At What Rate Do TB's and Coins Go Missing From Your Caches

[+BAMBOOZLE]

I was wondering what the average loss rate was for TB’s and coins in the field ( missing from a given cache). I sent the mail below to a cacher inquiring about a missing bug. The cache is View Carre’ and is unusual in two ways , lots of bugs pass through and it is muggle-proof....in other words only cachers handle the bugs and all missing bugs are due to being “ mishandled “ by cachers, period.

In 7+ years over 2100 bugs have passed through.....my best guess is I’ve marked about 40-50 missing ( some may have eventually turned up.)....this would be about 2% missing. If the cache had been muggled a time or two an additional 10-20 would have gone missing.

One thing for sure , a TB’s biggest enemy is a geocacher not a muggle.

 

Hi

 

Actually there were only three when I marked missing all those that were not there. Sometimes travelers hold them quite a while so some bugs may turn up. As you know this is one of the most secure caches in existence......security personnel, locked doors, and private elevator all keep the cache secure.....it has never been " muggled " and never will be. Still, in the caches 7+ years of existence, I've probably marked over 50 missing bugs. The bugs are mishandled ( collected, stolen, lost, etc ) by GEOCACHERS....its very frustrating and a bummer........I've thought of banning trackables but folks love to leave them here, they even mail them to be . I've read posts in the geo.com forum and many cachers think its o.k. to COLLECT your trackables. Worse yet, you now have to mark your coins if you want them to be in a collection ( stolen by others ) or not.........I marked all mine last night. Its not only this cache......I have a LOCKED one in front of my house that has the same problems.......I just made it Premium Members only and I may do the same here, it may help. Its a shame, really neat bugs don't last long in the field and coins go even faster.

Take care and Happy Trails,

 

BAM

 

Cache Location :

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...40-a9adb6a50ba8

[fivedime]

I've only released a handful of bugs and coins, but many of them have been logged as a grab by IDs with no finds, no history, no nothing except the one log for my bug/coin, which is never seen again. I doubt non-cachers who stumble across the items and decide to keep them would take the time to create an ID and log a find for something they are stealing. Why cachers would do it, I have no idea either...maybe they think they are balancing the theft by being "cool" and letting us know in a roundabout way it has been stolen...by them! Or maybe that is part of the joy of their theft, rubbing salt into the wound by announcing it is stolen and not just vaguely gone. I'm so disgusted by the whole thing that I won't bother putting anything else out that I have spent my money on just so it can get stolen...it sucks that the overall enjoyment of our hobby has to be lessened because of the actions of a few idiots. The fact that they are likely cachers using sock puppet IDs really adds insult to injury.

 

Bam...View Carre is such a special cache (and logging it and taking the tour was the highlight of my last trip to NOLA, thank you!) but it requires some extraordinary effort, not to mention actual human interaction that I think it tends to only attract people who love the hobby and have good intentions (2% missing is a very low rate, I am sad to say). But it is also a destination cache, so it may attract people who don't always have a lot of time to dedicate to caching but love to do it when they get the chance (on look at my profile and you can see I fall in this category). This could be leading to a lot of bugs and coins that get held for longer periods of time, not out of malice but rather out of simple inactivity despite best intentions. That in fact happened with a bug I dropped there back in '07...the couple who grabbed it lost it in their not-often-used cache bag for quite a while before finding it, nicely notifying me of their mistake, and placing it (sadly, that same bug - TB1931D - now appears to be missing at the hands of one of those previously mentioned one-visit, no-cache-one-coin-log sock-puppet thieves). Now that I think about it, I dipped a bug of someone else's through there, too, which I ended up hanging onto for a ridiculously too-long time (moving, changing job, business travel, yadda yadda...) but I also took it on some hopefully worthwhile theme-related travels and kept the owner apprised of what was happening with it while I held it.

 

ETA...unfortunately making things premium-member-only won't necessarily fix the problems either...I have seen some really stupid and dishonest stuff done by paid members (including randomly posting tracking numbers trying to get finds rthat stick).

Edited August 20, 2010 by fivedime

[+BAMBOOZLE]

I've only released a handful of bugs and coins, but many of them have been logged as a grab by IDs with no finds, no history, no nothing except the one log for my bug/coin, which is never seen again. I doubt non-cachers who stumble across the items and decide to keep them would take the time to create an ID and log a find for something they are stealing. Why cachers would do it, I have no idea either...maybe they think they are balancing the theft by being "cool" and letting us know in a roundabout way it has been stolen...by them! Or maybe that is part of the joy of their theft, rubbing salt into the wound by announcing it is stolen and not just vaguely gone. I'm so disgusted by the whole thing that I won't bother putting anything else out that I have spent my money on just so it can get stolen...it sucks that the overall enjoyment of our hobby has to be lessened because of the actions of a few idiots. The fact that they are likely cachers using sock puppet IDs really adds insult to injury.

 

Bam...View Carre is such a special cache (and logging it and taking the tour was the highlight of my last trip to NOLA, thank you!) but it requires some extraordinary effort, not to mention actual human interaction that I think it tends to only attract people who love the hobby and have good intentions (2% missing is a very low rate, I am sad to say). But it is also a destination cache, so it may attract people who don't always have a lot of time to dedicate to caching but love to do it when they get the chance (on look at my profile and you can see I fall in this category). This could be leading to a lot of bugs and coins that get held for longer periods of time, not out of malice but rather out of simple inactivity despite best intentions. That in fact happened with a bug I dropped there back in '07...the couple who grabbed it lost it in their not-often-used cache bag for quite a while before finding it, nicely notifying me of their mistake, and placing it (sadly, that same bug - TB1931D - now appears to be missing at the hands of one of those previously mentioned one-visit, no-cache-one-coin-log sock-puppet thieves). Now that I think about it, I dipped a bug of someone else's through there, too, which I ended up hanging onto for a ridiculously too-long time (moving, changing job, business travel, yadda yadda...) but I also took it on some hopefully worthwhile theme-related travels and kept the owner apprised of what was happening with it while I held it.

 

ETA...unfortunately making things premium-member-only won't necessarily fix the problems either...I have seen some really stupid and dishonest stuff done by paid members (including randomly posting tracking numbers trying to get finds rthat stick).

 

Hey, nice to hear from you......I agree with all you say in your post With so many bugs having passed through I didn't check to see how many of the missing later showed up but it could have been quite a few.........I made a quick check of about 10 which listed Location Unknown and none had gone missing at View Carre'.

 

What is a sock-puppet ? I've seen the term a couple of times.

[fivedime]

Sock Puppet is an id created just to post or do something unsavory, so your real identity is not revealed.

[+BAMBOOZLE]

Sock Puppet is an id created just to post or do something unsavory, so your real identity is not revealed.

 

Thanks for the heads-up.....now I know.