High number of finds.

[+Corp Of Discovery]

The phrase seems to come up every so often- 'high number of finds' (or it's close relative 'high numbers cacher'). But what does it actually mean? I'd guess it varies from cacher to cacher, I certainly know my definition has changed over time. For me, when I started, 100 seemed pretty high. Then I hit 500 and 1000 was the number. Now I think in terms of 5000+.

 

What does it mean to you?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Go ahead, admit it- you went and looked at my stats...

[+briansnat]

Anybody who has more finds than I do.

[+conradv]

Right now, probably 200 is "high" to me.

 

It is very dependant on location. I'm up in northern Idaho where they're spread pretty thin.

 

Now someone in a metro area who has thousands around them? Their version of "high" is a lot different from mine.

[+Airmapper]

To me it depends a lot on how many of those are multiple event logs, and the diversity of hide types. I don't necessarily knock micros, but I think a good variation of types means more than a thousand lamp post hides.

 

To really know I'd need to see a cachestat program readout with all your stats.

[+Waynelipp]

a high # of finds to me is about 200 right now. If you want to know a HIGH # of finds, then I would say 5,000+.

[k_statealan]

I would say it depends on your location. Someone like myself with 450+ finds in a more rural area where 500 nearby caches are spread out over thousands of square miles is a lot more impressive than someone with the same number of finds with 500 within 20 miles.

[+StarBrand]

4 years ago I was in awe of anybody with more than 250 and 500 seemed like a far flung dream. These days, high seems to be anybody with 2000+ to me. With only 92 caches within 50 miles and 190 with 100 - just seems like anybody that goes over 300 is pretty impressive locally.

[+cachew nut]

I think that if your total geocache count is under [x := Corp_of_ Discovery_stat_total + 1] then you are still a novice

[+Team Perks]

Anybody who has more finds than I do.

Yeah, I'm with Brian on this.

[+Jhwk]

Anybody who has more finds than I do.

Yeah, I'm with Brian on this.

no, no, no...

 

You da man!

 

And I still find the goal of 1000 astounding. that's my "high number"

[+baloo&bd]

It really depends on how long you have been doing this.

 

I am more impressed by someone with higher numbers who has been at this a while than someone who gets 900 finds in under 6 months.

 

The latter is generally doing cache runs and in many cases using questionable criteria for what is a "find". They also are leaving no time for enjoying the nicer and sometime obscure spots they were brought to.

 

A cacher in my area got around 900 finds in about 4 months. That is like 7 or 8 finds a day, great if you are retired however this person had a full time job and kids.

 

Guess I am from the steady and slow crowd. If I can average 30 a month, I think that is a pretty good target.

[+nameless301]

I really consider it to be about 2,000, but if I was still living in PA I would probly think maybe like 300 or what not. I guess it is all where you are located.

[+JDandDD]

That is a very complicated question. It depends on both the concentration in a cacher's area and motivation, at least. Where we live everything is a 40minute drive one way and the biggest concentrations are and hour or more. That slows you down. But its even more problematic if you live in northern Canada or some of the more isolated spot of the US. High could range from 100 to 2000 depending on where you live.

 

JD

[+budd-rdc]

It really depends on how long you have been doing this.

 

I am more impressed by someone with higher numbers who has been at this a while than someone who gets 900 finds in under 6 months.

 

The latter is generally doing cache runs and in many cases using questionable criteria for what is a "find". They also are leaving no time for enjoying the nicer and sometime obscure spots they were brought to.

 

A cacher in my area got around 900 finds in about 4 months. That is like 7 or 8 finds a day, great if you are retired however this person had a full time job and kids.

 

Guess I am from the steady and slow crowd. If I can average 30 a month, I think that is a pretty good target.

Newbies can definitely get more finds per given time period, since they have the luxury of planning routes to do this. Most newbies are also naive enough not to try any shortcuts until cynicism takes over and the game becomes more about the numbers than about having fun.

 

In my area, people are still "innocent" for the first 1000 finds or so. I started to become GeoGrumpy past 2000 finds, so I guess I'll call that "high number of finds."

 

(FYI: in Japan, 200 = high number of finds)

[+Metaphor]

317

[+VeryLost]

I think that if your total geocache count is under [x := Corp_of_ Discovery_stat_total + 1] then you are still a novice

 

Pascal coder?

