Oldest Trackables?

[+shellbadger]

The question of the oldest trackables gets raised periodically on the forum and readers will usually offer up examples, but with few details. As of the end of 2023, I have had 1,354 trackables belonging to someone else pass through my hands. I examined the logs for all of them and have compiled a list of the 25 oldest ones, with some details (see the table below).

 

I have no illusion that any of these are the oldest trackables, but rather they are only the oldest among a relatively small sample…the table is just a point of reference from which to start.  I would like readers to post the ID numbers of old trackables they own or have handled so I can update the list. However, there are rules.

 

The trackable must be as originally released, I want no copy or proxy trackables unless that was what was originally released. If I see an owner’s name in later drops, that trackable is usually disallowed.

 

The release date is not the activation date, it is the date the owner hands the trackable off or otherwise leaves it to its fate in a cache.

 

A drop is fundamentally a release of possession, either by a drop into a container or by handoff to another cacher. The original release is not counted as a drop.

 

As of 2024, the release date must be before 2009. If the release date is much before 2009, the trackable must be at least 14 years old on the last date logged. Those values will change with time and participation.

 

The last date is the last logged date of either a drop, retrieval, grab or visit. Ignore terminal discover logs. I calculate the days between the release and last logs and convert the days to years (Yrs). The Drops are divided by years to arrive at the average drops per year (/Yr). Low /Yr values indicate long periods between drops, usually as held trackables or residence in remote or rarely visited containers. Also, larger or unusually-shaped trackables move at slower rates.

 

Finally, I make no distinction between missing or active trackables. Some of the listed trackables have already been marked missing by the owners or cache administrators. However, based on records I maintain on my own trackables, I don’t regard a trackable as missing until a period of three years has elapsed since the last logged drop, retrieval, grab or visit. That is the point at which the probability of a trackable becoming active again is much less than 1%. The only listed trackable that satisfies this criterion is the one at rank 14.

Edited December 26, 2023 by shellbadger
misspelling

[+Goldenwattle]

Was this person 'collecting' other geocachers' trackables?

Will they be set free again?

[+shellbadger]

I consulted my profile page, where Groundspeak lists links to all the trackables I have ever logged. I am a retired old man with time available, it took me about three weeks to put the data together. All but maybe three trackables were released long ago. Those in my possession now were retrieved recently and are already boxed and awaiting mailing to a friend in Scotland after the holidays.  I do not collect or otherwise hang on to trackables.

[+Goldenwattle]

10 hours ago, shellbadger said:

I consulted my profile page, where Groundspeak lists links to all the trackables I have ever logged. I am a retired old man with time available, it took me about three weeks to put the data together. All but maybe three trackables were released long ago. Those in my possession now were retrieved recently and are already boxed and awaiting mailing to a friend in Scotland after the holidays.  I do not collect or otherwise hang on to trackables.

"I have had 1,354 trackables belonging to someone else pass through my hands."

Sorry, I misunderstood.

[+CAVinoGal]

16 hours ago, shellbadger said:

I consulted my profile page, where Groundspeak lists links to all the trackables I have ever logged. I am a retired old man with time available, it took me about three weeks to put the data together.

 

Interesting data - and although I , too, am retired, I don't seem to have THAT much time on my hands to go back through the  316 trackables I have handled in my geocaching "career" to extract the same information you did!  I do watch those I pick up and drop off, at least for a few drops, just to satisfy my own curiosity, and I do go back and review that watchlist from time to time.  Some move quickly, some sit for a long time. Once they are off my watchlist, though, I forget about them.

 

I'm curious, now,  as to the oldest TB I  may have handled.  Still, I'd have to open 316 TB pages, and go back to the beginning of each one's history.  A rainy day project, for sure!  It IS supposed to be rainy today, but we have a winery trip scheduled....

[+Mysterion604]

That A-10 TB would be awesome to see.

[+shellbadger]

I didn't calculate age or drops on all the trackables. I had set up a spreadsheet to determine the days between the release and last log dates. After the first 40 or so, I established a top 25 after which it was just screening for anything older than rank 25. I would then call up a TB home page and if even the activation date was after 2009, I moved to the next one. The ones with earlier release dates required a little more scrutiny.

