markta

First I want to thank everyone in the amazingly generous Geocaching community who donated to The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I've sent mail to most of you thanking you and making it clear that you are the heroes. Krista and I finished the climb in 27:22. Let's just say our legs are taking a bit of a rest for the rest of today. We took some cool pictures and I hope to post them. Secondly, I want to say thank you to the Groundspeak people. I violated some rules by not asking them about this idea before posting it and I'm dazzled that they spent time looking into it which went above and beyond what they had to do. I apologize for this and have learned my lesson. I should mention Flying Spaghetti Monster was particularly helpful in coming up with ideas and I'm grateful to him / her. I'm mailing out the coins as fast as I can. To clarify, you can certainly still donate today and get a coin, but I don't want to overstay my welcome and to be fair we should probably end this drive here. Thank you again my friends, --Mark and Krista (2/3 of team markta)

If you can write a check to the "Leukemia and Lymphoma Society" or simply "LLS" and mail it to me, I'd be happy to send you a coin. Thanks for your interest! --Mark

Hi Geocaching friends, I'm participating in the Big Climb this Sunday to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Basically it's climbing the stairs of the tallest skycraper in Seattle. Coincidentally I have a bunch of new, unactivated MarkTa geocoins I'd like other people to enjoy. SO, if you donate to the Big Climb by clicking here, and live in the USA I'll send you a free MarkTa 2nd to Find coin. Please contribute by Sunday, March 16th, 2008. Of course feel free to ask me questions by contacting me through my geocaching ID or through this thread. My coin is trackable and has its own icon, which some people really like; It's a big 2" across, a full 1/8" thick, is 1.6 oz, full color and clear-epoxied on both sides for durability. Here's what it looks like. What's kind of cool is that your contribution is 100% tax deductible! So feel free to donate large sums (ha ha). I'm just sending you a coin as a gift for helping out the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. thanks! --Mark (of team markta)

This post has been approved by Groundspeak - FSM

The coin maker was Song's Coin in Seoul S. Korea. They were at songscoin.com. No matter how you slice it, it seems what they did was wrong in my opinion. I am very satisfied with the coin, but this experience has made me decide to go with another minter for future coins. Here's what the coin looks like (even more embarrassing, it has my picture on it...) http://snipurl.com/1c7pg thanks again for all your help --Mark (of team markta)

Yes, the seller was definitely a man of scruples. I think he was one of the 'victims' here. Thanks fairyhoney!

Thanks everyone for their near-unanimous suggestions. Plus, after some not-too-heavy drinking, I now am much less stressed about it. And the plot thickens: After contacting the EBay seller anonymously, it appears that he inded got them directly from the mint I used in Korea and in fact he says: "Yes I bought it from Korea. I'm not sure what this coin means or where it's from. Good luck Thanks for looking. " So it seems the bad guy here is: the minter in Korea. I sent the minter mail asking him to refrain from doing that. It seems particularly bad because the coin has a PC code that duplicates one of my other coins. Thanks again for the help and suggestions! Particularly the sleuthing by Map Monkey - many thanks.

Hello, I was wondering what the coin community thinks of this situation. I had a geocoin made, I spent a long time on it (don't we all...) and it's big and epoxied on both sides and has its own icon - sorry if this sounds like it's an advertisement, I don't mean to. The point is I tried to make it NICE. I'll shut up now. Whenever I give or trade this coin, I tell people DO NOT SELL it - and I include a note with the coin that says "Keep, Trade or Put in a cache, but please NEVER SELL this coin." So now I see a guy is selling one on EBay! ( http://tinyurl.com/2qxt96 ) So my question is: 1. Should I activate it to punish the silly person? He even included the coin code on the scan. 2. Should I just relax because life is too short. My hope was for people to enjoy finding/getting the coin, not have it be tainted by money.

Hi CO Cachers, Please excuse my ignorance, but I'm flying down to Boulder this weekend and wondering if geocaching is an option considering all the snow you've had there. I was considering looking at Broomfield, Boulder, Longmont, Superior or Louisville and mostly sticking to in-city parks and environs (no hiking because I'll be by myself). I appreciate any suggestions, though I realize conditions there change on a daily basis! many thanks --markta

I can't believe I was there, but there's photographic evidence of it - yesterday was Johnny Boy and DB Cooper's 2000th find at Coins and GEMs. Congrats again!

Chrisgun hit the big 1000 today! Congrats Chris!!

I must agree with TotemLake about N00bish mistakes being just another part of the 'fun' (aka risk factor) of going for FTFs. Though I should also add these mistakes aren't made just by N00bs... Douglas_Clan your point is well taken that they can be super frustrating!!

Thank you friends! We couldn't have done it without you! Hope to see you all again soon.

Hi Douglas_Clan, when I had a short time to cache in Portland, these two were my favorites: Eye of the beholder (actually in Centralia! oops!) and One For the Little People. Enjoy your visit! --markta

Thanks everybody - I couldn't have made it this far without all of you. Too bad we couldn't crack the 100's together today Fishiam, though it was nice sharing the fun with Allanon, Chrisgun, Hydnsek, RWW and my best pal Nevcowpok today!

Congrats to WeightMan for hitting the big 900 today. A nice Christmas gift - way to go Bob!

I'd like to extend some hearty congratulations to NevCowPok for hitting the big 600! And on the neato Hang 10 cache, too. Hope to see you again soon Ken (and not stuck in traffic!).

I'd like to join you fine folks on this epic. I'll see you there at 8am (gulp)! --Mark

Thanks, but I'm truly bummed that I'm going to miss out on this - our car just died and I have to deal with it tomorrow. I'm sure you'll have a blast. Hope to tag along next time, too!

I'd be interested in some of this action. I haven't cached south of Federal Way. Maybe sneak cache by bikerfitz in? (at least an attempt).

I'd like to join for 4 coins each too. (one for me and 3 for caching). Thanks!

Thanks for your nice words friends. I never thought I'd make it to 100, but sitting on 99 for two days made me itch to go out for more. On our 99, we only met one other geocacher, (evergreenhiker!! Hi!) but last night at our 100th cache, it was great to meet about 100 others! (well ok maybe 80 others).