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The Official Travel Bug Obituary....

Go JayBee

By Go JayBee
in Trackables

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Sadjo

+Sadjo

Posted
Posted

I found the TB, Meg, last week. It had been out of action for 11 months from being retrieved from one cache to being dropped in another. The owner's profile show they last logged on beginning of July but haven't logged a cache in several years.

 

I'm planning a trip to Florida and taking Meg with me.

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BlueDeuce

+BlueDeuce

Posted
Posted

I found the TB, Meg, last week. It had been out of action for 11 months from being retrieved from one cache to being dropped in another. The owner's profile show they last logged on beginning of July but haven't logged a cache in several years.

 

I'm planning a trip to Florida and taking Meg with me.

 

Sweet.

 

Thank you. Seriously.

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HurricaneLaurk

+HurricaneLaurk

Posted
Posted

Back in May, I found a TB that hadn't been logged as in the cache that I found it in, so I grabbed it to move it along. Turns out, last time it was logged was April 2012 in British Columbia (I live in Ontario). So I traveled with it a bit and now it's back in action.

 

Also, I lost one of my own TBs while longboarding to work one day, and a month later, it resurfaced in Tokyo, Japan. It's crazy how some things can turn around like that.

 

I have two missing TBs though, but they've only been missing for about a month so I'm not too worried right now.

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rainbowbirdies

rainbowbirdies

Posted
Posted

Our workaround for the MIA/stolen geocoins is to now only send out a proxy. We photocopy the real coin - front and back - glue the 2 sides to cardstock and then laminate it with heavy grade laminate. You can cut it into whatever size you want then. That way the real coin stays safe with us forever. If/when the proxy disappears - we will just make another one and get it back out in circulation. We have lost too many TB's to put out the real thing anymore. You could also do this with the TB tags - make a proxy tag.

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akindofmagick

+akindofmagick

Posted
Posted

I picked one of these up in a cache and sent it on its way. My daughter was with me and we figured it was photo copied so the real one would be safe. I have 2 TB's missing and I may do the same with them.

 

We sent out our very first two TBs a couple of weeks ago, hidden at the same time, in the same cache. At the last minute I decided to make "avatars" of the darling unicorn and dolphin, as my daughters were reluctant to part with them. WOW! am I ever glad I did this! Winter the Dolphin has been moved once, to NY. Sirena the Unicorn, however, has disappeared, without ever having been logged as leaving the cache she was placed in. Grrrr. Told my nine-year-old DD#2 tonight we would wait 30 days, then if there was no word of her, we would create another Sirena avatar.

 

Lesson Learned!!

 

Thank you, Photoshop!!

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akindofmagick

+akindofmagick

Posted
Posted (edited)

How about shortest distance before going MIA? A whopping 11 miles for one of my geocoins! Probably more vulnerable to being 'souvenired' than a regular TB.

Shortest distance was 0km for my son's travelbug The Kozzy Bug-gy that we placed last august. Path5inder found it a few days after we placed it and he has not been logged since.

 

Try ZERO miles/km!!! Disappeared from cache where first placed, and not logged by anyone. Grrrr!!

 

Okay, enough whinging!! LOL!!

Edited by akindofmagick
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TroutGuy78

+TroutGuy78

Posted
Posted

Of the 11 TBs I've launched since 2004, only two survive, and one of those two I just launched this weekend. I must say that TBs aren't very cost-effective. ;-) Here's the roll-call for my departed TBs:

Chester

It's Magic

Mara the Hippo

Pedal Power Jersey

REI Flyer

Round and Round

Rubber Lips

The Griz

The Wishing Well

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Darick

+Darick

Posted
Posted

I used to mourn the loss of my missing trackables, but then I started making custom replacement tags for the ones I couldn't track down after about 6 months. Another idea I had with Halloween right around the corner is to create a travel bug cemetery, where you can put your trackable's code on a gravestone along with the name of the trackable, and then link to the trackable's page where you can fondly remember and visit the lost trackables of other poor cachers. If I make a virtual cemetery, would you be interested in laying your trackable to rest there?

