The Horn Hunters

Another completed mission! TB2FHQ7 We have found our horns! Over a year later and over 6.6k miles logged our geocoin has reached its home. Thanks to everyone who helped our coin reach its destination and thanks to Butterfly Lady for organizing the mission!

Horn Hunters mission is now both sent and received! Thank you mousekakat for the incredible and imaginative package. Mrs Horn Hunter walked in as lil' Horn Hunter and myself opened the package and jokingly said "Oh, we are getting dead things in the mail now?". Our 8yr old son is a rock collector so you could imagine how cool the citrine (at least that is what he says it is) and ore was to him. Very very nice coin you designed! We feel very priviledged to have such a limited edition of such a wonderful coin! Thanks again for the wonderful package!

Just an update. The coins I am gifting to OverTheEdge have been dropped in caches today and are beginning their travels. And I have been contacted today by my gifter gjensen and we are in the works of getting that coin activated and ready to go. Thanks for all the hard work Butterfly Lady.

With many many apologies to my coin receiver OverTheEdge. I have finally emailed them with the info on their coins to get their missions started. No excuses. I screwed up the timing of the mission and neglected to post we'd be away for a bit. I myself have not yet been contacted by my mission person. Thanks for the excellent mission Butterfly. I'm really looking forward to watching my coins travel to my person and form the other person.

Slightly off topic to the mission itself, but how do you folks drill coins? Can I use a normal hand drill or do you pretty much need a full blown drill press to do it? What kind of bit would I need to use, etc, etc. Thanks for any help.

You are correct. When you get your package I bet you'll have a good laugh because, while I've never been anywhere near Australia or even your hemisphere, I bet the item we sent you is available in every little dorky tourist shop in Australia. But hey! Its not a kangaroo, we at least tried! I really wanted to go with a wombat theme, but the best I could find were plush wombats and those suckers are $ especially when all the ones I could find on ebay were being shipped from Australia! I really liked those wombats. I debated having something shipped straight to you (if it was coming from there anyway) but darn I wanted to see it! What would be the point of learning something about the outback if I couldn't even see the item I'm sending?!? Anyway, what I lacked in Aussie content, I tried to make up for in geocoinage. I also took the liberty of sending you an extra coin with a little note asking if you could release it to the wild for me. At your complete leisure of course. No rush. Hope you don't mind. Wait for the foot to mend! Hope it heals soon.

1. Email sent - check 2. Name received - check 3. Mission sent - check - FINALLY this morning - all the way to South Australia. It was hard to find something we liked that had anything to do with S. Australia. Finally got the decent idea through this forum to go EBay route and had to wait for the ordered product. I wish I could of done better, but I didn't want my mission person to have to wait any longer! 4. Mission arrived -

My point was that no where does it say this forum is strictly about the buying/selling/trading of geocoins. It simply says its about geocoins. A thread that is trading geocoins via mission, or giving them away via cointest is on topic in my opinion. I realize that is subjective and we all have our own opinions but the only right opinions is Groundspeak's and apparently they believe they are on topic as well because they allow those threads to be here. If some folks think Groundspeak has allowed this forum to go off-topic from its original intent, perhaps their anger would be better pointed in that direction. Having said that, I like the idea of subforums for geocoins and like the idea of a forum for Trading (missions and otherwise), Cointests, Mystery Coins, Buying/Selling. But as long as Groundspeak can keep things organized, which I think they are doing decently, I don't understand the fervor for or against either way.

Where does it say that? I all see is: "Talk about trackable and oh-so-collectible Geocoins. " Perhaps people are imposing their own opinion into this topic based upon what they believe this forum should be or wish it to be? I don't understand why such a simple thing is such a big deal. Separate forums...great. So I visit an extra forum or two once in a while. Same forum....great. So I skip over threads that don't interest me. Its not life or death. Sounds like some folks think this forum sole purpose is for the buying/selling of geocoins. Maybe a forum for that topic alone and a Misc Geocoin forum would make people happy? For what its worth I think a pinned topic for any topic seems to me to be the worse possible option. It near impossible to keep track of what it going on with everything being posted in one single thread. I like what the mods have done seems like a good compromise.

Yes this has been an especially hard mission for us as well. Having a hard time finding anything locally that had anything to do with my mission recipients location. But I didn't even think of ebay until I saw a post up above. Problem solved! Our mission is slow going but now we are back on track!

1. Email sent - check 2. Name received - check 3. Mission sent - 4. Mission arrived -

Mission Received! This is our first year geocaching so we are recently discovering geocaching when you aren't walking all over snow. Just this weekend while doing some awful bushwacking I said we really need to go online and figure out what the heck poison ivy and oak look like. Now we don't have to! Go Pens! Thank you very much Pittsburgh benefactor. We love the coin and all the goods.

