Darwin473

They must be targeting geographic areas - in which case it works out well to be visiting a US website from Oz. I don't see any ads on the forum and only a small, unobtrusive ad to the side - offering geocaching premium. I don't have an adblocker installed, unless there's a built-in one I don't know about, and I'm using MS Edge so I doubt it.

Does that mean I can change my avatar and pretend to be someone else? Just need to work out how to fake an accent in writing...

Wow, that's impressive. I sometimes wish TB's could talk, and let us know the story of their journey between the logs. Was it someone that simply stopped caching and found the TB's after a while and sent them out again? Someone that passed away and their partner / relative / friend set the TB's free? Did someone buy them at a garage sale not knowing what they were? A TB hoarder who was visited by the ghosts of caches past?

At the moment, I'm very much a "targets of opportunity" cacher. All my spare time is being soaked up by other projects, and I haven't gone out on a geohunt in a long time (last vacation, I think). I've already found all the ones within walking distance of me, but I would like to go out more often. Having said that, when I do go out, I'm trying to get all the ones in an area if I can. If get any DNF's, I try again if I can (bit hard when caching on holiday).

I may be completely wrong, feel free to ignore me. I suspect the issue may be all the privacy levels of TOR and VPN's may stop the website being visited from seeing the previously placed cookies, not realise you've already proved yourself and prompt a subsequent check? I thought that was the point of the high-privacy approach, websites wouldn't be able to track you. Comes back to the old border problem - let the right people in to our house / village / country, and make sure not to let those people in. But then who gets to define who the right people are, and what happens with those gray areas? There was a near-international incident in Australia a few years ago, where a comedy show was able to pass a lot of the security at the APEC summit. What wasn't publicized much was that the reason they were able to penetrate so many levels of security (and this was one of the most high-security summits in Australian history) was because all the politicians were getting annoyed by the constant stops and checks by the security staff. So they told security to chill a bit and let the politicians through. Because after all, they were the "right" people and shouldn't need to be challenged, but security was still expected to stop all the "wrong" people without harassing the right ones.

It's off and been picked up, fingers crossed it gets to travel for a while!

You could try getting the Map Compare tool on Project-GC. It's intended to show you which caches you and a friend have/haven't found, but it has the nifty feature of options to include disabled and archived caches. I use it to check an area and if there were a bunch of caches in my intended location that were archived due to muggling, I know that's a bad spot to put a cache. You need to know the correct county / municipality / area for where the cache is. Can be a bit annoying when you are looking for one on the edge of two or more because you may think it's in county A but it won't show on the map due to it actually being within the borders of county B, but if it ever existed on GC, then the cache will be there in Project-GC. Edit: this won't help it show up on the app, but you'll be able to open up the page link on the browser on your phone to know where it is, and / or copy the coords into your map software.

Technically, any kind of stamp will do. Even the smiley face or heart ones from the dollar shop. My preference is a customised stamp, which includes the cache's GC number. Or the cache name - that way the stamp relates to the cache and when people have their stamp logbook, they can look at the stamp imprint and know where they got it without having to add their own extra notes to the page (though most do anyway). If you live somewhere that the weather is always nice, self inking stamps are ok, but my preference is to supply stamps that aren't self inking. People who are serious about LBH carry their own stamp pads. Self inking ones tend to go brittle in the cold and leak everywhere in the heat! If you have the cash, there are loads of companies who will make custom stamps for you. These are usually about the price of a dinner from a non-fancy restaurant which isn't "too" expensive for a custom item, but be aware that for some reason some people seem to get the idea that the stamps are collectible and take them. So something you can easily replace is a good idea. One cheap way of doing it using a product similar to Speedball Carve (YT video link showing how to use it) - designed to be carved, the tools are relatively cheap and one piece will let you carve a bunch of stamps. The downside is you need to hand carve each one (seems harder than it really is, just needs a bit of patience). A cheaper option can be to use Photopolymer sheet (also YT video - crappy video but shows how to do it without any fancy tools or machines). The sheets are also relatively cheap, clear printable plastic can also be cheap from some stationary shops and you can use an office printer to do intricate designs with small text. Once you've got your master printed, it's quite easy to produce spares. And if you have the machinery, it's also quite inexpensive to use a laser engraver to produce the stamps, or a 3D printer to make molds and then pour silicone into them. Super cheap to produce replacement stamps - after you've spent a few hundred on the machinery. That's why this option is last - a great option if you were already doing it for other reasons, out of reach for most people and not cost effective if you're doing it just for LBH cache stamps!

