Keeper of Maps

Directing this to the statement itself, not to 'mulvaney': Pfffft. Yeah right. More likely any of the management would have denied any knowledge of the cache and the bomb squad would have been called in anyway "just in case". As the author of the article in question, I stand by that statement, which is based on several emails I exchanged with an information officer with the Plano PD. In response to my question about who saw the suspicious activity (i.e. the cachers retrieving/replacing the cache), he said: "Walmart security saw it happen and reported it. If the individuals hiding the item would of contacted Wal Mart this would not of happened." (That is a direct quote from one of the emails he sent.) If Walmart had granted permission for the cache to be on their property their security people would have been aware of it and probably not felt compelled to report the activity to the police after determining it was related to the geocache. If they called the police anyways and the cache owner could prove that he had permission to place the cache, I suspect that a) the police would have had a conversation with the Walmart security people about doing due diligence before calling the police (but to always err on the side of caution if there's any doubt), and b ) the cache owner might have been asked to remove the cache anyways. I was not aware that it was Wal-Mart security that had spoted the cache in the first place. I do not doubt that the officer said what he said or the truthfulness of your reporting- however there have been cases in the past where the property owner was aware of the cache, was on site, had told the police that it was harmless and the cache was destroyed anyway, "just in case". The part I bolded assumes facts that are not in evidence. Cacher: "Mr. Manager, let me tell you about geocaching. Now that I've explained our harmless little game, do you mind if I put this film can under the skirt of a light pole out in the parking lot?" Wal Mart Manager: "Sure, kid. Knock yourself out. I've seen people doing a lot worse in our parking lot. Y'all have fun!" So, now security knows all about the cache? I don't think so. The Information Officer for the Plano PD is not omniscient; he might assume that if the manager had given permission, the security guards would have known about it. Having worked for a few managers, and actually been a security guard at one point, I'm pretty sure they would have known nothing about it. The smart cacher would have then said "I need a quick letter of permission so that I can prove I have permission. And could you give a copy to your security office so that they don't freak out when people show up on the property at 2am? Many thanks!" At this point the manager will hopefully say "sure, here ya go". If there's any resistance then the cache shouldn't be placed. Frankly, if you're placing a cache on a pole in a parking lot there's probably a better place to put it. There have been enough incidents that anyone placing a geocache should be thinking about this when choosing the location. And were I a reviewer evaluating an LPC in a parking lot (easy enough to check), I would ask the cache owner to confirm the landowner gave them permission. I have a cache that's on land well outside the fence of an airport by several hundred metres, but is on land that is allocated to the airport on some maps. The reviewer questioned this during the approval process and only approved it when additional information was provided.

Directing this to the statement itself, not to 'mulvaney': Pfffft. Yeah right. More likely any of the management would have denied any knowledge of the cache and the bomb squad would have been called in anyway "just in case". As the author of the article in question, I stand by that statement, which is based on several emails I exchanged with an information officer with the Plano PD. In response to my question about who saw the suspicious activity (i.e. the cachers retrieving/replacing the cache), he said: "Walmart security saw it happen and reported it. If the individuals hiding the item would of contacted Wal Mart this would not of happened." (That is a direct quote from one of the emails he sent.) If Walmart had granted permission for the cache to be on their property their security people would have been aware of it and probably not felt compelled to report the activity to the police after determining it was related to the geocache. If they called the police anyways and the cache owner could prove that he had permission to place the cache, I suspect that a) the police would have had a conversation with the Walmart security people about doing due diligence before calling the police (but to always err on the side of caution if there's any doubt), and b ) the cache owner might have been asked to remove the cache anyways. I was not aware that it was Wal-Mart security that had spoted the cache in the first place. I do not doubt that the officer said what he said or the truthfulness of your reporting- however there have been cases in the past where the property owner was aware of the cache, was on site, had told the police that it was harmless and the cache was destroyed anyway, "just in case". Ah... this is what comes from not reading the full story because it's mentioned in the second paragraph. With respect to the "cases in the past" that you allude to, there must be more to those "cases" that prompted the police to destroy something the property owner had vouched for.

