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Travel Bug missing - do you know the cacher that keeps it?


thofol

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Dear all,

 

Does anyone know suedenim? She has picked up a travel bug of mine in early August 2009.

 

I tried to contact her several times. Once she reacted and I proposed she could send it to me via mail if she has no time to go caching. Since then there was no reaction.

 

Maybe somebody knows her and can ask her to put my TB into a cache.

 

Thank you

Thofol

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Dear all,

 

Does anyone know suedenim? She has picked up a travel bug of mine in early August 2009.

 

I tried to contact her several times. Once she reacted and I proposed she could send it to me via mail if she has no time to go caching. Since then there was no reaction.

 

Maybe somebody knows her and can ask her to put my TB into a cache.

 

Thank you

Thofol

 

I am sorry to say that this is a all to common thing....Most of my coins have gone AWOL....TBs go AWOL every now and then but unlike a coin,do sometimes turn up.I have personally picked up a TB that had been missing for over a year!...much to the owners delight.All i can say is email her again..look back at log reports to see if she cached with any one else..if so then email them.In the mean time,you can always release a duplicate..same tracking number...then if the other one should surface,email the holder of the duplicate,or cache owner if in a cache and ask them to destroy it or send it back to you postage paid.i hope your one comes to light again.....

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It appears that the cache where she collected your TB was the very last cache she ever found. :(

 

Looks like a typical case of someone losing interest in geocaching (Yes, really... some people do fail to become addicted... ) but from her profile page it seems that she did log onto the site in June this year so maybe your email will still get through. It's worth trying once more...

 

Good luck

 

MrsB

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One of my Garmin coins was picked up by TheGrimkniffs at the Weston-Super-Mare Mega, and despite me emailing them, it has not been moved on. They are still caching (sporadically).

 

I have even offered to pay for postage so it could be returned to me.

 

Another of my coins was picked up by an American, in Italy nearly 2 years ago. I think he might have lost it since it has not been moved on as well. Again, I've had no answer to my emails :)

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Dear all,

 

Does anyone know suedenim? She has picked up a travel bug of mine in early August 2009.

 

I tried to contact her several times. Once she reacted and I proposed she could send it to me via mail if she has no time to go caching. Since then there was no reaction.

 

Maybe somebody knows her and can ask her to put my TB into a cache.

 

Thank you

Thofol

 

Most of my TBs disappeared after only logging a few miles - it's depressingly common for a bug to make one or two hops over about 20-30 miles and then vanish - either they disappear from a cache or someone collects them and does nothing with them.

 

Sometimes TBs do go missing when they are lost by whoever picked them up. It's unfortunate, but even so it doesn't seem so much to ask to let the owner know what happened.

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Thats terrible that people take them and never place them somewhere else. What a way to ruin a game B)

 

Yes, it's a pity that some people don't care much about the trackables that they find...

 

on the other hand, some TBs are lucky enough to be picked up by helpful cachers and clock up a good milage...

 

Postcard from the Kruger National Park.

 

MrsB :grin:

Great idea - mebbe it'll beat the Royal Mail? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-10984523

 

:)

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Wonder how much of this is down to new cachers being full of enthusiasm, doing some caches, picking up some trackables, keeping them in a bag at home, then life takes over, they lose interest and the box of TBs gets forgotten about.

 

Odd that they don't receive and respond to emails though - unless they set up a special email account for their geocaching then never bother checking that either.

Or maybe by the time they remember they've got them they think it's better to keep their heads down rather than admit what they have done.

 

Or, they have some kind of bad experience and decide to walk away from the game without a care for those they leave behind.

 

We have a similar situation here in Cornwall where a local lad really got into the game, did over 100 finds, set his own cache and ended up picking up a TB that is needed as one of three from which you get information to find a cache. The idea is the TB travels around the county and you have to get out and pick them up when they are close by, get the info you need then move them on.

 

It's a great idea, and we managed to get all 3 and find the cache.

