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Million Caches


masterninja

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I don't know if this has been asked before but I would have thought so myself.

 

I was just wondering and was asked by my son the other day who would have the most geocache finds to date and how many? Is there someone with over a millon finds? Also besides the orginal geocache team who would be or have been the first geocacher?

 

Just me being curious. I was wondering why when the first cache was placed why is the gc code GCF? Why not GCA?

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I don't know if this has been asked before but I would have thought so myself.

 

I was just wondering and was asked by my son the other day who would have the most geocache finds to date and how many? Is there someone with over a millon finds? Also besides the orginal geocache team who would be or have been the first geocacher?

 

Just me being curious. I was wondering why when the first cache was placed why is the gc code GCF? Why not GCA?

This site should answer some of your numbers questions:

 

http://cacherstats.com/

 

In short, the leader is approaching 50,000.

 

Dave Ulmer placed the first geocache; Mike Teague was the first finder.

 

Groundspeak wasn't around when the first few months of caches were placed; when they were eventually assigned spots in the Groundspeak database, the codes weren't assigned in strict chronological order. So many of the earlier caches might "look" out of order if they're sorted by waypoint.

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AFAIK team alamogul has the most finds: http://www.geocaching.com/profile/default....7f-0e1537af57f1

 

1 million finds will be very hard as currently there's only 1.2 million active caches worldwide.

 

the GC code corresponds to the internal numeric ID of the cache listing in the Groundspeak database. the first GC codes are just hexadecimal representations of the ID. 0-9 is 0-9, A is 10, F is 15 and 10 is 16. if that doesn't make any sense to you, check google and wikipedia about how hexadecimal works :angry:

 

the first cache listing would thus have had code GC1 (usually there's no ID 0), the ninth GC9 and GCA would've been the tenth. GCF is the 15th. it's safe to assume that the first few cache listing entries in the Groundspeak database were for testing purposes only and never related to any real cache listings. or maybe there were some other issues with them and were eventually deleted.

Edited by dfx
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I don't know if this has been asked before but I would have thought so myself.

 

I was just wondering and was asked by my son the other day who would have the most geocache finds to date and how many? Is there someone with over a millon finds? Also besides the orginal geocache team who would be or have been the first geocacher?

 

Just me being curious. I was wondering why when the first cache was placed why is the gc code GCF? Why not GCA?

Wow! 1 million finds. I calculated it. If a cacher found 100 caches a day, it would still take over 27 years.

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I don't know if this has been asked before but I would have thought so myself.

 

I was just wondering and was asked by my son the other day who would have the most geocache finds to date and how many? Is there someone with over a millon finds? Also besides the orginal geocache team who would be or have been the first geocacher?

 

Just me being curious. I was wondering why when the first cache was placed why is the gc code GCF? Why not GCA?

Wow! 1 million finds. I calculated it. If a cacher found 100 caches a day, it would still take over 27 years.

Which made me wonder. As popular as the game is becoming, it is feasable that a young cacher, say 10 years old, could someday have 1 million finds at the end of his lifetime. I believe in 30 years, people will see 10,000 finds as common.

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Wow! 1 million finds. I calculated it. If a cacher found 100 caches a day, it would still take over 27 years.

ah big deal, hit complete the ET powertrail one day and log them all. then do the same thing again the next day and log them all again. and then again the next day. etc etc. won't even take 3 years to hit one million that way! :angry:

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I don't know if this has been asked before but I would have thought so myself.

 

I was just wondering and was asked by my son the other day who would have the most geocache finds to date and how many? Is there someone with over a millon finds? Also besides the orginal geocache team who would be or have been the first geocacher?

 

Just me being curious. I was wondering why when the first cache was placed why is the gc code GCF? Why not GCA?

This site should answer some of your numbers questions:

 

http://cacherstats.com/

 

In short, the leader is approaching 50,000.

 

Dave Ulmer placed the first geocache; Mike Teague was the first finder.

 

Groundspeak wasn't around when the first few months of caches were placed; when they were eventually assigned spots in the Groundspeak database, the codes weren't assigned in strict chronological order. So many of the earlier caches might "look" out of order if they're sorted by waypoint.

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This site should answer some of your numbers questions:

 

http://cacherstats.com/

 

In short, the leader is approaching 50,000.