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sparklefingers

+sparklefingers

Posted
Posted (edited)

 

Try ZERO miles/km!!! Disappeared from cache where first placed, and not logged by anyone. Grrrr!!

 

Okay, enough whinging!! LOL!!

 

me too, my first ever TB in the first cache. kid's found it and all that was left of the TB was melted plastic :(

 

one of my missing TB's finally resurfaced this week so I hold on to hope. 4 of 8 currently still going... though one of those is my car so... that doesn't really count.

 

edit due to silly typo

Edited by sparklefingers
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Dewi o Dre-Gwyr

+Dewi o Dre-Gwyr

Posted
Posted
It's really hard for Mom or Dad to say: "Comon now, we have to let this one go" Especially if the bug is some cuddly, soft, Teddy Bear, or Dinasour.

 

That's pretty sad, really. My son has really loved some of the bugs but when it has been a little while bugs have to go back in a cache. I don't care if he had a tantrum. I would just put him in his room until he was done with the tantrum. Oh well, I guess not everyone deals with kids in the same way. Letting them keep a TB would be like looking the other way if they stuck a candybar in their pocket at the store IMHO.

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Adventure Stones

+Adventure Stones

Posted
Posted

We have a cache that is a TB reanimation cache. (Sepulchre of the Damned GC44H3H). Send us the tracking number of your "dead" TB. We place a wooden coin in the cache with your number on it. People who visit the cache may release your "Zombie" TB back into the world. If they take it out they have to make it as close to the original as possible. Of course when things come back from the dead they are not quite right.... take a look! The cache itself is a large ammo can with the inside decorated like a sepulchre. It is in a swampy nasty little area to add to the story.

The Adventure Stones

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Digger&Granny

+Digger&Granny

Posted
Posted

 

Try ZERO miles/km!!! Disappeared from cache where first placed, and not logged by anyone. Grrrr!!

 

Okay, enough whinging!! LOL!!

 

me too, my first ever TB in the first cache. kid's found it and all that was left of the TB was melted plastic :(

 

one of my missing TB's finally resurfaced this week so I hold on to hope. 4 of 8 currently still going... though one of those is my car so... that doesn't really count.

 

edit due to silly typo

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nanctom

+nanctom

Posted
Posted

I enjoy creating and retrieving travel bugs and have been really discouraged lately when they turn up missing and never get to travel. My strategy now is to place TB's only in Premium member geocaches. I do not like the facsimile/proxy/replicated approach to travel bugs. I consider that a "Fake" travel bug. A big thank you to all geocachers that log TB's.

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Fireflying

Fireflying

Posted
Posted

the best thing to do when you are putting out a trackable...include directions of how to "pick up" or "drop" trackables...etc. Most of the reasons why they go missing is failure to log the trackable. You could put your TB in a plastic baggy with a piece of paper explaining how to log and please remember to do so...etc. That will really help.

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pixi65714

+pixi65714

Posted
Posted

Man! I wish I would have known these forums were here. I could have done my trackables differently. I sent out Batman, The Joker, and Harley Quinn. (Actually, Harley I keep with me and touch down at all the caches I visit) The Joker made two stops and disappeared. Batman made one stop and disappeared. BUT after a year came back into circulation.

 

I thought it would be cute to create little stories for them and send them out to travel in the world. Little did I know the trackables were ‘too cute’ and the stories were worthless.

