What happens to all my TB's and GeoCoins?

[+blackdoggina]

Does anyone else have this problem?.. I've placed a dozen TB's and Geocoins (at some expense and effort, I might add...), and I don't know what happens to them!

 

Only ONE of them has moved -- and that one only once! What gives?

 

Is everyone keeping them?

 

Is there a solution?

 

I've attached tags to each one of my little traveling friends requesting that they TRAVEL and not be kept.... This is getting very frustrating; not to mention expensive -- what with buying bugs and all..

[+ecanderson]

Does anyone else have this problem?.. I've placed a dozen TB's and Geocoins (at some expense and effort, I might add...), and I don't know what happens to them!

Happens to everybody at times, but your specifics ARE rather unusual. Is this a known problem in the area in which you are distributing your coins and bugs? It's uncommon that so many would disappear immediately after they are first placed, never to be heard from again. I see three situations here:

 

1) I am assuming that you do see them being picked up --- or do you not? If they are just disappearing without notification of a "grab", you've got a local problem that needs to be addressed --- or you've annoyed somebody!

 

2) They are still in the caches where you left them. Have you checked? Could be the area just isn't very much into the TB/coin thing for some reason.

 

3) If you do see the "grab", you can always contact the "grabber" to see what the status is. If you do see the "grab", are many being grabbed by the same person?

Edited August 16, 2009 by ecanderson

[WanderWomen]

There is a forum thread here that may help you keep them in circulation longer (and is an entertaining read) but bottom line is that once you let them go, they are on their own. I think sometimes people forget they have them, lose them, drop out of caching, etc.

 

We have been lucky so far, but we don't send any out that we aren't ready to have go MIA.

[+busterbabes]

When I release a new TB/GC, I fully expect them to dissapear quickly.

The ones that don't dissapear and keep on moving make it all worth while..

[Keystone]

I am moving this thread from the Geocaching Topics forum to the Travel Bug forum.

[+BlueDeuce]

Does anyone else have this problem?.. I've placed a dozen TB's and Geocoins (at some expense and effort, I might add...), and I don't know what happens to them!

 

Only ONE of them has moved -- and that one only once! What gives?

 

Is everyone keeping them?

 

Is there a solution?

 

I've attached tags to each one of my little traveling friends requesting that they TRAVEL and not be kept.... This is getting very frustrating; not to mention expensive -- what with buying bugs and all..

 

Of the seven travelers you've released under this account, within the last two weeks- 2 were Discovered, 3 were moved and 2 were just placed into a cache.

 

Unless you were expecting daily action, those travelers are doing just fine.

[+TexasGringo]

I had 9 TB's out....and I have 9 TB's Missing In Action.

 

I won't invest any more $$ in those.....

[+Harry Dolphin]

I had 9 TB's out....and I have 9 TB's Missing In Action.

 

I won't invest any more $$ in those.....

 

Ah, what you're doing wrong is not having sisters like mine! Two of them think that the best Christmas present for me is five geocoins each!

I've released 34 so far. 8 are in 'location unknown'. 3 more are definitely gone, but not marked as such.

Poor Wannabe Bird disappeared from a TB motel in Oregon after 20900 miles. Poor Wannabe.

2 others have travelled over 10000 miles!

Of course, once they get to The Netherlands, they seem to stay there, but they do keep moving!

[+EscapeFromFlatland]

Of course, once they get to The Netherlands, they seem to stay there, but they do keep moving!

 

For awhile this spring/summer it was Germany for a few of my trackables.

Edited August 20, 2009 by bramasoleiowa

[+BigCatMomma]

I'm glad to have come across this topic, because we seem to have a local problem in my area where TBs disappear, never to be seen again. I suspect a "collector" is among us.

 

I have often wondered if the solution might be to simply not show TBs and geocoins in a cache inventory. Let the finder log the TB or coin when they find it and not disclose where they leave it. If you don't move a TB or coin, simply don't mention its presence. That way, those who want to collect the things are going to have to go to an awful lot of effort to expand their collections. They'd literally have to keep visiting every cache in hopes they discover a TB or coin there instead of simply looking at cache descriptions and seeing a TB or coin in the inventory. So basically I'm suggesting a change in the way TBs and coins are logged in order to protect them from "collectors."

 

This might not work so well for TB hotels, but I have seen at least one cache that got muggled so often that now the cache owner requires you to email him in order to get the combination for the cache as it's now locked and chained! That would be a solution, I guess, to a TB hotel having all the TBs in it go missing. You'd at least know who snagged them, and perhaps banning the perpetrator from geocaching.com would be in order.

 

I travel a lot and really enjoy moving the TBs and coins around, so it's disappointing to me to see them disappear when I place them locally. As a result, I will probably STOP placing them locally. I've just started fielding my own TBs, and would hope that if others know they've got a "collector" in their midst that they'd not drop my TBs where they know they're falling into a black hole.

 

I'm really interested in others' thoughts on how to solve the problem of "collectors."

[J'nK]

I have released 2 TB's into this world and I have 2 TB's MISSING! It's such a piss off but these are the chances you take. I also have 1 Geocoin in action and it reached it's first goal very fast then sat stagnant in a cache for a year. Now it's been sitting in another cache without much action.

[+Gitchee-Gummee]

We have noticed a LARGER number of apparently legit geocachers are failing to log trackables into or out of caches properly. We do not know the solution, but it appears that many are getting into geocaching w/o ever reading up on the do's & don'ts. Not picking on the newbies, either. Have seen this from a fair number having 200+ smilies (We blame this on simple forgetfulness). However, it really does seem like a lot are not aware that they have to properly log the trackable, as well as their written log.

 

We have some MIA's out there, and only hope they at some point in time are "found" by someone that knows what they are doing! The last one was so logged in the logbook, not logged online nor logged (online) out of the cache. Evidenced by the next cacher noting such online in their log.

 

Oh well, grin and bear it. It takes all kinds to make the world go 'round, eh?