 

Dave Ulmer placed the first geocache; Mike Teague was the first finder.

 

Thanks addisonbr for the info and even looked myself up on cacherstats as well. I was kind've even amazed as to where I stood in the line up.

 

Alamogul has been doing a lot of travelling to get over 45,000 finds. I could only imagine that many for myself someday. Also going back over the history page on GC, Mike Teague was the first cacher to find the first geocache. I had thought since they had collaborated in starting geocaching.com that they are friends and didn't think of him as the first finder.

 

Also thanks to dfx on the gc codes and yes I do understand how it works, even more so now. Also I see now about the 1.2 million caches that are active and whatever archived that it would take a very long time to get 1 million find.

 

Thanks everyone I really wasn't expecting as quick a response on these things. Now I can let my son know.

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I don't know if this has been asked before but I would have thought so myself.

 

I was just wondering and was asked by my son the other day who would have the most geocache finds to date and how many? Is there someone with over a millon finds? Also besides the orginal geocache team who would be or have been the first geocacher?

 

Just me being curious. I was wondering why when the first cache was placed why is the gc code GCF? Why not GCA?

Wow! 1 million finds. I calculated it. If a cacher found 100 caches a day, it would still take over 27 years.

 

Then I think i'll probably finds cache in a wheelchair by then, lol.

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I don't know if this has been asked before but I would have thought so myself.

 

I was just wondering and was asked by my son the other day who would have the most geocache finds to date and how many? Is there someone with over a millon finds? Also besides the orginal geocache team who would be or have been the first geocacher?

 

Just me being curious. I was wondering why when the first cache was placed why is the gc code GCF? Why not GCA?

Wow! 1 million finds. I calculated it. If a cacher found 100 caches a day, it would still take over 27 years.

Which made me wonder. As popular as the game is becoming, it is feasable that a young cacher, say 10 years old, could someday have 1 million finds at the end of his lifetime. I believe in 30 years, people will see 10,000 finds as common.

 

I'm 15, lets see.....

60x365= 21900 999000(I'm almost at 1thousand finds)/21900= 45.61644

 

To reach the 1million milestone by the time I'm 75, I've got to find about 45-46 caches per day for the next 60 years.

Better get started! :rolleyes:

Edited by Mr. Wilson & a Mt. Goat
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Wow! 1 million finds. I calculated it. If a cacher found 100 caches a day, it would still take over 27 years.

ah big deal, hit complete the ET powertrail one day and log them all. then do the same thing again the next day and log them all again. and then again the next day. etc etc. won't even take 3 years to hit one million that way! :rolleyes:

 

Checking out a few of the stats and I was wondering about this one person who claimed to have found over 500 in one day and thinking it was impossible checked it out and it ends up he did the E.T powertrail. What a trail i'll have to make a trip of it.

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Wow! 1 million finds. I calculated it. If a cacher found 100 caches a day, it would still take over 27 years.

ah big deal, hit complete the ET powertrail one day and log them all. then do the same thing again the next day and log them all again. and then again the next day. etc etc. won't even take 3 years to hit one million that way! :rolleyes:

 

Checking out a few of the stats and I was wondering about this one person who claimed to have found over 500 in one day and thinking it was impossible checked it out and it ends up he did the E.T powertrail. What a trail i'll have to make a trip of it.

"New World Record-1147 geocache finds in 24 hours"

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I think I'm on the low end of the norm right now with 153 but only been at it for 3 months now.

 

Yeah the number of people who have logged a cache vs number of people still logging caches is probably not high. Look at a random local cache of low difficulty and see how many people logging finds have double or even single digit finds vs how many have hundreds or thousands of finds.

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I think I'm on the low end of the norm right now with 153 but only been at it for 3 months now.

 

Actually 153 probably puts you in the top 10 percent.

50/month is a pretty good pace.

 

Cracking into the top 10% is easy, as you're blowing past the people who created an account years ago, found 5 caches, then forgot about it forever.

 

Keeping up with (and advancing past) the people who've been at it for 5 years and are still active is a lot harder. I was really excited when I cracked into the top 400 in my state (according to cacherstats), but I've stagnated in the 395-388 range for several months now. I'm just treading water.

 

But who's counting? :rolleyes:

Edited by dakboy
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Guess I'm no where near norm after looking at some of the stats just at the bottom of the totem pole. One day I will be though.

