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Found a Cache accidentally while placing a Cache.


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While trying to find a good hiding spot for a cache I plan on hiding, I found another cache.

 

The cache I found is a pill bottle with a blank piece of receipt paper and a piece of eraser that has been hand carved into a stamp. It's not listed on this site as an active cache. Is there a way check and see if it's archived?

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it sounds like you have found a letterbox and not a geocache. try looking for it on www.letterboxing.org

 

some other possibilities include that it is a stage of a multi, or a mystery cache final, but the stamp makes it seem like a letterbox.

 

edit to fix letterbox address

Edited by dorqie
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While trying to find a good hiding spot for a cache I plan on hiding, I found another cache.

 

The cache I found is a pill bottle with a blank piece of receipt paper and a piece of eraser that has been hand carved into a stamp. It's not listed on this site as an active cache. Is there a way check and see if it's archived?

That is almost *assuredly* a Letterbox. Letterboxing is another hunt-for-the-container type game; it predates geocaching by a fair bit. There are no proximity rules for geocaching vs. letterboxes, but it would be a kind thing to do to contact the owner of the Letterbox to see if you can work something out that works for both of you. It's always good when the two games can play nicely with each other.

 

Places to start your quest to try to figure out whose Letterbox that is:

 

http://www.letterboxing.org/

http://www.atlasquest.com/

 

Good luck! Let me know if you need any help.

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Oh funny!

 

I just found the listing for it on www.letterboxing.org. That explains a lot.

 

Apparently, it's been in place since 2004, but still has a blank log.

Geocaching has a much bigger community than letterboxing. With about 5,000,000 users finding geocaches, that doesn't stand a chance to the lesser amount of letterboxers finding letterboxes.

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We found a clearly labelled letterbox when we were on the hunt for a cache. With a mix of happiness and sadness we realized what we had found instead. It helped us when we finally gave up looking for the cache that at least we had found something. I looked up the particular letterbox and it was so challenging that the only way we would have figured it out was by the way we did.

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Oh funny!

 

I just found the listing for it on www.letterboxing.org. That explains a lot.

 

Apparently, it's been in place since 2004, but still has a blank log.

the means of logging a letterbox is the opposite of logging a cache. You use the stamp in the letterbox on the logbook that you carry with you.

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Oh funny!

 

I just found the listing for it on www.letterboxing.org. That explains a lot.

 

Apparently, it's been in place since 2004, but still has a blank log.

the means of logging a letterbox is the opposite of logging a cache. You use the stamp in the letterbox on the logbook that you carry with you.

 

You also place your unique stamp on the letterbox log too, from what I understand.

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I'd recommend you put your cache far enough away that others don't find the letterbox and think it is your cache. If you are within a hundred feet or so it would be good to add a note to your page to warn of the potential confusion. I think I've found about 10 letterboxes by accident over the years.

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Just looking at the website just now, there are 369 letterboxes in the state of Minnesota. In contrast there are 18,726 geocaches.

 

http://www.atlasquest.com/aboutus/stats/ Says 505 in Minnesota on Atlasquest, which was started in 2005, but has surpassed Letterboxing.org in popularity big-time. I live in the #1 State (New York), and I've stumbled on about 10 of these things while Geocaching!

 

I agree, keep your cache a good distance from this letterbox.

 

Some will tell you some gobbledygook about letterboxing being 160 years old. Technically true, but it was confined to one National Park in England for the first 150 years. The letterboxing we know today is only two years older than Geocaching.

Edited by Mr.Yuck
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There shouldn't be any confusion between my cache and the letterbox. They're over 200 feet away from each other.

 

That'll work. I know a case where there's a cache and a letterbox in the same tree. Last time I was there (it's in the cemetery my parents are buried in) over 30 geocachers had signed the letterbox logbook. :o

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There shouldn't be any confusion between my cache and the letterbox. They're over 200 feet away from each other.

 

That'll work. I know a case where there's a cache and a letterbox in the same tree. Last time I was there (it's in the cemetery my parents are buried in) over 30 geocachers had signed the letterbox logbook. :o

 

I found a cache recently which, judging from the logs, must have started out maybe not 200 feet but at least some tens of feet from a letterbox. When I found it, it was sitting on top of the letterbox. I couldn't tell from either the cache page or the letterbox page whether the cache migrated to the letterbox site, or the letterbox to the cache site, or if they both sort of fell into the same local gravitational anomaly.

 

To make matters worse the cache was missing its log, and recent cachers had been assuming both containers were the cache (one for swag, one for the log) and signing the letterbox log.

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If I hadn't found the letterbox, I probably would have placed my cache nearby. I'm glad I found it first.

 

How often do cachers check to make sure there aren't any letterboxes nearby?

I would say it's exceptionally rare. It is a little harder to check for a Letterbox since Letterboxes are, generally speaking, more like puzzle caches than traditional caches. There's no easy way to see if there is a Letterbox in the spot you like without solving the Letterbox clues.

 

And even that assumes that the cacher knows about Letterboxing. I would venture that the vast majority of cachers have never heard of it.

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Not sure about other parts of the country (or the world, for that matter), but scuttlebutt around here has been that caches placed "too close" to letterboxes have a nasty habit of growing legs and walking off. For that reason, I always try to find the nearest LB before placing. Certainly not a rule or anything though.

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