[+welch]

The phrase seems to come up every so often- 'high number of finds' (or it's close relative 'high numbers cacher'). But what does it actually mean? I'd guess it varies from cacher to cacher, I certainly know my definition has changed over time. For me, when I started, 100 seemed pretty high. Then I hit 500 and 1000 was the number. Now I think in terms of 5000+.

 

What does it mean to you?

This seems like something related to where you are and how active you are geocaching (every weekend? one weekend a month? just once in a while??).

When I first started caching I thought getting 20 finds would be neat, and that 100 would was quite a few. But now I think 20 could be a Saturday and 100-200 or maybe even 300 in a year would be possiable without great difficulty.

I would say 500 caches in a year or less would be 'high numbers, 1000+ in 2-3years, or more than 1500 total. However thats just going my stats and what I think is typical of the 'locals'. Other areas would IMO be different, for example if I lived in Valentine, Nebraska (zip 69201) which has SEVEN caches within 25 miles, 100 finds might still be high. While if I lived in Minneapolis (zip 55401), 1000 or 1500 finds might not be that high since it has 1900 caches within 25 miles to work with.

Edited September 2, 2006 by welch

[+KoosKoos]

Brian is so right on this one.

 

When I started, I thought it was awesome that people had SO many finds....but seeing how some numbers come about (loose finds, park-n-grabs, millions of micros, etc., etc.), it doesn't mean much to me these days.

 

It's great for those who have the time/inclination to seek out hundreds of caches in a weekend...but that isn't for me and I don't see it as a big deal any more.

[+KoosKoos]

edit - dupe post

Edited September 2, 2006 by KoosKoos

[nonaeroterraqueous]

When we started I thought the mid-300s was a moderate number. Then we got the GPSr maps in the mail and we started hitting the better part of a hundred each month. Here in the Los Angeles/ Orange County area 1,000 seems like a standard minimum number for anyone who takes the game seriously. That's because we probably have one of the highest cache densities in the world, and that's a consistent density over a very large area. I haven't done the research to prove it, but I figure since the highest-rated finders in the world are located in this metropolitan area it's probably a safe bet that we've got something of an advantage here. Location is everything when it comes to the numbers, which is another reason why the numbers don't say anything about a person's finding abilities. Around here the numbers-hungry cachers won't go after caches that take too long to get to, and they don't waste time on anything they can't find right away. At least, that's what my limited experience seems to indicate.

[+Glenn]

To me, it depends on the area. Some areas are cache dense and the average local has thousands of finds. While other area have less caches and the local have 100's of finds. I'd think that if your find count is in the top 10% for the area you are in then you have a high number of cache finds.

[+RoyalRed]

Any number of caches that gets me tired and spent from finding them.

[+El Diablo]

I started off being awed by people that had found 100 caches. Then it was a thousand caches. Soon it was common to see thousands of cache finds. I guess over time I've became insensitive to the numbers.

 

I no longer look at the numbers of others. To me the highest is one more cache than I have now.

 

El Diablo

[+Shop99er]

Anybody who has more finds than I do.

 

Ditto

[+cachew nut]

Pascal coder?

No, emoticon

[+3blackcats]

I think anyone with over 3000 finds has a bunch of finds.

 

I'm still puzzled as to why folks think that cachers who have a high amount of finds in a short amount of time have questionable methods and/or motives...

 

p.s. I haven't looked at your # of finds, Corp of Discovery...

[+Thrak]

Hard to say. There is a local cacher who has a full time job who hit 1500 in his first year. I don't have that kind of numbers and I'm quite content.

[4wheelin_fool]

I guess it depends on where you live. The entire state of North Dakota has only 299 caches, while there are 331 within an eight mile radius of this LA region.

[nonaeroterraqueous]

I guess it depends on where you live. The entire state of North Dakota has only 299 caches, while there are 331 within an eight mile radius of this LA region.

That sounds about right. I got about 400 in a ten mile radius of my home in Orange County, which is essentially just another part of the greater Los Angeles metropolis.

[+norsehawk]

High for me would be over 2000. Really High would be CCCooperagency.

[CoyoteRed]

Go ahead, admit it- you went and looked at my stats...

I'm sure a few did, but I really couldn't care less.

 

As to the query of the definition of a "high numbers cacher," well, as you've said, I think that is a moving target.