Different problems, same solution. Any thing that gets sent out into the wild where random members of the public can interact with it will eventually meet a person who isn't nice. Or even just meets a misadventure like being accidentally dropped down a drain or falls out of someone's pocket. Some people like to buy the really fancy GeoCoins which wouldn't last very long out travelling. If a TB goes missing, or you have a nice one you'd rather keep at home but still want to use the code - create a proxy! As thebruce0 wrote, you can put the code on anything - it can be as simple as a laminated bit of paper, or an engraved bit of metal, or an epoxy keychain or anything you can think of which you can make. The goals are to make something that is tough enough to last out travelling without falling apart, but cheaper than just buying a new TB. And if the proxy goes missing, you can create a new proxy.

This is called making a proxy, and it is something I personally wholly encourage! Personally, I don't "re-set" the TB, I just add a Note stating the old one has gone missing, and here's a new one off on adventure number two (or three, or ten...). Inevitably the new proxy TB going out is different to the original, but I just set a photo of the new version to be the profile picture for that TB and leave the old one in the gallery. There's always that 0.0001% chance the original might re-surface somewhere, and if it has the history and photos on the TB page of the original then the finder would know for sure that it is the correct TB.

Oooh, I like that idea. I had a look at your Hidden Creatures tags, those skulls look good.

Bit of a long shot, if you've already exhausted all other options: Where people sell stuff (eBay, Etsy, Facebook Marketplace, etc), find people selling GeoCaching related items and ask them if they've got any for sale or know of anybody who does. Some vendors know other vendors, or have inventory they haven't listed for sale.

I had a good look but couldn't find anything in the app. Though I don't have Premium - website would be best option.

For the benefit of anyone that wants to have a go at making something like this for themselves (I assume the OP found a solution in the last six years or so), then I recommend using PhotoPea - it's essentially a free version of Photoshop that anyone can use (with the obligatory ads on the sides). The advantages are that because it's 99% the same as Photoshop for all the basic stuff, it's easy to search for things like "how to add text in photoshop" or "how to add a border in photoshop" to find hundreds of tutorials. The main disadvantage is that it's online only, so if you have a poor internet connection or your connection drops out, there's a chance you can lose your work. Save early, save often! Some people may also consider it a disadvantage that it works best on a laptop / computer with a mouse - hard to use on a phone or tablet. If you do have unreliable internet, or prefer to work on images offline, InkScape is a free, open source program that has many of the same features as Photoshop with good community support. Available for Windows, Mac and Linux, it is very powerful, free and can easily give you options to create signs like those discussed in this thread in just a few minutes. And if you have any documents you'd like to work on (such as software for creating text-heavy pamphlets rather than images with a little bit of text) but don't want to pay for the full Microsoft Suite just to get Publisher, there is both OpenOffice and LibreOffice which are different flavors of office software (Word, Excel, Publisher, etc). Both are free and open source and allow users to do almost all the functions of Microsoft Office without the big price tag or ongoing subscription. The down side is needing to learn the locations of menus and tools if you're an established Microsoft Office user, but although both use their own file formats they both have the options to work with, edit and save in Microsoft formats so you can send files to other people who use Microsoft and they'll be able to use your files. Okay, I'll go back under my rock now.

I'd happily apply for these promos, but I'm in Australia and therefore the promotion isn't open to me. Though if someone wins one (and also wins the lottery to afford postage) they can send it down to me, I'm happy to drop it off into a cache here!

That sounds like a good way to make proxy GeoCoins!