 

I’ll know better going forward. :)

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ChefHazmat

ChefHazmat

Posted
Posted

Placed a TB(TB1BG3R) back in 2011 in my first and only find(so far)and was happy to see it was found 9 days later. Well long story short the user that found it logged it as a discovery and not a pick up, said user is no long active, and the cache has since be archived. Learned my lesson with that one. lol

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BushySasquatch

+BushySasquatch

Posted
Posted (edited)

Ok so the missus wanted to go visit all the yard sales in Lewiston, Idaho on this nice sunny day and low and behold what do I see sitting on the table? A bag with a TB and a figurine attached to it, a little green jeep and a geocaching patch. I asked where they got it and they stated they didn't know. I explained what it was and they said I could just have it (Thanks you guys)! So I looked it up and Clover from 5 years ago in an archived cache from 5 years ago. I have never brought a bug back from the yard and was wondering, do I try to contact the owner and see what he wants done with it or send it back into the wild? 913873_10151315494415771_1154563446_o.jpg

 

I would contact the owner to see what he/she would like you to do.

Great work rescuing this TB from the garage sale!!

I live in hope that one day our missing TBs and GeoCoins turn up.

Edited by BushySasquatch
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Bug_Nerd

+Bug_Nerd

Posted
Posted

...I should have read everyone's tips first ;)

 

This one went missing~ TB629K8

 

Same story. First TB, first cache it was placed in, etc. It was placed in a campground with poor cell coverage, so I'm assuming it will be discovered 5 years from now when they get out the gear and decide to go camping again :P

 

It never occurred to me to drop it in a premium only cache....D'OH!

 

Guess I'll just have to release more of them. :)

 

Should I mark it as missing? Not sure what the purpose of that function is.

 

Thanks!

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Elorabug

+Elorabug

Posted
Posted

How about shortest distance before going MIA? A whopping 11 miles for one of my geocoins! Probably more vulnerable to being 'souvenired' than a regular TB.

 

Got you beat. I have one that went 0 miles before the cache owner of the cache I dropped it off in marked it missing. I dropped four off in that cache. Three were found in other caches (none logged), and one of those went 21 miles before disappearing again. I figure the one that went 0 miles is out there somewhere, but it's been over a year and hasn't been found yet.

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dellmill

+dellmill

Posted
Posted (edited)
It's really hard for Mom or Dad to say: "Comon now, we have to let this one go" Especially if the bug is some cuddly, soft, Teddy Bear, or Dinasour.

 

That's pretty sad, really. My son has really loved some of the bugs but when it has been a little while bugs have to go back in a cache. I don't care if he had a tantrum. I would just put him in his room until he was done with the tantrum. Oh well, I guess not everyone deals with kids in the same way. Letting them keep a TB would be like looking the other way if they stuck a candybar in their pocket at the store IMHO.

 

I agree I wouldn't let my kids do that either.

Edited by dellmill
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arlenlisa67

+arlenlisa67

Posted
Posted

I dropped my very first tb in my own hide which is .6 miles from my house (Idaho) the seven souvenirs of August. 2 days later someone picked it up and it was never logged and it just vanished. The goal was Germany. I just picked a random country. I am wondering if that cacher is thinking they have to go and take the trackable to Germany themselves. Ha ha I did contact them by email. Their username suggests they are from the same small town as me. My heart was broken but I'm doing good now. My other tb's have traveled well.

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mackbrad

+mackbrad

Posted
Posted

My first post. I have four bugs and coins that are apparently in the possession of other's. They have had them since atleast August - one was up to a year ago. Mi finally decided to put on my big girl panties and contact them. I politely asked them to move the trackables to a cache if they were still in their possession. I felt like a loser asking, but at this point it is my only hope to getting these guys moving again. I only have one that was placed in a cache and then was reported missing from the cache :(. Stinks because I take the whole trackable thing so seriously, I feel like it is my job to keep them safe while in my possession. All right hoping I get some movement with my requests especially since the weather in my area is finally turning for the better!

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mackbrad

+mackbrad

Posted
Posted

We have a cache that is a TB reanimation cache. (Sepulchre of the Damned GC44H3H). Send us the tracking number of your "dead" TB. We place a wooden coin in the cache with your number on it. People who visit the cache may release your "Zombie" TB back into the world. If they take it out they have to make it as close to the original as possible. Of course when things come back from the dead they are not quite right.... take a look! The cache itself is a large ammo can with the inside decorated like a sepulchre. It is in a swampy nasty little area to add to the story.