 

What about in twenty years? You'll have a mix of old veterans and hyper-aggressive newbies, both with impressive numbers.

[BRTango]

Personally, I'm looking forward to hitting 100. I've been at this for over a year now, and don't get out nearly as often as I'd like. With a new child, new job, new house, I'm lucky if I get a couple a month.

[+Semper Questio]

The phrase seems to come up every so often- 'high number of finds' (or it's close relative 'high numbers cacher'). But what does it actually mean? I'd guess it varies from cacher to cacher, I certainly know my definition has changed over time. For me, when I started, 100 seemed pretty high. Then I hit 500 and 1000 was the number. Now I think in terms of 5000+.

 

What does it mean to you?

 

Not much.

 

My find count means something to me. Most others' counts just don't mean anything to me any longer, regardless of what they are.

[+Criminal]

You’ll have to come up with a definition of ’find’ first.

[+wimseyguy]

<Yawn>

[BRTango]

You’ll have to come up with a definition of ’find’ first.

 

Take your pick:

 

Definitions of 'find' on the Web:

 

- come upon, as if by accident; meet with; "We find this idea in Plato"; "I happened upon the most wonderful bakery not very far from here"; "She chanced upon an interesting book in the bookstore the other day"

 

- detect: discover or determine the existence, presence, or fact of; "She detected high levels of lead in her drinking water"; "We found traces of lead in the paint"

 

- come upon after searching; find the location of something that was missed or lost; "Did you find your glasses?"; "I cannot find my gloves!"

 

- determine: establish after a calculation, investigation, experiment, survey, or study; "find the product of two numbers"; "The physicist who found the elusive particle won the Nobel Prize"

 

- come to believe on the basis of emotion, intuitions, or indefinite grounds; "I feel that he doesn't like me"; "I find him to be obnoxious"; "I found the movie rather entertaining"

 

- witness: perceive or be contemporaneous with; "We found Republicans winning the offices"; "You'll see a lot of cheating in this school"; "The 1960's saw the rebellion of the younger generation against established traditions"; "I want to see results"

 

- line up: get something or somebody for a specific purpose; "I found this gadget that will serve as a bottle opener"; "I got hold of these tools to fix our plumbing"; "The chairman got hold of a secretary on Friday night to type the urgent letter"

 

- discover: make a discovery, make a new finding; "Roentgen discovered X-rays"; "Physicists believe they found a new elementary particle"

 

- discover: make a discovery; "She found that he had lied to her"; "The story is false, so far as I can discover"

 

- obtain through effort or management; "She found the time and energy to take care of her aging parents"; "We found the money to send our sons to college"

 

- rule: decide on and make a declaration about; "find someone guilty"

 

- receive: receive a specified treatment (abstract); "These aspects of civilization do not find expression or receive an interpretation"; "His movie received a good review"; "I got nothing but trouble for my good intentions"

 

- perceive oneself to be in a certain condition or place; "I found myself in a difficult situation"; "When he woke up, he found himself in a hospital room"

 

- recover: get or find back; recover the use of; "She regained control of herself"; "She found her voice and replied quickly"

 

- succeed in reaching; arrive at; "The arrow found its mark"

 

- discovery: a productive insight

 

- find oneself: accept and make use of one's personality, abilities, and situation; "My son went to Berkeley to find himself"

 

- discovery: the act of discovering something

wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

 

- The find command is a search utility found on the Unix platform that can search through the directory tree of the filesystem locating files based on some user-specified criteria. By default, find simply returns all files below the current working directory. Further, find allows the user to relate some action to be taken on each matched file.

 

- Button in Netscape Tool Button Bar at top. Searches for word(s) keyed in document in screen only. Useful to locate a term in a long document.

 

- a meteorite that was not seen to fall but was found and recognized subsequently.

 

- A found piece without associated witnessing of event

 

- Searches for text in the currently loaded page. In Netscape, this is a button on the browser. In Explorer, you need to click Edit/Find.

 

- is a found piece of meteorite that was not witnessed when it hit the earth.

 

- Term applied to a discovery of coins; also called a hoard when the quantity is large.

 

- Searches for text in the current page.

 

- when a meteorite is discovered by chance

 

- An operating system command that searches particular directories for files with specific attributes.

 

- a new discovery, usually of something that was not thought to exist. It can be a single item or a hoard of stamps or covers.

