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Geocaching on a budget


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So I see a lot of suggestions for "cheap" items as swag. Or gear. Or containers. (Etc.)

 

But I'm on a REALLY tight budget. (I'd say I can spend less than $5 per month on this hobby, and that includes the premium membership.) I've been trying to come up with ideas for the cheapest stuff (not garbage) that I can do for swag to trade, signature items, gear, etc. And I can hardly come up with anything.

 

I see so many EMPTY caches, and I want to fill them up with fun things. But (as I've stated) I really don't have the money to get these things. Heck, I hardly have the gas money to find them.

 

Does anyone have ideas for geocaching on a really tight budget?

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Well, you can go geocaching for free. I did so for several months when I first started. I had a basic membership, and used Google maps since I had no GPSr.

 

But you seem to be asking specifically about trade items, not about geocaching as a whole.

 

A lot of trade items are free: advertizing giveaways, old toys you have lying around the house, that sort of thing. You may also be able to find inexpensive toys at garage sales or thrift stores. And I find that some of my non-geocaching friends have started giving me things they don't want any more, knowing that I can use them as trade items.

 

Another option is to buy a lot of items together, but to leave only one or two in each cache. Examples include foreign coins (many coin shops have a bulk bin) or toys that come in large sets (like plastic army men or Lego blocks). Some people add their geocaching name to items like this and turn them into signature items.

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One of my in-laws makes barettes out of pop cans that look pretty amazing, and she leaves them as trades. She does have some specialized tools she uses to make them, but they are an example of something that costs almost nothing in materials to make a really nice trade item. At a craft show these could easily go for $10 apiece.

 

I bought some parachute cord and plastic whistle cord ends in bulk, along with matching braided cordage, heat shrink tubing and cord locks to make some nice handmade GPS lanyards. I probably spent about $2 apiece to make them.

 

The point is, you can look online and find countless ideas for little crafts you can make for next to nothing out of materials you might already have lying around, and use those as trades. It would also be an automatic "signature item" if you care about that sort of thing.

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I generally think of the kids when I think about swag and you can work to them with simple things like bags of army men as someone suggested. One out of the bag for each cache doesn't take much investment. Of course, you can start with one item for a swap at the first cache and take that swapped item and drop it into the second cache and use the traded item from it to drop into the third and so on. That way you only have an investment of one item.

 

Now to fill up empty caches is a different story but looking around the house (or your parent's house) you may find some stuff that is just collecting dust. To my wife's serious annoyance I gave away a bunch of my son's toys and books to a co-worker in very poor financial condition so they would have a less meager Christmas. She got even more annoyed when shortly after that Stars Wars movies started the second round of popularity and there was a resurgence in interest in the old original toys which were drawing hefty prices although she would have preferred to still have them rather than getting money for them. Price of them was simply something else to fuss at me about. As if I didn't already give her plenty of reason. You may be surprised to find out what your parents have saved of your stuff that you don't have any interest in. My son sure hasn't and I'm fighting to get rid of a lot of stuff.

 

For myself, I seldom actually take something out although my wife will take anything turtle or hummingbird related. Usually I'll just leave something anyway and often it's a dollar coin. I've seen lots quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies in caches too. Unfortunately an awful lot of caches here are film containers, medicine bottles, Altoids tins and so on where swag isn't an option or where very small items like coins are the only option so there isn't much swapping.

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I rarely trade anymore, and seeing empty or near empty caches are becoming the norm. If I run across an item I really want or if it's a really nice cache, I do have some go-to swag I can trade.

 

As far as swag goes, no one wants the army men and golf balls that are ubiquitous in cache containers. I used to leave paracord survival bracelets that I make, but I thought of something better...Now I leave a little bag with the paracord, buckles, and instructions on how to braid your own (very simple). That way, it's made to fit, and what outdoorsman wouldn't want to wear their own handmade paracord bracelet (I haven't taken mine off in years)? The paracord is pretty cheap if you buy it by the roll, and the buckles cost little of nothing... I also have a few St. Anthony (patron St. of lost articles) coins to leave in deserving caches, but they ran about a buck apiece.

 

One of the most useful trade item I have ever picked up was a cheap deck of playing cards in a cache about 3 miles into a canyon where we would be camping. Came in handy that night around the campfire.

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Sorry to hear about the money problem! That sucks for sure. When we first started we hit the dollar store a few times to pick up swagg. Now though after almost four years we have the opposite problem. We have way to much swagg! As my daughter out grew her toys we added them to the swagg boxes. Like others said family and friends often give us stuff as they know we like it for swagg. Then for a short time we were living in a condo and with the little space people have there they would often go threw there kids toys. Instead of throwing them in the garbage they would set them outside of the garbage room in boxes. Crazy how many times it happened and I often had to pick them up because there was some crazy cool stuff in there. I have given bags of little toys away to other cachers that I know who like to hide caches and sometimes say they didn't have any swagg for it. I would say currently I have about 6 big boxes of small cool swagg items. I try and fill up some empty caches when we find them. If you keep an eye out I am sure some of these opportunities will pop up for you to get some cool stuff.

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The premium membership, the swag, the app, etc are nothing compared to the price of the gas to cache all over the place. If you can mitigate that by using a bike or you only cache places you have to go (work, stores, etc), you can geocache on the cheap. If you eat at fast food places, get a kids meal. Not only are you getting smaller portions, which is good if you can stand to lose some weight. You also get a swag item.

 

Another thing to do is go to a store after a holiday and get the 50% discounted stuff. After Easter there were tons of bunny erasers, pencils, etc all for cheap.

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One of my favorite swag items I found recently was a little rock painted to look like a ladybug. Simple, cheap, and creative!
I have someone's sig item in my collection. It's a Brazil nut painted to look like a miniature wedge of watermelon. Of course, it is actually a food item, so I just HAD to trade for it... just to get it out of the cache, you see.
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So, just my 2 cents worth... I took an approach to this "sport" that I am having fun with. I really play to find and move travel bugs, which is hard because most of the caches inventory is not up to date. But the most fun for me is making sure that each cache that I visit has enough swag in it to make it worth finding. I found beanie babies and hot wheels work best. I have started to attach a tag to each item that says to trade even, up or not at all, just a little tag I made on the printer and laminated. I know it wont always work, but maybe sometimes, So, I know I have not been doing this for very long, but if I find a cache, I leave it well stocked, I'd love if a few others did the same. I just cant stand finding a cache with nothing, even if I don't actually trade for anything. PS. Playing cards can be found a thrift stores, usually 3 or 4 for a dollar... Ain't that cheap...

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