JoergWausW

I think it's time for two features: 1) a "register, but not activate" function - if you own a coin you can register that you own the coin without activating it (using your tracking plus your activation code). This means you have to register your unactivated coins, but there's no way anyone else can activate your coin. (should as well help with the problems about twice-used tracking codes) 2) a "not loggable" function - mark your collection as such and only "write note" logs are allowed for all coins in your collection. Nobody drops and retrieves a big collection in/from an event anymore anyway. 2a) If you want somebody to discover your complete collection ("in your collection"), there should be an option to generate a one-time code that you may give out to the willing discoverer. That person enters it and writes one log entry for all your coins, the system puts it in as logs for all coins and you get only ONE email about it. (this way no typo leads to coins that are owned by someone else and never logged before...as it happens a lot nowadays) Even easier: the coin owner picks a user name (after an event or whenever you meet that person) and that user automatically gets the discover-score for all your coins. The current system seems to be misused a lot and people can't control anymore what happens with their codes. That has to stop. I think those two suggestion could be able to fix some problems.

I couldn't find a solution for you at geocaching.com. Why do you need it? Here is your current list down to 5 of the same icon (not necessarily 5 of the same coin): This is how I did it: 1) go to your public list of trackables (the one list everyone can access) 2) save page as htm-file -) When I tried to open it in 'open office', it crashed, probably because the file was too big and I was not patient enough to wait if it ever would wake up again. It may work for Excel... I don't know. So I did this: 3) open saved file with Windows editor 4) search for string "Trackables Moved" - there are two hits. The correct one is the first one that doesn't say "Total" in the same line 5) mark the <td>-Tag you can find three lines below 6) press ctrl+shift+Home to mark everything in the document before the table you want. 7) Press Delete to get rid of it. The first line in your document now should be <table class="Table"> 8) search for string "Trackables Owned". Again, the first on is the correct one. 9) mark the </div>-Tag five lines up 10) press ctrl+shift+End to mark everything in the document after that line. 11) Press Delete to get rid of it. The last line in your document now should be </table>. 12) Save file as another name. -) When I tried to open it in 'open office' it still crashed, probably because of all the icons.... 13) Open the saved file in firefox/another browser. You get a table only with icons, names and counts. 14) press ctrl+A to mark all and ctrl+C to copy all 15) Start 'open office calc' (Excel might be able to do the same, but I don't own it) -) Don't use the regular "paste"-function (made it crash again....) 16) Chooose Edit-> Insert content (may be labelled differently in English- I have a German version... it's ctrl+shift+V in open office) -) Don't pick HTML (crash...) 17) Pick "unformatted text" - this gets rid of the icons. 18) I got a dialog how the content is supposed to be inserted. Make sure name and count is in different columns (I didn't have to change anything - the preview looked fine). 19) Then I had a nice two column file with the correct information. Now sort by Column Count (data-> sort) If anyone knows an easier way, you're welcome to tell.

I saw a challenge cache here in Germany that requires you to have logged at least 3000 TBs/Coins. Sadly you are not allowed to log this cache when you recieved more than 3000 fake logs on your own trackables. As long as those challenge caches are published or other statistic badges for this, there will be people who collect tracking codes. BTW: What about achievement geocoins for 1K logged, 2K logged etc... trackables? And a challenge cache with a log requirement of having logged 1.000 of those...

I don't think the seller checks your profile or asks anyone to decide whether the coin is "earned" by you or not. The only criteria will be your payment. In the end it's the coin owner's/buyer's decision/own story what a coin stands for. @31 days: on the sellers page it doesn't say anything about August, just 31 days in a row are mentioned. If they narrowed it down to people who participated in a one-time-challenge, they'd have way less potential customers... @366 days: same thing applies here - they don't say anything about consecutive.

I never bought one of those name-cokes, but as far as I understand it you can order your own name printed on the can - included in the layout, big and obvious, white on red, not just a laser engraving on the silver. What you describe doesn't sound similar at all. If they had the prize of a can of coke each... then you probably will get a lot of people interested.

