fivedime

Another way proxies may be used is to send out instead of a coin you may want to keep in your colection. Part of what you've paid for is a tracking number...employing a proxy allows you to use it, while keeping posession of the coin, not to mention giving cachers who are into that sort of thing the opportunity to add an icon to their profile (albeit at the same time denying them the joy of seeing and holding the actual coin - for this reason it is always nicest if traveler profiles are worded to clearly indicate what is out there is a proxy and not the actual coin). Personally, I will likely never release another coin into the wild again. I don't like spending my money to fund thieves' collections...and as stated before it's not a matter of "if," but "when."

Sock Puppet is an id created just to post or do something unsavory, so your real identity is not revealed.

I've only released a handful of bugs and coins, but many of them have been logged as a grab by IDs with no finds, no history, no nothing except the one log for my bug/coin, which is never seen again. I doubt non-cachers who stumble across the items and decide to keep them would take the time to create an ID and log a find for something they are stealing. Why cachers would do it, I have no idea either...maybe they think they are balancing the theft by being "cool" and letting us know in a roundabout way it has been stolen...by them! Or maybe that is part of the joy of their theft, rubbing salt into the wound by announcing it is stolen and not just vaguely gone. I'm so disgusted by the whole thing that I won't bother putting anything else out that I have spent my money on just so it can get stolen...it sucks that the overall enjoyment of our hobby has to be lessened because of the actions of a few idiots. The fact that they are likely cachers using sock puppet IDs really adds insult to injury. Bam...View Carre is such a special cache (and logging it and taking the tour was the highlight of my last trip to NOLA, thank you!) but it requires some extraordinary effort, not to mention actual human interaction that I think it tends to only attract people who love the hobby and have good intentions (2% missing is a very low rate, I am sad to say). But it is also a destination cache, so it may attract people who don't always have a lot of time to dedicate to caching but love to do it when they get the chance (on look at my profile and you can see I fall in this category). This could be leading to a lot of bugs and coins that get held for longer periods of time, not out of malice but rather out of simple inactivity despite best intentions. That in fact happened with a bug I dropped there back in '07...the couple who grabbed it lost it in their not-often-used cache bag for quite a while before finding it, nicely notifying me of their mistake, and placing it (sadly, that same bug - TB1931D - now appears to be missing at the hands of one of those previously mentioned one-visit, no-cache-one-coin-log sock-puppet thieves). Now that I think about it, I dipped a bug of someone else's through there, too, which I ended up hanging onto for a ridiculously too-long time (moving, changing job, business travel, yadda yadda...) but I also took it on some hopefully worthwhile theme-related travels and kept the owner apprised of what was happening with it while I held it. ETA...unfortunately making things premium-member-only won't necessarily fix the problems either...I have seen some really stupid and dishonest stuff done by paid members (including randomly posting tracking numbers trying to get finds rthat stick).

Either it will turn up or it won't. I've had a travel bug go missing for a year, then had a cacher email me an "Oops" note saying he found it in the bottom of his bag and moved it along. On the other hand, of the five coins I have released in the wild, one was obviously stolen, another probably so, and another was in a cache that got muggled. Granted the sample size is small, but a 60% failure rate flat out sucks. I have a lot of coins that I had plans on releasing, but I am now of a mind I will just keep 'em for myself instead of funding thieves' collections. It is very sad that it has come to this...

One of my coins was "found" by a cacher with a 2-year-old ID, 0 finds, 0 hides, 1 trackable (my coin), who will not answer emails and last logged on the day they "found" my coin. Nice, huh? I have dozens of coins ready to be released in the wild, but my experiences with the few I've let go have pretty much killed any desire. I guess I will just stick some in caches as swag, with a note for the next finder to do with as they please. Might as well feel good about them being taken...

Of the 5 coins I have released, only 2 are still in circulation. One was in a cache that was plundered, and one was supposedly placed in a cache that was never found again afterwards. Hmmm. But the one that really got me was a motogrrl Memorial coin that was taken out of a cache by an obvious sock puppet...no finds, no nothing except a single log 2 years after creating the account to say they found it. I atempted a few emails and got no reply...surprise, surprise. I have a few dozen (!) coins that were originally purchased with the intent of releasing them...that is all being rethought now. I HATE THIEVES, and I'll be d@mned if I am going to spend my hard-earned money giving them something to steal.

I would DEFINITELY want a couple. Heck, I'll pay ya now for a clay tiki coin tomorrow! LOL

I, too, had a German "cacher" log one of my coins...which had never even been released into the wild! It took a few testy emails to get him to stop re-logging the deleted logs. Idiots.

I've see some of the older Tiki coins get a hefty price on eBay lately...not to mention the brand new silver ones LOL.