Directing this to the statement itself, not to 'mulvaney': Pfffft. Yeah right. More likely any of the management would have denied any knowledge of the cache and the bomb squad would have been called in anyway "just in case". As the author of the article in question, I stand by that statement, which is based on several emails I exchanged with an information officer with the Plano PD. In response to my question about who saw the suspicious activity (i.e. the cachers retrieving/replacing the cache), he said: "Walmart security saw it happen and reported it. If the individuals hiding the item would of contacted Wal Mart this would not of happened." (That is a direct quote from one of the emails he sent.) If Walmart had granted permission for the cache to be on their property their security people would have been aware of it and probably not felt compelled to report the activity to the police after determining it was related to the geocache. If they called the police anyways and the cache owner could prove that he had permission to place the cache, I suspect that a) the police would have had a conversation with the Walmart security people about doing due diligence before calling the police (but to always err on the side of caution if there's any doubt), and b ) the cache owner might have been asked to remove the cache anyways.

My pleasure... have a good event!

If you search for the keyword RACE10, you'll be given a list of all the caches that have that in the cache name. It looks like there's 27 caches, including the event cache itself. At the bottom of the search results page are some buttons to all you to check all of them and then download them. You'll probably have to do that twice because there's two pages of results. Another option would be to create a bookmark list and add all the RACE10 caches to the bookmark list. Then you can create a pocket query for the bookmark list. Good luck!

Had something like this happen in my pocket a couple of years ago. I had a pair of AA batteries in the same pocket as my keys. The keys bridged the contacts on one (or both?) of the batteries and proceeded to become incredibly hot very quickly. Of course I was at a restaurant with friends and their response to me jumping up, reaching into my pocket and dumping the contents on the table was priceless. It took the keys several minutes to cool down. Luckily, I didn't get burned, but it was surprising, to say the least. I shudder to think what would have happened if the battery had ignited. Oh, and got stung by a bumble bee while I was out recently. It was the first time I'd been stung by a bee, so I had no idea whether I was allergic to bee stings. Apparently, I'm not.

Since there are no "Needs Maintenance" logs on your caches, what you did by posting a note was good so there's no need to post an "Owner Maintenance" log. I always post an "owner maintenance" log when I visit one of my caches. Even if my visit consists simple of retrieving the container, opening it, noting it's in good condition and putting it back it's still maintenance. As well, it preempts situations like the one that started this thread.

True, they aren't complaining in this thread. But, as someone who had a coin that was more expensive than your average coin and took a lot of flack over this, I can say that sadly not everyone is as polite.

This is one of the better summations I've read on this issue and I wish everyone would read it carefully before they start complaining that people who make and sell geocoins are ripping everyone off.

Thanks for the quick reply! Unfortunately, I'm not going to rent a car since our regional office isn't that far from the hotel. But, maybe I'll luck out and the hotel will have a courtesy car like the hotel I stayed in last time I visited Halifax.

I'm going to be in Halifax on business for the first half of next week and will have some free time during the days because most of my work will be in the evenings. Just wondering which caches are "must-do" caches? I'll be staying at the Delta Barrington. Recommendations appreciated!

The commercialization started a long time ago when the first travelbug tag was sold. But people like buying TBs and geocoins, so they don't complain except when someone other than Groundspeak tries to cover their costs. But I digress.... Events cost money to put on and if the entrance fee for the event is to cover their costs or is a user fee charged by the venue, I don't have a real problem with that. One complaint I have about the treasure hunt caches is that they tend to be rather uninspired caches. But the thing that probably nags at me the most is that when you visit the profile for the owner of these caches you discover that they haven't even paid for a premium membership, so they are generating revenue from a service many of us are paying for. With respect to the recently posted event in the Ottawa area, I am undecided as to whether I will attend.

A similar publication in Ontario that came out a little while ago had a similar article on geocaching.

Yay! (I'd almost forgotten about them!)

Perhaps your ISP has (inadvertantly) blacklisted them for appearing to spam?

