+BirdSearcher Posted May 18 Posted May 18 For a while now I have been retrieving archived caches (cough*litter*cough) that were never picked up. The oldest one so far was 10 years since archival. Another memorable one had been archived 6 years prior & still had a trackable in it! which I put back into circulation. Others must have similar stories? 1 2 Quote
+kunarion Posted May 18 Posted May 18 (edited) While scouting a local park for cache placement ideas, I found this ammo box on the lawn next to a wooded area. It had a molted snake skin inside, and Swag and a log book. It was archived after being lost two years earlier, before I started Geocaching. I returned it to the CO. I've occasionally discovered a throwdown (and the original container) while caching, but I hardly ever go looking for archived caches. They are typically at most just broken bits of plastic strewn around. I did once find an empty ammo box in good condition, archived, with an absent Cache Owner. I've since re-painted it and placed it as a cache, and it's doing well. Edited May 18 by kunarion 1 1 Quote
+ecanderson Posted May 18 Posted May 18 22 minutes ago, kunarion said: While scouting a local park for cache placement ideas, I found this ammo box on the lawn next to a wooded area. It had a molted snake skin inside, and Swag and a log book. This cache was archived after being lost two years earlier, before I started Geocaching. I returned it to the CO. You can tell it is an old listing. "Be sure to visit T-n-T New and Used Cars for all your transportation needs while you are here." certainly wouldn't fly today! Sure would be interesting to know where that 30 cal can had been that left it in such rough condition! Quote
+kunarion Posted May 18 Posted May 18 (edited) 8 hours ago, ecanderson said: You can tell it is an old listing. "Be sure to visit T-n-T New and Used Cars for all your transportation needs while you are here." certainly wouldn't fly today! Sure would be interesting to know where that 30 cal can had been that left it in such rough condition! "T-n-T New and Used Cars" was a Geocache, a nearby ammo box full of matchbox cars for trade. That kind of thing could in fact be published today, if care were taken for the muggle situation. The archived box I found was once high up in a leaning tree. My theory is that when the tree fell, it landed on the box. Then it took 2 years to rot enough to become muggled out from under the debris. Edited May 19 by kunarion 1 Quote
+Wanderschuler Posted May 18 Posted May 18 Good for you! Sounds like a win-win for the environment and cache owners. I love that a lost trackable has been put back in circulation too. 2 Quote
+niraD Posted May 18 Posted May 18 3 hours ago, kunarion said: While scouting a local park for cache placement ideas, I found this ammo box on the lawn next to a wooded area. While scouting hide locations early in my geocaching career, I found a magnetic keyholder. I used the names and dates in the logs to identify the cache listing. Someone had "hidden it better", then the CO couldn't find it and assumed it had been muggled again, and then the CO had archived it. I contacted the CO and returned the container. 1 Quote
+BirdSearcher Posted May 18 Author Posted May 18 5 hours ago, kunarion said: I hardly ever go looking for archived caches. They are typically at most just broken bits of plastic strewn around. I am enjoying finding the archived caches in my area almost as much as finding new caches! The hunt is fun either way. I throw out the broken containers but have found so many good ones that I don’t need to buy new ones any more. In my area ,there seem to be many cachers who don’t pick up their archived caches- some likely move away, lose their mobility or die But there is at least one cacher who is still putting out new caches while never picking up their archived ones I message them or put a post on the cache page but never get a reply 1 Quote
+brekkcaching123 Posted May 18 Posted May 18 We have sooooo many caches in my area getting wiped out. Last year within 50 miles of my house we had 25+ caches get wiped because there wasn't anyone doing maintenance. One of them was by an inactive CO. It was a multi cache. I got to the first stage when it go tarchived and took the film canister. I emailed the owner and they said they stopped geocaching because it got boring and they let me keep it, so I used it as my own. Another cacher in my area who has 80+ active caches passed away back in 2022. I've adopted one of his caches with the permission of his wife. One of his caches that got archived about a year ago I'm assuming is still there, because it was only a 1.5 but was more like a 3.0. Finding archived caches is something I enjoy. I'm feeling like I could be able to find one with a TB still in it... might be tricky though. 1 Quote
+Harry Dolphin Posted May 18 Posted May 18 I was helping my sister hide some caches along a trail. I said "That looks like a good place for a cache." We found an ammo can! Final of a multi that had been archived five years previously because the first stage had gone missing. Hid a new cache, and my sister used the ammo can for another hide. She had DNFed the cache a fair while back. 2 1 1 Quote
+ecanderson Posted May 22 Posted May 22 On 5/18/2025 at 10:33 AM, kunarion said: "T-n-T New and Used Cars" was a Geocache, a nearby ammo box full of matchbox cars for trade. That kind of thing could in fact be published today, if care were taken for the muggle situation. Interesting, because it's a real business not too far away, too! Quote
+NanoApe Posted May 22 Posted May 22 In Hangzhou, China, there are very few caches. One day, I had a sudden idea and downloaded all the archived caches in Hangzhou. To my surprise, I found two archived caches located very close to me. Based on the logs, I deduced that these two caches were most likely still in their original spots. So, I went out to search for them—and indeed, I found both! One of them had been rediscovered after 8 years, which even surprised the CO, who was amazed that the container was still in place after so long. I then recreated two new caches to revive them, placing the aged containers back exactly as they were. The two caches are GCB4TQE and GCB4TTK, with the former being the one rediscovered after 8 years. 1 Quote
+Sottiwotti Posted May 22 Posted May 22 If I wasn't so scared of muggles, I would love to hunt for archived caches in my area. Pretty sure I won't have much luck though, the local CO is quite good at removing their caches Quote
