Number of new caches decreasing?

[+Goldenwattle]

2 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

 

On most of the filters you can set country, state and LGA, e.g.

 

 

But for you, it looks like there's no LGA subdivision in the ACT so I don't think you'd be able to get it any finer grained than that. Maybe someone else will have some suggestions.

 

I still can't find that. Please give a link. When I click on Project-GC I don't see that. I have looked home, profile etc. All I see is country.

Do I need to be a paid member?

[+barefootjeff]

33 minutes ago, Goldenwattle said:

I still can't find that. Please give a link. When I click on Project-GC I don't see that. I have looked home, profile etc. All I see is country.

Do I need to be a paid member?

 

No, you don't have to be a paid member. At the top of the window click on Statistics:

 

That will open up a whole raft of searches you can do:

 

 

On the Caches per area in the left hand column, you can select Country and State, which will then give a table of caches for each LGA in that state, although that one always excludes archived caches. In the other searches you can restrict it to an LGA and decide whether or not to include archived caches (plus all the other filter options). You can get a few extra filter options by being a paid member.

 

A trick I use to get the number of caches in an LGA given certain filter parameters is to select the Top Logged option then go right to the end of the results. The index value of that last cache will be the total number (excluding, in that case, any caches that have never been found).

Edited March 28, 2021 by barefootjeff

[+Goldenwattle]

Thank you Barefootjeff.

 

Number of new caches does not appear to be decreasing here in the ACT (Australian Capital Territory)

 

Or in NSW, as a whole. (Caches published by people from NSW.)

And for interest, as many geocachers in the ACT publish caches over the border in NSW, caches published by ACT people in NSW.

The only state or Territory I can find with a noticeable drop in published caches, is the Northern Territory. Victoria has a very slight drop in published caches, but they were locked down for a time with Covid.

 

Edited March 28, 2021 by Goldenwattle

[+Z_Statman]

And those that are, in my area, are nothing more then P&Gs

[Johannis10]

2 hours ago, Z_Statman said:

And those that are, in my area, are nothing more then P&Gs

I'm sorry for you. Maybe it's time for you, to place nice own ones, this year?

Greetings Johannis10

[+cerberus1]

6 hours ago, Z_Statman said:

And those that are, in my area, are nothing more then P&Gs

 

We're seeing similar, but on topic to the thread title (Number of new caches decreasing?), numbers are still improving dramatically.

They're still coming in a few at a clip today too.   

I won't do the majority, but hopeful that others get the bug to go outdoors a bit.   

[+Ragnemalm]

I checked out a nearby town, and got some expected results:

 

2010: 11

2011: 72

2012: 159

2013: 18

2014: 178

2015: 188

2016: 36

2017: 94

2018: 21

2019: 45

2020: 7

2021: 3 so far

 

What I see is not a declining trend but a strong dependency of very few people. From 2011 to 2012, one CO was very active, then stopped placing new and he has now archived all his hides, From 2014 to 2017, another CO was even more active, made lots of very original mystery caches. Then he got a full-time job that needs all his attention, so, few new hides since 2017. We see a dip in 2016, which perfectly matches his engagement in a mega event, so many new ideas went there.

 

2019 has a momentary top. Guess what? A power trail!

 

So all that area needs is a new CO making many new caches, but from the top in 2014-1015, the town as well as nearby roads are quite crowded.

 

So the conclusion is mostly the same: It depends on very few people. It usually depends on mass placements of very simple caches (PTs) like the 2019 peak. The 2014-2015 top is a bit different, also publishing of large batches, but in that case created by a very energetic enthusiast who made many (actually very good) mystery caches.

Edited March 29, 2021 by Ragnemalm
misspelling, one corrected fact

[+brendan714]

A follow-up to my first post from 2017, here are the updated cache numbers for my hometown using the same search method:

 

2008 - 585
2009 - 622
2010 - 659
2011 - 608
2012 - 671
2013 - 537
2014 - 602
2015 - 867
2016 - 581
2017 - 308
2018 - 311
2019 - 327
2020 - 638
2021 - 158 (as of March 29)

 

There's no doubt that the number of new caches significantly decreased from previous averages between 2017-2019.  But WOW what a huge increase in 2020!  And a healthy number of new caches so far this year too despite being only 3 months into 2021!  I definitely found myself geocaching much more last year thanks to the increased number of new caches. 

[+coachstahly]

17 hours ago, brendan714 said:

A follow-up to my first post from 2017, here are the updated cache numbers for my hometown using the same search method:

2020 - 638

 

I'd be curious to know how many of these are still active.  We had an influx of new players and new hiders in 2020 but I'd say about half of them have already left the game, leaving behind caches that need maintenance (and will never be maintained by the CO) or have already been archived.  My numbers aren't nearly as high in my immediate area but they follow the trend described by most people on here, highest from 2012-2015, a tailing off after that and an uptick in hides in 2020, although my area's cache totals barely made it to triple digits from 2012-2015.  The larger metropolitan city to the south, however, has larger numbers but follows the same trend as above. 

[+brendan714]

4 hours ago, coachstahly said:

I'd be curious to know how many of these are still active.  

It's easy for ProjectGC to tell me: of the 638 caches placed in my area in 2020, 94 are now archived. 

That's not bad, actually: 85% of caches placed in 2020 are still active.  Anecdotally, I didn't seem to notice any significant increase or decrease in overall cache quality last year in my area. 

[+barefootjeff]

5 hours ago, brendan714 said:

It's easy for ProjectGC to tell me: of the 638 caches placed in my area in 2020, 94 are now archived. 

That's not bad, actually: 85% of caches placed in 2020 are still active.  Anecdotally, I didn't seem to notice any significant increase or decrease in overall cache quality last year in my area. 

 

For my region, there were 50 new caches (excluding events) in 2020 of which 2 have been archived, so 96% are still active. So far in 2021 there have been 6 new caches (so about half the rate as last year) of which 1 was archived (a newbie messed up their coordinates so badly they archived it and started again).

[+Isonzo Karst]

WORLDWIDE

0,000,000 March 2000 ;-)

0,500,000 Jan 2008 

1,000,000 March 2009

2,000,000 Feb 23, 2013  
3,000,000 April 18, 2017 
3,151,415 March 23, 2019
3,198,358 Oct 03, 2019 

3,337,499 Oct 08, 2021   

 

FLORIDA

0,000,001 September 2000

0,002,000 (aprox) Sept 2003

42,954 Jan 09, 2018  
41,927 Oct 12, 2018  a 1000  loss in 6 months
40,559 Oct 03, 2019  a 368 loss in one year

39,303  Oct 08, 2021

 

Covid has impacted geocaching, like everything else.  March - April 2020, there was a quick spike up of new finders and new hides in my area. Few of those players or their caches remain.

 

 

Edited October 9, 2021 by Isonzo Karst

[+CheekyBrit]

Bannock county, Idaho here, including up to October 19th 2021:

 

Year	# hidden	rank in Idaho	Hidden by me
2000	1	1
2001	0	0
2002	3	18
2003	5	20
2004	7	16
2005	12	11
2006	18	8
2007	24	6
2008	38	5
2009	30	9
2010	25	18
2011	23	23
2012	18	26
2013	51	7
2014	27	11
2015	19	12
2016	20	8
2017	8	12
2018	8	13
2019	44	3	32
2020	75	4	12
2021	31	8	9

Since the info was up on screen within project-gc, I included what rank Bannock county scored out of the 44 Idaho counties in terms of who hid the most.
Power trails change everything. In 2020, most of those caches are a power trail added by mudbloods. Similarly, The League of ID Cachers dropped a beast of a power trail in 2012 making Owyhee County's count 1726 hidden that year alone. It is not a metro area. 

So in response to the original question, yeah geocache is starting to decline a little bit, but at least in Bannock county, a few geocachers and I are reviving it. Almost half my caches now are CITOs and events, which don't show here. Archived caches are excluded but disabled are included.

[fendmar]

^It's cool that it appears you inspired your own spike.

[+thebruce0]

Also important to remember there's a difference between declining, and slowing down.  Granted it's a tough definition to ..define in this hobby though.

[Darwin473]

On 3/28/2021 at 8:56 PM, Goldenwattle said:

The only state or Territory I can find with a noticeable drop in published caches, is the Northern Territory.

 

 

Anecdotally, I get the impression that there have been a fair number of caches archived, but I haven't seen anywhere near as many new ones. Though I know a fair number of new ones are also PMO caches, so I don't see those. It's also impossible to get a clean sweep of all NT counties as there are zero caches on Tiwi Island. Still, if was able to get 100% of all caches in the NT, that's only 1,064 caches. Totally achievable - if I had the time, and the fuel!

 

On the plus side, two counties can get 100% clearance easily as they both only have only one cache each. Though I'm not going to be able to get West Daly county anytime soon - it's an 800km / 500mi round trip for me to get out there! I guess I'm not a real geocacher... yet.  

[+barefootjeff]

It's been a very lean year thus far on the NSW Central Coast, with just 12 new caches (3 of those mine), compared to 49 last year (7 of those mine). Part of that might have been due to the 107-day COVID lockdown that ended a bit over a week ago, although even before then it had been a pretty quiet year.

 

Of the 12, there were 7 traditionals, 1 multi, 2 puzzles, 1 AL bonus and 1 challenge cache, comprised of 2 micros, 8 smalls and 2 regulars. There was also 1 event which was held in January with 15 attendees. No new Adventure Labs have gone live here this year.