Do what cereberus1 suggested - send out a proxy! A proxy is when you buy a GeoCoin/TravelBug that you like and want to keep on display at home, and put the tracking code onto something else. That something else can be as simple as a laminated bit of paper, an engraved metal tag or some other custom made little thing that you've made. Personally, I have great fun creating proxies so I don't mind if they go missing - gives me an excuse to create and (re)release a new one. Just needs to be durable enough that it'll last a while, while still being cheaper than a coin/bug. This way your nice thing stays at home where it won't go missing, but the code you paid for still gets to travel and take its chances on the winds of fate. Though keep in mind that some people are so opposed to the idea of proxies that they throw them in the trash as soon as they see one. I suspect that this may be more from people who deliberately keep other people's trackables (as opposed to when it happens accidentally).

I think the design and concept are brilliant! Personally, I'd have made the relief of the gorilla a bit shallower, from the image it looks like the teeth project a bit, which could cause snags or for them to break off. On the other hand, I don't think these would be an every day wear ring, nor that they'd do too much travelling. Not sure if it'd be within your budget, but I'd include a basic duplicate tag that the owner could release rather than releasing the wonderful ring itself. Or include a little note that advises people on the wonderful world of proxies so they can make their own. How much would the cost extra be for the eye-gems? It would look good, red eyes tend to have that "evil" look (which some people would like, others wouldn't). Maybe emerald?

I've had good luck with manufacturers (such as a sign writer, when looking for magnetic material) and approaching them during the day and asking the staff if I can have a rummage in their bin. What they consider scraps or not worth working with is often the right size for small hobby things like making caches. I've had a few tell me to take a hike (no pun intended), but most of them have given me permission to dumpster dive. I'll let them know what I'm looking for up front, and if given permission I take the time to tidy the area up a bit as well if needed.

My most travelled is Lego plate, a simple bit of lego with a laminated paper tag. Currently logged 64,000km but 28k of that is from the "locationless" GC8NEAT cache, which although locationless was based in Seattle so logging that cache by the person that had it added on a few thousand km without actually travelling there.

I've put in a request for each of the ones that I've seen available since I first started, haven't received any - yet.

I'd been thinking of doing something similar - a mystery where the finder needs to use the cache page to find a link to a video, and the video is a "follow the trail" type where watching the video shows the searcher how to get from the posted coordinates to the cache container. So the video would be a simple one, starting from let's say a statue, along a path, round the corner and ends at a tree. The searcher then knows the tree is where the cache container is. The reason I haven't is because I think this setup fails the "use a gps" test. If the posted coords (or the cache page) say to start at the statue, and the video shows which turns to take and how far to go to reach the container, then where does the GPS come into it? Having something at the tree with coords (like an engraved metal plate or similar) to where the container actually is would create an extra step with more chances of the cache breaking, and I believe it then becomes a multi and not a mystery. So the people who like multi's would skip it because the cache icon would be a mystery, and the people who like mysteries would skip it because it has multiple waypoints.

Pointless thought experiment: if someone with a stupid amount of excess money hired a bunch of people to go running around putting stamps / signatures in caches and log them under the one account, would it be possible for one account to "find" all the caches in the country? That would be the logical extreme of team finding? Assuming an even spread of 1,000 team members per state (as a raw average, some states are bigger or smaller or have higher or lower cache density), being paid $500 per week and it took a month for each team member to log all the caches in their area then it'd only cost a hundred million dollars and employ fifty thousand people to log all caches in the USA - and only for four weeks.

Totally off-topic, I had a quiet giggle at how small the world is. @Goldenwattle - you recently dropped off a Travel Slug GeoCoin that I'd moved back in March '21. The gallery has a photo of the coin with one of our cats. I dropped it in the NT, JACS Team moved it to QLD, Aussie Liahona moved it and then you took it down to NSW.

To me, that it makes it more valuable, because then it gives people the opportunity to ask "what's that" and we can respond with "well, let me explain..." I like that, I'm stealing that to use as a description.