my geocaching partner and i are new to the game, but i have already sincerely vowed to leave something of interest or use. we got on a kick recently of buying cheap, but totally useful, snap-glow sticks and leaving one or two in standard size caches. we have found books, which was probably one of my favorite-almost-died-in-woods caches, though nothing else was truly interesting.
i was going to post practically the same topic today, so i'm glad someone has beat me to it...
good swag vs. bad swag? i suppose it would fall under a category of a personal token, useful, trackable, or genuinely interesting... in a way, i want to raise the bar (not by price) for good cache swag in my area. we are starting to do small pieces of artwork for a cache we want to hide, and the ideas just keep coming.
sometimes the worn out crayon at the bottom of the ammo can is all you have to sign the log with... i can appreciate that.
i enjoy the community aspect of geocaching as well, so we have left nice personal notes, lists of our favorite bands, and hope to expand to even more artistic/expressive/cultural tid-bits (staying away from ANY agendas or political topics, etc.) we are amateur hippies like that ... seeing geocaching as an opportunity to spread little kindesses.