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I know it’s a fact of life of geocaching that caches and travel bugs will get stolen.
But does anyone actually have any luck with geocoins? If you do, is there some big secret to longevity that we are missing here (without drilling a hole in them, gluing them to a brick, etc…)?
I pretty much expect that every coin we release into the wild will last for a few caches, if we’re lucky, then be heard from no more.
So I’m sitting on five really cool coins here that were won or given to us or our children as gifts. And I have a dilemma. On one hand, we don’t personally collect coins and it would be great to see them move around. On the other, it irks me to have them quickly become part of someone’s permanent collection. What do I do? I’ve already told the kids not to expect to see their coins if we put them in a cache. How disappointing and hard to explain.
So my question is, what’s the point of geocoins? My experience is, the uglier the bug, the better chance it has of staying alive. Coins just seem to up the ante on the cute/collectible factor and beg to be taken.
On the Left Side of the Road...To spend money …….. ?
I have resisted the urge to collect these coins.
(I do collect the icons, and my TB list has some 540 icons.)
But they are a very interesting collectible. I like to hold the bare metal in my hands – wonderful feeling of … ???
The rarity of these coins makes the collections very unique. And while geocaching is still popular, there is a market for the selling and trading of them. Afterwards …. hard to tell, but I suspect they will remain highly valuable.
I wonder if anyone has heard of a non geocaching collecting them yet?
Well this is my point. They are marketed as a trackable, not a collectible. However, the become a collectible.
So why should I pay to build someone else’s collection?
What am I missing here?
On the Left Side of the Road...I have sent out over 300 geocoins. Some are drilled and tagged and some are not. About half of these coins are now missing. Some disappeared from the first cache I placed them in and others traveled many miles beforre being lost. If they are tagged or not doesn’t seem to make much difference on if they disappear of not. I even had one coin that the person stole the tag and left the coin. Go figure….
It is quite a disappointment when they disappear but the fun of watching them travel and read what is posted about them far exceeds the “bum” factor of when a coin is reported missing.
Then there is the real fun and excitement when an occasional lost coin shows back up again many months or years later.
And what the coin looks like doesn’t seem to matter if they are stolen or not. Some of what I thought were the ugliest coins I have sent out were lost and I got a lot of really cool looking coins that are still traveling around yet.
@bugsmasher69 wrote:
I have sent out over 300 geocoins. Some are drilled and tagged and some are not. … If they are tagged or not doesn’t seem to make much difference on if they disappear of not.
This surprises me.
What is the experience of others who have gone the drill-and-tag method?
On the Left Side of the Road...We have seen a few where a copy was made of the coin, laminated and send around. Not sure it that would be a solution for you but would insure that the original wasn’t stolen, yet others can share in it. A step above a virtual coin.
TEYou could also take them to events and let other people enjoy them as well as yourself – share the joy! 😀 Then, they are still under your control, but you can see the fun on other people’s faces as they get to discover them. I have one of the Starfish geocoins and I wear it as a necklace for people to discover. I don’t buy them anymore either – they are cool, but I just get mad when they get stolen.
@Timberline Echoes wrote:
We have seen a few where a copy was made of the coin, laminated and send around.
Not a bad solution, and not likely to get stolen.
However, seems to defeat the purpose of actually having the coin travel.
On the Left Side of the Road...@ldove wrote:
I have one of the Starfish geocoins and I wear it as a necklace for people to discover.
My starfish geocoin had traveled over 26,000 miles before it was lost in a cache that got muggled.
If we see coins in a cache we at least will take down the tracking number and report the Discovery so the coin owner knows it is safe at that time, however if it is a copy or laminate we will not.
I think it is wrong to consider coins trackables at this point, as everybody makes them into collectables (myself included)
@kansas64 wrote:
I think it is wrong to consider coins trackables at this point, as everybody makes them into collectables (myself included)
Therefore…”What’s the point of geocoins?”
This basically confirms that people collect them, even though they are stamped “Trackable at geocaching.com” with a unique number.
Therefore, the tracking is pointless, and you can expect to spend $$ per coin just to add to someone’s personal collection when they steal them.
No thanks!
On the Left Side of the Road...The point of geocoins is whatever you want it to be. Or not to be if that’s your choice.
I love to find a coin in a cache and add to it’s story. I also have a collection (not from caches!) of about a hundred coins. We’ve had rotten luck with coins we’ve released, so we probably won’t be releasing very many. Putting an unactivated coin in a new cache for FTF is very rewarding. At least you know where it went, and it’s appreciated by the lucky cacher that gets it.
Our first coin was from an FTF on one of Mathman’s caches. That’s what got us started.
@Team Black-Cat wrote:
The point of geocoins is whatever you want it to be. Or not to be if that’s your choice.
So if the way I want to play the game is to take every ammo can that we find because hey, they’re kind of handy, is that ok too?
Obviously no, but that’s exactly what happens when someone steals a coin and adds it to their permanent collection.
I didn’t realize how naive we were regarding coins, and that people simply assume they were there to take rather than move along. Like I said, I have better things to spend my money on that building up people’s personal coin collections.
On the Left Side of the Road...Personally I don’t get excited by them for the reasons you listed. When someone gives me a coin, I do enjoy giving it to others who seem to like them or placing it in one of my geocaches just because it may cause some excitement about visiting my cache.
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