+kunarion Posted May 22 Posted May 22 (edited) 22 minutes ago, Sottiwotti said: If I wasn't so scared of muggles, I would love to hunt for archived caches in my area. One concern about collecting old archived containers is, maybe the reason it was archived is that strangers are not to be poking around there. Sure, it was propped up with throwdowns or throwdown pieces of paper, and even had Found It logs, but it wasn't supposed to be there. So when attempting to pick up the container (which may be hard to find) you could run into an angry land owner, frustrated neighbor, or the police who are called while you're searching. It's nice to remove an old cache box. I'm just saying that the result can be not so nice. OTOH, when I pick up my old archived caches, there is still permission to have caches there, but I arrive with large trash bags anyway. Because you never know who may see you "carrying what looks like a camouflaged military ammo box through the woods, off-trail". It's better inside a trash bag. So if I did go to someone's old archived cache site, it would also be with gloves and trash bags, because "I'm picking up trash". People are happy when you pick up trash... Edited May 22 by kunarion 2 Quote
+DarkZen_EvilCowPie Posted May 22 Posted May 22 I once found a 10 year lost trackable for sale at a Goodwill. I alerted the owner and put it back in play. That's been 5 years and haven't heard from either since. 1 1 Quote
+kunarion Posted May 22 Posted May 22 27 minutes ago, DarkZen_EvilCowPie said: I once found a 10 year lost trackable for sale at a Goodwill. I alerted the owner and put it back in play. That's been 5 years and haven't heard from either since. I think that at some point Trackable Owners become disillusioned by the vanishing Trackables, and stop paying attention. I don't blame them for that. The item is awaiting a log, and it's almost as obvious as it can be that the current holder needs to make that log. Actually, I would prefer for Trackables to be allowed to travel regardless of whether or not the Owner is active, but whatever. But Trackables seem to evaporate much faster now than they used to. I try to think of a safe cache to place it, and the Taker starts mismanaging it immediately. And "throwing it in a box in the garage and pumping up their Stats with robotic Took It To Logs forevermore" is just as bad, maybe worse... because then it's even harder to figure out when the item becomes lost (or goes to Goodwill). Quote
Stebin92 Posted May 22 Posted May 22 I rescued this archived cache (from an inactive owner living hundreds of kilometers away) who has been in the woods for more than a decade. I washed it, let it dry, repainted it with transparent paint, removed old glue and re-glued the tar paper roof, replaced rusty screws with new ones and finally painted geocaching logos. I also saved the small lock 'n' lock container inside and let the TB that was inside travelling again. Now I only need to find a good place to hide it, maybe also where it was before or somewhere else close to it. I may add two eye rings and a combination lock (with the code written in the cache page or in a previous stage, if it'll be a multi) to prevent muggles from messing with the content, unless I'll hide in in a such remote place where noboby will stumble across by accident. 1 3 Quote
+Weber_and_Sons Posted May 26 Posted May 26 I like to go through old archived caches on geocaching.com and put them on a map of all the archived caches in my area then maybe one day ill make a cache dedicated to all the archived ones near me. none of them are findable though sadly 1 Quote
+Nite*Owls Posted May 28 Posted May 28 We just found an old, dirty archived cache today while looking for a new cache. They were just hidden two trees apart. The old one had damp swag but it didn't have a log which was strange, but I think I got it figured out on which one it was from the Project-GC archive map (if it's a traditional). Would have been helpful to be able to match up dates and signatures if it had had a log. In the very rare cases where we do find an archived cache, I usually log them as a find if I'm 100% sure I have found the correct cache online, otherwise, like the one I found today I didn't log since I can't be totally sure. There's a slight chance it could be the final of a mystery or multi. Either way, we got rid of some old geotrash/geolitter, and others won't mistake it for the new, much better and creative cache. 2 Quote
+hzoi Posted June 6 Posted June 6 There were only ever a handful of caches hidden within Naval Station Guantanamo Bay before Groundspeak disallowed caches on military installations, so when I traveled down, I took a GPSr with both active and archived listings in it. I struck out on several that had been missing for years, but I did manage to find one archived listing, as it was archived for lack of maintenance, not going missing. The hutia had been nibbling the log, but otherwise it was fine. I helped to resurrect this multi after accidentally finding it. I'd just completed a now-archived multi nearby when I saw a suspicious pile of rocks at the base of a tree. The cache had been taken over a year earlier but apparently returned. The owner was very happy to know it was back and redesigned the cache so it didn't conflict with the newer multi. 2 Quote
+JL_HSTRE Posted June 6 Posted June 6 Over a decade ago, I was gifted a Letterbox with a butterfly stamp so I placed in some woods near a library that had a butterfly garden. There were some power lines that could interfere with accuracy in addition to the trees. The listing specified a plastic screwtop container. One of the early seekers was perplexed to find an ammo can in the woods and notified me. I was able to find the ammo can and checking with my Reviewer revealed it was the final stage of a multi archived several years earlier. I logged a find on the archived cache and repurposed the ammo can elsewhere, with the blessing of the former CO, a local who had mostly quit caching by that point. 4 Quote
+Corp Of Discovery Posted Tuesday at 05:53 AM Posted Tuesday at 05:53 AM I've been known to occasionally do so... 1 1 Quote
+Sottiwotti Posted Tuesday at 05:00 PM Posted Tuesday at 05:00 PM 11 hours ago, Corp Of Discovery said: I've been known to occasionally do so... How do you do this exactly? You look up archived caches in the vicinity and decide to take a look? Quote
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.