Home-made Trade Items

[+fox-and-the-hound]

I have an idea for some home-made trades and it occured that I've seen relatively few, but they were always nice. What have you seen? What could you make? What would it's trade value be?

[+Henki]

I recently received in the mail from someone on these forums some homemade travel bug-type things. They were slices of tree branches with his website address and a tracking number stamped on each one.

[+Henki]

Check out these homemade FTF coins by BillsBayou. I have yet to see one in person because almost every one has gone to the same person ~cough caderoux cough~, but they look pretty cool.

 

BillsBayou's signature item

[Not So Lost Puppies]

One cacher in our area makes small dream-catchers and places them in caches, and restock them in caches they own.

[+nfa]

I've made some tiny geocoins by dremelling out a negative space in soapstone, and filling it with molten tin or pewter...I'm starting on another series of these,and will be stamping "NFA" or numbers on the (until now) blank side.

 

Jamie

[+Woodbutcher68]

Since my main hobby is woodworking, I put handmade items in caches. I've put in Christmas ornaments, honey dippers, trivets and the mushrooms pictured to the left. The TB Napa Valley Bound is a handmade bottle stopper

[+New England n00b]

I'm in the process of making laminated business cards. I use Avery Dennisons free DesignPro 5 software which sets up the cards nicely. The card stock is Avery #5871, 10 cards to a page. Run it through a color laser printer (I do both sides), then laminate them. They look pretty good, are relatively cheap, and don't disintigrate in caches because the paper is protected... What is great is that each card on a page can be modified - so I have a series of 10 cards with different pictures on them, representing things that are important to me. If someone really wants to, they could collect all 10.

 

I do the printing and laminating at a local copy shop (not those big places hwere they don't know their toes from their ears).

 

All I am waiting on right now is Groundspeak allowing or disallowing the use of their logo (way over 25 being made).

 

Once I get the final product printed out, I'll post a picture or two.

 

So...

Software: Free

Paper: About $20 for 200 cards (10 to a sheet)

Laser Printing: 25 cents per sheet side

Laminating: About $1.50 per sheet

 

So 10 cards costs about $4 to make... not so bad. About 40 cents each, but very personalized and pretty cool.

[+fox-and-the-hound]

I'm in the process of making laminated business cards. I use Avery Dennisons free DesignPro 5 software which sets up the cards nicely. The card stock is Avery #5871, 10 cards to a page. Run it through a color laser printer (I do both sides), then laminate them. They look pretty good, are relatively cheap, and don't disintigrate in caches because the paper is protected... What is great is that each card on a page can be modified - so I have a series of 10 cards with different pictures on them, representing things that are important to me. If someone really wants to, they could collect all 10.

 

I do the printing and laminating at a local copy shop (not those big places hwere they don't know their toes from their ears).

 

All I am waiting on right now is Groundspeak allowing or disallowing the use of their logo (way over 25 being made).

 

Once I get the final product printed out, I'll post a picture or two.

 

So...

Software: Free

Paper: About $20 for 200 cards (10 to a sheet)

Laser Printing: 25 cents per sheet side

Laminating: About $1.50 per sheet

 

So 10 cards costs about $4 to make... not so bad. About 40 cents each, but very personalized and pretty cool.

 

I really like this idea and I've notice a few others doing similar card-type items. I thought I might help lower your bottom line a bit. Hammermill Paper (available at all office supply stores, ie: staples, officemax, etc) has card stock (business card paper) available in a multipack of color (or single colors/white) for $7/per 100 sheet pack. That's roughly 1000 sheets for $7 or .07cents/card if you don't mind cutting them up yourself. Laminating is available by the roll at Michael's (bought mine there) and other craft stores for about $6-8 for a 50? foot roll. I'm lucky enough to have a laser printer at work, but I cant help you there !

 

As an avid hiker (like many cachers), I was thinking about making the classic pepsi-can ultralight camp stove to put in caches. It's cache friendly, great gear for hikers/campers, environmentally friendly since it runs on white alcohols (rubbing alcohol/denatured) and uses recycled aluminum cans. Not to mention it helps prevent scorching the ground with campfires. Any thoughts?

[+NoClue-Opp]

I saw in the forums a while back someone was making custom marbles. That was the coolist item I have heard about.

