Gotta love eBay…

[glorkar]

Punched in “geocache” to see what would turn up. Of course there were the usual bison tubes, geocoins, t-shirts and other misc. stuff. A few items did stand out though:

Book: Geocache of the Rainbow Bull

Container: Pipe bomb…I mean, magnetic under bridge cache

Container: Greenie the Groundhog

[Team_Sandman]

Yes I also love Ebay I’ve gotten a lot of great ideas from. I have about 8 brand new caches that should be shockers to some.. I just ordered a new T-shirt from Debbie does decals with a big geocache logo and my screen name. Im always looking for the next awsome cache idea and the net is the place.

[-cheeto-]

@glorkar wrote:

Container: Pipe bomb…I mean, magnetic under bridge cache

Hmm.. Geocaching.com prohibits placing caches on bridges. Nothing says bomb squad call more than that container magnetted to the underside of a bridge.

[HeliDood]

He mentions a foot bridge in the auction description. Thats probably what he meant.

[HeliDood]

A Wisconsin geocacher, “Firemonkee” has a geocache eBay store.
http://stores.ebay.com/firemonkeescachecloset?refid=store&sspagename=domain

They sell these little “critter” cache containers. Firemonkee has a series called the Critter Chronicles. More or less they’re nano’s hidden in the woods. (and a few of them, from my experience, were a PITA to find).

They sell some other containers on their store as well.
Like this one 😯
http://cgi.ebay.com/GEOCACHING-1-Nano-Revenge-Micro-Tree-Branch-Cache-/220494800678?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item335683a726

What it looks like to me is having a geocache eBaY store could help pay to fill your car up with geoGas on those out-of-town caching trips.

[Team Deejay]

You know, yesterday we were searching for an ammo box that hadn’t been found since November. It took us the better part of an hour at GZ, and that was after a phone-a-friend to confirm it wasn’t up a tree, buried, or hidden in some sort of diabolical fashion. It was only 50 feet away from GZ, but with 7 months worth of nature on top of a ground hide, it ended up being very difficult to find.

So, why did I bring that up? Placing a normal hide in a wild area can provide quite the challenge without resorting to “tricks.” Whenever I see a thread about placing “clever” tiny containers in wilderness areas, I always cringe. This sort of thing tends to tear up the area and give us all a black eye with land managers. A former WGA board member used to add the following link to his forum sig, and I think it applies here.

Any fool may throw a stone down a well which a hundred wise men cannot pull out.

[PCFrog]

@Team Deejay wrote:

So, why did I bring that up? Placing a normal hide in a wild area can provide quite the challenge without resorting to “tricks.” Whenever I see a thread about placing “clever” tiny containers in wilderness areas, I always cringe. This sort of thing tends to tear up the area and give us all a black eye with land managers.

I thought caches were placed to be found. However I tend to find more and more small to micro wood caches.

[Team Deejay]

@PCFrog wrote:

@Team Deejay wrote:

So, why did I bring that up? Placing a normal hide in a wild area can provide quite the challenge without resorting to “tricks.” Whenever I see a thread about placing “clever” tiny containers in wilderness areas, I always cringe. This sort of thing tends to tear up the area and give us all a black eye with land managers.

I thought caches were placed to be found. However I tend to find more and more small to micro wood caches.

You know, there are micros, and then there are micros. People place micros in the woods because they are cheap and relatively easy to hide. Usually people realize that a placement needs to be done in an environmentally sensitive fashion, but remember that we get new people playing all the time. They see a micro hanging in a cedar tree in a evergreen forest (pretty much indestructible) and a nano in a city hide, and they think about how clever it would be to attach a nano to a blade of grass in a sensitive prairie. As a result, the area gets all stomped down and the land managers think we are a bunch of idiots.

We also have a copycat factor. I know of one hider who thinks it is cute to drill bolts into live trees and put magnetic containers on the bolts. Now I hear of at least two other hiders who have copied that technique. I will tell you that this hide technique has been mentioned by land managers in two different county park systems as one of the reasons they need permit systems and complex rules. I try to assure them that the vast majority of geocachers don’t behave like this, but this stuff doesn’t go unnoticed. Everything we do is done in public. As hiders (and finders) we need to keep the needs of the public and the land managers in mind when we play our game. Otherwise, we will end up with more permit systems and banned areas.

[Trekkin and Birdin]

Dave, Thanks for linking to Genius Loci’s excellent commentary. I enjoy a truly clever hide as much as the next person, but “clever” and “just plain tough” are not often the same thing. Anytime some part of nature is altered, like drilling into live trees, I struggle with that concept, even though it is indeed clever. This time of year I REALLY hate pine tree hides more than ever, because often as not, birds are nesting in there, too. I’ll generally walk away from those and if I can come back later after the birds have fledged, i will. In one case, because I’d seen quite a few “nest” hides, I almost took a real nesting Mourning Dove for a cache.

Our environment has enough with which to contend without creating situations that bring us kooks (including myself and Trekkin’ in the group) into the woods where we might lose judgement in our desperation for a smiley. Speaking just for myself and Trekkin’, we’re finding ourselves walking away from caches that aren’t our thing. We don’t need those smileys and can walk away from them. I know others just love them, and there’s room for all, but I do think as the hobby evolves, at times sight is lost of the original intent.

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