 

I should add that, on the cacher profile page, Groundspeak sorts the the trackables logged into those that employ the travel bug dog tags and those that use the themed travel tags. Among the total trackables I have logged, only 40% were of the former but contributed the most trackables to the top 25.. The themed travel tags (60%) didn't become mainstream until around 2012 so they mostly didn't require much effort. That said, the Jeeps and Diabetes travel tags were among the very oldest trackables.

 

Just send me the ID number, I will do the rest.  Even if you did pull in the extra info, I would do it again to be sure everything on the list gets the same treatment.

 

 

Edited December 27, 2023 by shellbadger
additional thought

[+shellbadger]

40 minutes ago, Mysterion604 said:

That A-10 TB would be awesome to see.

That is my favorite modern warplane. Sadly that is not the only example of a trackable without photos on either the home pages or the galleries.

Edited December 27, 2023 by shellbadger
spelling

[+GeoCharmer81]

4 hours ago, CAVinoGal said:

 

Interesting data - and although I , too, am retired, I don't seem to have THAT much time on my hands to go back through the  316 trackables I have handled in my geocaching "career" to extract the same information you did!  I do watch those I pick up and drop off, at least for a few drops, just to satisfy my own curiosity, and I do go back and review that watchlist from time to time.  Some move quickly, some sit for a long time. Once they are off my watchlist, though, I forget about them.

 

I'm curious, now,  as to the oldest TB I  may have handled.  Still, I'd have to open 316 TB pages, and go back to the beginning of each one's history.  A rainy day project, for sure!  It IS supposed to be rainy today, but we have a winery trip scheduled....

Not sure about phones, but on laptop there are 'sort by' tabs on your trackables page.

[+CAVinoGal]

1 hour ago, GeoCharmer81 said:

5 hours ago, CAVinoGal said:

 

Interesting data - and although I , too, am retired, I don't seem to have THAT much time on my hands to go back through the  316 trackables I have handled in my geocaching "career" to extract the same information you did!  I do watch those I pick up and drop off, at least for a few drops, just to satisfy my own curiosity, and I do go back and review that watchlist from time to time.  Some move quickly, some sit for a long time. Once they are off my watchlist, though, I forget about them.

 

I'm curious, now,  as to the oldest TB I  may have handled.  Still, I'd have to open 316 TB pages, and go back to the beginning of each one's history.  A rainy day project, for sure!  It IS supposed to be rainy today, but we have a winery trip scheduled....

Not sure about phones, but on laptop there are 'sort by' tabs on your trackables page.

 

Yes, I see I can sort by last log, distance traveled, and Name; but I'm not seeing a way to find out how old those TB's are without opening each of the 316 TB pages for those I have moved or discovered at some point.  A rainy day project, for sure!!

[+fizzymagic]

I own this one, released 28 May 2002 and logged 12/06/2023

 

I believe it is older than any on your spreadsheet.

 

I consider myself very lucky!

Edited December 27, 2023 by fizzymagic

[+shellbadger]

4 hours ago, fizzymagic said:

I own this one, released 28 May 2002 and logged 12/06/2023

 

I believe it is older than any on your spreadsheet.

 

I consider myself very lucky!

Outstanding, and I see that is still active, I will work it up. Lucky indeed, I released over several hundred trackables during 2010-2011 and I have only a handful that have made it to 13 years.

[+GeoCharmer81]

This one TB3CTY6 ▼ has been going since April 18, 2013 with most recent log on October 22, 2023 but sort of 'doesn't count' because ... it's me!!! Too bad I didn't do it when I started caching in 2009. Although, TB2WM77 ▼ has been going since June 17, 2009 with most recent log on August 31,2023.   Still doesn't hold a candle to the one owned by fizzymagic!!!

[+GeoCharmer81]

6 hours ago, CAVinoGal said:

 

Yes, I see I can sort by last log, distance traveled, and Name; but I'm not seeing a way to find out how old those TB's are without opening each of the 316 TB pages for those I have moved or discovered at some point.  A rainy day project, for sure!!

That sounds like a big job. I wish there was a sort setting for when they were activated.   You got me curious. I only have 157 activated. though. I sorted mine by most recent log, took into consideration how many miles they've gone, whether they were bought and adopted or originally activated by me, and my memory of which I thought I owned longest.