[+New England n00b]

I'm in the process of making laminated business cards. I use Avery Dennisons free DesignPro 5 software which sets up the cards nicely. The card stock is Avery #5871, 10 cards to a page. Run it through a color laser printer (I do both sides), then laminate them. They look pretty good, are relatively cheap, and don't disintigrate in caches because the paper is protected... What is great is that each card on a page can be modified - so I have a series of 10 cards with different pictures on them, representing things that are important to me. If someone really wants to, they could collect all 10.

 

I do the printing and laminating at a local copy shop (not those big places hwere they don't know their toes from their ears).

 

All I am waiting on right now is Groundspeak allowing or disallowing the use of their logo (way over 25 being made).

 

Once I get the final product printed out, I'll post a picture or two.

 

So...

Software: Free

Paper: About $20 for 200 cards (10 to a sheet)

Laser Printing: 25 cents per sheet side

Laminating: About $1.50 per sheet

 

So 10 cards costs about $4 to make... not so bad. About 40 cents each, but very personalized and pretty cool.

 

I really like this idea and I've notice a few others doing similar card-type items. I thought I might help lower your bottom line a bit. Hammermill Paper (available at all office supply stores, ie: staples, officemax, etc) has card stock (business card paper) available in a multipack of color (or single colors/white) for $7/per 100 sheet pack. That's roughly 1000 sheets for $7 or .07cents/card if you don't mind cutting them up yourself. Laminating is available by the roll at Michael's (bought mine there) and other craft stores for about $6-8 for a 50? foot roll. I'm lucky enough to have a laser printer at work, but I cant help you there !

 

As an avid hiker (like many cachers), I was thinking about making the classic pepsi-can ultralight camp stove to put in caches. It's cache friendly, great gear for hikers/campers, environmentally friendly since it runs on white alcohols (rubbing alcohol/denatured) and uses recycled aluminum cans. Not to mention it helps prevent scorching the ground with campfires. Any thoughts?

 

As far as the stove - VERY cool, but leave the fuel to the cacher to buy, obviously. Caches go *boom* enough what with the bomb squads and all.

 

In regards to the card stock, that's pretty good - the only thing is I can't cut a square corner to save my life, and the laser-print cards I listed are specially perforated so there aren't and little fringes - It comes out very professional. I bought them initially to make business cards for my sister-in-law, but then had some fun with the leftover stock, so it kinda worked out. The laminating done by my local copy shop is pretty thick - I could have faked a drivers license with it before the state changed over to the new ones (L.E.O note: I have never done this, just commenting on the quality). I haven't used any of the 'home-made' laminating kits, so I can't speak to teh quality it produces. It is definintely a good idea though. Next year, I may do larger 3"x5" sig cards and laminate them, and your paper & laminate suggestion would probably work out very well! Thanks!

[+ByrnedFish]

I make these wooden nickles, which seem to be popular trade items in these parts. You can buy 1.5" wooden discs at any craft store. Then i had t2o stamps made at a local stamp store. then u just stamp each side with one of the stamps and hand number them. its easy and has an updfront cost, but hten its cheap.

Just an Idea

[+SS D.S.K.]

http://sigitemdb.mi-geocaching.org/ss_d.htm

 

this a link to pic of what we put in caches pretty cheep and fun to make. Cards are made at home and we bought a laminater on e bay to laminate the cards.

[+Team Yarber]

Both my wife & I work with Glass. My wife has added her own made, glass beads & I added one of my glass lures to our cache & plan to add another to any "worthy" caches.

We were also tinkering with the idea of making fused glass tokens. Maybe,

 

If you want to check out our glass work check out:

www.preciouslittlethings.ca

&

www.yarber.ca

[+Team LaLonde]

We found a couple of origami animals (frog, crane) today.

[+BadAndy]

Embroidered leather swagbags and geocoin wallets.

 

They seem to go over pretty good.

[+New England n00b]

OK, the laser cards I mentioned above? Toner does not take well to the back side, so I don't recommend that if you wanna do double sided cards. Argh.

[+Koakai]

One of my hobbies is the making of silver jewlery items. However I am still quite the amateur at it, so on occation if I have a piece that I am not 100 percent happy with, or if I need a special item for a cache, I use one of those pieces. I had a bunch of silver swords I used when I first started caching, total outlay, maybe 5-6 dollars each in silver.

 

I have started to play with enameling on copper and silver, and have been making simple F.T.F. token for my caches. I'malso slowly attempting to make a few signature 'coins', to put into caches using this method, but I am very slow at it, because any day I have off, I usually tend to wind up headed out the door to go caching.

[+Fergus]

I make chainmail balls to leave in caches.