GEOPIRATES

[PyroTecNick]

i have just started geocaching and find it great fun but often upseting when a cache is missing the geocoin or travel bug that is ment to be in it i was wondering WHY do people do this??

[mylt1]

just because the coin or bug isnt there doesnt mean its been pirated, the person that took it just may not have logged it yet. what caches are missing coins/bugs?

[+Vinny & Sue Team]

i have just started geocaching and find it great fun but often upseting when a cache is missing the geocoin or travel bug that is ment to be in it i was wondering WHY do people do this??

I believe that terms such as "pirate" and "geo-pirate" tend to be reserved for people who steal caches, and, in general, I believe that the multitude of people who steal trackables such as coins or TBs are usually simply known as "TB thieves" or "coin thieves" but the use of such terms may be somewhat excessive and overly pejorative in many cases, because the evidence seems to point to the fact that in a majority of cases, trackables that disappear are not exactly "stolen", that is, taken by someone with the intent of stealing them, but rather:

• some newbie and even not-so-newbie geocachers really do not understand that they are not trade items, and they may keep them.
  
• some trackables are simply lost; either dropped on the trail, lost in the clutter in a backpack, lost in the clutter in a car, or lost in a drawer or a box, perhaps to be found years later, or not at all.
  
• some trackables are taken by children of families that cache with children, and the kids simply keep them as toys, to be discarded when they get bored with them. These tend to be the same kids that take good swag and leave broken McToys or wads of dried used chewing gum in its place.
  
• some geocachers who know what trackables are simply forget to log them online.
  
• some geocachers who know what trackables are do not understand how to log them online, particularly if they are not very web-savvy.
  
• And, finally, some trackables are indeed stolen: one great example that comes to my mind is the simple and bizarre fact of how quickly Jeep Travel Bugs useta disappear from circulation once released.
  

Lastly, since this topic has been raised thousands of times before, and since it really only about trackables, I suspect that the mods will likely, in short order, move the entire thread to the Travel Bug or Geocoins section of the forum, where it can hang out with the many hundreds of other threads devoted to the same topic.

Edited March 25, 2009 by Vinny & Sue Team

[+9Key]

And what do you do if you *know* who is stealing coins and bugs? There's one in my little 'burb that will visit caches just after someone drops a traveler and almost invariably the next cacher to visit says "the coin wasn't in the cache". I wonder why they do it too.

[+Renegade Knight]

i have just started geocaching and find it great fun but often upseting when a cache is missing the geocoin or travel bug that is ment to be in it i was wondering WHY do people do this??

Cache maggots do this because that's how they feed their ego.

[Mr.Yuck]

And what do you do if you *know* who is stealing coins and bugs? There's one in my little 'burb that will visit caches just after someone drops a traveler and almost invariably the next cacher to visit says "the coin wasn't in the cache". I wonder why they do it too.

 

I'll agree with Vinny, almost all the time it's just cluelessness or forgetfullness that leads to TB's and coins not being logged. However, there have been people who steal coins and TB's just "for kicks". I can remember a then newb in PA. and N.J. who stole about 50 TB's over their first few months of caching, but eventually dropped them all in one cache, and became a respectable member of the Geocaching community. I think they have about 2,000 finds and 50 hides now. And wasn't there someone who anonymously dropped off a few hundred TB dog tags (with the travelers removed) at an event in the Midwest quite a few years ago?

 

Anyways, there was a doosy of a thief who operated from Pittsburgh to Buffalo to Syracuse, and all points in between within the last two years. Mostly coins, but a few TB's. It was a newbie, and he was obviously clueless enough to think he could log the caches as finds, and no one would figure it out. Oh, and his children used to totally wipe out the trade items in the caches too. Someone took to using an old unused sock puppet account to email the owners of every single cache he ever found. I hear several people sent him emails through the website saying they knew what was going on, but he would never respond. Then of course there was a lot of chatter about him on regional Geocaching forums. He eventually stumbled on one of the forum discussions, where he was confronted and tongue-lashed. He appears to have stopped after that.

 

Probably not the best way to do it, but I guess it worked.

Edited March 25, 2009 by TheWhiteUrkel

[+Vinny & Sue Team]

And what do you do if you *know* who is stealing coins and bugs? There's one in my little 'burb that will visit caches just after someone drops a traveler and almost invariably the next cacher to visit says "the coin wasn't in the cache". I wonder why they do it too.

