I have to agree that the junk is a bit overwhelming. Rocks, sea shells, wrappers. I tend to clean these items out and replace with "stuff" for our well stocked bag we always carry with. If we see a low stocked cache, I have no regrets in adding some "stuff" from our stash to it.
We usually have our 4 kids in tow, and always leave more valueable items in the cache when we left then when we came. As this is a family activity for us, we tend to keep our travel bag stocked and make the occasional trip to $1.00 store to stock up. We always have both things that would appeal to the adults as well as a few items for the kiddies on hand.
We don't tend to take much out of caches, if we do it is one item. We are more into moving travel bugs. A lot of items we do acquire from caches become our travel bugs, as they are so ugly but make great travel bugs.
~Wegakempf