TBs & GCs: What's the deal?

[+VirusZero]

So it's been a while since I've cached proper. Life gets in the way like that: work, kids, blah blah. I still make sure that I log something whenever I visit a new place...but again that's nowhere near maintaining a streak. 

 

So with caches seemingly getting smaller it begs a question: are TBs and GCs still a thing or are they all getting stolen and the craze gone?

 

Last I tried sending something out it did something near 80k kilometers until it disappeared in Portugal, same with a lot of my other GCs. It was fun while it lasted, but why does one get the feeling the concept has retired?

Or am I wrong? I still have some rare GCs in my collection and I'd love to send something out if I knew it'll eventually return, at least to close proximity. Do I lose hope yet?

 

Cheerio!
VZ

[+kunarion]

7 hours ago, VirusZero said:

Or am I wrong? I still have some rare GCs in my collection and I'd love to send something out if I knew it'll eventually return, at least to close proximity. Do I lose hope yet?

 

 If you're hoping for your Geocoins to return to you, that is very optimistic.  Good luck with that, but I personally know of only one time when that happened.  It was my own Geocoin that went across the sea to another continent, then came right back to the same cache.  I then retrieved it.

 

I activated over 100 Trackable items, and a handful of them get logged once in a blue moon. Very few turn up by surprise anymore.  It seems to me that the reason a TB moves or vanishes is because of who takes it... people who do or do not know or care about others' property.  So it doesn't matter if you release a bunch of TBs or just one.  If you toss TBs into a black hole, they all vanish, regardless of the number.  Set up these things in a way that they have a chance to endure, try some longevity ideas.

 

But that's part of the fun , placing a TB or Geocoin to see how far it goes.  Just be sure you don't mind if disappears.  Otherwise, keep it.  That's a better plan if you want it "returned".

 

Edited January 13, 2022 by kunarion

[+VirusZero]

On 1/13/2022 at 8:06 PM, kunarion said:

If you're hoping for your Geocoins to return to you, that is very optimistic.

Believe me, I've been doing this long enough not to be optimistic anymore. The point is back in the day they used to actually travel long enough to keep track, and you *could* keep track. These days it seems that either people don't send them out anymore or they immediately go off the radar the moment their owner places them somewhere, and that's my point. So yeah...

[+dprovan]

I love finding and moving TBs, especially coins, but there's no denying they've all but vanished from the scene. (Well, except the ones that made it to Germany where they seem well cared for even though they never leave the country once there. )

 

On 1/13/2022 at 8:06 AM, kunarion said:

But that's part of the fun , placing a TB or Geocoin to see how far it goes.  Just be sure you don't mind if disappears.

I agree that if you release one, definitely be ready for it to disappear and consider that part of the fun. I encourage people that want to to put them out there because I like to see them and travel with them. But I have to be honest and admit that I've lost interest in having my own. I still have a couple tags around here that I never got around to releasing.

[+kunarion]

46 minutes ago, dprovan said:

I agree that if you release one, definitely be ready for it to disappear and consider that part of the fun. I encourage people that want to to put them out there because I like to see them and travel with them. But I have to be honest and admit that I've lost interest in having my own. I still have a couple tags around here that I never got around to releasing.

 

I have a bunch ready to release.  And I keep resisting to do so .  One recent release was at a cache that has a high terrain difficulty, after a moderate hike.  My theory is that it will be taken by a more dedicated Geocacher, perhaps one who hunts tough ammo boxes.  A nice quiet kind of cache to place my TB.

 

On thing I enjoy is seeing some TB return from the dead after a couple of years.  Cache was muggled, then archived, it's gone, and then one day my TB pops up in a cache 100 miles away.  But these things don't seem to reappear as often anymore.