1). SouvenirEmail Sent - Yes 2). SouvenirName Received - Yes 3). SouvenirMission Sent - Yes on 5/6/08 4). SouvenirMission Received -No

1). SouvenirEmail Sent - Yes 2). SouvenirName Received - Yes 3). SouvenirMission Sent - No 4). SouvenirMission Received -No

I love this idea. I think a simple checkbox when you activate a trackable to make it "geonymous" so it does not show up in the cache page inventory would be a very very nice addition to the website.

I understand the drilling thing, could you explain the padlocking thing? Do you have any pictures of a padlocked coin? We haven't released any coins to the wild yet, but we will soon when some of our custom coins begin to arrive in the mail. I've already decided to drill but would be interested in learning any another techniques to keep the coin in circulation as much as possible. As far as proxies go. We don't like them and I'm sorry to those that use them but we don't move them. If we could move/log them without having their icon or even their presence (i.e. count increase in generic icon) on our profile then we would. We made the decision when we started the hobby and began to learn more and more about the hobby that we had no interest in numbers, but we have great interest in knowing our history of coins we've seen and moved in our travels. So we don't discover coins, have no interest in proxies and the only coins/icons in our profile we ever want to see is actual coins we own, TBs and geocoins that were in our actual physical possesion for the purpose of being moved from one cache to another cache or given to us for the purpose of dropping into a cache. I'm sure I didn't come up with this idea first, but one thing I would LOVE Groundspeak to do and I'm convinced would at least alleviate the problem is the ability to drop coins into caches without logging it on the cache page and doesn't show as being in the inventory of the cache. The geocoin log still shows all drops and pickups, but no presence of it ever shows up when simpy viewing geocaches. I realize that we have other problems, muggles, forgetful or lazy geocachers, geocachers the quit after they pick up a coin, but I can at least forgive those folks. Its the thieves that I'm sure exist that watch caches for the purpose of stealing geocoins that I can't forgive, but I think there are solutions like the above that would help solve this problem significantly. If you can't see the geocoin log page without having the tracking number and you can't get the tracking number without having the coin and if you never know where the geocoin is until you've actually picked it up, then I think we cut back at least on the thieves significantly. Folks that find the geocoin could of course still add the geocoin to their watchlist since they had the tracking number in their possession, so they would know which cache the coin is in and be able to follow its progress if they wish. But the actual geocache page never shows any sign of the geocoin in its inventory. This could be a simple (on/off) Invisible or Anonymous (or whatever geoword you want to use) option when you activate a geocoin or trackable that you could click to make the trackable work in the described fashion. Maybe call it "Geovisible" or "Geonymous".

Sounds like fun! 1). SouvenirEmail Sent - Yes 2). SouvenirName Received - No 3). SouvenirMission Sent - No 4). SouvenirMission Received -No

ChocoEmail Sent- check ChocoName Received- check ChocoMission Sent- check, mailed 4/7 ChocoMission Received- TODAY 4/22!!! We were lucky enough to receive some international chocolate from Italy! We got some wonderful dark and orange chocolate. We also got our first Italian geocoin and we got an additional Italian geocoin to release to the wild. Such a cool idea. I never thought of sending extra coins to my mission person to release into the wild. This was the first mission we've participated in and we can't wait to do it again (need to wait for our geoguitars and big beans to arrive, we hardly have any coins to trade at this point). Thank you very much 'Nicole' Team.

I like the new Geogems assuming they are of quailty construction. The acrylic part worries me that they might feel/appear to be a cheap plastic toy. But I've seen quality acrylic items as well, its hard to tell from the photos. My son as a rock collector will love them, even if they aren't real gems. Personally, as long as our trackable items don't become geotrash, the more the merrier. I agree though it is definitely a problem that TBs and Geocoins alone are confusing enough to new geocachers. More trackables will just increase the confusion. We are only a few months into our geocaching hobby. When we joined a few months ago I tried and tried to figure out all the details but broke down and just posted questions in a forum or two here. Most new people won't post/ask questions. They either figure it out eventually and make mistakes along they way (i.e. take a geotrackable as swag) or potentially become overwhelmed and quit. I'm convinced better education can help, especially with the introduction of new geotrackables. Although no ideas at the moment of what kind of better education is needed.

ChocoEmail Sent- check ChocoName Received- check ChocoMission Sent- check, mailed 4/7 ChocoMission Received-

ChocoEmail Sent- check ChocoName Received- check ChocoMission Sent- not yet, today probably ChocoMission Received-

I might be a few minutes late, but I emailed to try and join. Finally got enough coins I can actually do some trades and participate in some of these things.

I'll trade one for a coin and one of your custom picks. I'm brand new to this hobby and only have 4 geocoins to my name (3 of which all arrived yesterday!). So I am going to keep one or two, release one or two and trade the rest.

Received mine yesterday. Love 'em. Thanks Kentucky.

But you are not alone. I finally got my first geocoin yesterday in the mail and activated it.