Probably yanagi just missed longtomsilver's thread from today that contains a bit more than this one about the same coin. Click here: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=325866

you can check your guesses using this link: www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?tracker=MAxxxx; just replace replace the xxxx with your guess. The outcome page is one of those: 1) The Travel Bug you requested does not exist in the system. -> not your coin, because the code is not registered yet. 2) someone else's coin page -> not your coin 3) This Trackable (coin name) hasn't been activated. 3a) coin name and shown icon don't match your coin, e.g. there are probably some state based coins that have tracking codes starting with MA 3b) coin name and shown icon match -> maybe your coin This is the math (using approximations): There is a total of 923.521 possible codes starting with MA (31*31*31*31, since Groundspeak uses 31 letters for each digit). 30 of those have the same first three digits and differ in the last one, another 30 differ only in the third digit and so on. 120 out of those 923.521 codes differ in just one digit. What is the probability that one other coin happens to have such a code? Let's assume your coin exists 500 times, therefore 499 other codes were registered for this production. To draw one of those 120 codes out of 923.521 has a probability of about 0.013%, a little bit less when the first code is drawn, a little bit more, if the last of the 499 other codes is drawn, because some are already taken. Since the Java Applet I used doesn't allow enough digits anyway I rounded up here to 0.02% what makes the result "worse". Result: The probability that one or more codes of those 499 codes match yours in 3 digits is about 9.5%, according to a Binomial distribution with p=0.0002, n=500 and k>=1. (note: Binomial distribution is not correct because the probability p is not constant during all 500 generations, but growing. But the value of p is 50% too high anyway, because I rounded up before). If you assume you got 2 digits wrong in your reading the numbers are not as good: The chances that no other code matches yours in two digits are only less than 5%.

Maybe I'm misunderstood: I'm just supplying information here - I'm not looking ;-) - and I'm open to any coin to be discussed. I must say I'm confused with the use of the word "official" in this matter - but this is thought on a meta-level. Just because something got trademarked doesn't mean for me that it's automatically official. coinsandpins were the first to create a series of coins to celebrate finishing certain geocaching goals. Someone (probably them) got the term geo-achievement trademarked, so others have to use a different term if they want to do the same idea. But other coins that aim the same goal of celebrating achievements are as well worthy to be collected. I don't think a TM on it makes a coin better or worse. They just can't be called geo-achievement. If I produced a nice designed coin series with even non-trackable coins and called it something like "your geo-success: 100 finds" - I could call it an official coin series. I wouldn't be allowed promote their sale here, but still: official, because they'd be on the market. (I don't plan anything like this, just an example - but maybe I should trademark that term to gain some licence fees if someone else wants to do it now ;-) ). When this thread started I wasn't aware of the TM-fact, and thought it was about achievements in geocaching in general (why narrowing down on a certain series, if there are plenty?)

It depends on the meaning of the term "geo-achievement" - if it's supposed to be read as "trademark" we are off-topic when we mention coins that weren't "invented" by coinsandpins.com (btw - the "official" geocaching store is a reseller in this matter) -- but if it's a short term for "geocaching-related achievement geocoin" we are totally on. (I'm sorry for the excessive use of quotation marks)

you might want to add a new category - there might be a new series soon, at least ten new icons came out: Geo Award Geocoin – 1 Year of Geocaching Geo Award Geocoin – 2 Year of Geocaching ... Geo Award Geocoin – 10 Year of Geocaching

50.000 finds does not have a star in my list (has custom icon and there are some coins), 600 hides doesn't have a custom icon but were minted, 200 hides is twice in the icon list, both times with (the same) custom icon. I guess you're not not looking for personal coins that celebrate an achievement like the ones in the list, are you?

But notice that (except the 600 hides one) all the coins marked * have probably not been produced yet - they have no custom icon - and probably not enough potential buyers so far... these were just registered names published by Groundspeak.