 

But this lad has had one of the TBs for about 3 months and has stopped caching. He's on my friends list (don't ask, he wanted help many months ago when he started) so I have emailed him a couple of times to remind him he is holding up other people trying to get the 3 TBs (there are 16 people watching the one he's got), but I have never received a reply, and I haven't seen him around for ages.

 

It's a shame, but some people don't have the same sense of responsibility as the rest of us.

 

It's the same in a lot of aspects of life, and I don't know if it is getting worse or if I am just getting older and more grumpy and cynical about other people's attitudes to their fellow human beings.

 

Actually, I do know, I am getting more grumpy and cynical. And older of course :anibad:

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We set 8 tbs off in january and five were collected by 1 person and dropped off in a series of caches in a similar area 8 miles away, none of them were ever seen again, well at least not yet....

And one of the 3 subs got lost on the top of Pen y Ghent- as I probably would, and another got put into what we think was a cache on the edge of a rubbish tip in Germany, the security service removed that and the Tb is no more.

 

4 out of 11 lost in 7 months, not great, but you live and learn.

:anibad:

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My first TB was taken to the USA and placed into a cache without being logged. The cache was muggled but someone found the TB and opened a geocaching account saying they had it.

 

We exchanged a couple of e-mails and I explained geocaching and TBs and said I'd direct her to a local cache she could drop it into or suggested she could mail it back to me. It's been over a year now and I haven't heard anything back, despite sending another 2 e-mails :rolleyes:

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Thats terrible that people take them and never place them somewhere else. What a way to ruin a game :D

 

It's a shame, that's for sure. Unfortunately I think it's just the kind of thing we have to accept as an occupational hazard... I've all but given up on releasing TBs now because so few of them get very far before disappearing. I thought things were better in the US but the bug I released over there made one move, then another move that wasn't logged and is now in the hands of a cacher who seems to log in periodically but doesn't respond to emails.

 

That said in fairness it's possible that new cachers pick up trackables not realising what they are (most don't have an information sheet attached). If someone takes a trackable thinking it's geoswag and trades it for some other piece of geoswag there's no way of knowing who has it. Also, with the best will in the world, people who have given up caching may not want to be handing out their address to complete strangers so the "return postage" envelope can be provided. And then of course there are the trackables that people just lose.... although we might hope someone who lost a TB would make contact given the way some folks get flamed on the forums for expressing an unpopular opinion it's understandable that people don't want to put their hands up and admit they messed up.

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In my opinion it is especially that somebody just keeps the TB and does not release it. It is even worse that we were already in contact, and now she is not responding anymore. I know that there are other topics in life (in suedenim's case her divorce). However, it's a matter of fairness.

 

I mean - if a cache is muggled and the TB/coin is stolen by a non-cacher... That's life. Kids maybe don't know something about Geocaching / TBs / coins. This is normal (still...). So I don't blame a muggle (even if there should be a stash note in each geocache).

 

By the way my other TBs that are lost:

- A mobile phone only made it 30km. Hey, it was a 20 Euro prepaid phone without battery and SIM. Obviously this did not hinder someone: It was logged into a cache that was not muggled. However it disappeared. Its copy at least made it to the US - till it disappeared.

- My other TB was a RAM module. Unfortunately somebody in Thailand thought 256 MB would be top hardware. So it was taken from the first cache.

 

The moral of the story is:

- Only make cheap TBs so they are not attractive to thieves.

- Don't release any TBs/coins unless you an bear its loss.

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I am also waiting for a T.B to be moved on from a new cacher I hold my breath as they logged the T.B but did not log finding the cache all though it was their first cache :D The thing that bugs me :) is the bug was in remberance of a lost family member. I have sent them a polite email to jog their memory

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By the way my other TBs that are lost:

- A mobile phone only made it 30km. Hey, it was a 20 Euro prepaid phone without battery and SIM. Obviously this did not hinder someone: It was logged into a cache that was not muggled. However it disappeared. Its copy at least made it to the US - till it disappeared.

