Lemon Fresh Dog

GeoKs! I know where that Brass Cap is! I'll bring it to the next local event.... Kidding....

Yes indeedy! They have all been mailed some time ago. However, I have not gotten a US recipient posting their arrival yet - so I am assuming it is a border issue due to the season. (I'm anxious to hear - so PLEASE, if you live in the US and have these arrive, POST as soon as you can).

My dog votes for my coin!

Now THAT is a story and THAT is why I collect geocoins - sending a note to get one of these ones!

No experience on this, but have an opinion! I'd think that you are better off selling to a targeted audience - folks that know what caching is and want a coin.

Well! If the idea was to get me to look at their GPS units - it worked! I'm thinking of getting one now to try it out.

Mine is a simple story of a naive lad that.... oh wait.... wrong forums... Every year I do a personal coin to place in caches, give away and trade. This year it was the Geobone v2. (they are far more expensive to mint than my 2006/2007 coins - so I only want to d the Geobones every few years). What is the story? Um... my geonick is "Lemon Fresh DOG" - so a bone makes sense. The SCUBA portion reflects my interest in discovery, exploration, science and the earth - so I thought I'd start as low as I can! Plus I am a diver (unless you actually have to dive to be considered - I haven't been out/under nearly as much as I want to be). Each new bone in the future will represent a major theme of a hobby I like - Mountain Biking, Cross-country skiiing, hiking, astronomy, aviation - that sort of thing. I don't want to over-crowd the coin - so one minting to one theme. This is for my outdoor/exploration interests. The little doghouse with the bones out front (or bowl) and the satellite above is something I try to place in all my coins - to tie them all together.

Well... I'm PADI certified, but my dog HATES the water. So she stays on the shore whilst I dive beneath the waves and look at fish and such. Where I live currently it's mostly very cold lakes - so I want to get my ice-diving and, by virtue of the fact I'm way up in the Rockies (or close), my altitude cert as well. Strangely, no one has been pointing out the fact that GPS's won't work underwater! However, it's *art* not science - this whole coin thing.

At a CITO event I placed some coins on tree stumps, near benches and such. Then I posted the coordinates for each coin at the main "camp" and folks could seek them as they visited different areas of our adopted park to pick-up trash. That was fun. Next year, I am thinking of placing them, but not posting the coords until AFTER the CITO. So there'll be 10 or so coins "out there" and if you find one while picking-up trash - good for you! Any unfound coins at the end of the day will have their coords revealed and you can run off and get them. Other than that, I'm not logging all my finds. I keep track of them and will log them one day, but sometimes I'll visit a cache, sign the book, and drop a coin. Then I'll just watch the cache to see if anyone says - "hey! there's an unlisted coin in here!" - nothing so far

The custom icon is now on the Groundspeak site - so those that have them and are activating them will now have their very own dogbone! (if anyone from the US or Europe has them yet - please let me know)

I'll take some time and enter this contest shortly. Meanwhile, I was looking at some of my coins the other day and have one very special one that related to the intial post here. Does anyone remember the "Bikedog" coin? I'm not a motorcyclist, but a road cyclist (mountain actually), and I really like the initial post in this thread. We need to remember that there are bikes on the roads and pathways when we are out there. We actually need more bikes on the road! Sadly, there are many folks that will be missing a loved one this holiday because of this lack of awareness. So, I'm going to send off a few coins as the initial post of this thread suggests and even send out another for "Bikedog". Never knew him or met him, but his coin is a special one to me.

My friend, you're a lover of releasing coins, aren't you?? You could always try your luck in the Todie's Wild Ride thread, I know there's a few more LACKEY coins waiting to be won there!!!! I'll check it out. To be honest, I'd rather get a coin such as a Lackey coin from....well...a Lackey. Winning it would be okay too - so I'll check out the cointest. Just the other day, I was lucky enough to get a volunteer coin from a great local cacher that has done just a tonne for the hobby. That's the perfect way for me to get one of these special coins. As for releasing coins - isn't that sort of what they are for?

Actually, I know the coin you are refering to. There's also a super-secret Platimum edition and the Ultra-super-secret eBay-only edition that is so rare that even the person minting the coin doesn't know about it and the metal is said to be not of this earth. If you don't have it, then your collection is junk.

