Protecting Traveling Geocoins

[+Chickahominy]

Today, I found a cache with 4 travelers listed and none in the cache. One was a Celtic Peacock.. a beautiful coin of which I'm sure the owner was proud. A visiting cacher left a note a week ago that they should have found 21 travelers in our local area... but found none as they were all missing. I know, cache owners and traveler owners need to be better about making items MIA. On a personal level, I have decided NOT to leave any travelers in caches that currently have items listed but missing. That means they went missing once... they could go missing again, right? Could Groundspeak come up with some kind of a rating system that would let cachers know how safe a cache is? Perhaps something like 12/24 Travelers safe in this cache. Or a little colored bar with lo to high danger for travelers. We need to do something! We invest money in these coins and want to be able to release them (and find them)! Help us out, please.

[+seekerfamily]

If Groundspeak doesn't do this, the cache owner can. We have a few caches that have had numerous coins go through the cache. We agree it is very frustrating to get to a cache with one or more trackables listed as in the cache only to find it empty. In the last 3 weeks we have found only about 25% of the caches with travelers listed actually contained these trackables.

[+AtlantaGal]

The only problem with this Molly is that the caches here are in a vacation hotspot. Sometimes the coins are not logged out or even dropped into a cache in a timely manner. Plus there are a slew of cachers that simply move travelers without ever logging them out or into caches.

[+Toojin]

Not about the rating, which I think is a good idea, but about missing travelers...

 

I believe (but am not going to swear to this) that someplace Eartha said that if you have been to a cache and could verify that travelers were missing and that they had been missing for awhile, that s/he would be willing to mark them unknown so that they don't show in the cache inventory.

 

I personally go through my travelers periodically and try to verify their whereabouts. I will mark them unknown and then if they show up the finder can grab them and move them on.

 

Anyway, the important part of this blathering of mine was that I believe Eartha will help.

[+BlueDeuce]

There's nothing wrong with choosing a safe cache to place a traveler. The problem is that once it's moved, who knows what type of cache it'll visit.

[+JackHoe]

I personally go through my travelers periodically and try to verify their whereabouts. I will mark them unknown and then if they show up the finder can grab them and move them on.

 

I don't check my travelers whereabouts, but as soon as somebody sends me a note that one was not in a cache, I mark the coin missing. (I check first if it is missing for a while)

[+ElliPirelli]

It is the responsibility of the cacheowner to make sure, the box is in a safe place.

 

I believe most coins get lost through cachers. They either forget to log them, or they steel them. There is no reason to just remove some nicelooking medal but leave the box otherwise unharmed. No muggle would do so.

 

I had trouble with some teenagers, who were shown several of my caches and out of those, travellers went missing. My reaction was to move the final location some 50m and replace the small box with a micro, where no travellers could be left.

For me very sad, I'd rather find a nice sized box with some tradeitems and travellers. But this was the only solution apart from archiving the cache.

 

When I leave travellers in caches, I always make sure, they kind of look safe. An exposed box wouldn't get a traveller from me.

 

My own coins a only mark missing, when I get email information, that it is missing.

Travellers out of my caches I mark missing with the information, that the next finder can just grabb it from the unknown location.

[+Eartha]

If you find missing trackables, and the cache owner, or trackable owner, won't/don't mark them missing, send me a link for the trackable item, and I can mark it missing for you.

[Brownie Charles]

There is no reason to just remove some nicelooking medal but leave the box otherwise unharmed. No muggle would do so.

 

If I were a clever, educated muggle, I won't ruin the cache itself, in which I can frequently find nice items. Maybe I would even maintain it, keeping the golden egg laying hen alive.

 

The other things come to my mind are ignorant casual cachers, and parents who cache with family (their kids' joy being more important than rules, so let them keep the shiny stuff). Or combination of the two.

[+Eartha]

There is a valid point posted here that I hadn't thought about. With more and more exposure, and new technology added to the game, the risks will probably grow larger.

[+Chickahominy]

Thanks for all the comments. I enjoyed the sharing of info.

 

AG - I realize that we live in a vacation hotspot and some people carry the coins home with them.. therefore the delayed logging. I allow time for that.

 

Cache owners are not logging the coins as missing after a year. I always try to post a note to the cache page and the coin page. I'm not sure about alerting Eartha. That just seems to be a bit of a hassle for her.

 

I'm more of the thought of the cache owner perhaps taking the travelers or neighborhood children. I have visited two caches lately in plain sight of neighborhood houses where there was a lot of muggle activity. These caches had 4 travelers gone missing from 6 months to the day before. I have to think that muggles are taking the pretties. I want a way to mark that these caches are not safe for travelers. Is it rude to leave a comment like that in my find log?

[+Chickahominy]

There is a valid point posted here that I hadn't thought about. With more and more exposure, and new technology added to the game, the risks will probably grow larger.

 

That is a thought, Eartha. It seems to me that we have more new cachers who are trying to move travelers (and place caches). Almost with a sense of reckless abandon. I've spoken with several local cachers about the need to educate new cachers. I'm also making sure any travelers I come across are marked and bagged.

[+Chokecherry]

I know one of the caches around me is one that is used to demonstrate geocaching. So people who visit that park and borrow the gps from staff can go geocaching sometimes for the first and only time they ever will and they wander away with those travel items on occasion I think as that cache is a vacuum for items.

 

I've had close calls with geocoins where I thought I had lost them in my bag of stuff and it made me sick. I also am bummed when I placed a travel item in a cache and apparently it went missing soon after. I always feel guilty when that happens.