 

I have (wait while I go check my profile)... 131. My profile says I joined in August 2009, which is true, but I also was caching in 2001 and have about six finds from back then. So since my actual first find, in 2001, I've averaged 1.2 finds per month. In the last year, I've averaged about 8 finds per month.

 

Does that mean I'm not one of the "top cachers?" I guess so, to people who only consider the numbers. But I bet I enjoy each of my finds much more than the person who is finding hundreds every month. I enjoyed caching from the first one; I started enjoying it even more when I realized I don't have to find them all. I can usually look at a description and know if I'd enjoy finding a cache, and if not, then I don't. (I've seen enough parking lots, thank you very much.)

 

My enjoyment kicked up another notch when I realized that just because I started to look for a cache, that doesn't mean I have to keep looking for it. Here's a DNF I posted last week:

I enjoyed my visit to the memorial, so thanks for that. Then I saw where the GPS was pointing for the actual cache, and didn't bother to continue the search.

 

The cache description took me to a beautiful memorial honoring war veterans. The actual cache was down the road a bit, on a guard rail.

 

Cache the way that makes you happy. If you enjoy watching your numbers run up, go for it. I'm a statistics geek, I enjoy using GSAK to slice and dice my numbers a hundred different ways. But I only hunt for caches that I like. I'm not trying to catch up with people who have been caching for 8 to 10 years. There aren't any prizes. If you aren't having fun, do something different. If you are having fun, then keep on!

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the GC code corresponds to the internal numeric ID of the cache listing in the Groundspeak database. the first GC codes are just hexadecimal representations of the ID. 0-9 is 0-9, A is 10, F is 15 and 10 is 16. if that doesn't make any sense to you, check google and wikipedia about how hexadecimal works :rolleyes:

 

the first cache listing would thus have had code GC1 (usually there's no ID 0), the ninth GC9 and GCA would've been the tenth. GCF is the 15th. it's safe to assume that the first few cache listing entries in the Groundspeak database were for testing purposes only and never related to any real cache listings. or maybe there were some other issues with them and were eventually deleted.

A bit of playing on the Internet revealed this:

 

GC1 thru GC3 (No Record) (Deleted? Test pages? Not sure)

GC4 was hidden on 05-07-00 (Mike Teague's first hide)

GC5 was hidden on 05-07-00

GC6 was hidden on 05-09-00

GC7 was hidden on 05-25-00

GC8 thru GCA (No Record)

GCB was hidden on 06-17-00

GCC (No Record)

GCD was hidden on 06-21-00

GCE (No Record)

GCF was hidden on 05-03-00 (Dave Ulmer's "Original Stash")

GCG thru GCR (No Record)

GCS was hidden on 05-07-00

GCT thru GCZ (No Record)

 

We know, from poking about the sci.geo.satellite-nav site, that Dave hid the first GPS Stash Hunt game piece. But the GPS Stash Hunt is/was a different game than Geocaching, just as Terracaching and Navicaching are different games. Did Dave actually hide the first cache listed on Geocaching .com? The alphanumerics certainly don't indicate that. It looks like someone backdated the hide date of Dave's Geocache to make it the earliest from a chronological standpoint. From here in the cheap seats, it almost looks like Mike Teague hid the actual first Geocache.

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GCG thru GCR (No Record)

GCS was hidden on 05-07-00

GCT thru GCZ (No Record)

as explained above, the low numbered GC codes are all hexadecimal, so there is no GCG thru GCZ. after GCF comes GC10, then goes up to GC1F and after that you get GC20. you see an entry for GCS because in the GC coding system, S equals 5, and so you end up with looking at GC5. JFYI.

 

and yeah, a lot of the old ("original") geocaches were actually listed on gc.com only later on and so have a later GC code. i'm sure there have also been a lot of geocaches back in the day which were never listed on gc.com.

Edited by dfx
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as explained above...

Yeah, I got that part. Just listing blanks to keep up appearances.

I still wonder which cache was actually the first one listed on this website.

We've seen threads about folks hiding stuff, (often calling the hide a "cache"), without ever listing it here, or anywhere elsse.

While those might qualify as "geocaches" from a generic term standpoint, would they qualify as "Geocaches" with a capitol G?

