're a legitimate shop, running since 2017. In saying this, just because it's legal to sell any mushroom spores does not mean we will ever sell the spores from deadly species of mushroom like the Death Cap because although it would be fascinating through the microscope we'd not be able to sleep without worry that someone might be dumb enough to cultivate them.

If you are looking to cultivate mushrooms, we have over 23 species of culture available for growing Shiitake, Golden Oyster or even the bioluminescent (grow in the dark we like to call them) mushroom species "Panellus stipticus" and more!

Extremely Important: cultivating these species has been illegal in the UK since 2005. That is not what we sell them for, and if your question is about growing them then we will not answer it and will refuse sale.

Spore-only orders go out same day if payment is received before 1pm Monday to Friday, or you get a free spore syringe if we're late. Grow kit orders are dispatched in 0-3 working days when payment is received before 1pm Monday to Friday, or you get a free grow kit if we're late. Other products show their dispatch promise on their own product pages.

For UK customers there are two flat rates at checkout. For just microscopy-only orders, Economy is £1.95 and takes around 2-3 days. Express is £3.95 and is 1 day, tracked. For everything else, the flat rate is £3.95 and £5.95 (as they are bigger parcels usually - we know some small things like IPA wipes will trigger the higher flat, we'll get around to figuring out that bug soon.)

We do mess up occasionally with dispatch, but us having some skin in the game for when we're late keeps us true and on our toes not to be late. Plus it just feels fair from our perspective. If we are late with your order, you do not need to get in touch to point it out - we are very aware of the orders we become late with so we know which ones to put the free gift inside. Peace.

Yes, we ship almost everywhere where it's legal for us to do so... you will see the available options at checkout.

Where we can, we calculate your own import fees at checkout and charge this to you so you don't have to deal with customs costs and extra delays - the parcels should just get to you without any fuss for a great experience (the price is higher initially, but you'd have to pay that price yourself anyway if you ordered from another shop which didn't charge you it at checkout and you'd have to go through the hassle of delays and paying it regardless).

If your country is not listed and is also not:

• on a UK sanctions list
• engaged in crimes against humanity

Then please get in touch and we will try to correct this.

Gourmet mushroom farms never cultivate from gourmet spores, because the traits would be all different from grow to grow. That's where cultures come in - mushroom farms will generally use actively growing live mushroom mycelium because the mycelium has been taken from a mushroom they want to replicate the same traits from... Think cloning. This is essential if they want those same exact characteristics each time like its looks, flavour etc.

Gourmet mushroom spores on the other hand are a lottery of genetics between spores. You won't know what you could be growing, you could strike it lucky and grow shiitake with characteristics superseding commercial shiitake mushrooms, or you could end up with the opposite - who knows what you would end up with.

Our mushroom spores are for the microscope however, 600X is the ideal viewing magnification - these are not for cultivation as the species would be toxic (although, we don't consider any of them remotely close to deadly as we would never stock anything that was deadly, ever). But many of the microscopy spores we have would be illegal to even attempt to cultivate - as stated on their respective product pages.

If you are looking to grow any kind of gourmet or medicinal mushroom, like Golden Oyster, Lion's Mane or more, then we offer those as liquid cultures to use with our grow kits. We don't offer spores for these. If you want spores for those then you will need to grow them first and collect the spores yourself.