What wallet are you using? If you're using a full wallet (Bitcoin-qt), then it could take up to 12+ hours to download the full blockchain and your transactions show.

As a beginner, you'd be better off with a wallet like Electrum or Multibit that will show your transactions almost immediately.

You can also view them here on blockchain.info, by putting your public key (the one that starts with a 1) into the search bar. Your transactions should show up, assuming nothing is going wrong with this site:

blockchain.info

Otherwise, just contact the owner, I'm guessing he'll be eager to help.

1. https://electrum.org/download.html 2. https://multibit.org/

I was just using an online based wallet through blockchain.info.

Tried doing a search for my public key 18fyCm3vkftJ9nNgZ4SwoJkCuGVZQ2kZcE and had no luck finding the transaction.

When I get home tonight I need to check out these other wallets and get in touch with the owner. If I'm only out 10 bucks though on a gift card that I got for xmas. No sweat off my back.

*Oh, and thanks for the help!

No problem. Just in case you don't get those BTC, I just sent you some to that address to play around with or buy a little something with. But hopefully, you'll end up receiving both transactions.

Check out electrum or multibit, they're both fairly easy to use. Be sure the password-protect your wallet with a long password (write it down somewhere!). If you do continue to use blockchain.info be sure to enable 2-factor authentication and use a strong password.

I did get the BTC. Thank you so much for you generosity. I have downloaded the Bitcoin-Qt and is downloading the block chain now.

I'm going to check out electrum and multibit next. Thanks!

Great! Glad they both came through.

I need to make one correction to what I wrote above. In my haste, I accidentally called your Bitcoin address your "public key". Actually, your public key is a related but different concept. Properly said, the string that starts with "1" is just a Bitcoin address.

Anyway, just wanted to correct myself that those are two different but related concepts. This has no impact on your use of Bitcoins -- just use the one that starts with "1" to give out to receive Bitcoins. Most programs won't even show you the public key I'm talking about, so no need to worry about it.

I definitely see your address in the logs- let me know if you have any problems and I can check with Coinbase. For everyone else, it's definitely faster to supply an email and use a Coinbase account, and then transfer from there at your leisure.

Thanks for checking. I did get the bitcoins. Thank you! I am still very new to this and learning as I go.

If it was your intention to give people an easy way to break into the market, mission accomplished.

I tried it out with a $20 card this morning (I've had it for 3 years and never remember to use it on the rare occasion that I'm at Starbucks). I just received my 0.014916 bitcoin via Coinbase. It took 2 hours between when I submitted it and when I received the bitcoin.

Sorry it took so long- I'm hand-verifying transactions to be safe. Very much a human error I plan to remedy.

No apologies necessary! I was simply letting the skeptical person know that in my case it took 2 hours and that you were legit.