I think I once saw Jeremy in a limo with Elvis drinking Gin and Tonics. I couldn't make a positive ID, but when the limo pulled away, there was a smashed Lackey coin on the ground. Sadly, it was beyond repair and, in fact, might have just been some ice from their drinks - as it slowely faded away in the sunshine (I've heard the Lackey coins do that). I'll likely never get a Lackey coin, but if they make a Geo-Fool coin - I'm a shoe-in!

I didn't even TYPE a SQL Statement....how can it be a SQL error!

Wow....you're making me blush However, I'm an ugly old man. The Lemon Fresh Dog DOG is rather nice though!

I would agree - if the purpose of geocoins was solely to collect them. Which would give me much less enjoyment - as they are then not a product of a process (geocaching), but just an item to collect. For example, if the Post Office made stamps invalid for sending a letter and only allowed meter mail. Then, continued to mint stamps, but only for the collectors....it wouldn't mean much to me. (personally). In fact, I collect "USED" stamps. I want stamps that were actually used to move a letter. I want geocoins from people I have actually met, or "know" through a common interest in the outdoors, caching, etc. Limted editions (to my way of thinking) are not "real" geocoins, because they have no intention of purpose to be in a cache - they are simply an item created for the purpose of collecting. They are commemortive items and not functional items. That's okay! Many people collect commemortive items. Obama plates, Moon Landing coins, stamps from Tonga. That's a whole "type" of collecting that many enjoy. I don't. Therefore I don't enjoy LE coins and/or coins manufactured for commercial scarcity. Everyone is different, but I don't like "commercial collectables". I like collectibles that represent an actual activity beyond the act of collecting itself. (or person - I really, really like personal coins and.... dare I say it here ... even NON-trackable ones! - yipes!) Open-ended mintings will not dimish the fun of collecting coins. By their nature, Personal coins will be limited and often not open-minted. I'm thinking open-minting for the commercial, trackable coins that are really well designed. This would give those seeking coins for caches the choice of better quality designs to place in caches - and, yes. they would be stolen, but maybe not as much as the LE materials. Travel Bugs get stolen, but not as much as geocoins. The added benefit of having some of the better designs in continuous production (or at least repeated production for the time they are selling) is that it would make it harder for lower quality designs to sell out. It's changing, but at one point, you could have put a tracking number on a blank piece of metal, called it the "minimist geocoin" and sold-out a 200 coin edition in 2 hours. Ha! At one point, someone would have minted the design just because I mentioned it in this post! Anyhow. I shouldn't stray too far from the original question. As most can guess, my answer is "NO! - I do not pay more for limited edition metals" and I suppose I've ranted about why that is. Sorry to all the little pixels on your computer that I have caused a decrease in life-span to. EDIT TO ADD: I shoudl also mention that I find "Commercial Collectables" markets to be volitile and dangerous to the prolonged health of a hobby. Many examples exist. The Branford Exchange and collector plates, the comic industry of the late 1990's, stamp collecting in the 70's (Tonga!), Beanie Babies, Action Figures. Except for comics and stamps, all the above have little external purpose (you can read a comic, you can use a stamp to mail a letter) - so there is an argument that you can't "flood" a market with toys or plates. You simply create what the market will bear. In geocoins, we are about to experience a "fall" (if we haven't already) - or, in popular terms an "adjustment". We see it already. There are actually surpluses and discounts now happening.

You know you're a geocon addict when the bottom of your washing machine always has a geocoin in it.

I should add the Lemon Fresh Dog dog. She's a rescued dog from Rocky Mountain House here in Alberta (ARF - Animal Rescue Foundation) and was found with a couple puppies. When we first got her, she was quite aggressive, but now she is super-sucky!

