Free Garmin Geocoins question

[+Mad H@ter]

The person who activates each coin will decide what to do with it. For me the great and liberating thing about geocoins is that you release them to be shared by others rather than keeping them to clutter up your home

Couldn't agree more

[+keehotee]

Personally - if I were Mr Garmin, and saw what seems to be happening to most of the coins - against my stated wishes for them - then this would be the first and last set of coins I issued.

 

Funny - the main forum never seems to be full of posts from people who received Jeep TB's asking if it was OK to keep them...... and that competition's now in it's fourth year.

It just goes to show what a greedy, short sighted bunch of hoarders we all are....

 

[ducks and runs for cover]

[+uktim]

 

It's interesting that these coins are seen as so desireable when they are part of such a large run as MadH@ter points out. It turns the laws of supply and demand on their head.

 

Demand will always be high if something is "free". The puzzling thing is that many people appear to have spent more time and money in pursuit of one free coin than it would have cost to buy a rarer coin online

[wolfshead57]

Personally - if I were Mr Garmin, and saw what seems to be happening to most of the coins - against my stated wishes for them - then this would be the first and last set of coins I issued.

 

[ducks and runs for cover]

 

I dont think Garmin will be disappointed about the coins going missing or ending up in a collection that may or may not travel around the place for folk to see.

 

I think Garmin will be rubbing their collective hands and the man/woman who thought of this promotion will be getting a big fat bonus this Christmas. Just look at how many threads there are on here and other forums(I guess) about this subject.

 

Me, I still say you should set them on thier merry little way and to hell with the thieves who want to steal them from the game (only applies to those who have stolen them from the wild not those who have collected them legit). We all play this for fun and boy has this subject been fun to read.

[+purple_pineapple]

Providing it is registered it is part of the competition and anyone who sees it can discover it and enter the competition. IMHO coins in collections that visit events are likely to get far more logs than ones out in the wild.

 

They may get seen by more people at events but showing them off in this way limits their exposure to a small percentage of cachers that peruse other peoples collections at events. IMO a wider cross section of cahers will stand a chance of seeing these coins in the long term if they are released to travel around caches.

 

The person who activates each coin will decide what to do with it. For me the great and liberating thing about geocoins is that you release them to be shared by others rather than keeping them to clutter up your home

 

hmmm - I appear to be agreeing with UkTim - something must be wrong!

 

Anyway, my opinion - what with one thing and another these last few weeks, I haven't been able to pick one up myself, so my only hope of enetering the competition is to find one in the wild. Events are all very well, but what if I can't make it to the only event within 2 hours drive of my house? And what about those thousands of cachers who don't go to events? And there's no point kidding ourselves - the majority of events are attended by the usual crowd!

 

And finally, I don't think they can be directly compared to personal coins - unless there is a competition to find another coin you own and keep, and only show to friends, so therefore only your friends can enter... we mustn't forget that the considerable majority of cachers don't use the forums and don't go to events.

 

And before anyone says anything, yes, I have logged one, and its in the wild!

 

D

[+purple_pineapple]

I wonder what percentage of coins have been picked up by non-cachers who have no hope or interest in placing their coin in a cache. Garmin must expect a large number of coins to go 'missing' that way. Since the interest lies largely with geocachers who already have their own gps I do wonder how this is meant to work as a promotion. I suppose it raises the profile of the brand amongst cachers.

 

I wondered that too! To my mind, they are promoting the brand to the most "Garmin-aware" group of people in the country! Still, not complaining that they do it!

[+HazelS]

I doubt many would be picked up by non cachers....

 

The shops I've been into they've not been on display, they've been in a jiffy bag under the counter!

[+uktim]

 

It's interesting that these coins are seen as so desireable when they are part of such a large run as MadH@ter points out. It turns the laws of supply and demand on their head.

 

Demand will always be high if something is "free".

 

Indeed, but a large amount of interest is, or is assumed to be, in the form of theft of travelling coins. If you're a coin thief then they're all free!

 

Ummm. Who is making this assumption

 

You'll have to elaborate a bit. It seems somewhat unjust to draw any association between theft and peoples enthusiastic pursuit of free gifts.

Edited September 2, 2008 by uktim

[paganfrog]

i just think the whole thing has been a complete farce. i get the idea that garmin were using geocaching and geocoins as a much cheaper way than the usual nationwide mass campaign advertising.

the problem is that they failed totally. they failed to advise the stores and staff as to what was supposed to have been done. the only people that know the most about this promotion are Groundspeak geocachers.

the coins have failed to be where they were supposed to be on time, there has been hardly any posters or leaflets on display.

as to the supposed rules to play, i read it that if you want to enter the competition you are supposed to release the coin into a cache. if you dont enter the competition then the coin belongs to the person who managed to claim one from a store.