 

I think there's a distinction between TBs being logged by someone and then they lose or hoard them, and TBs that disappear from caches.

 

I've seen no end of logs in caches that say "Took whatever TB" and even looked online and have seen them say "Took whatever TB" there too. They think they've logged it. Yet they've clearly not logged the trackable online despite signing the log in the cache, and filling in the log online.

 

IMO, a lot of this is just because the interface for logging and trackables is badly designed and it doesn't spell out what folk should be doing. Even the paperless geocaching GPSs don't (yet) have anything to hold an inventory of TBs and functionality to let you mark which TBs you've taken from a cache, and select when you drop them off.

 

As I've said in these forums before on the same topic - the trackable system also conspires against simple mistakes too. e.g If you drop the TB off in a cache, but log it into the wrong one by mistake, you no longer have the number and can't do anything about it (unless you wander out to the cache again and get the number) I've done that once, for a cache that was about 2 miles down the road. If I'd travelled further I can't see me jumping through hoops because the system is so badly designed you can't fix a simple logging mistake.

 

Plus it's not always easy to see that mistake. Why? Because the log page is bereft of the info.

 

It's not even that it's that complicated either. It's simply left to chance that a new geocacher twigs that they've got to log a trackable separately when finding it. But at the same time when placing it you can do that on the log page. Even just typing that discrepancy shows how flawed it is. The fact that log books and log entries are full of folk saying "I took the TB" "I dropped off the TB" that suggests, erroneously, that these logs are what you do when you find or take a TB. That's what people see, that's what they do. See the obvious flaw?

 

Clearly there should be no need at all to say "I took a TB" in a log. The fact folk do it, is because the system is flawed and doesn't display in the log that you took it. Why doesn't it? Because you can't say you took it at the right time.

 

Fixing the system won't stop theft or hoarding, but nothing will - at the very least though they could deal with the majority of mistakes or confusion over trackable logging by improving the interface to the site.

Edited by needaxeo
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don't give up my daughter has a brownie project going with 5 trackables. one got picked up at the end of april and never got dropped off so after 6 weeks i emailed asking could it be dropped off and kept email every two weeks offering to post a copy of the item if they wanted one to keep or to let me know if broken etc heard nothing back just checked on it again today and i don't believe it it has got dropped off this morning in a cache :)

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Well, there's an element of risk in releasing a trackable and that's part of the fun. A bit like floating a stick down a river. If you really wanted to guarantee that the stick got downstream you'd carry it with you. All the same pinching trackables is not nice.

 

The thing that bothers me most is a really nice coin that I left in a remote Dartmoor cache. The very next cacher to find it reported no coin, which suggests that either someone targeted the cache to get the coin (and didn't log it) ... or ... I dropped it on the ground or something when repacking the cache. Sadly I think the latter is probably more likely. I feel bad about that.

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I found 2 Geocoins tonight- neither had been logged into the cache. The last person to find the multi-cache was back in June so it isn't a cache with a lot of traffic...shame really, I loved this multi.

One of the coins I'd found was registered as 'missing'. I can now move it on this weekend. The other coin I found tonight hasn't been moved since the beginning of May. Again, I'll move that on this weekend.

Don't give up hope, perhaps some coins and TBs have been dropped into a cache and just never logged. I try and put TBs into caches with more traffic so that the TB can keep moving.

We have 5 TBs out, one has logged a total of 0 miles, the others are just hitting the 100 mile mark so slower going than I thought.

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I have a bug that was picked up by a premium member with over a thousand finds to their name (These muppets). They have kept it and are still caching. I have e-mailed them but no response, they are still active and logging in on a regular basis. My daughter is a bit upset about it. If I win the lottery I am going to track down all their bugs/coins and keep them!!

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I was once in the position of having lost somebody's geocoin in my possession. I knew it was in the house somewhere, but I could not lay my hands on it. I sent the owner apologetic emails saying that it would be bound to turn up, but I had a spare un-activated coin that they could have and I would release on their behalf to make up for their disappointment. I never got a reply from the coin owner, so I kept the lost coin in my inventory and occasionally I would mount a search for it and then give up again, when I did not find it.

