Long Gone...

[+StarBrand]

I was looking at some different statistics (something I rarely do) and was a bit alarmed to see that almost 28% of the caches I have found in the past are now archived. However when I looked a bit closer - I noticed many of those were caches I found 5 or more years ago. That just happens to represent my first 100 or so finds. So 2 questions - 1 for long time cachers:

 

1 - How many of your first 100 finds are now archived?? - For me 54%

 

2 - How many of your finds from 5+ years ago are now archived?? - about the same 54%

[+DiamondDaveG]

14 of my first 100 have been archived making for about 14% (I never was great at math, could someone check that please? )

 

I haven't been caching for 5 years yet so I cant answer that, but 16 of my finds in the past 20 months have been archived.

[+OReviewer]

1- With locationless caches, 57% of my first 100 are archived, without them 49%.

 

2- I wasn't caching 5 years ago.

 

Over all, 30.6% of caches I have ever done are archived. This does count locationless.

[Mr.Yuck]

1. 40 of my first 100 are archived, so 40%. That was less than I figured.

 

2. Slightly higher, 43% for 5+ years old.

 

Yes, I imagine locationless could mess with the numbers for some people. Me, I only did one.

[+StarBrand]

yup - I never did any locationless - just to clarify - but I can understand how that could really affect some folks numbers.

[+uxorious]

My first 100 cache finds now have 39 archived caches. The last 100 have 5 archived. (not counting event caches of coarse. )

 

I've only been at this for three years, but the rate of archived caches seems to taper at a faster rate as the caches get older. (makes sense) You would expect older caches to have higher rates of archival, therefore older players should have higher percentages of no longer available caches.

[+Kit Fox]

62 of the 100 first cache i've found are now archived.

 

63% of my 1414 finds or 891 caches are still active.

[+nittany dave]

58% of my first 100 are now archived

 

259 or 48% of my finds from 5+ years ago are archived.

[BlueDamsel]

I was looking at some different statistics (something I rarely do) and was a bit alarmed to see that almost 28% of the caches I have found in the past are now archived. However when I looked a bit closer - I noticed many of those were caches I found 5 or more years ago. That just happens to represent my first 100 or so finds. So 2 questions - 1 for long time cachers:

 

1 - How many of your first 100 finds are now archived?? - For me 54%

 

2 - How many of your finds from 5+ years ago are now archived?? - about the same 54%

 

I've been caching since 2001, so about 3 or 4 of my original 100 are still active.

[+otis89]

14 of my first 100 finds have now been archived. I can't answer the second question since I haven't been caching for 5 years.

[+StarBrand]

Ok - so my experience seems pretty typical.

 

It would seem that about 50% of caches that were out are archived after somewhere around 4 to 5 years.

 

(Half life of a caches????!!!???? - might make an interesting study.....hmmmmmm)

[+Chrysalides]

(Half life of a caches????!!!???? - might make an interesting study.....hmmmmmm)

Yes, actually that would make for a very interesting study. Best done with data directly from Groundspeak's database, but we should be able to get a pretty good idea from our individual snapshots. I'd contribute but I have only been caching for a few months and the result not very useful. It might be interesting to see if there are variations across regions as well.

[+ArcherDragoon]

38% here...interesting to go back and see which ones they were...

[+Harry Dolphin]

Won't be into my fifth year of geocaching until July.

Out of my first 100, 30 have been archived, not including Locationless caches. But I wasn't into cache and dashes back then. Three were near the AT and got archived recently. Surprisingly 5 of the 30 were Briansnat caches.

My overall total (including Locationless) is 28.6% archived.

[+sullude]

I just wonder why these caches have been archived. I've heard of people making caches on vacation and hope for the best. People getting into cacheing and for what ever reason getting out and leaving their caches to die. Is there some way to take them over for someone that it turns into a archive CITO one. I always wondered why.