The Adventure Stones

That is an awesome idea! I love it!!!!!

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mackbrad

+mackbrad

Posted
Posted

Ok so the missus wanted to go visit all the yard sales in Lewiston, Idaho on this nice sunny day and low and behold what do I see sitting on the table? A bag with a TB and a figurine attached to it, a little green jeep and a geocaching patch. I asked where they got it and they stated they didn't know. I explained what it was and they said I could just have it (Thanks you guys)! So I looked it up and Clover from 5 years ago in an archived cache from 5 years ago. I have never brought a bug back from the yard and was wondering, do I try to contact the owner and see what he wants done with it or send it back into the wild? 913873_10151315494415771_1154563446_o.jpg

Those bugs were lucky you found them! I wonder if one of the kids mugged a cache!?! Maybe I'll start visiting yard sales just to see if I find some of the missing.....

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Sinuhe-BE

+Sinuhe-BE

Posted
Posted (edited)

Years ago I launched several travelbugs- One of them disappeared and later reappeared broken. The geocacher who found it contacted me, I gave my adress to him and I received the pieces and the travel tag.

All right, I logged it, but now the travel bug appears in my inventory, although it doesn't exist. I've tried to log it as "missing", but nothing happens. Every time I log a new cache or revisit a cache, the travel bug is in my inventory, which makes me crazy BECAUSE IT ISN'T. I've looked for virtual travel bug cemeteries but they seem to be all closed and archived.

Please, how can I get rid of this lost travel bug? Thank you for your advice.

Edited by Sinuhe-BE
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kaasualty

+kaasualty

Posted
Posted

Ok so the missus wanted to go visit all the yard sales in Lewiston, Idaho on this nice sunny day and low and behold what do I see sitting on the table? A bag with a TB and a figurine attached to it, a little green jeep and a geocaching patch. I asked where they got it and they stated they didn't know. I explained what it was and they said I could just have it (Thanks you guys)! So I looked it up and Clover from 5 years ago in an archived cache from 5 years ago. I have never brought a bug back from the yard and was wondering, do I try to contact the owner and see what he wants done with it or send it back into the wild? 913873_10151315494415771_1154563446_o.jpg

Those bugs were lucky you found them! I wonder if one of the kids mugged a cache!?! Maybe I'll start visiting yard sales just to see if I find some of the missing.....

 

Hah! I have CLOVER in my possession right now. Picked him up in Pennsylvania a few days ago! Little bug is traveling A LOT!!!

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MinionBrewers

+MinionBrewers

Posted
Posted

Since we are quite new to the geocaching world we never picked up travelbugs since we were unsure about them. Unfortunately the newbie cachers think they are cute and take them. We never took any trackables until we understood the etiquette of what to do with them. We released our first one ever in July, and by the second drop, it was lost! By a newbie cacher. The next experienced cacher luckily took it to Warsaw Poland!!! Never did I think it would make it that far. However, a week later I was messaged that it was no longer in the cache. So...with our last several finds that state trackables are in the container, they were indeed empty. Guess ours wasn't the only one taken.

 

RIP Minion Bru

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Alex+Aimee

+Alex+Aimee

Posted
Posted

I'm here to mourn the loss of Little Lost Chequered Tom. Tom originally wanted to travel from Gloucester, UK, to the Isle of Wight. He got as close as somewhere near Weymouth. Just as he stepped tiny paw on the ferry to cross the channel, a guy picked him up and took him to PORTUGAL.

 

Since then, the guy who "holds" the trackable has visited it in every cache they've found, but in a very obviously automated way. No pictures of the TB, no mention of the TB in their cache logs, and no notes on the TB page except for a default "Visited such-and-such". I wouldn't be surprised if the user doesn't even have the TB anymore. Or, if he does, he thinks it's his property now.

 

The user also seems to be an app user, as they are never seen on the site itself. I've messaged them many times on all mediums, both politely and probably not-so-politely, and have never had a reply. To add insult to injury, the user and I have a bit of a language barrier going on. But even my Google-translated messages have been ignored. It's useless.