 

Several months later, I was doing the vaccuming and I heard an ominous PLINK noise when vaccuming around my computer desk. As my vacuum cleaner has a clear dust chamber, I peered in, and there was the coin, glinting amongst all the dust bunnies. Yay! I quickly released it into the wild again and since then, any TBs I am holding go into a special bag, so I always know where to go looking for them.

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I have 1 TB that someone has held onto for since March, they have promised to drop it off but so far no luck.

Another GC that I received as a Christmas present was placed in a cache in Scotland, a prolific cacher was next to visit the cache (the next visitor reported it missing) and I thought he may have picked it up but he hasn't answered any of my messages so I've been forced to mark the coin missing.

I enjoy watching my trackables travelling so will continue to occasionally release a GC or TB and try not to get too disappointed if they vanish :P

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You just need to be organised. All TB's and coins which I pick up are kept in a special section of my caching bag, and never put anywhere else. That way, they never get forgotten or lost. After all, they are someone else's property so you have a duty to look after them. Out of the 676 coins and TB's I have moved on, I can claim to have never lost one.

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I picked up an american TB a few weeks back and thought, I'll move it along (as you do) - Got home and logged on to find that its mission is to visit "football grounds" - Living in the Oxfordshire area we don't have many (its last home was a premier Div Club) Nothing near Oxford or Swindon - the nearest is a cache quite near Reading. After putting a bug, who'se mission was to go into caches with the word "stone" in, in a cache containing the "Soldier Stone" (although the title was something else)I got blasted by the next finder, for not finding a "correct" cache to put it in. So I'm a bit worried about finding a football ground cache within reasonable travelling distance. I am a great believer in moving on TBs and coins but it is getting more difficult with the amount of nanos and micros none of which are big enough (mitch - the american bug) is attached to a six inch tall stuffed dog and my last one was attached to a very large plastic dog bone !!!(which was picked up by a caching friend who says she knows of a cache big enough to put it in - thank Geo)

Anyway I am now thinking of putting out a cache near a local non-league ground as a desparation measure, so as to be able to move the TB along and not disappoint its owners)

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I picked up an american TB a few weeks back and thought, I'll move it along (as you do) - Got home and logged on to find that its mission is to visit "football grounds" - Living in the Oxfordshire area we don't have many (its last home was a premier Div Club) Nothing near Oxford or Swindon - the nearest is a cache quite near Reading. After putting a bug, who'se mission was to go into caches with the word "stone" in, in a cache containing the "Soldier Stone" (although the title was something else)I got blasted by the next finder, for not finding a "correct" cache to put it in. So I'm a bit worried about finding a football ground cache within reasonable travelling distance. I am a great believer in moving on TBs and coins but it is getting more difficult with the amount of nanos and micros none of which are big enough (mitch - the american bug) is attached to a six inch tall stuffed dog and my last one was attached to a very large plastic dog bone !!!(which was picked up by a caching friend who says she knows of a cache big enough to put it in - thank Geo)

Anyway I am now thinking of putting out a cache near a local non-league ground as a desparation measure, so as to be able to move the TB along and not disappoint its owners)

Heck, use the local football pitch on the 'rec.

It's a football ground -of sorts!

 

You don't have any football grounds -non-league, near you?

 

Steve Bloomers watching, is one I picked up, that wanted to visit football grounds.

 

I got blasted by the next finder, for not finding a "correct" cache to put it in.

I'd be watching that cacher, and making sure they did find the "Correct" cache to move the TB to!

 

As far as a TB may have a mission, I think the 'travel' bit must come first.

If you can help with the mission it's a bonus.

Edited by Bear and Ragged
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I tried to contact her several times. Once she reacted and I proposed she could send it to me via mail if she has no time to go caching. Since then there was no reaction.