 

- A database management operation intended to locate a single record or a set of records or features based on the values of their attributes.

 

- means calculate, measure or determine, etc.

 

- a meteorite that was simply found lying on the ground; the date of the meteorite's arrival on Earth is unknown.

 

- A function useful for searching for word(s) in the active window. Using this command, you can locate a specific term(s) in a long document easily. The keyboard shortcut is Ctrl + F.

 

- In word processing, a command that allows the user to locate any character, word, or phrase in a document.

[nonaeroterraqueous]

You’ll have to come up with a definition of ’find’ first.

Uh, oh! That's a can of worms best left unopened. You know a statement like that is going to provoke someone.

[+Glenn]

You’ll have to come up with a definition of ’find’ first.

Uh, oh! That's a can of worms best left unopened. You know a statement like that is going to provoke someone.

Only from those who feel guilty about something.

[nonaeroterraqueous]

Only from those who feel guilty about something.

Well...apparently there are plenty of those around, because if you bring it up you'll probably get another flame war. That issue has been beaten to death anyway. As much as I enjoy heated bickering I'm not so much into watching reruns. There are so many new and interesting things to assault each other over that it would be a pity to rehash this one.

[+Corp Of Discovery]

Thanks for the responses so far.

 

Crim: for the purposes of this thread a find is pretty much just a number. That's all I'm interested in as far as this thread is concerned. I was wondering if there would be anything close to a consensus or even just a leading contender for that number. It appears there isn't.

 

CR: the smiley was put after the part you quoted for a purpose.

 

SQ: it doen't necessarily have to be someone elses number, but what/when would you consider your own numbers to meet the criteria, if ever (or could you even consider them to be without relating them to someone elses number?).

 

Wimseyguy: WAKE UP!! No sleeping while posting please.

[+brodiebunch]

Does the amount of time taken to achieve a high number of finds factor in?

 

We are approaching our 500th find but its taken us nearly three years to do so. I have a met few geocachers who have found that many since January of this year.

[+Jhwk]

Thanks for the responses so far.

 

Crim: for the purposes of this thread a find is pretty much just a number. That's all I'm interested in as far as this thread is concerned. I was wondering if there would be anything close to a consensus or even just a leading contender for that number. It appears there isn't.

 

CR: the smiley was put after the part you quoted for a purpose.

 

SQ: it doen't necessarily have to be someone elses number, but what/when would you consider your own numbers to meet the criteria, if ever (or could you even consider them to be without relating them to someone elses number?).

 

Wimseyguy: WAKE UP!! No sleeping while posting please.

 

Come on - you know better than to take the bait

 

or feed the pig...

[+Semper Questio]

 

SQ: it doen't necessarily have to be someone elses number, but what/when would you consider your own numbers to meet the criteria, if ever (or could you even consider them to be without relating them to someone elses number?).

 

 

When would I consider MY count to qualify me as a 'high numbers cacher"? I really don't think it matters since the numbers mean different things to different people in relation to how they play the game. Like I said before, I know what my numbers mean TO ME because I know how I got them.

 

You certainly can't objectively quantify the "value" of your numbers as high or low without considering their value in relation to other cachers' numbers.

 

Subjectively speaking I can say that my count seems high to me sometimes when I consider all that went into even some of the finds and how relatively casually we play the game. On the other hand, it seems pretty low when you think of a "per day" rate, periods of caching inactivity, or what DIDN'T go into some of the finds.

 

Vague enough answer fer ya?

[+Criminal]

 

SQ: it doen't necessarily have to be someone elses number, but what/when would you consider your own numbers to meet the criteria, if ever (or could you even consider them to be without relating them to someone elses number?).

 

 

When would I consider MY count to qualify me as a 'high numbers cacher"? I really don't think it matters since the numbers mean different things to different people in relation to how they play the game. Like I said before, I know what my numbers mean TO ME because I know how I got them.

 

You certainly can't objectively quantify the "value" of your numbers as high or low without considering their value in relation to other cachers' numbers.

 

Subjectively speaking I can say that my count seems high to me sometimes when I consider all that went into even some of the finds and how relatively casually we play the game. On the other hand, it seems pretty low when you think of a "per day" rate, periods of caching inactivity, or what DIDN'T go into some of the finds.

 

Vague enough answer fer ya?

Whatever office you're running for, you have my vote.