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Ok another newb question.... sorry, but hey I AM new :D What do you guys use as signature items? I am not looking at spending lots of money on trail tags or geocoins, or even wooden nickles (really liked someone's shrinky dink idea though)...... I am not concerned about tracking (yet), was just reading that people liked to see signaure items and stuff, so was wondering what everyone did that was... well cheap :D

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Ok another newb question.... sorry, but hey I AM new :D What do you guys use as signature items? I am not looking at spending lots of money on trail tags or geocoins, or even wooden nickles (really liked someone's shrinky dink idea though)...... I am not concerned about tracking (yet), was just reading that people liked to see signaure items and stuff, so was wondering what everyone did that was... well cheap :D

 

I started out with my Avatar on card stock and a design for the back and after cutting them out placed them in a plastic 50 cent coin holder, then moved on to Pathtags and geocoin.

 

Best thing I have found so far are Lazer Etched Whistles that cost about 25 cents each but are useful and everyone seems to love them. Email me for the company who makes them, Glad to see a new cacher joining in the forums :D

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We began with my design and username printed on business cards using our computer since that was more economical. My oldest wanted to play around with Sculpey clay and now I make our signature items out of Sculpey. Our username is gravechaser so I cut out tombstone-shaped pieces and carve "R.I.P" on the top and the year. I use a paint pen to sign our gravechaser name on the back after it's baked, then I glaze it to seal it. They look pretty neat. I was asked to start numbering them, and I'm up to 6 that have been left in caches large enough. I've thought about reducing the size to conserve clay as the colored clay is pricey.

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I have a 1" button that I've left in quite a few caches (ok, way too many caches). I no longer leave it in most caches but I do leave it in caches I do on trips. I'm going to visit my daughter next month and am going to kind of meander my way there and back (I'm in California and she's in Montana) so I'll leave the button in a few caches in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and possibly Wyoming. They cost me 25¢ apiece - not counting shipping - and I get them in a lot of 100 at a time. I probably have about 30 or so left out of my 4th hundred. :rolleyes: I guess that means I've spent over $100 on the silly things. Sigh............ If you don't go wild you can get something like this and only buy 100 of them and they will last a long time. $25 for 100 buttons isn't really much to spend. Here's what my button looks like. Remember, despite the size of the picture, in reality it's only 1" so it fits into a film can.

 

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Well, i'm new too, but i love the idea of signature items. so, i went to on eof the big box craft stores (micheals, hobby lobby, etc.) and got a bag of wooden nickels.

 

i know in your op you said you didn't wanna mess with nickels, but they are only like 2.50 for a bag of 20 or so. then i just got creative. i'm on dtc v.1 still, and i've spent $5. granted, i learned caligraphy when i was young, so i have an advantage, but i think if you put your head to it, you could come up with something cool that would be easily reproducable by hand. just what we have done. eventually we'll get a coin or something. good luck!

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I use plastic poker chips with vinyl water resistant stickers, seem to hold-up pretty well in the elements so far. They can be easily made and there are some links and instructions on my homepage which can be found at my profile. Links will take you to where I get the parts, but I am sure there are other places available.

 

Plus, the laser etching mentioned before can be done on most any item you can think of, carabiners, compass and any other small items are useful and interesting.

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My brother and I and another friend make up Team Bald 2.5. This year I had some pocket combs made up at an advertising specialty store with each of our caching names, and team name on it. Although Ihad to buy a large quantity and pay for a setup fee, we were able to split the order 3 ways, and each of us has enough sig items for most of next year. I'll be able to reorder these without the setup fee next time. Although I missed the trip to GW5 this year, the other members of the team had great fun placing these combs in caches in about 8 states! These advertising specialty stores have lots of inexpensive items that can be customized for really great swag.

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I'm trying to figure out what to use as a signature item as well. Froldt is actually made up of myself and my girlfriend. the Hubert and Ducky duo. We went to the local arts and crafts store and bought some sheets of rubber foam stuff and an exacto knife. We cut out little duck-shaped pieces, to which we would write her name and the date we found the cache. It takes a little bit of time, but is cheap (less than a dollar a sheet, and we could get about 50 or so a sheet).

 

I was doing the same thing for mine, but cutting out a character I sketched up, a headhunter. There are a lot of little cuts, though, and it took awhile to make any progress, so I have stopped doing that. I'm thinking about getting a batch of business cards made with my name, a space for the date and the headhunter logo printed on them. I think it's roughly $15 for 1,000 cards.

 

The other idea I've come up with is to make the headhunter heads out of sculpey, but it ends up being a bit pricey and time consuming. If I can find sculpey in mass quantities, then I might go for it!

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Seeing as I love making chainmail things... I've made chainmail signature items:

 

sigitem.jpg

 

The largest is a Tetra-Orb, for anything that it will fit in.

The second-largest is a 5-ring mobius ball, for micro caches.

The smallest is a 3-ring mobius ball, for nano-caches.

 

Those are the coolest things I've ever seen!

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i simply wish to advise you that some of us consider cards to be the bottom of the ladder, although every once in a while i run into a very fine card.

 

i prefer things that are handmade, and i prefer things with the cacher's name on it. if you are not an artisan or even an artist, anything that speaks to you is a good choice. it need not have to do with your name, but just be something you like.

 

i know several cachers who change their signature periodically; it's cool to be able to collect a cacher.

 

typically i leave a cd (my own work) or a photo dvd (once again, my own photos and music). people seem to like them. i used to hand-pound pennies and engrve my name on them. i keep meaning to do those again. people seemed to like those, too.

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I at one point contemplated attaching a small tag to each chainmail ball with my geocaching name, but ended up passing on it. It'd just make the endeavour of making one a lot more of a hassle, what with having to print up tiny tags, likely laminate them somehow, punch a hole in them, and then slide them onto one of the rings. Noone else around here makes them, so there's not exactly much confusion :o.

 

Although, someone picked one up from somewhere and left it as a trade item in another cache that I happened to find afterwards... so it kinda threw me off when a chainmail ball was already in a cache I hadn't found yet :(. That cache thusly had two chainmail balls after I left :D.

 

But yeah... my type of thing is unique, costs about 3 cents worth of rings to make, and I can generally make one in about 45 seconds, given I'm holding the tools and have the rings in front of me. It works out pretty good.

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