Neither? I like to release them as TBs. (OK, I collect them too, but I enjoy following their travels more than knowing I have some stashed in a box.) In general, I won't pay any extra for any "special" version unless it looks way better than the "regular" version and only costs a little extra. I think it s*cks when a seller makes the best looking version the (really) high dollar one. But then, more often than not, I'll blow off the RE too. Opps... I forgot to mention Coins as Travel Bugs. They are, indeed, a trackable item. Sadly, as I ranted, the scarcity (perceived or real, manufactured or not) drives the "value" upwards. Short story. Don't spend too much time enjoying them moving around. They get stolen. There are ...oh...300 or so threads on how to prevent this. To the topic at hand, I wonder if anyone has ever found a limted metal coin in a cache and if so, how well did it travel? I suspect they would be even more short-lived.

Maybe I will rant a little. What are geocoins intention? Are they collectibles or are they signature items? Before someone answers "both" - let me clarify by refining my question to ask - what is the "primary" intention? My hope, dream, personal opinion is that they are signature items that are created to represent a cacher or organization. The collecting of these coins then becomes a collection related to an activity - geocaching. This stands in opposition to the collecting of an arbitrary object - the coin itself. As an analogy - I don't understand why someone would want to collect commemorative plates. I *can* understand why someone would collect plates that are historically significant (like plates from old Railroads, Luxury ships). Not my thing, but I would take a Titanic Plate over an Elvis plate any day!) So... what does this have to do with this post? I'm a collector. I collect comics, stamps, little 1:400 airplanes, and other odds and ends. Can't explain it, drives my wife crazy, I even worked in a museum I like old historical artifacts so much. What I see when I see limited editions is - poison. Yup. It poisons the hobby because it creates a false scarcity (okay - it's real, but manufactured). This, in turn, reduces enthusiasm for collecting. (people like to complete). The first sign of this is that people become very "topical" in their collecting. Given enough material, this can be fun and evolves the hobby. For example, very few folks collect every stamp in the world today (they used to). Now, people collect one country, or one "theme", or just try for one representative sample from each country. A good example of where this has gone wrong are the "postage stamp" countries that release a stamp for everything under the sun (Tonga!). No serious collector wants these. There is limited mass-market appeal, but the cost of production is so low that we continue to see "Star Wars" postage stamps and "Obama" official silver dollars. We see this in geocoins. How many geocoin sales can we have? We now see sell-offs and specials all the time as people realize their "collection" has become "inventory". We see coins made for a purpose that I don't comprehend. (maybe my mind is feable?). I won't name coins, but there are coins that I think are absolute junk. Their connection to the hobby, any aspect of the hobby, or anyone IN the hobby is marginal at best. LE's, XLE's and so forth seek to exploit this. They create exclusion and diminish enthusiasm (okay...some folks like to "chase" them). An example of this are what they actually call "chaser" cards and action figures. For example, they come out with a new set of Star Wars figures and load 24 in a box. They create one figure that is rare and place this in every 4th box - it's called a "chaser" figure. Then, the Walmart employees pull the figures and sell them on eBay (to the point where they will fire anyone caught doing this). Star Wars, Matchbox, Upper Deck - they all have done this. It benefits the manufacturer as folks "chase" the item It "poisons the hobby as collectors "give-up" trying and this becomes and epidemic of people leaving whew.... let me tell you how I *really* feel! End of the rant for me is the conclusion that I think folks (individuals and organizations) should mint coins as signature items. Mint as many as you can afford/members want. Manufacturers should concentrate not on many new designs, but very good designs that they can mint again and again and again and again. The cream will rise to the top and the best designs would become "hits". We'd also see less thieving as there would be less "collectors" value and more people buying them for caches (plus for their collections). I buy stamps to send mail, I buy one of every new stamp for my collection. It's fun! Could you imagine if there were only 100 copies of each Beatles or Pink Floyd CD in the world?

Didn't like it then. Don't like it now. I'm sure I've written a book or two on why open-minting and non-exclusive coins are better (especially for organization coins - personals are really up to the individual)

For those wondering about the "Chinese Metals" comment. Each geobone has a sheet with the activation code:

Only if you're smoking them... oh-oh..... it's been nice knowing everyone.....

Awesome! One cachers actually sent me a photo of their dog wearing the original geobone and I keep it posted in my office at work. It's hard to believe that was waaaaaay back in 2005. I'm looking forward to the version 2 pictures. Once again - I need to get my husky up here. She's older now, but still with us!