Odyssey Voyager

everyone is welcomed here! especially our good friends and allies in the UK! i'll try to keep this thread up to date on all the tournament events! thanks for playing.

again...an awesome picture! all that is needed is a photoshop removal of the screw head!

awesome! thanks for playing! does anyone have an opinion about the team that will win the tournament this year?

Hello again everybody! Now that the regular college basketball seasons have concluded and left us all with such great memories and a love for the game, is anyone up for some March Madness?! If so...then welcome to the March Madness Basketball Cointest! All participating players have a chance to win one very nice Honu Turtle Geocoin Shiny Silver Edition for the Tournament Champion. The 3 other teams that make it to the Final Four will win a nice consolation prize! Here is a picture of the Honu Turtle in case you haven't already seen it: COINTEST RULES: There are 64 college basketball teams in the NCAA final tournament bracket. I have 64 blank index cards, and I will place the name of one college team from the tournament on each card. I will then shuffle them all up, and without looking at the team name, I will number the back of each card with a number from 1 to 64. All you have to do is PICK ANY TWO random and different numbers between 1 and 64 that HAVE NOT already been picked. This will allow for a maximum of 32 PLAYERS and each player will have 2 teams or 2 chances to win the whole tournament! So jump in the game quickly before all the teams and numbers are taken! When all the numbers have been selected, or when the tournament begins this Thursday, I will reveal the team name that correspond to each number, and the cointest entries will be closed. It is so simple and easy, you don't even have to know anything about college basketball. I will update this post as often as possible to show available numbers (scroll down to a current post to see updated list of available numbers), but please review all selected numbers to make sure your number choice is still available. I will contact you if a number you pick has already been chosen. Again, once we have 32 players, the cointest will be closed. Are you ready for the madness to begin?! Game on! Good luck to all! ONLY 1 ENTRY POST PER FORUM MEMBER OR FAMILY. In the interest of fairness, if you and your family have 3 different accounts, please only enter only once per family (yes, I will check, and no sockpuppet accounts allowed either!) Think carefully about your 2 numbers before posting, as no editing will be allowed without permission first. So if you make an error in your post or you want to change your numbers for any reason, please just send me a PM so I can note the changes and times in my records BEFORE correcting or editing your original post entry. Thats about it as far as rules go, but if you have a question feel free to ask away and I'll do my best to answer. This cointest will end on Monday, April 5, 2010 when the final champion is determined. Above all else...HAVE FUN!

email sent.

Heavy Metal Madness!

by the way, when do the BCGA directors meet next? thanks for info.

once upon a time...oh, about 10 years ago...in a land far, far, away called beavercreek, oregon...there lived a small family of adventurous turtles. one day while walking slowly through the woods in the month of may, the turtle family discovered a geocache under a tree and were so happy at their discovery, that they pledged from that day forward to help spread goodwill to others through geocaching where ever they traveled. so as the family grew larger, some turtles took their little ones in tow, and moved to other far away lands, never forgetting the geocache promise that was made. every where the turtles went, they placed a geocache for all to enjoy. some moved to the great american southwest and a few ventured further south to central and south america. some moved to asia and to other exotic lands of the far east. some even managed to swim to hawaii and all the other south pacific and indonesian islands. one adventurous little turtle dude even surfed the earth's seven seas all the way to antarctica! during his surfing adventures "down under" he left his own gem trackable on the island of tasmania for other geocachers to find and discover! cowabunga cool! a few of his cousins swam a great mediterranean sea cruise until they reached Greece and bought a few souvenirs, and a cool geocaching t-shirt, before touring all of europe. a few other long distance "travelers" made it all the way to africa on a wooden raft made of drift wood, and some mighty turtles even ventured to the "great white north" of canada in spite of the frigid temperatures and celine dion! some say that the turtles have helped place geocaches in over 100 countries around the world on all seven continents, including antarctica. as of March 8, 2010, there are over 1,001,000 active geocaches on the earth. maybe these little turtles aren't quite as slow as we think they are. the 10 year anniversary of geocaching has given all the turtles of the world a great reason to celebrate, and made them all one great big happy family! and so they all cached happily ever after...the end...or is it just the beginning?!

i'm glad you guys like your trojan horse geocoin prize! please share this steed with all your geocaching friends and family!

you might be surprised at the great suggestions you will receive if you post your design here first. others that have been through the process have invaluable insight that will help you see things you might have overlooked. this may help you avoid the dreaded "hindsight" moments that many 1st time geocoiners have. for example, i produced my 1st geocoin in 2006, when it arrived i suddenly realized that i should have added a cutout to attach a lanyard or key chain! i was able to have the factory add a cutout to some of the remint editions, but it wasn't in the exact shape or location i wanted, and the "after thought" cutout caused some issues when i wanted to add colors to the final remint. geeez...all those headaches could have been avoided had i just thought about it or received a suggestion in the design phase before production!

email sent and idea submitted.

i emailed you about this question already, but it might be helpful for others interested in submitting design ideas. my question is: what price range would you like for these geocoins? costs definitely determine certain aspects of the design process. also: is BCGA getting tired of the "totem" themes?