Could it be that our history, (like most histories), includes a bit of fabrication? :rolleyes::)

The hide dates from GC4 thru GCD are right in line with the hexadecimal system, which would put numerics before letters.

The only odd bird, (alphanumerically speaking), is Dave's "Original" hide, which doesn't show up until GCF.

Edited by Clan Riffster
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I still wonder which cache was actually the first one listed on this website.

that would be GC4, assuming GC1-GC3 were dummy listings for testing purposes.

We've seen threads about folks hiding stuff, (often calling the hide a "cache"), without ever listing it here, or anywhere elsse.

While those might qualify as "geocaches" from a generic term standpoint, would they qualify as "Geocaches" with a capitol G?

Groundspeak has no trademark on "geocache" or "geocaching", so there is no such thing as a Geocache with a capital G. it's not a name, it's a (composite) noun.

The hide dates from GC4 thru GCD are right in line with the hexadecimal system, which would put numerics before letters.

The only odd bird, alphanumerically speaking), is Dave's "Original" hide, which doesn't show up until GCF.

that's because the hide date is independent of the internal ID, which is represented in the GC code. the ID is strictly ascending with creation time of the entry. lower numbered entries were made before higher numbered entries. of course it's technically possible to manually change the ID after an entry has been made, but there's no real good reason to do so. i'm sure the higher up you go with the ID numbers, the more "off" the hide dates will seem to be (up to a certain point where usage of gc.com caught on).

Edited by dfx
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I still wonder which cache was actually the first one listed on this website.

My understanding is that the first database of listings was created by Mike Teague in May 2000. Geocaching.com was registered in July, and revealed to the world in September. Unless I'm wrong, the initial data in Geocaching.com was copied / ported from Mike Teague's database.

 

So I think the answer is that the first cache listed on this web site was a tie for everything that was in Mike's database through the beginning of September. And as I mentioned before, I don't believe that any particular attention was paid to lining the waypoint codes up with chronology.

 

I believe that the first cache that listed on Geocaching.com outside of the process of porting data from Mike Teague's database, is this one in Arizona - interestingly enough, a listing that is still active:

 

Geocache

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I think I'm on the low end of the norm right now with 153 but only been at it for 3 months now.

 

Actually 153 probably puts you in the top 10 percent.

50/month is a pretty good pace.

 

Cracking into the top 10% is easy, as you're blowing past the people who created an account years ago, found 5 caches, then forgot about it forever.

 

Keeping up with (and advancing past) the people who've been at it for 5 years and are still active is a lot harder. I was really excited when I cracked into the top 400 in my state (according to cacherstats), but I've stagnated in the 395-388 range for several months now. I'm just treading water.

 

But who's counting? :D

 

It's hard to keep your monthly cache stats up once you have found most of the caches in your area though.

Going to have to start spending some gas money. I need to get out and see interesting places anyway maybe I'll get to see the ocean finally. Geocaching has truely become an obsession. I love it!

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It's hard to keep your monthly cache stats up once you have found most of the caches in your area though.

Going to have to start spending some gas money. I need to get out and see interesting places anyway maybe I'll get to see the ocean finally. Geocaching has truely become an obsession. I love it!

 

Seeing the ocean is definitely something you should do at least once before you die - if every penny has to go for food or rent or medicine it may seem impossible to spend on gas (or bus tickets) so I can't advise you on finances - but, yes, get out and see interesting places !

 

At least you don't have to copy D. Boone and walk all the way over the Cumberland - I guess you could if you wanted to - but we have so many options that you should definitely take your choice and go.

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I don't believe that any particular attention was paid to lining the waypoint codes up with chronology.

This is true. But, much attention was paid to importing the existing caches into the new Geocaching.com database, state by state, and country by country.

 

Conspiracy theorists can extinguish their torches now.

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I don't believe that any particular attention was paid to lining the waypoint codes up with chronology.

This is true. But, much attention was paid to importing the existing caches into the new Geocaching.com database, state by state, and country by country.

 

Conspiracy theorists can extinguish their torches now.

I think I missed the connection between these sentences - are you saying I'm implying a conspiracy? I'm not following well, and I can't figure out what the conspiracy would be.

 

Honestly asking the question, not being snarky.

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I don't believe that any particular attention was paid to lining the waypoint codes up with chronology.