This is a list of all 72 current entries in the "All Geocoins" list on geocaching.com that contain the word "achievement". The list is ordered by the time the coin name was registered (id-numbers as shown in the source code of that page, there are some numbers without a custom icon as well, marked with a *) It looks like CoinAndPins and others(?) registered more icons than they made coins for so far. Some names are there twice with different numbers. |277|Geo-Achievement Finds 100 Geocoin |278|Geo-Achievement Finds 250 Geocoin |279|Geo-Achievement Finds 500 Geocoin |280|Geo-Achievement Finds 1,000 Geocoin |281|Geo-Achievement Finds 2,000 Geocoin |282|Geo-Achievement Finds 3,000 Geocoin |283|Geo-Achievement Finds 4,000 Geocoin |284|Geo-Achievement Finds 5,000 Geocoin |1155|Geo-Achievement Hides 10 Coin |1156|Geo-Achievement Hides 25 Coin |1157|Geo-Achievement Hides 50 Coin |1158|Geo-Achievement Hides 100 Coin |1159|Geo-Achievement Hides 200 Coin |2514|Geo-Achievement Finds 6,000 Coin |3075|Geo-Achievement Hides 200 Geocoin |3189|Geo-Achievement Finds 7,000 coin |3190|Geo-Achievement Finds 8,000 coin |3191|Geo-Achievement Finds 9,000 coin |3192|Geo-Achievement Finds 10,000 coin |3193|Geo-Achievement Finds 11,000 coin |3194|Geo-Achievement Finds 12,000 coin |3195|Geo-Achievement Finds 13,000 coin |3196|Geo-Achievement Finds 14,000 coin |3197|Geo-Achievement Finds 15,000 coin |3198|Geo-Achievement Finds 16,000 coin |3199|Geo-Achievement Finds 17,000 coin |3200|Geo-Achievement Finds 18,000 coin |3201|Geo-Achievement Finds 19,000 coin |3202|Geo-Achievement Finds 20,000 coin |3241|Pillars of Scouting Tag-Achievement! |4643|Geo-Achievement Hides 300 Geocoin |4644|Geo-Achievement Hides 400 Geocoin |4645|Geo-Achievement Hides 500 Geocoin |4646|Geo-Achievement Hides 600 Geocoin * |4647|Geo-Achievement Hides 700 Geocoin * |4648|Geo-Achievement Hides 800 Geocoin * |4649|Geo-Achievement Hides 900 Geocoin * |4650|Geo-Achievement Hides 1,000 Geocoin * |5058|Geo-Achievement Finds 25,000 coin |5059|Geo-Achievement Finds 30,000 coin * |5060|Geo-Achievement Finds 35,000 coin * |5061|Geo-Achievement Finds 40,000 coin * |5062|Geo-Achievement Finds 45,000 coin * |5063|Geo-Achievement Finds 50,000 coin |5064|Geo-Achievement Finds 55,000 coin * |5065|Geo-Achievement Finds 60,000 coin * |5066|Geo-Achievement Finds 65,000 coin * |5067|Geo-Achievement Finds 70,000 coin * |5068|Geo-Achievement Finds 75,000 coin * |5069|Geo-Achievement Finds 80,000 coin * |5070|Geo-Achievement Finds 85,000 coin * |5071|Geo-Achievement Finds 90,000 coin * |5072|Geo-Achievement Finds 95,000 coin * |5073|Geo-Achievement Finds 100,000 coin * |5226|Geo-Achievement 365 Days of Geocaching Geocoin |5227|Geo-Achievement 366 Days of Geocaching Geocoin |6067|Geo-Achievement 24 Hours 24 Caches Geocoin |6068|Geo-Achievement 24 Hours 48 Caches Geocoin |6069|Geo-Achievement 24 Hours 72 Caches Geocoin |6070|Geo-Achievement 24 Hours 100 Caches Geocoin |6071|Geo-Achievement 24 Hours 150 Caches Geocoin * |6072|Geo-Achievement 24 Hours 200 Caches Geocoin * |6073|Geo-Achievement 24 Hours 250 Caches Geocoin * |6074|Geo-Achievement 24 Hours 300 Caches Geocoin * |6075|Geo-Achievement 24 Hours 400 Caches Geocoin * |6076|Geo-Achievement 24 Hours 500 Caches Geocoin * |6515|Geo-Achievement 31 Days of Geocaching Geocoin |6590|Geo-Achievement Grid 81 Geocoin |7147|Mile High Club Geo-Achievement Geocoin |7188|Geo-Achievement 24 Hours 150 Caches Geocoin * |7189|Geo-Achievement 24 Hours 200 Caches Geocoin * |7361|7 Souvenirs Geo-Achievement Geocoin * edits to erase mistakes/clarify

As far as I know a basic membership is enough to klick a user name and send a message (maybe people should know not to delete the check at "send my email"...)

The problem behind all this: Activated Geocoins that you find in caches and that are not your own, must not be stored in lockers. The person who put it in a locker obviously didn't do what the owner of the item intented: Keep it traveling from cache® to cache®. So locking up another cacher's geocoin with personal belongings could be considered theft. People who legally (for whatever reason) obtain content of a locker or other personal storaged stuff, can't be expected to know whether a geocoin is activated or how to check that - even if they read "trackable at Geocaching.com" on it. Nor can they know what it means that a Geocoin is activated or what a Geocoin really is. Keeping/seeling those activated coins may be considereds 'Possession of stolen goods'. Maybe it helps to prove to those people that this is what they are doing. This should include explaining how to use the tracking number, a link to the coin's page (best would be using the one that cointains the number, e.g. at the end there is tracker=PC....) and quoting the goal (if there is one) and the owner of the item.