also...from ebay's "legally compliant listings" help page: "Make sure your item is authentic: You should not list replicas, fakes, counterfeits, or other illegal copies on eBay. For example, you should avoid listing an item that bears the brand name or logo of a company that did not manufacture or AUTHORIZE the product. Do not list homemade or otherwise UNAUTHORIZED copies of music, movies, television programs, or software. Under the law, it is no excuse to say that you didn't know the item you were selling was a counterfeit. It's your obligation to investigate your source for product and stand behind everything you sell."

well, there are many reasons for others to be concerned. mainly, the mint artwork or dies appears to have been stolen. yes...stolen...why? because the designer of this geocoin has spent time and money on this design and on the metal die, and in doing so, the design belongs to the person that spent their time and money to have it produced. this is exactly why ebay has a policy against selling intellectual property that belongs to others. why should you care about it? well, because if you purchase a DVD movie or a music CD, you expect it to be a high quality original, not a cheap duplicate or a black market bootleg. if nobody cared about it, we would all be buying items blindly with no idea what we were getting and the structure of honesty in marketing would collapse. you mention the term "caveat emptor" but the very explanation of this term implies a quality of merchandise: "Under the doctrine of caveat emptor, the buyer could not recover from the seller for defects on the property that rendered the property unfit for ordinary purposes. The only exception was if the seller actively concealed latent defects or otherwise made material misrepresentations amounting to fraud." ~ From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. the other thing to consider is that, although you are correct and this item is not being sold as a geocoin, it is almost identical to the "real" geocoin, and people that are not familiar with geocoins (and there are many) may purchase this item thinking they are purchasing one thing and then get another. its deceptive and its unethical and it could cause an honest person a lot of headaches they don't need. if you think ebay won't do anything about it, you are wrong. they take these matters very seriously for all the reasons i just mentioned, and it appears they have already "removed" some of these auctions. just because someone doesn't know an item is stolen does NOT make them less guilty of having in their possession or selling STOLEN PROPERTY. this is also a concern for geocoin sellers on ebay, because if i acquire one of these bootlegs, then i am also in jeopardy if i decide to sell it in the future. so, you see, there are many reasons for others to care about theft of intellectual property. especially when it is as flagrant as it appears to be in this situation. peace.

sorry you missed out on all the consolation games. i was hoping one of these might last a couple of days and that more players would get a chance to win, but the forum members are very talented at solving puzzles, as you can see! wow! these guys are good! all the prizes were mailed this morning. congrats, once again to the winners, and a "thank you" for all the players who participated.

i'm afraid you missed the boat on this one. the cointest ended last saturday.

the fool is cool! too bad you guys didn't design a "10"...it would have fit nicely with the year released "2010" and with the 10 years of geocaching anniversary. oh well, my royal flush will have to wait.

there usually is a small amount of real gold in a gold plated geocoin. the reason i suspect this person removed the plating for gold was because he was also selling pure gold bars on ebay. i noticed he was buying many other inexpensive gold plated geocoins too (perhaps for the same purpose?). i was going to start a thread on the topic of geocoin forgeries, but when this topic appeared i decided to mention my experience as well.

i've reported 2 of the ebay sellers. whether the seller knows these are bootleg copies or not, it shouldn't make a difference. they are selling cheap knock offs! sadly, we all know that if a good idea can be stolen, it will be stolen! we have seen it within the geocoin community, as some geocoin makers take ideas from other geocoins, and now we see it spread to the metal/coin minting and selling business. we should all look out for these cheap replicas and report any and all suspicious activity. i myself was suspicious of a seller on ebay a few months ago, when one of my trojan horses turned up on ebay one day, but it wasn't in one of the finishes i produced! i took a closer look at the auction and realized this person had removed the "satin gold plating" for some reason (to sell the gold value?), and had then "hand painted" the geocoin to resemble a limited edition zeus, which was selling very well at the time. when i bid on the geocoin and asked the seller a question about it, he quickly ended the auction and never replied to my inquiry! i blocked him from bidding on my auctions. alot of strange activity goes on when something becomes popular and there may be some fast money to be made, even if they are ill-gotten gains. here is a picture of the ebay auction fake of my design:

this is just wrong! that same ebay seller has been flooding the market with cheap so called "geocoins". i have a feeling that buyers may be surprised when they cannot activate these knock off copies! i will indeed file a report of this seller. this same thing could happen to any one who has ever produced a geocoin!

i like to use "paint.net". its a free program with quite a few nice features. not as nice "photoshop" or the other high end paint programs, but hey...its FREE! so i'm not complaining...lol...i've also seen some other artists here "scan" their rough drawings, then use a paint program to "clean up" and "tweak" their sketch. many collectors and buyers just have no idea how much time goes into the design process of these original works! if you charged by the hours spent "tweaking" and "touching it up", the costs would skyrocket! its a good thing i like spending so much time "painting".

thanks for playing nikos. i hope you find a way to recover the information on the broken flashcard! this serves as a reminder to everyone that flashcards should also be backed up to a 2nd storage device in case of loss, theft, or damage. actually you have a full house!

thanks for participating! i love the cointests myself and its a great way for coin owners to share their beauties with other geocoin lovers!

YOUR head hurts?! take a look at ALL those names, numbers, and cards! i need a drink!

thanks for playing wolfslady and thanks for sharing the fun adventures! your home seems lively and full of activity. may your home always be filled with the sounds of family and friends and laughter!