I am sorry to say that this is a all to common thing....Most of my coins have gone AWOL....TBs go AWOL every now and then but unlike a coin,do sometimes turn up.I have personally picked up a TB that had been missing for over a year!...much to the owners delight.All i can say is email her again..look back at log reports to see if she cached with any one else..if so then email them.In the mean time,you can always release a duplicate..same tracking number...then if the other one should surface,email the holder of the duplicate,or cache owner if in a cache and ask them to destroy it or send it back to you postage paid.i hope your one comes to light again.....

 

The thing is, EVERY travel bug or geocoin will eventually go missing. The life of any trackable item is always the following:

Release -> travel -> go missing.

 

Now of course we like the travel part to be as long and as far as possible. But there's not much we can do to influence it. Therefore I think it's best to always tell yourself when releasing a trackable, it will eventually go missing, and only send out things that don't value too much to you, because it WILL go missing. Remember:

Release -> travel -> go missing.

Release -> travel -> go missing.

 

Then let go of it, sit back, and watch those logs coming in. As long as a cacher has logged it, I wouldn't worry too much. Of course if it's been for a year, maybe send them a FRIENDLY email reminder. But there are many reasons why some cachers don't cache for a long time. But as they have logged that they took it, they certainly at least partly understood the trackable system and didn't take it with the intent of keeping it - otherwise logging it would be silly, wouldn't it? I have an own one that someone was holding on to for a year and a half (August 2007-January 2009), and then placed it again in a cache - and now it's very active travelling again. And I just picked up one, that the previous holder had for 4 years. I don't know why he kept it so long and it's certainly not ideal, but I'm sure there was a reason for it - and the important is that he eventually DID place it in a cache. SO, sit back and relax. :)

 

Where I do get worried is if it's logged into a cache, which is visited by many people, without anyone taking the TB or logging it as discovered. That means, the TB was removed by someone without logging it - which means either a new cacher who hasn't figured how to log it, or someone just forgot to log it, or worse, someone stole it with intent or the cache was muggled. In this case, it is worth looking back at the logs of the cache, see who came after the one who placed it, and maybe send them a friendly mail asking if they had seen the TB (and if they are new, explain them how TB's work).

 

Of course if the cache was reported muggled after your TB got in there, it is likely that your TB was lost. In that case the release a duplicate thing might come into place. But I wouldn't do that while it's logged as in someone's hands, even if it's been years. As long as a cacher has it, I consider it safe - better stay in a cacher's hands for a long time, than being lost in a muggled cache. As said, sit back and relax. Release some other ones that keep getting logged - I've released enough TB's and coins that almost every day at least one of them gets moved somewhere in the world - so I don't think much about those who haven't been logged in a long time...

 

and always remember:

Release -> travel -> go missing.

 

:mellow:

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I tried to contact her several times. Once she reacted and I proposed she could send it to me via mail if she has no time to go caching. Since then there was no reaction.

I am sorry to say that this is a all to common thing....Most of my coins have gone AWOL....TBs go AWOL every now and then but unlike a coin,do sometimes turn up.I have personally picked up a TB that had been missing for over a year!...much to the owners delight.All i can say is email her again..look back at log reports to see if she cached with any one else..if so then email them.In the mean time,you can always release a duplicate..same tracking number...then if the other one should surface,email the holder of the duplicate,or cache owner if in a cache and ask them to destroy it or send it back to you postage paid.i hope your one comes to light again.....

 

The thing is, EVERY travel bug or geocoin will eventually go missing. The life of any trackable item is always the following:

Release -> travel -> go missing.

 

Now of course we like the travel part to be as long and as far as possible. But there's not much we can do to influence it. Therefore I think it's best to always tell yourself when releasing a trackable, it will eventually go missing, and only send out things that don't value too much to you, because it WILL go missing. Remember:

Release -> travel -> go missing.

Release -> travel -> go missing.

