Trackable Travel Rates-Part 1, Introduction

[+shellbadger]

 

There are recurring questions about trackable endurance and travel on the forum for which there are often very good responses, but based on limited information. The writer in a position to address most of the questions in more detail, and will do so in a series of posts over the next couple of years. I will explain.

 

From January of 2010 to January 2023, I have released over 5,000 travel bugs at a rate of 200-450 per year. Over 13+ years some of the trackables have visited caches all over the world. They have been to every state in the US, every major administrative district (state, province, canton, oblast) in the countries of western and northern Europe, including the principalities of Andorra, San Marino, Lichtenstein and Monaco. My trackables have visited caches on every continent, including Antarctica. For now, the best supports of that claim are my past forum posts and the screen-captured map below, produced by gctrackables.com in open beta testing. What is shown is the distribution a sample of only a thousand of my trackables, sorted into either traveling trackables (blue markers) and missing trackables (green). For reasons unknown to me, not shown are the distribution of some trackables in caches.

 

My trackables are not uniform in shape, size or composition. Some are simply the celebration tags marketed by Groundspeak (Makers, Holiday, CITO, Geopets, Zodiac, etc.), usually without attached items. However, most trackables do have items attached to dog tags (by chains or rivets) which can be glass, stone, wood, leather, metal, cloth patches or laminated images. Many are the size of poker chips (some are poker chips), others are smaller. There are keychain and jewelry pendants. The largest are laminated images measuring 2.25 x 3.25”. There are very few geocoins and no bowling pins or beanie babies.  Should the reader wish to see photos of the trackables, they are all listed alphabetically by series name behind the “owned trackables” link on my profile page.

 

I keep records on my trackables by series, based on either a theme or a general shape…see the first entries of the partial Comics spreadsheet below. After I enter drop dates, elapsed days between drops and the cumulative days between release and the most recent drop are calculated automatically. Shown in the first two columns are the number of drops achieved (Cnt for count) and the most recent drop log date (Last Log). These are also calculated automatically.  A zero in the Cnt column means the trackable has either not moved, or has disappeared from, the container where it was released.

 

I also maintain a catalog of my trackables…see partial catalog spreadsheet below.  It displays part of the catalog with details about the Art Deco series. I hid many columns to make important information viewable as an image. There are two catalog numbers, the annual and total. Trackables are not cataloged until they are released. All entries start with the name, ID and tracking numbers and release dates and locations. The colored ID cells indicate missing travel bugs. For those, there is information on the last logged locations and dates, along with the count (Cnt) of drops achieved (retrieved from the respective series spreadsheet). 

 

The ultimate objective of this approach, decided upon years ago, was to enable comparisons of the rates of travel and survivorship among the series. For example, as a group, do poker chips have better histories than laminated images?  For a series to be included for comparison in this project, I determined that each series must have at least one trackable achieve 30 drops, but there is a problem with that choice. Being 83 at this writing, there might not be enough time for me to do as much as once conceived. So, I will content myself with limited comparisons.

 

Part 2 of this post defines release and drop, as employed in this project.

 

 

[fendmar]

That's a lot of trackables!

[Darwin473]

These reports of yours are brilliant! 

 

On 1/24/2023 at 10:18 PM, shellbadger said:

There are recurring questions about trackable endurance and travel on the forum for which there are often very good responses, but based on limited information.

 

I have this issue, just like everyone else. I know what's happened to my TB's and I know of a few that I've seen / moved or the more famous ones. But that is a drop in the ocean and not a representative sample. Your data set is a marvel to behold. Thank you for sharing!