I just created a little image with collected pictures of a few trackables - most coins of them are trackable and made mid-2007 and earlier (e.g. there are some newer ones and a couple non-trackables in the picture). If you want to know what you're missing, this might help (at least concerning trackable coins covering about the first 1000 icons at geocaching.com). I don't think many people own more than 50% of those. Most of these coins are probably hard to find today.

As mentioned in some lost thread before, one problem seems to be to create enough interest to maintain a really good database. Every thread about planning/discussing this kind of a project vanished before long. -> it's not too hard to find information about trackable coins. But it takes some time. -> non-trackables are way more difficult, because they are harder to track down ;-( -> @topic: In the list of "All Geocoins" there is an entry called "HTF Geocoin" (id 1222) - that probably means "Hard to Find Geocoin" - I couldn't find any of those so far... any help? For the lack of database systems I liked enough I started to create my own database and collected information, sorted by appearance in the trackable pages at Groundspeak's profile pages. Right now I am stuck in like "spring 2007" (collected about 1600 different coins with almost 4000 different editions of these), about 7 years and 6000 icons behind (Groundspeak hit 7000 recently, there are like 1000 new icons per year now, but people tend to give different editions of the same coin different icons recently, too). This should give an idea about how much is out there. About history as far as I got it: - In 2001 TBs (May to August) and Moun10Bike coins (September) came up about at the same time (all trackables have IDs, the first TB is TB1, the first Moun10Bike Coin is TB1D=#29) - Icon-ID-Numbers 21 and 22 - in 2003 the USA coins were created, Icon-ID-Number 23. - in 2004 the first Jeep promotional came up (ID 136) - in 2005 the first German Geocoins (ID 138), GeoWoodstock (139) and the White Jeep (141) - State Coins, CoinClub and Event-Coins were created in big numbers and Groundspeak started hosting these numbers - Personal Geocoins by individual cachers were first rejected, but finally Groundspeak created 15.000 numbers for the "Personal Geocoin"-Icon (id 152), that got the original USA-Coin-Icon (23.gif, while the USA-coin has a new icon today: usa.gif). These numbers could be obtained in small numbers, mainly through the early mint services like oakcoins and directmint(personalgeocoins.com). Later they added another 15.000 numbers... some people were able to move their coins to an individual icon way later, especially when they made a remint. - Compass Rose Coin has id 153. The 2006 CR coin has id 186 So I think the decision to allow personal coins and the appearance of the first Compass Rose Geocoin happened pretty much at the same time and started it all - late 2005 and 2006. In these days collectors went for every coin and got kind of disappointed when they noticed that they couldn't keep up anymore with every coin. Individuals were starting their own website promoting their coins to make money, and things became commercial... to the dislike of those who wanted to keep trading and get everything out there just by doing so. Coins started to be signature items for cachers or for states/countries or for events, mostly plain layouts. To make them more wanted people started to develop the art of coin design and functionality: shaped forms, first glow in the dark, then translucent colors, twotone, cutouts, spinning, hinges, ... And people bought them People created LE coins that were ordered way more than the RE (some coins had even more LEs produced than REs because of that - simply because of lack of interest for the RE), announced numbers were increased or decreased... There could be a lot more added... :-)

I think those three coins (about 250 of each of the three) were made all at the same time (they have their own icons, file names 1099.gif, 1100.gif and 1101.gif) in early 2007 by this person: http://www.geocaching.com/profile/?guid=5ae7eb55-eee5-4680-b2c7-884bd47ab51d . Just compare the url on the walrus-coin with that person's website, and consider the cacher's name and the "track this cat" part on the other ones. How they ended up in Illinois? I don't know. They seem to be from the Seattle area, based on the FTF entry here: http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?id=1128453&page=7

It still doesn't clarify what you mean by "same coin". Can you provide a link to both listings? I'm still thinking there should be two different TB-codes involved. Anyway, since nobody is able to "delete" a coin listing (as far as I know), your problem needs a different solution, depending on what it really is. Have you tried any of my suggestions in the previous post?

