Cache Raiders

[Grandma & Grandpa]

We have a T.B. / coins trading cache. It is clearly labeled as “1-for-1 trades only” in the webpage description, frequently by our posted notes in the logs, by a red & white sign at the cache location, and a sign inside of the ammo box.

Yet people continue to take trackables without leaving any. The inventory is down from a high of a couple of dozen to two right now. But the collection of McD junk in there continues to grow.

Any suggestions as to how to deal with this? Or is it a losing battle and we may as well not even get worked up about it?

We have occasionally made a trek to a cache site only to find an empty box. That’s frustrating, and we don’t want ours to end up the same way…

cYa, Grandma & Grandpa

[gotta run]

@Gram&Gramps wrote:

Or is it a losing battle

In a word: yes. You could have a neon sign inside your cache with instructions and people would still not read it. We’ve learned the hard way that people, especially in groups and hunting numbers, don’t take any time whatsoever to read anything inside the cache.

Heck, with paperless caching, you’re lucky if they ever even go to the cache page.

So just like in other areas of life, you either have to design things to be idiot-proof and, if that’s not possible, live with the reality that your best ideas will be destroyed by travel bug hoarders, swag thieves, and general doofuses.

On the Left Side of the Road...

[Lostby7]

I’m afraid that there is very little you can do to get people to comply with your 1 for 1 wishes. In fact there are many who believe that bugs / coins shouldn’t be stuck in a cache simply because the cache owner says they need to be traded for evenly. It comes down to the argument of …”those are not the cache owners trackables and therefore they have no claim over how they are traded.”

Some feel that as the goal of trackables is to move they should be moved as often as possible (what the owner usually wants), the cache owners wishes are irrelevant.

Part of the reason I do not have a TB hotel is that I would be bummed when the trackable inventory went to zilch. The best you can do is to visit your cache often and add new trackables each time you visit.

[-cheeto-]

Travel bugs and geocoins are meant to be moved and to follow the owner of the “trackable’s” wishes not the wishes of the owner of the cache they are in.

Geocachers will always place these items in “hotels” and “retreats” and whatever but you cannot always expect 1:1 trades. These caches are also “magnets” for cachers looking to move a geocoin or find their FIRST travel bug.

In fact, expecting 1:1 trades on these items causes them to NOT meet their goals.

I own an assortment of Geocoins and Travelbugs. It’s pretty much a waste to turn them loose because no one moves them around all that much and they stay in the hands of people for eons. I find it much more interesting when they move around. Having one stuck in a Travel Bug “trap” that expects 1:1 trades is not my intention when I place them out into “the wild” but there are many caches and owners with your perspective that cause these items to stay sitting in these caches.

You chose to create a TB/GC “hotel” type cache. If you want to maintain a certain level of items in your cache for Geocachers to discover and/or move around it will pretty much be up to you to keep it filled with these items at your expected level. If you aren’t willing to do this, I would say don’t be disappointed by Geocachers who are doing what they are supposed to with items that are meant to be moved around.

This has been my opinion since the first time I saw a cache like this but I have not shared this opinion before.

-cheeto-
[/b]

[gotta run]

The travel-bug movement issue is a good point, and we cringe when our bugs get dropped in TB prisons…I mean, hotels.

To the basic question, though, of whether it’s unrealistic to expect people to heed any owner “rules” in a cache, the answer is “yes.”

Heck, people don’t even follow good caching etiquette as it is, let alone special rules. Otherwise every ammo box would be filled with similar quality swag. Instead we end up with empty boxes or caches filled with dirty golf balls, lost buttons, rusty nails, and on and on. That’s why more and more we just put out micros and forget about it. Simply not worth the time and frustration.

While we certainly expect to maintain our caches, we don’t expect to pay for endless supplies of stuff to fill the shelves of people who take more than they leave or take swag and leave travel bugs. (TBs are not trading items!!!!)

On the Left Side of the Road...

[LDove]

Hate to say, but I agree with all the previous posters. Travel bugs and coins are meant to travel and are not trade items as they are owned by someone else. I have a TB cache too that goes empty from time to time so I work to visit caches and “restock” it with new TB’s and coins and to keep them moving for their owners. 😀

[PCFrog]

@Lostby7 wrote:

It comes down to the argument of …”those are not the cache owners trackables and therefore they have no claim over how they are traded.”

Some feel that as the goal of trackables is to move they should be moved as often as possible (what the owner usually wants), the cache owners wishes are irrelevant.

Dito

[TyeDyeSkyGuy]

The simple fact is that most people don’t read anything inside the cache, and rarely read the cache page.