 

They've had the TB since around March. They rarely cache, so there are months on end where the TB doesn't visit anything. I thought Tom was lost for good when nothing happened to him for 3 months back in November, so I marked him as missing. And then the guy came back and GRABBED it again, ignored my messages to place the TB, and continued to visit the TB in MORE Portugal caches.

 

I don't think there's hope of the TB being placed. I think it'll stay in this guy's inventory for the next thousand years, visiting caches I can't even pronounce, automated log after automated log. Who knows if the trackable itself even exists anymore? I know I shouldn't care so much. I know I shouldn't meddle with it. And I know I shouldn't have hope. So, I've decided to simply bury my Little Lost Chequered Tom and seek closure. When there is hope... it's hard to let go. It's for the best.

 

Goodbye, Tom. I hope you really are in Portugal, and not swimming in a landfill or hidden at the bottom of a drawer. I hope you're having good adventures, despite being lost. I hope you've had fun in a country I could never even dream of visiting. And I hope the clueless user is treating you well, despite not apparently knowing what you do when you find a TB. Wander on, poor Tom. Wander on.

 

*tears* Alas, poor Tom. I knew him (well-ish).

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Team Rascal

Team Rascal

Posted
Posted

In the beginning I loved the idea of TBs, purchased a bunch and set them free. Nearly all of them were lost really fast and this was a huge disappointment to me. Now I just carry all my TBs along and keep them around. I do like the idea of the avatar and I think that's what I'm going to do is make laminated copies of them and drop off the copies but keep the originals. After they get lost I'll create new copies. I realize this will be like a little bit of cheating due to the additional miles but I don't see any other option.

"Every" teenager is downloading the app on their phone to find caches but they don't even log them. I bet that's where most of the TBs disappear to.

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vw_k

+vw_k

Posted
Posted (edited)

After being placed in a vacation cache on a "party island" in Florida, the cache getting trashed, someone finding it and taking it to Delaware and it sitting in their house for 4 years until one of their geocaching friends recognised what it was, then a cacher holding onto it for another 2 years TB14REN seems to have gone missing again, dropped in a cache in South Carolina and no mention of it since July 2014 :(

Edited by vw_k
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TheAuthorityFigures

+TheAuthorityFigures

Posted
Posted

Just read 14 pages of misery, sorrow and heartbreak. I have 4 TB's that I WAS going to release, now I'm not so sure (TB7A0R3, TB7A0T7, TB7DZTM). Just too many people out there that just want to see the world burn. Nearly ALL the caches that list TB's in them around my area have no TB's in them. I know because I went to a few to rescue the listed TB from a cache that its been in for way too long, only to find it's not there. So I posted notes on the cache log(s) that the listed TB aren't there and a note in the TB log stating the same. I also emailed the TB owner to let them know.

But this got me curious, so I did a pocket query of caches in a 100 mile radius of my home location that have trackables listed. After reading the cache and tb logs, I've come to the conclusion that over 95% of TBs that end up here are lost to the black hole. What was discouraging was after looking at these logs closely, was discovering that many of the TB's were mentioned as not there by a cacher in the cache log, but NOT on in the TB log. Isn't common courtesy to let the TB owner know that their property isn't in the listed cache? Somewhere there is a break in the communication between the cacher-CO-TBO chain in my area because there are way too many TB's listed in a cache that from what I can tell went missing months and even YEARS ago.

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TxSnooper

TxSnooper

Posted
Posted

This seems like a good Forum to post a Travel Bug I found that is not registered or has been deleted. It is a Canada Travel Bug #GS9MOK - Help me Find my owners long lost pen pal - "Maitland Australia or Bust" The Mission is to get the Bug from St Catharines Ontarion Canada to the Burns Family in Maitland NSW Australia. If anyone has any information to find its way I am happy to log it for its travels. I have had no luck finding the Burns Family

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