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"lost" geocoins


cclarkmd

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I still feel like a beginner to Geocaching although have been doing it for the last few years. I finally purchased some trackable geocoins last year and released 4 of them which have now "disappeared." Isn't there some sort of etiquette about this? I feel really disappointed in geocachers for keeping my geocoins which clearly have defined missions......

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There's tons and tons of discussion about "lost" trackables here, yet I'm always surprised to see another new thread started about the topic.

 

There's no way to know for sure if a geocacher was responsible for your trackables going missing. Caches are muggled all the time, and I feel that a big draw is the presence of trackables. All kinds of people can find caches and take what's in them. No matter how "remote" cachers think a location may be, there's no guarantee that other humans don't know about it.

 

Some trackables do go missing while in the possession of cachers. There's probably a bajillion reasons why the trackable isn't moved on.

 

It's not worth worrying about. I've given up on the notion of releasing nice coins. I'll be keeping the ones I have now. At the most, I'll take them to events for others to "discover", but that's it.

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It's not worth worrying about. I've given up on the notion of releasing nice coins. I'll be keeping the ones I have now. At the most, I'll take them to events for others to "discover", but that's it.

You have to be careful with that as well. I have 4 coins that I am missing that were STOLEN from my box while letting people discover them at an event. One of them is my yellow Time and Space coin that was one of my all time faves.

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It's not worth worrying about. I've given up on the notion of releasing nice coins. I'll be keeping the ones I have now. At the most, I'll take them to events for others to "discover", but that's it.

You have to be careful with that as well. I have 4 coins that I am missing that were STOLEN from my box while letting people discover them at an event. One of them is my yellow Time and Space coin that was one of my all time faves.

 

I've not suffered this, but have heard others say the same thing. Some of them have even been stolen from out of geocoin folders. It is very disappointing when any geocoin goes missing, by whatever means. :(

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A newbie picked up my coin in April and they asked me how to handle it. I sent them a message at that time on what to do with it and my coin has been sucked into the newbie coin vacuum. Contemplating sending another message asking htem to mail it to me if they're going to geocache anymore but I figure it's lost now. Glad I got two of the coins so I still have one at home to look at.

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Some of them have even been stolen from out of geocoin folders.

 

It is upsetting when you have a coin picked up and never dropped off anywhere. But the situation above would downright anger me like none other. That's outright theft right there.

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Wow....how disappointing.....I've retrieved several TBs and GCs over the last couple years and happily moved them on to new caches and watched their progress over up to 30,000 miles or more....I've NEVER kept a GC no matter how cool or how much I might want to keep it. I guess my lesson learned is that NOBODY seems to keep plain old ordinary Travel Bugs. They aren't so cool. So from now on I'll not spend the money on GCs, but will likely recourse to TBs only so that I don't experience such crushing disappointment in humanity. :-(

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a good rule of thumb -

if you are not willing to see an item go missing, do not put it into a geocache

 

this is just as true for trackables as it is for swag

 

- - - -

 

trackables go missing for many reasons -

 

mistaken for swag

taker is not aware of what a trackable is

lost in transit

taker innocently believes that keeping them is allowed

outright theft

 

some of these situations get corrected in the fullness of time -

 

taker gets educated

taker finds item at the bottom of backpack

 

- - - -

 

there are several things that can help, but no sure-fire solution -

 

release a proxy

mar the item in some way

bag the item with specific instructions

add a laminated card with specific instructions

refuse to release it

 

- - - -

 

if you have a nice item that you want others to see, my recommendation would be to keep it, put it into your collection, and share it at events, via "discover"

 

if you want to see an item go on a journey, there are several low-cost alternatives, such as aluminum travel tags - they may still go missing, but it does not cost as much

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A cacher has been holding on to one of my coins since 2009. I had tried emailing him several emails without success. So this week I decided to try and finally get him to move my coin on. After emailing without success, I went in to his profile and saw he wasn't a newbie, but a seasoned active cacher, so I put notes on the caches and coins that he owns and ALSO emailed a cacher who appeared in his photo gallery who he goes caching with!!! It was just a polite email explaining that I had been unable to get hold of the cacher and would he possibly be able to pass on the message as it was his friend. Result - less than 12hrs later I had an email from his friend saying he had contacted him and that he would move the coin on soon!! So fingers crossed!

 

(He took another coin belonging to someone else the same day and still has that one too - both were taken from a cache that he actually owns!)

 

And another success story - had a coin disappear from a cache that appeared to have been muggled back in 2009. There was no trace of any of the items that had been in the cache and I think the actual cache itself disappeared so I assumed it was well and truly gone. About a month ago I received an email saying the coin had mysteriously turned up in another cache so was back on it's travels again! So don't give up hope if you've written off a coin!

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A cacher has been holding on to one of my coins since 2009. I had tried emailing him several emails without success. So this week I decided to try and finally get him to move my coin on. After emailing without success, I went in to his profile and saw he wasn't a newbie, but a seasoned active cacher, so I put notes on the caches and coins that he owns and ALSO emailed a cacher who appeared in his photo gallery who he goes caching with!!! It was just a polite email explaining that I had been unable to get hold of the cacher and would he possibly be able to pass on the message as it was his friend. Result - less than 12hrs later I had an email from his friend saying he had contacted him and that he would move the coin on soon!! So fingers crossed!

 

 

I would have gone with just contacting his caching buddy. Posting on all his caches is getting close to using the site to harass someone.

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A cacher has been holding on to one of my coins since 2009. I had tried emailing him several emails without success. So this week I decided to try and finally get him to move my coin on. After emailing without success, I went in to his profile and saw he wasn't a newbie, but a seasoned active cacher, so I put notes on the caches and coins that he owns and ALSO emailed a cacher who appeared in his photo gallery who he goes caching with!!! It was just a polite email explaining that I had been unable to get hold of the cacher and would he possibly be able to pass on the message as it was his friend. Result - less than 12hrs later I had an email from his friend saying he had contacted him and that he would move the coin on soon!! So fingers crossed!

 

 

I would have gone with just contacting his caching buddy. Posting on all his caches is getting close to using the site to harass someone.

 

Yea... just a little over the line I'd say...

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I still feel like a beginner to Geocaching although have been doing it for the last few years. I finally purchased some trackable geocoins last year and released 4 of them which have now "disappeared." Isn't there some sort of etiquette about this? I feel really disappointed in geocachers for keeping my geocoins which clearly have defined missions......

nope. thieves will take them. everything i've put out has been stolen.

stuff i buy now is for my personal collection or FTF prizes.

no more buying for other peoples collections!

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