When I first made my tokens, I considered for a long time all the different ways of making them and tried to avoid having them cause any problems. Looks like it didn't turn out that way. I used to put real Where's George dollars in each cache I found but that became expensive (I have over 600 finds) so I switched to dollar bill signature tokens. The token that Navdog has was what I using before the change. So for my 200th find I decided to come up with a new sig token. The one I eventually created is the one now causing the problems. First of all, it should be noted that the tokens are significantly smaller than real bills (less that 1/4 the size). That along with that fact they are laminated should make them legal and not be confused with a real bill. (The Treasury department does not considers bills that are very obviously a different size than the original as attempts at counterfeiting). The bill is a copy of my "Where's George in Minnesota" TB. I also tried to blank out a few of the numbers in the serial number but I never could get something that looked half-way decent. It was always very obvious that it had been changed poorly and just didn't have the effect I wanted. I was so concerned at not getting in trouble with the Treasury guys that I never considered that anyone would actually enter the serial number at WG.com. In reflection, I realize that it would be a very natural thing for someone to do especially because it's clearly has the WG site URL and is marked "Track this bill".
That all said, I'm am truly sorry to all of you who have been affected negatively at the Where's George site. It was never my intent to cause any trouble with the tokens. But I knew there was a problem when the bill started climbing the Geocaching Bill list and eventually became number one with 21 hits. At this point, Hank at Where's George banned the bill and wrote me a nasty gram about the bill. Everything he said about the bill was true and I should have never created it in the first place. I told him I was sorry and that I would never do anything like that again. The problem was that there were about 400 of the tokens in circulation and it would be impossible to contact every person who finds one and tell them not to enter it at the WG site. But I figured that since the bill was blocked as a bill in a public place, that would be the end of it. It's only recently that other events involving Where George travel bugs have resulted in a redefined policy at WG.com that apparently makes it a banning offense to enter the serial number of my token. I even got a note from 9Key, a geocaching.com admin in Texas that he got banned at WG for entering the number. I felt bad about that happening as I do will all those who got banned.
Problem is, I really like the look of the laminated dollar bill token and, as a signature item, I hate to give it up. So starting with the next batch I make (I'm out right now), I will blank out the serial number and if I can't learn to use the photo editing software any better, than so be it, it will look funny. But at least they won't cause any further problems.
So please, if you have one of my Wild George tokens or find one in a cache, don't enter the serial number. It will get you banned and I don't want that to happen to anyone.
Sorry this has been so long, but it's length is representative of the time and consideration I gave the matter before I made up my token. Even then, it didn't have a happy ending.
Just so you will know what they look like, here's an image of one:
And just in case you have really good eyes, please don't enter the serial number
I hope this clears the up the matter of my tokens. Again, I never intended to cause any problems by using them.