Like my pappy use to said "Everything must die to make room for the next"

Or " There's only so long you can fish with out breaking out the dynamite "

[+StarBrand]

I just wonder why these caches have been archived. I've heard of people making caches on vacation and hope for the best. People getting into cacheing and for what ever reason getting out and leaving their caches to die. Is there some way to take them over for someone that it turns into a archive CITO one. I always wondered why.

Like my pappy use to said "Everything must die to make room for the next"

Or " There's only so long you can fish with out breaking out the dynamite "

Speaking for my own archived caches - the reasons are varied. Mostly archived due to some change in the physical area that made a cache not work there anymore. Some looked like good spots but had repeated muggle or theft problems. Some archived due to issues with land owners/managers. 88% of my total caches are still active and 80% of mine that are 5 or more years old.

[+supertbone]

I have only been caching for a little over 3 years and 35 of my first 100 finds are now archived. 14% of my current finds (323 out of 2290) are archived. I would have thought this number would be higher, but I realized that my rate of find jumped greatly every year. I found almost 3x the number of caches in my 3rd year than in my 1st, and 2x more when comparing my 3rd and 2nd years. Because half of my cache finds took place in my last year of caching, and many of those where on new caches, the likelihood of them getting archived was lower.

[+BBI Dragon]

Only caching for 5 months, but 10% are archived out of my first 100 now.

[+BBI Dragon]

Only caching for 5 months, but 10% are archived out of my first 100 now. I wonder in a few years what this percentage will be like.

[vagabond]

starting a little over 8 years ago out of my first 100 there are 39 still active, if I counted right

[+The Jester]

I started caching in April 2001: 71% of my first 100 are now archived. Of my five year+ caches, 71.8% are archived (232 of 323 - seven are events). I've never found a locationless. For all my caches, it's 38.8% are archived (1057 of 2726 - forty events).

[+The Leprechauns]

My first 100 finds were between June and September, 2002. Of those, 60 are archived, including ten locationless caches, so it's really 50%.

 

Of my 582 finds prior to February 25, 2004, 315 are archived, or 54%.

 

These figures are interesting, as my total percentage of all finds that are now archived hovers between 65 and 70%. Things like living in an area where a prolific hider has been banned or has archived all their old caches can distort the number. So can doing a big series of caches that stays in place for a year or so but is then archived en masse.

[+Ambrosia]

My numbers may be off, as my mind really is too foggy for all this counting and figuring. I did not count locationless or events.

 

I started caching April 27 2002, despite what my start date says.

 

1. 57/100 of my first 100 caches (done within 8 months, and in 6 US States, 3 Canadian Provinces) have been archived.

 

2. 538/946 of my first 5 years of caching (16 states + D.C., 5 countries total) have been archived. Seems a bit high, hope I have my numbers correct.

 

edit: added some data

Edited February 26, 2009 by Ambrosia

[+Don_J]

My first find was on 5/14/05, so I'm a bit short on the five years. Of my first 100 finds, 43 have been archived, 2 are locationless and 16 of them were active until October and November of last year, when they burned up in the brush fires in the mountains north of Los Angeles. Most of the caches that I find are too far off the beaten path to get muggled, but when they do, they usually get archived for the same reason. When it comes to urban caches, I'm muggle shy. I'll usually just keep on driving when I see a cache that is likely to have a short lifespan. Overall, 15% of my 2786 finds have been archived. On the other side, 20 of my 127 placed caches, (15.7%) have been archived. 5 because of those same fires.

[+jcar]

Well I've been caching just over five years. Of my first 100, 62 are now archived. First year, 56% are now archived, and currently 31% of all my finds are archived.

[+Happy Bubbles]

65% of my first 100 have been archived. Since my 100th find was in March 2004, my first 100 and my finds from 5+ years ago are pretty much the same caches.

[+sillygirl & jrr]

41% of our first 100 are archived, 6 of those were locationless.