I have to admit, that I have a problem understanding your problem, because of this sentence: Do you really say, that you have two coins with the identical tracking code (like PCxxxx) listed twice? It sounds weird, because each tracking code should only exists once in Groundspeak's database (of course the same code might be printed on different coins). That means by entering this tracking code in the form at http://www.geocaching.com/track/ you will only get to one coin listing. That should be the official one. It should not be possible to reach two different coin listings with the same tracking code, because the second one would not be able to be activated, because the code was activated before. So please check the following: - go to your collection page: http://www.geocaching.com/my/collection.aspx - if I understand you correctly, you'll find two entries there that bother you, because they belong to the same coin. - Open both coin pages in two different windows/tabs/register cards from there by clicking their names. Then there should be two possible outcomes: 1) you get to two different coin listings (as can be easily seen by the TB-codes in the top right corner, because they should be different - btw. it would be safe to post this TB-code here). If this is the case, the two coins that belong to those listings should have two different tracking codes as well (maybe just one letter is different?). In that case you can click "move to inventory" at the very one cache listing that belongs to the right coin. If you don't know which one is the right one, you can access the right coin listing by using the tracking code that belongs to the right coin at the main trackable page. You might not have this tracking code anymore because you sent it away and might be in the hands of your adoptee. But if that person wants to be able to grab that coin he or she will tell you the tracking code. 2) you get to the same coin listing (everything should be identical on both pages, especially the TB code). In this case Groundspeak's database only knows one coin listing for this tracking code, but by some circumstances lists it twice in your collection. If so, you might contact Groundspeak to remove this glitch in your collection. But still, there will be only one tracking code. That means only one of you can own the coin listing of those two, because the double entry would be deleted. I hope this makes sense.

Sounds good, I probably won't be part, because of limited stock of coins. But here are my questions about the concept: 1) Is there a reason why the surprise coin is supposed to be sent to you? Shouldn't this unlucky gifter who can't fulfill any wishlist's item be allowed to pick from people who weren't surprised yet? This is why I ask: If one mission cycle takes 2 weeks collection of participants, 1 week shipping plus a couple days for telling and posting pictures there won't be very much more than 15 to 20 missions a year. If the number of participants remains lower than that, it's fine of course. But if I get the idea of this project, the fun is to be surprised eventually. In other words: I see a risk of a lot of people posting their wish list and are passive most of the time (for months). I think the goal should be: make sure every participant recieves a coin at least once a year. 2) Maybe people who collect intensively should think about posting an "already have" or "don't want"/"just sold myself" list for common(or similar to the wishlist's) coins as well for this surprise case, so chances are smaller (I know they are pretty low in most cases) that people are ending up with a 'bad' surprise coin (meant well of course).

I do have one, because in 2009 we did the challenge to find 10 caches in the city of Canby - we got this coin as reward for completing the challenge. We did it on one of the hottest days there ever (>100°F), so this coin is a great memory of a very unique caching day for me (and we visited the site of the Original cache location that day). Probably that's a similar memory for most people who have one (and here in Germany it's a quite rare coin to have). The question is, if there was any other way to get to one of those coins, or a way to get more than one per cacher... and if someone did it. btw: do you need an unactivated one or would you want to adopt one? That might be another important aspect.

I don't see how that can happen - the owner of the second coin wouldn't have been able to activate it and therefore should have requested a new code instead of publishing it...

I try a more structured approach: possible intentions of creators and/or buyers: -> activate the coin and put it into a geocache/bring to an event to travel around. -> activate and put it into a private collection to have other people discover them (at events or somewhere else) -> put them into geocaches/events unactivated (as gift/price,...) -> put them into a private collection to show them off (unactivated) -> have several unactivated ones to trade them to get other cacher's coins in exchange (or give them away as gifts) -> have several unactivated to sell them if you expect to make a profit doing so possible additional intentions of creators of coins: -> have a personal item that reflects your geocaching hobby -> trade for other cacher's personal coins -> sell them to other cachers who don't have trade objects -> sell them to cover cost -> just make money (some businesses exist), for a living or sometimes for a charity and, last, possible ways of action of cachers who find coins in caches/get them handed at events: -> move them along as intented (and log them properly - sometimes people fail) -> take them to log, but forget/lose/don't go caching soon enough... -> move/take them without knowing what it is, (and maybe give it away to people who even don't know what geocaching is, but might like it) -> take them purposefully to keep them for a private collection (as in theft) For every person out there probably more than one of the mentioned aspects are true, e.g. most coin creators who made their personal coin sell some to cover cost and trade some, keep at least one and let at least one travel...

with 'patients' you are talking about those people who are sick enough to use it...? (sorry, it was just too punny) Seriously: Yes, it can be done, but the warning signs are obvious, too. Problem about patience: most of the mentioned projects 'failed' because of too much of it: after some people entered their own data - they wait patiently, but not very much happens and then, some day, they forget about it. What now?