For example, my Riddler series of caches has instructions inside every one of them. They don’t tell you how to open the puzzle, but gives hints, and most importantly, ask that you put back everything exactly how it was found. Out of 10 Riddler caches with probably 25-30 maintenance visits, I’ve only ever found the cache to be put back the correct way, twice! On many, many occasions, the puzzles aren’t even closed or reset for the next cacher.

This is just the nature of the game I guess. Sux, I know, but don’t let it get you down.

[Lostby7]

@tyedyeskyguy wrote:

This is just the nature of the game I guess. Sux, I know, but don’t let it get you down.

Yep.

We need to also remember different people play for different reasons and have different goals. Sometimes your expectations will match up and sometimes they won’t. Don’t sweat it. Having a TB Hotel with trade requirements just means you will have to spent a bit more time on maintaining it.

[EnergySaver]

More or less a Ditto of what others said, but to help explain the thinking out there:

(1) Yup, TBs typically have goals that center around moving as fast as possible, so “Hotels” go against that concept (yet I’ve had Hotels of my own in the past too).

(2) Paperless caching does mean many people are not reading the text on the website listing … when people have it on a PDA they at least have the text in hand. But some people are into “blind” caching, just seeking a cache by coordinates alone … no reading of text or hints at all … they get a kick out of finding them that way. So all the text in the world on your listing will be of no use, no matter how you emphasis it.

(3) I’ve seen people caching with little kids, where the let the little kids check through the “goodies” while the adult just signs the log page and hands it back to the kids. So the adults never even get close enough to the container to be aware of a special note inside. I’m not saying this is bad or wrong … but it can explain the lack of reading giant blinking signs inside a cache.

A thought … maybe try a Multi-Hotel … hid a micro with coordinates to the final and put your warning right by the coordinates on the piece of paper. This is your best chance for the finders eyes to see your “rules” … but good luck with that working 🙂

[bnb]

@EnergySaver wrote:

A thought … maybe try a Multi-Hotel … hid a micro with coordinates to the final and put your warning right by the coordinates on the piece of paper. This is your best chance for the finders eyes to see your “rules” … but good luck with that working 🙂

But, this may go even more against the TB’s goal. Many people avoid multis just because they are listed as multis. If they don’t read the cache page, they don’t know that it is actually just an offset.

[Team Bear Bear]

@bnb wrote:

@EnergySaver wrote:

A thought … maybe try a Multi-Hotel … hid a micro with coordinates to the final and put your warning right by the coordinates on the piece of paper. This is your best chance for the finders eyes to see your “rules” … but good luck with that working 🙂

But, this may go even more against the TB’s goal. Many people avoid multis just because they are listed as multis. If they don’t read the cache page, they don’t know that it is actually just an offset.

True, but how about putting a log inside the micro, and put on the log sheet the coords to the ammo can that is hidden a short distance away?

[Barry Butrymowicz]

We usually try to trade Bugs and Coins 1 for 1 as we usually have about ten or so with us, but we only do this at bug hotels, and most times we trade everything out in a hotel, as we cache, we leave bugs in caches that have the room, and we do just grab TB’s or coins that are not in Hotels, when our Northwoods Bug Exchange was up and running (and will be again soon) we would have to refill it from time to time, usually we make a trip to Wausau, or Milwaukee, or sometimes another state and during a numbers run and will pick up bugs just to bring to the northwoods to get people out of their cars and walk past real trees and not light poles to find a cache, a bug or coin in there is sometimes the little push they need to walk that distance.

we are not against the 1 for 1 rule in hotels, They make it easy to trade bugs or coins when you have a small amount of time for caching and need to get rid of the ones you have been holding over a couple of weeks.

This is just our $.02 worth

Barry and Valarie of sweetlife

[Mathman]

As an owner of TB’s and many traveling coins I would prefer that my coins keep moving. It is nice to drop a coin to replace a taken one but shouldn’t be necessary.

One of our racing coins (on it’s way to Maine) was confiscated in Delaware and taken to South Carolina by a cache owner in order to stock a TB “Prison” Because the cache was monitored, it took more than 5 months to get it moved again.

I am not against TB/coin hotels. They are great. There is a very successful one in Hudson WI called “Run For the Border.” There is NO need to restrict trading and it is doing well.

[CacheARRRS]

There is a newer one near Oshkosh called “right in Planeview” that sees a nice traffic flow of TB’s.

Every time I stop by there are around a half dozen movers, and nothing stagnates there….and there are no “rules” governing trades and it seems to be working just great.

[Author]

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