 

this whole thing has been a fiasco from start to finish.

imop it could and should have been promoted a lot better than it is.

 

anyway i have a london bigben coin, and i really want the others please. if i cant get all of them, then my first wo choices would be london eye and stonehenge.

 

pleeease (flutters eyelashes appealingly) i would pay for the postage costs and send a caithness postcard as thanks.

 

just to make it clear, i will be keeping these, but all coins i keep i always activate. any vistors to my area is always welcome to drop me a message to view my coins. it states that in my profile.

 

so at the moment i have a london bigben coin in my activated collection, if anyones passing through and wants to enter the competition please dont hesitate to contact me for a viewing.

 

[+uktim]

Well, there seems to be a feeling that releasing these coins will result in their loss through theft and some examples (one maybe?) have been given of released coins already going astray. Perhaps I am wrong in getting that impression, but it seems to be one of the reasons given in this thread for not releasing them.

 

I didn't mean to suggest that people seeking the coins would resort to theft, my apologies if it comes across that way. This thread seems to be concerned with their theft, but perhaps I'm wrong to surmise these are more prone to theft...maybe those not wishing to release these would feel the same about any coin they own.

 

I think that it's far to early to assume that any of these coins have been lost. They've only been out there for such a short length of time. In my short experience of releasing coins I've already had coins reappear after being "lost" for longer than the very short time that the Garmin coins have been circulating for.

 

The possibility of theft has been used as a justification for keeping them in a collection by some collectors. I suspect that like the rest of life the fear of crime is out of proportion to the reality.

[+Matrix]

Well Katie has decided that she will decide when we go caching this weekend she has read all the posts and has changed her mind several times (well she is female after all ).

 

Its a pity that there is no event pending as she is keen to actually show it to people rather than read logs until the coin goes missing .

 

As I think all the information required has been collected will a moderator please close it.

[+keehotee]

Now to hunt down keehotee for calling me a hoarder....

 

Do you want plain co-ords, or something a bit more cryptic ???

[+fat boy slow]

As an aside to the main topic here can I just point out that ( imho ) none of these coins is particularly rare, in that if I understand things correctly there were 1,000 made of each design.

 

As I understand it that would be quite a large production run for most coins you see in caches, I know for example that there were only 500 of each of the UK Mega coins ( supporter & attendee ) made which makes them twice as rare, and as I paid for 1 of each I am holdng on to them, although the second Silve ( supporter ) coin I bought is already out in the wild

 

Likewise I have bought a coin out of a run of 250, again much more rare which I am holding, but I bought it cos I liked the look of it

 

BUT the least common of my coins were a MEGA BLACK coin, given on the day to approx 50 people and a Groundspeak Volunteer coin which is not possible to buy or beg and that is definately staying with me.

 

I guess what I am asking for here is a sense of perspective, they cost nowt but time, are worth practically nothing and should ( in theory ) be fairly common place in caches, after all if they issued 5,000 and the UK has approx 25,000 caches then in theory 1 in 5 caches could have one of these coins which would mean most folks could get to see all of them in a relatively short time....

Edited September 2, 2008 by fat boy slow

[+purple_pineapple]

As an aside to the main topic here can I just point out that ( imho ) none of these coins is particularly rare, in that if I understand things correctly there were 1,000 made of each design.

 

As I understand it that would be quite a large production run for most coins you see in caches, I know for example that there were only 500 of each of the UK Mega coins ( supporter & attendee ) made which makes them twice as rare, and as I paid for 1 of each I am holdng on to them, although the second Silve ( supporter ) coin I bought is already out in the wild

 

Likewise I have bought a coin out of a run of 250, again much more rare which I am holding, but I bought it cos I liked the look of it

 

BUT the least common of my coins were a MEGA BLACK coin, given on the day to approx 50 people and a Groundspeak Volunteer coin which is not possible to buy or beg and that is definately staying with me.

 

I guess what I am asking for here is a sense of perspective, they cost nowt but time, are worth practically nothing and should ( in theory ) be fairly common place in caches, after all if they issued 5,000 and the UK has approx 25,000 caches then in theory 1 in 5 caches could have one of these coins which would mean most folks could get to see all of them in a relatively short time....

 

well said! I wonder what the production run was on some of the coins like the Uk coin or the england coin. unlikely to be more than 1000, and certainly less than 5000...

[mandarin]

Thank you to all contributors to this thread. The Topic is now being closed, at the request of the OP.

 

mandarin