 

I'll agree with Vinny, almost all the time it's just cluelessness or forgetfullness that leads to TB's and coins not being logged.

 

You know, I suspect that a lot of it is also simply apathy, on the part of geocachers who are quite overwhelmed with life and who cannot focus coherently enuf to really do anything sensible with the trackables which they pick up.

 

However, there have been people who steal coins and TB's just "for kicks". I can remember a then newb in PA. and N.J. who stole about 50 TB's over their first few months of caching, but eventually dropped them all in one cache, and became a respectable member of the Geocaching community. I think they have about 2,000 finds and 50 hides now. And wasn't there someone who anonymously dropped off a few hundred TB dog tags (with the travelers removed) at an event in the Midwest quite a few years ago?

And, in a similar vein to your tale of the newbie in PA/NJ who stole trackables and then became a respected geocacher, I recently heard a very similar tale of a young male in his 20s from the TN/NC area where much the same thing happened over time.

 

Anyways, there was a doosy of a thief who operated from Pittsburgh to Buffalo to Syracuse, and all points in between within the last two years. Mostly coins, but a few TB's. It was a newbie, and he was obviously clueless enough to think he could log the caches as finds, and no one would figure it out. Oh, and his children used to totally wipe out the trade items in the caches too. Someone took to using an old unused sock puppet account to email the owners of every single cache he ever found. I hear several people sent him emails through the website saying they knew what was going on, but he would never respond. Then of course there was a lot of chatter about him on regional Geocaching forums. He eventually stumbled on one of the forum discussions, where he was confronted and tongue-lashed. He appears to have stopped after that.

 

Probably not the best way to do it, but I guess it worked.

I remember that there was a trackable thief who emptied several trackable hotel caches located along or near major interstate highways in Maryland a year or two ago, and I seem to remember that some locals theorized that it was the trackable thief that you have mentioned above.

[Mushtang]

This is a Travel Bug issue so I'm moving this thread to the appropriate forum.

[Keystone]

This is a Travel Bug issue so I'm moving this thread to the appropriate forum.

WHY DO THREAD PIRATES STEEL MY LINE?

[+sunsetmeadowlark]

Sometimes it's just a stupid error too. I picked up a coin from a cache in late Feb. Logged it out of the cache it was in and held onto it until last week when we went out of state. We found 76 caches during the 4 days we were traveling and dropped quite a few trackables but didn't do most of our online logging until we got home. Somehow or another, I dropped that coin into a cache and absolutely can't remember which cache it was *and* can't find my notes on which cache it was. I have contacted the coin owner to let them know what happened and to offer to replace the coin if it doesn't show back up soon. Fortunately, the coin owner was really great about it. It was a completely stupid mistake on my part and totally unlike me but it does happen.

Edited March 26, 2009 by sunsetmeadowlark

[JakeK]

I understand that life gets busy but is there someway to mark a TB or coin as lost? I have several around me that are missing and haven't moved in years, just look up TB1B3PP, its been missing for 2 years.

[+Eartha]

If the cache owner or the TB owner don't reply to messages to mark it missing, your local reviewer or I can mark it missing. Just send us a link to the missing TB. We will confirm that it is missing and mark it to an unknown location. If someone finds it, all they have to do is grab it.

[+GPS777]

Somebody has had one of my travel bugs for over a year, now. They haven't replied to my e-mails about it even though they still log into geocaching.com regularly. They know what travel bugs are because they have several of their own. In cases like this, I think geocaching needs to lock down their accounts until they give at least some sort of reply. Of course they could always simply start a new account but they'd lose all their past logs (or at least have to manually re-enter all of them). I realize people might have lost them, but they should at least be nice enough to reply and apologize. There's the slight possibility they put them in a rarely visited cache and also forgot to log them, but that is pretty doubtful. In my case, anyone can look at the log and see the person has been holding it for a year. As I recall, a few months ago I saw they'd picked up another traveler at the same time and still had not logged it anywhere, either. This is a case where I think GC.com really should make an official contact and if there is no response, then lock the account. People pay money for travel tags and usually a bit for the attached item. When somebody else obviously took it, they at least owe an explanation (and several dollars of reimbursement, in my opinion).

Edited March 28, 2009 by GPS777

[+JennM]

GPS777, I had the same thing happen - new cacher picked up my bug... "their first bug" and noted it in their log. That was nearly 2 years ago now - it's gone.