Very cool that you got a coin of yours taken into orbit! I spent the better part of the last 6 years redesigning some parts on the Shuttle's Main Engines, which NASA showed a great deal of interest in LOL. STS-122 was the first flight with the new parts on all 3 engines so it was a special flight for me, too. I have a friend who has been tailoring her career with an eye toward trying to become an astronaut; I hope to have her someday fly my watch if she makes it (probably to the moon, not just earth orbit, at the rate things are going). Enjoy your coin, I'm sure no one needs to tell you how special it is. I would love to be lucky enough to discover it one day.

Very cool! I love the skull coin...but the stone tiki is no slouch either.

Mine arrived in the mail today...looks great! Thanks!

I watch many of the bugs and coins I discover or grab/move. I am just curious about where they go after I have seen them. I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this.

I emailed yesterday but have not received a payment request?

Biggest scare...looking for a cache once I opened up a water meter box (concrete box in the ground with an iron lid) to find a very toothy mouth, wide open, facing me. Angry possum. I closed the lid quickly and took a DNF. Most beautiful...doing night recon for a cache I came back for another day, my path was crossed by a young spotted skunk. Beautiful animal, and fortunately he ran away instead of spraying. Ugly real life followed by close call...on a slightly long-ish hike into the woods for a cache we came across a few dozen buzzards climbing over something. It was a dead wild pig. Luckily downwind. A little further down the wife and i spotted an unusual feature on the bank of a canal. We went over to look when my wife suddenly remembered one of her few days actually attending class in high school, and said, "hey, I think that's an alligator nest, we learned about that in school." Not 2 seconds later we heard a very loud SPLASH just a few feet away and high-tailed it out of there. When we got to the final cache location, on the bank of yet another canal, there were a few alligators in the water that kept slowly swimming toward us. Logged it quickly and beat it out of there. Creepiest...i hate snakes...HATE them. One day while walking through a natural area looking for a cache, I looked over at a very thorny tree next to me and thought, "Boy, that's a thorny tree." Just then I noticed a snake winding its way up a branch just inches away. Who knew they could climb? Actually, I did know that but seeing it creeped me out. Invasive species...logging a benchmark on a bridge over a canal near a cache I had found many eons previously, I looked over at a palmetto bush on the side of the canal and saw 2 huge wild iguanas sitting in it. A typical scenario in Florida..."exotic" pets escape ot get too hard to care for and are released...apparently there is a huge problem with pythons in the Everglades threatening the eco balance.

I asked and told him those very things in my last reply to the emails he has sent me. He stopped replying LOL. Leaving the log up for a little while, at least until I hear anything from Groundspeak.

Boy, this guy sure has "discovered" a few coins in the last few days LOL. What do they do, sit around typing numbers into the site trying to find one that will work?

Does the toadzcode coin have a prefix of "GT____"? If not, I suppose that precludes the slipped digit argument. In subsequent email traffic with this guy it is clear he knows he is logging coins he has never seen, just to get icons or whatever pathetic excuse he has. Oh yeah, this is his excuse: "My intension is better to log some coins, bevore the coins are be missed. Thats my rule." He has been reported. Thanks.

It is MY signature coin (one of the original orders of geotags). If he has seen it somewhere before, he worked at the mint.

There is a picture of my coin on the page, so they know what they are logging. I emailed him and explained what he was doing was wrong and why, and he re-logged saying things like "It's only a game, let's be friends". He knows what he is doing and that I disapprove.

TB1PAJ2 I keep deleting them but one particluarly persistent jerk keeps re-logging, despite my warnings not to. I will be forwarding this matter to Groundspeak along with his email. Just wondered if this is something folks have seen happening before?

...on one of MY coins, that I am holding in my hand right now and has never been released into a cache, from folks in Germany claiming to have "discovered" it using something called "toadzcode"?

283, please. Thanks!

I have been a moderator/admin on an online forum, and I know it is a thankless job (anyone ever contacted the FBI over online death threats?). I can say probably the most likely reason someone would take it on is they believe in the forum's goals, principles, etc. and want to do their part to further them. It helps immensely if the mods have the backing of the forum/site owners and I suspect the mods here have that backing (I didn't where I was a mod/admin, hence my decision to leave the position...but that is neither here nor there re: this discussion). That said, I just wanted to thank FSM for his decision to remint, and the spectacularly good way in which he chose to do it. I think it shows just the sort of thoughtful impartiality that a moderator must exhibit to succeed in the job. This is truly a win-win-win situation.

I am selectively trading my geocoin, please email if interested, let me know which finish you prefer. I have two finishes, 30 each in nickel: and in brass: I will not make any more brass (they look great, I am just not a "gold-type-person"). If I do any future re-orders (somewhat likely), they will only be in nickel. So...brass will likely be the more limited of the two...