This is true. But, much attention was paid to importing the existing caches into the new Geocaching.com database, state by state, and country by country.

 

Conspiracy theorists can extinguish their torches now.

I think I missed the connection between these sentences - are you saying I'm implying a conspiracy? I'm not following well, and I can't figure out what the conspiracy would be.

 

Honestly asking the question, not being snarky.

 

Keystone would be better equipped to answer, but from what I have seen and heard in these forums, the 70 or so caches that existed before Geocaching.com went online were assigned waypoint names Geographically, starting in the Pacific NW, heading East, then taking care of Countries other than the U.S. If you look at the oft-linked list of The World's 100 oldest Geocaches You'll see the waypoint names becoming consecutive Hexidecimal numbers around 9/1/2000.

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Keystone would be better equipped to answer, but from what I have seen and heard in these forums, the 70 or so caches that existed before Geocaching.com went online were assigned waypoint names Geographically, starting in the Pacific NW, heading East, then taking care of Countries other than the U.S. If you look at the oft-linked list of The World's 100 oldest Geocaches You'll see the waypoint names becoming consecutive Hexidecimal numbers around 9/1/2000.

That sounds like a perfectly reasonable way to do it. I just couldn't figure out what the conspiracy might be - it may reflect my lack of being plugged in to the controversies of the day.

 

Keystone, can you help me figure this out? Did it seem to you like I was initiating a conspiracy theory, or perhaps responding to one? I haven't been able to figure out either.

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Does anybody know where Cache # 1,000,000 is?

It very much depends on how you define it.

 

As far as the millionth active cache, it's a bit of a moving target. The first time there were more than 1,000,000 active caches on the site was on Monday, March 8 2010. Which leads one to believe that a cache published on March 7th became the first cache to be the "millionth" active cache on the site. It's very hard to pin it down exactly, because the number on the front page of the web site only refreshes once a day.

 

Theoretically, comparing the March 7th number with the March 8th number and going through the caches published on March 7th exactly in order of publication time could get you there, but without the email notifications for each cache it would be very hard for a non-Groundspeak person to know in what order they were published. Complicating matters is that every time a cache was archived that day, decrements the number.

 

I expect that a clever lackey could write a query that would spit out an answer, but outside of that I've been considering everything published on March 7th as a "tie" for the first cache to be the millionth active listing.

 

---

 

Detecting the millionth cache to be listed, regardless of current active listings, is also tricky.

 

Groundspeak started with a hexadecimal system (0-9, A-F). As the number of geocaches started to really ramp up, they later relaxed that to use what on its face looks like a base-36 system (0-9, A-Z). However, not all of the letters are in use (I, L, O, U and S are reserved).

 

So keeping all of that in mind, we wind up with GC1GBC0. This is helpfully not disconfirmed by entering the following URL into a browser; it takes you to a log page for the same cache: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?ID=1000000

 

However, even that isn't accurate, because a large number of waypoints that came earlier in the counting system were never published (or possibly, for some very early numbers, never allocated) in the first place. So while that cache represents "serial number" 1,000,000 - it certainly does not represent the millionth listed cache.

 

At this point we run into a situation were realistically, only a lackey would have the resources to come up with a definitive answer. We could test each URL, in order, to see if the cache exists, but it would be prohibitively time-consuming (or possibly challenge the TOS).

 

And even THEN, that solution wouldn't handle caches that were retracted. I have a find for my account on a cache that was published, then retracted the following day for a proximity issue and never republished. It looks like it was never published when you try to go to the cache page, and yet it really was a cache that I have a find for in my totals. What to do about that, or about other caches that were retracted before any finders logged it, is a bit of an unclear issue.

 

...AND, that's the best I can do on this question. For now.

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So keeping all of that in mind, we wind up with GC1GBC0. This is helpfully not disconfirmed by entering the following URL into a browser; it takes you to a log page for the same cache: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?ID=1000000

just as a small note here: most if not all pages refering to a cache on gc.com are able to take any one of the 3 (that i know of) possible arguments: ID, GUID or GC code. so to get to a cache with a particular ID, you can use:

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?ID=xxxxxx

and instead of ID=xxxxxx you can also use wp=GCxxxxxx or guid=xxxxxx.... and that works the same for the cache page itself, for the log page, for the gallery page and a bunch of others as well probably.

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