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Coins & TrackablesCommentary

Releasing Them To The Wild

Zor

With all of the geocoin challenge programs going on in the last year, I’ve started to build a small collection of geocoins. In fact, over the course of all the time I have been caching, I’ve managed to end up with quite a few. There are a couple which I have bought for special occasions, but a lot of them are ones I have gotten through coin challenges or special events that I have been part of. Then I noticed the other day that I have these coins all over the house and none of them are doing anything.

Some of those coins have special meaning to me. My Ape Cache coin is one I am proud to have because I got it while doing the last Ape cache in North America. There’s a couple of ones I bought that I got because I really liked them and would never want to give them up. But the rest of them are just sort of sitting in a box, collecting dust, never to go anywhere. It got me to wondering…

I’ve started thinking about taking pretty much every geocoin I have and releasing them all. I tried putting them in a small book to showcase but they’ve fallen out and I never show them off anyway. If they are just sitting in a box, why not send them off out into the wild.

I know the odds are slim that they will stay moving, but they aren’t moving now. They are just sitting around, doing nothing, and not being enjoyed by anyone. At least if I released them into the wild, they might get some mileage and go somewhere interesting before being stolen or lost.

Has anyone else here had the same thoughts about all those trackables you have laying around? Do you ever think about just getting rid of them?

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Zor

I am Zor. The creator of protoculture. Otherwise known as a geeky father of two, husband to an awesome wife, and a hardcore geek.

13 thoughts on “Releasing Them To The Wild”

  • I never would throw out in a cache a geocoin I earned through some sort of challenge/passport stamper. A random coin that I got for Christmas one year with no real attachment to it(not a 500th or 1000th achievement coin for example)? Yeah, I’d toss a random coin out there. I’ve tossed out a micro FTF Signal the frog geocoin a few winters ago and it’s still bouncing around. I’ve heard it said about releasing trackables is that it’s like sending your kid off to college. It’d be nice to hear from him on a regular basis, but don’t count on it, lol.

    • See, for me I have found that there has been SO many of those geocoin challenges that they all sort of run together and begin to have less meaning. That’s kind of the reason behind my thinking about sending them all off

  • me and superwife LIVE for geocoins.

    sure, they’re a collection for us, but we really enjoy digging them out and
    enjoying how shiny they are from time to time.

    we also enjoy the fact that they are something fancy/shiny that we might be able to hand down to our kiddos who have been present for almost all of the coins we have collected so far.

    We have our share of trackables out in the wild that I have purchased with the intent of watching them travel.

    The coins we have worked for will stay in our little collection, at least for now, as a reminder of all the fun we’ve had collecting them.

  • We always said that we were not into geocoins. But we had earned so many from the challenges and won so many, and purchased so many to help support organizations and events, that we ended up with a box full. So it turned out that we had a collection.

    Keeping them in a box made it difficult to show them because they were not organized and we had to keep our eye on them when we brought them with us. So we went to the coin shop in Moncton and got a coin book with sleeves to hold the coins. It allows them to be seen on both sides without removing them, and we can bring them safely with us.

    We once released one of our ACGA coins to travel but it only lasted for a few caches and disappeared.

    One of our favorites

    .

  • I’ve only kept a couple. I like to watch them travel, and look at the pics that some cachers attach. Out of 25 or so travellers, I’ve only lost 3 or 4.
    But if I was you, Zor, I’d hold on to some, for the little kids who may one day be interested in the hobby.

  • I’ve been looking at getting a personal coin designed, but the cost is pretty high. Might go with a pathtag first. I have been very impressed with the quality and the detail that can go into them, and they can be done fairly cheaply (about $150 for 50, I think). I enjoy the pathtags in my collection almost as much as my geocoins.

    • I did Pathtags to replace my poker chip signature items. At first I thought mine were really cool. But I found that all of the paint on my peeled off over time. Not sure if it was just the batch I got or them in general. I have others that have been fine.

      The appealing thing about PTs are the price. It’s pretty cheap to get them made.

  • I dont own pathtags

    With regard to the ones we find in caches: I don’t bother with pathtags. I am not interested in logging their movements. We do most of our logging and moving of TB’s with GSAK. I dont want to have to bother going to another site to move them. However I will grab them and put them in another cache but I dont log the movement

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