 

Then let go of it, sit back, and watch those logs coming in. As long as a cacher has logged it, I wouldn't worry too much. Of course if it's been for a year, maybe send them a FRIENDLY email reminder. But there are many reasons why some cachers don't cache for a long time. But as they have logged that they took it, they certainly at least partly understood the trackable system and didn't take it with the intent of keeping it - otherwise logging it would be silly, wouldn't it? I have an own one that someone was holding on to for a year and a half (August 2007-January 2009), and then placed it again in a cache - and now it's very active travelling again. And I just picked up one, that the previous holder had for 4 years. I don't know why he kept it so long and it's certainly not ideal, but I'm sure there was a reason for it - and the important is that he eventually DID place it in a cache. SO, sit back and relax. :)

 

Where I do get worried is if it's logged into a cache, which is visited by many people, without anyone taking the TB or logging it as discovered. That means, the TB was removed by someone without logging it - which means either a new cacher who hasn't figured how to log it, or someone just forgot to log it, or worse, someone stole it with intent or the cache was muggled. In this case, it is worth looking back at the logs of the cache, see who came after the one who placed it, and maybe send them a friendly mail asking if they had seen the TB (and if they are new, explain them how TB's work).

 

Of course if the cache was reported muggled after your TB got in there, it is likely that your TB was lost. In that case the release a duplicate thing might come into place. But I wouldn't do that while it's logged as in someone's hands, even if it's been years. As long as a cacher has it, I consider it safe - better stay in a cacher's hands for a long time, than being lost in a muggled cache. As said, sit back and relax. Release some other ones that keep getting logged - I've released enough TB's and coins that almost every day at least one of them gets moved somewhere in the world - so I don't think much about those who haven't been logged in a long time...

 

and always remember:

Release -> travel -> go missing.

 

:mellow:

 

That's not true in every case

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Release -> travel -> go missing

 

--> Yes, this is true. But this is something you don't want to hear if you have a couple of TBs and coins out there...

 

Finally for this TB it got to a good end: The owner dropped it into a cache. Okay, this happened after one year, but in the end I am happy. Other TBs disappear without being logged.

 

Thank you, suedenim!

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a month isn't that long at all....

 

Yeah.... we're still new and have enjoyed watching our bugs/caches. I guess we're trying to get the game moving along. If I hold onto a bug for too long, I'll e-mail the owner to give them peace of mind.

 

I often look up the TB owners and some folks have LOTS & LOTS of TB's in circulation. Makes me wonder if they're even 'watching' all of them...... doesn't it get overwhelming to have too many of them to 'watch' (or enjoy) their travels?

 

I mean....unless people just put these TB's out there for the numbers & mileages?

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a month isn't that long at all....

 

I often look up the TB owners and some folks have LOTS & LOTS of TB's in circulation. Makes me wonder if they're even 'watching' all of them...... doesn't it get overwhelming to have too many of them to 'watch' (or enjoy) their travels?

 

I mean....unless people just put these TB's out there for the numbers & mileages?

 

I'm glad you asked me that...

 

Oh. OK. :unsure:

 

Well, I'll answer it anyway...

 

We've got 32 travel bugs out there in the wide, wide, world - 20 currently active, 12 in the dreaded "Unknown Location", that place far, far away where TBs struggle to vanquish their demons and only the strongest and bravest return to face another day.

 

I check through the whole list of active ones every 2 or 3 months, look to see where each one is (and stick its pin in the right place on my map), email any holder who's had one for 6+ weeks with a very gentle reminder message, and any that seem to have been stuck in the same cache for a very long time (and I suspect they're no longer there) I'll put a note log on the cache page to ask if any future finder could mention in their cache log whether its there.

 

To me, it's all part of the fun of TB (and geocoin) travels but I'm fairly sure that many (most?) owners don't do so much "chasing up".

 

MrsB

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I've released about 120, but most are now missing or held by cachers long-term (one travel bug has been with the same cacher for nearly 7 years!). I must admit that I don't keep track of them avidly, although every once in a while I go through and mark them missing. I rarely release trackables these days because it's too expensive a game to keep on seeing them disappear after a short journey.

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