[+shellbadger]

9 minutes ago, GeoCharmer81 said:

This one TB3CTY6 ▼ has been going since April 18, 2013 with most recent log on October 22, 2023 but sort of 'doesn't count' because ... it's me!!! Too bad I didn't do it when I started caching in 2009. Although, TB2WM77 ▼ has been going since June 17, 2009 with most recent log on August 31,2023.   Still doesn't hold a candle to the one owned by fizzymagic!!!

I will look at the second one, it might make the list for a while, depending on how many responses I get..  You are right fizzymagic's trackable might be untouchable (see attached).

[+shellbadger]

17 minutes ago, GeoCharmer81 said:

This one TB3CTY6 ▼ has been going since April 18, 2013 with most recent log on October 22, 2023 but sort of 'doesn't count' because ... it's me!!! Too bad I didn't do it when I started caching in 2009. Although, TB2WM77 ▼ has been going since June 17, 2009 with most recent log on August 31,2023.   Still doesn't hold a candle to the one owned by fizzymagic!!!

I have your second one at 14.214 years.  I will work it up later, it is is near midnight here, bedtime for this old man.

[+GeoCharmer81]

49 minutes ago, shellbadger said:

I have your second one at 14.214 years.  I will work it up later, it is is near midnight here, bedtime for this old man.

I didn't check it out to 'make the list,' just y'all got me thinking. Those are both mine. If you would like to put it on your list, you are welcome to do so--- that would be neat!!!

[+shellbadger]

In an earlier post, I uploaded a preliminary top-25 list of the oldest trackables. I asked readers to send ID numbers of trackables that might be included on the list and a few cachers did.

 

In the meantime, I discovered a means to quickly screen the trackable lists of logged trackable of a few of my US and European correspondents. The screening that took me weeks before, could be completed in a few hours. In summary, I learned after sorting the lists by most recently-logged trackables, the first trackables for a given date listed are the oldest.

 

I started with 14-Jan-24 and worked backwards to 6-Jan, when the screening was suspended so I could spend my time counting drops. Early It became clear that 15- and 14-year-olds were pretty common and I should restrict my search to trackables activated before 2006 to discover the oldest ones.

The initial screen included over 70 trackables, but more than half of them had obviously included duplicate tags or proxies. I encounter two such examples that had accrued more than 22 years. There may well be others on the present list, but to winnow them further would require reading every log entry on 100-300 pages for every trackable.

 

Although more than half the entries on the original table were replaced, the present table is absolutely not definitive. It is the gleanings from only five cachers having logged trackables active in early January 2024. While this is a meager sample, it is enough to satisfy my curiosity. I have no doubt that there are enough unknown trackables to displace most of those listed on the present effort.

 

My oldest active trackables are over 13 years old. I started this project to determine how their age compared with others that may be out there. What I learned is they are at least eight years behind the active leaders and I will not live long enough to see any of them make a future leader board.

 

The criteria for inclusion in the table are detailed earlier in this thread. However, I will clarify some points and make some observations.

The ranking is based on age in years (the gold column), which involves calculating the difference in days between the release dates (green column) and the last logged date (the blue column). Days are then converted to years. Three decimal places were sometimes required to establish rank.

 

The drops are counted exclusively from the map page of each trackable…it was the most time-consuming part of the project.  The counts represent only a minimum number of drops or exchanges. Unlogged drops or exchanged usually cannot be identified. The drop number may also be interpreted as the number of cachers who have possessed a trackable.

 

The values for age, drops and miles are current as of 19-Jan-24. Subsequent activity for any of the trackables can change the ranking. The trackables with last-dates in years 2022 or older, are likely missing will eventually fall out of any future rankings.

 

Except for the itemized trackables following, the majority spent time in both North America and Europe, perhaps more the latter…Australia and New Zealand are also frequent destinations. Many of the Europe-based trackables had pilgrimages to Seattle. Number 5 was in Europe and the Middle East. No. 7 stayed in the USA except for a brief trip to Iceland. No. 9 was Europe only. No. 12, USA and Bermuda only.  No. 21, USA only. No. 23, mostly Europe. No. 24, mostly USA.

 

I am finished with this exercise, do not send any more candidates for evaluation.