I ordered my pathtags about a month ago and they arrived earlier this week and I'm very happy with the way they turned out. Unlike many designs I've seen in the gallery, my design is based on the way I sign the back of the cards I have been leaving in caches. (My forum avatar is currently set to my pathtag artwork.) Shortly after activating it in the gallery, I had a request for a trade, even though I'm not generally planning on trading them at this point. And I made a trade offer for a pathtag by a noteworthy cacher that was accepted. These are a great alternative to personal geocoins because you can produce the initial design for a reasonable amount of money and once you have the die created you can order additional tags at a reasonable cost/tag.

It was probably a mistake on the original poster's part to mention his costs. However, there could have been factors people were unaware of that contributed to raising the per coin cost. But, that's really none of our business. The geocoin costs us what he's selling it for. We can accept that and buy it, or reject it and not buy it. We don't have the right to say "you should be selling it for this price". There's nothing they can do at this point if they were charged more than the average by the mint they used. If they produce another geocoin in the future, they can take this into consideration. The S&H might have been a bit high, but the price they quoted for S&H was a fixed fee for 1-3 coins. Administratively, that makes things much easier for the seller and might not be that far off the mark. Not that it's any of my business, but do your prices include covering things like your PayPal fees every time you sell a coin? On the topic of taking a loss, I think many geocoin producers don't mind taking a bit of hit because of the prestige of having their own geocoin. I've done three event geocoins with another cacher and we took a hit on the first one because we underestimated some unexpected costs (eg: customs), and roughly broke even on the second. The jury's still out on the third, but we won't be surprised if we're short on it. In our case, we were making geocoins celebrating local event, though since we weren't the organizers of the events we consciously made the decision not to make money off it and pumped some of the revenues from the geocoin back into pins we gave to anyone who showed up at the event, even if they didn't buy a geocoin. However, if we're going to continue the conversation, we really should start a new thread rather than continue hijacking this one.

I'm all for fundraisers....but when the coin's cost of minting is questionable at best and then the sale prices mentioned are actually low enough to create a loss...then I become skeptical. Well, look at it this way: They choose to sell slightly below cost prior to the event to the actual organizers/participants in the event (presumably) to build the necessary funds to front the production of the coins. At the event, they sell them for an amount a bit over the cost of the coin with the extra funds going into the overall production costs/cost of the event/organization's operating funds. Post-event, they sell the coins at a premium as a bigger funds raiser. In other words: get in early and you get a real deal; participate in the event and get preferred pricing; don't participate in the event (i.e. don't contribute to helping make the event a success) and you pay a premium. However, the bottom line is still this: If you feel the coin isn't worth your money, then don't buy it. You don't have the right to berate the person because their product is, in your opinion, too expensive.

What makes you think that you have a right to know either piece of information? When people might be getting ripped off, the people have the right to know. No, you have no right to know who made their coins nor the rationale behind their pricing. You do have the right to decide whether the price of the geocoin meets your definition of value-for-money. If it does, you may purchase one. If it doesn't then you don't buy the geocoin. It's that simple. (However, if you read the thread and visit the website mentioned in one of the original messages you'll notice that it appears to be a fund raiser for their group/event.)

Nice looking coins! Order already sent.

What makes you think that you have a right to know either piece of information?

The numbers Damenace are interesting, but not wholly applicable to our coin as some of the assumptions made are incorrect. Nor do they take into consideration higher shipping costs because we're not in the US or the fact that we have to pay customs fees when we receive the coins. And there's also PayPal fees per transaction that factor into the cost of the coin, too. But the biggest thing that he seems to be missing is the fact that the $16 are CANADIAN DOLLARS, not US dollars. With an exchange rate of roughly $1.00 CAD = $0.85 USD, this equates to $13.60 USD per coin. Taking into consideration all the costs that Damenace is not privy to, we're going to be lucky if we break even on this. Personally, I'm expecting we'll lose money on this. The bottom line is that the geocoin is available for sale in our store and everyone is welcome to purchase them if they want to.

Yes, our curious minds need to know As mentioned elsewhere, that is the price for one geocoin.

Thanks! geoSquid and I have actually been thinking about this design for a year and were basically waiting for time to pass so that we could use it. Oh, and we do ship to the Netherlands.

It will be using the event geocoin icon: