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2021 Souvenirs


Max and 99

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From the Official Geocaching Blog:

 

First 2021 Souvenir

 

We did it. We made it. This year brought unprecedented change, but we still came together as a community despite challenges. We adapted by figuring out Zoom to see our friends, geocaching solo, and planning future outings. Even through it all, caches were found, souvenirs were earned, and travel bugs achieved their mileage goals.


Kintsugi is a traditional Japanese art that uses a liquid precious metal to mend the pieces of broken pottery. This art form honors what the pottery has been through and is the perfect metaphor for our souvenir to close out the year.

This year, we invite you to leave 2020 stronger and to welcome 2021 with hope by introducing two new geocaching souvenirs.

How do I earn both souvenirs?

  1. Earn the Last 2020 souvenir by finding any geocache from December 24-31.
  2. Earn the First 2021 souvenir by finding another geocache from January 1-8.

What types of geocaches qualify for either souvenir?

Nearly any type of geocache! Including:

  • Traditional Caches
  • Multi-Caches
  • Virtual Caches
  • Letterbox Hybrids
  • Event Caches
  • Mystery Caches
  • Webcam Caches
  • EarthCaches
  • Wherigo Caches
  • Adventure Labs

How do I plan ahead to find the nearest geocaches?

Click this link to find geocaches near you! However you choose to participate, New Year’s is an opportunity to appreciate the experiences of the past year and embrace what is to come. How will you celebrate?

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2021 is coming to a close and no one could have foreshadowed what transpired this past year. Every good story has a few obstacles though, and we have emerged on the other side better and more hopeful than ever before. Much of our adventuring lately may be from the safety and comfort of our homes, but geocaching has continued to bring us outside and together with the geocaching community.

As we close the book on 2021 and turn to 2022, we reflect on the noteworthy memories made in the past year, while staying hopeful for all that can be accomplished in this next chapter.

This year, we invite you to turn a new page by introducing two new geocaching souvenirs. It’s time to mark 2021 as “Fin” and imagine your “Once Upon a Time” in 2022 by bookmarking these dates and going out to find a geocache!

How do I earn both souvenirs?

  1. Earn the Fin 2021 souvenir by finding any geocache from December 24-31.
  2. Earn the Once Upon a Time 2022 souvenir by finding another geocache from January 1-8.

What types of geocaches qualify for either souvenir?

The following cache types all qualify for the souvenir:

  • Traditional Caches
  • Multi-Caches
  • Virtual Caches
  • Letterbox Hybrids
  • Event Caches
  • Mystery Caches
  • Webcam Caches
  • EarthCaches
  • Wherigo Caches
  • Adventure Labs

How do I plan ahead to find the nearest geocaches?

Click this link to find geocaches near you! However you choose to participate, the turning of the page to a New Year is an opportunity to appreciate the experiences of the past year and embrace what is to come. Let’s make 2022 the best story yet.

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On 11/3/2021 at 6:36 AM, Max and 99 said:

What is a criteria for souvenirs?

Groundspeak offers them for their promotions, for countries, and it appears Mega events. What other kinds of things qualify for a new souvenir?

 

Not an exhaustive list, but looking through mine, I see:

 

Geotours (ok, I actually don't have one for a geotour, somehow, but they exist for them now).

 

Certain geocaching milestones/holidays: Blue Switch Day, International Geocaching Day, International Earthcache Day. Plus New Years Eve and New Years Day. Pi Day got one in 2015; 10/10/10 was one of the first. Leap Day's also gotten one thrice so far. 3 million caches got one, and there was another for cache owners at the same time.

 

Used to be one for CITO week, now it's CITO season. The 2021 CITO locationless GC8NEAT got one. (GC8FR0G did not, but it is mostly available at mega events).

 

One can earn one at one's first Community Celebration Event.

 

World-Wide Flash Mob used to get one, but it no longer appears to.

 

The Washington A.P.E. cache has its own souvenir. I believe HQ does as well. Does the Original Stash Tribute Plaque? Is there one for getting the "Trifecta" (all three of these) as well?

 

That's all I've got, but if I recall correctly, someone -  @The A-Team maybe? - has a whole page dedicated (can't check from work).

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On 11/16/2021 at 10:06 AM, hzoi said:

That's all I've got, but if I recall correctly, someone -  @The A-Team maybe? - has a whole page dedicated (can't check from work).

 

Oh hey, I just noticed that my name was invoked. :grin: I haven't been hanging around here much, so I only just noticed.

 

Souvenirs can be grouped into a few major categories:

  • Attending a Mega/Giga event
  • Finding a cache in a region (ie. country, state, province, etc.)
  • Finding all of the caches in a GeoTour
  • Date-based (ie. finding a cache on a specific day/weekend/week/season)
  • Finding specific caches (HQ, Original Cache Location, Project A.P.E., GC8NEAT Locationless, or one GPS Maze)
  • Other
    • Marketing promotions (e.g. 15 Years of Geocaching, Reach the Peak, Wonders of the World, etc.)
    • Notable milestones (so far just 3 million caches)
    • For a few years, World Wide Flash Mob events (2011-2014)
    • Special one-off (e.g. Creation Celebration, Maker Madness, Mars Perseverance Rover, Texas Instruments Spread Math Love)
    • Other others (2010 BSA Jamboree, Marination! test souvenir)

You could come up with a fairly short description to cover most of these, but then things get more complicated when you get to the "Others", where there's a much greater variety in what you need to do for each one.

 

One thing that they seem to have avoided is awarding souvenirs for accomplishments. There have been many requests in the past to award souvenirs for things like filling your calendar, Fizzy or Jasmer grids. It seems that they're happy with leaving those to be covered by challenge caches.

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On 11/3/2021 at 6:36 AM, Max and 99 said:

What is a criteria for souvenirs?

Groundspeak offers them for their promotions, for countries, and it appears Mega events. What other kinds of things qualify for a new souvenir?

 

From a technical standpoint, I'm confident that a souvenir could be released for most anything that happens on the back end, any 'event' or collection of prerequisites. It's another reason they can't just be resynchronized for a profile to remove invalid ones. If they appear because a function is triggered for a specific user doing something/anything on the website or api or at a specific time, it'd be a whole lot of work to create another version of that function that can retroactively search for a past events and triggers and confirm it or re-apply it. They aren't awarded just for analyzing statistics (as the list above demonstrates).

 

ETA: eg, For the GIFF souvenir, I'm certain it's programmed not be enabled with the existence of an "Attended" log on a GIFF event or a "Discovered" log on the TB, but rather on the act of posting either of the logs, which is why removing a relevant log doesn't remove the souvenir.

In theory, they have the flexibility to award a souvenir for most anything they can think of, if someone can write a 'trigger' function for a specific user in the right context.

 

It kind of hearkens back to the old discussion of achievements vs challenges during the moratorium, and how HQ could begin awarding souvenirs (or otherwise badges) for certain statistical accomplishments. But the tie in to challenges is a whole other topic and there were threads for that :P

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6 hours ago, The A-Team said:

One thing that they seem to have avoided is awarding souvenirs for accomplishments. There have been many requests in the past to award souvenirs for things like filling your calendar, Fizzy or Jasmer grids. It seems that they're happy with leaving those to be covered by challenge caches.

  

The more Souvenirs they create the more they look like time limited challenges to me.

 

I dislike that they seem to be having a negative affect on my finding of caches. Which challenges are expressly prohibited from doing.
      I save my nearby Earthcaches for the yearly souvenir. 

      I save my nearby caches for the next months reach the peak challenges in case I choose to not drive far away.

 

As a fan of challenges, remove the time limit let me cache when I want and where I want.

 

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47 minutes ago, Payson Pirates said:

What happened to the "Special souvenir" or "special bonus" for finding all five math trackables? I found all five and also I've seen other people say they found them all and nothing. Are they still working on this or what?

 

A good question. We never could figure out the answer to that one. 

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4 hours ago, Payson Pirates said:

What happened to the "Special souvenir" or "special bonus" for finding all five math trackables? I found all five and also I've seen other people say they found them all and nothing. Are they still working on this or what?

 

 

According to the promotion page, the souvenir is only for logging one of the trackables. It only mentions "a special math bonus" for finding all five, not another souvenir.

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