 

We haven't been caching for 5 years, but we have found 97 caches that were hidden in 2002 or earlier. Of those only 18 (with 6 locationless) are archived. Of course since we didn't start caching until 2005, by the time we found any of these caches they'd already been around for 3+ years.

[+Sagefox]

59 of our first 100 are now redlined.

Started 11/01 and number 100 was in 6/02.

[+Snoogans]

57 of my first 100 are archived.

 

I stopped counting at 170 archived of the finds over 5 years old. Lots more had gone.

[+Monkeybrad]

62 of the first 100 are archived

 

1,161 archived from 5+ years ago

[+palmetto]

57 of the first hundred we found are archived.

 

There were 63 owners of those first 100 caches, 8 are still active cachers. Several more are actively maintaining their hides, but aren't finding or hiding anymore.

 

47% of the 515 hides more than 5 years old are archived (excluded Locationless and events)

 

oops sorry, not posted from my player account....

Edited February 27, 2009 by palmetto

[+bbqbob2]

I was surprised, 27% had been archived since I started in Dec 2007, and only 2 or 3 were from Hurricane Ike damage.

[Teioneon]

22% for first 100. Our first 2 finds are archived and the others are scattered out pretty evenly.

 

Have not been caching quite 4 years yet but it's about 16%. A couple preloaded caches were archived before we got there and did not know it until after we had looked for them. Felt a lttle foolish but learned a pretty good lesson.

Edited February 28, 2009 by Teioneon

[+NYPaddleCacher]

86 (just over 11%) of the caches I have found have been archived. I've only been caching since Jan. 2007 though and about 25 of those archived were from a team that moved out of the area and archived almost 100 caches when they did so.

 

What does all this mean? I have no idea. Yesterday I found the oldest cache that I have found so far (GCEC) and tomorrow morning I hope to find the oldest cache in Connecticut (it's just a few miles from where I am now).

[+Flatouts]

Ok...if I've counted correctly (it's 4:45am here ) 27 of our first 100 finds have been archived. It's too early for me to figure out what percent that is.

[+KG1960]

Looks like 32% of the first 100. My first cache was May 2006 so don't have five years yet.

[+Suziq]

75% of the first 100. That seems like an awfull lot until I realized that most of these were Urban caches and I did them all within the first 6 months I was caching (started in 2002). Urban caches seem to disapear faster. After the first year my caching slowed down and I found less urban and more "wilderness" caches. Of my last 100 which goes back to 2006 (I told you I slowed down) only 25% have disapeared. I found that interesting.

[+Glenn]

For me it is 51% for the my first 100 cache finds. I also check the caches that made a DNF entry on and the archive rate for the caches that I DNF is around 80%.

[+DanOCan]

% of my Finds which are now Archived: 25%

 

% of my first 100 Finds which are now Archived: 35%

 

% of my Finds from more than 5 years which are Archived: 37.5% (only 3/8 though)

[+*TnT*]

59% of my first 100

[+Zop]

Interesting..

 

Of my first 100 caches, 29 have been archived... a couple more should have been

 

However, I've only been caching for two years and of the 5000 + I've found so far, only 10.6% have been archived. We have some pretty active cache owners out this way.

[+SgtSue]

I've been caching just over 5 years and looking back this is what I've found.

 

40% of my first 100 have been archived - 38% of those were micros.

 

29% of all caches found over the past 5 years have been archived.

 

46% of all archived caches were micros, 3.5% was an event of some sort (regular, cito, mega) and 1.6% were locationless.

 

Further investigation shows (though I am not a prolific hider by any means) the first cache I placed, not quite 5 years ago, is still going strong with over 300 finds.

[+Gumby&Pokey]

We started 0n 2/2001 and 58% of the first 100 have been either archived or disabled. Thanks to the remoteness of most of the early caches 42 are alive and well!

[+Knight2000]

We are not long time cachers. Its been 2 years this week.

 

42% are gone. Only sad to see a few go though.