 

When I first contacted them, several months after they'd picked it up, they replied that their child was taking the bug with him back out of state to drop off with the other parent... never happened. That cacher picked up several travelers that day - some were dropped off the same day, others are still in their inventory. I moved mine to "missing" after many months.

 

I did have one go missing almost a year ago and it turned up again the other day - so go figure. Sometimes they do turn up again.

 

I found some in a cache that had been AWOL for around 2 years, and I'd even looked for them 18 months before in 2 caches they were supposed to be in, but weren't. I think those folks accidentally hung on to them, then placed a new cache (in their own front yard!) to unload them. I picked up the 2 that I'd sought before and moved them on. People traded bugs in that front-yard cache for a while then once the cache was empty of bugs, the owner archived it. I guess that's one way to get them back into circulation!

 

Jenn

[+Outplay'n]

I dropped off a travel bug last year on a trip to Tennesse, It had traveled from Poland and after i dropped it off it just dissapered. One year later it showed up again getting ready to travel even farther. I think some times people just do forget and then somehow the little brain start back up again

[+Original A1]

I'm sure there's all sorts of reasons they go missing, however annoying it is. For instance, what if someone is hospitalised for a while? I know it's going to be relatively rare, but things like that happen. I'm too wet behind the ears to send TBs on their way, but have had 3? passing through my hands to date, and get pleasure from seeing where they head (not very far yet!), so for me, there's the incentive to move them on. However, if I do ever launch my own, I'd be pleased if they re-emerged and view it as a bonus, rather than expect it - sadly, a sign of the times.

 

However, the very first cache I visited yielded a Geocoin which I duly logged on the Geocoin site. When I enquired what happened next, I was informed that it's perfectly acceptable to keep it if I liked, or even to trade it on. It is still in my possession (about 6 weeks later), so if that's wrong, please let me know and I'll re-hide.

 

As you see, it can be plain ignorance. Although most of Geocaching is straight-forward, some of the protocols take a bit of getting used to, and I think it must be rare than you get actively malicious people, although there will always be one or two who love to spoil it for the greater majority.

 

[+JennM]

Was it an unactivated coin, or one already belonging to somebody else?

 

If it was an unactivated coin, it may have been a gift from another cacher - in which case you could keep it - activated or not.

 

If it is activated and owned by someone else then it should be moved on.

 

I keep my own activated coins in a collection which I bring to events for others to discover - these are coins I've bought, unactivated, and activated them myself, so they are my property.

 

Coins/bugs belonging to others need to be moved along.

 

Jenn

[+Original A1]

Was it an unactivated coin, or one already belonging to somebody else?

 

If it was an unactivated coin, it may have been a gift from another cacher - in which case you could keep it - activated or not.

 

If it is activated and owned by someone else then it should be moved on.

 

I keep my own activated coins in a collection which I bring to events for others to discover - these are coins I've bought, unactivated, and activated them myself, so they are my property.

 

Coins/bugs belonging to others need to be moved along.

 

Jenn

Apologies - it's a pathtag. It's round, metal and coin-shaped, so easy to confuse. This was one of the responses on their site:

 

"WELCOME! And that is GREAT that you found a pathtag in the wild! I've only found one or two in the while here in the states.

 

And by the way...the pathtag is yours to keep if you want it. Or you can put it in another cache if you don't want to keep it!"

 

I'm getting the feeling that it's a "sister" site where sometimes the two pursuits coincide, but sometimes don't.

 

[+kimmykat&hellbilly]

i have just started geocaching and find it great fun but often upseting when a cache is missing the geocoin or travel bug that is ment to be in it i was wondering WHY do people do this??

[/quote

Just scanning through the forums and saw this post. We moved a few coins and tb's around gatlinburg tn last year and they havent been seen since. It seems the whole area is getting wiped out of the coins and bugs. I hope its somebody saving them for one big coin/bug extravaganza, but I kind of doubt it. I think most of the time, its an honest mistake, or they just dont know, but im sure there are some people just collecting, oh well.

[+Runaway46]

My nightmare is the new cacher that logs "my first travel bug" and it happens to be one of mine. Too frequently in that instance never to be seen again.

[NoSuchCache]

I've not released my second and third coin and traveler since my first ever coin went missing with the first person that picked it up. I'm still holding out hope though, I've emailed them twice and perhaps life has just gotten away from them and someday my coin shall move on.

 

Just...ow, my first ever and it's AWOL with the first person to grab it.