Souvenirs – Friend or Foe
If I did the math right, I have 96 souvenirs. When did that happen?
In October of 2010, Groundspeak announced the release of Souvenirs. Since then, souvenirs have become something that many have sought after, and many couldn’t have cared less.
Souvenirs are described as (taken from Groundspeak’s official page on the subject):
Souvenirs are virtual pieces of art that you can discover and display on your profile page. They are associated with a particular location and may also be bound by time.
Souvenirs come in many flavours. For each new state or province you find a cache in, you get one. For every mega you go, you get one. For every special weekend or other time period defined by Groundspeak, you get one. As long as you find a cache or attend an event, or do whatever the souvenir requirements are, you are granted that souvenir.
For the most part, people see them as the equivalent of “achievements” from various other types of games. A stamp that says you did “something” of value. In geocaching, these souvenirs represent your geocaching activities at certain times over the course of your caching career.
However, for some, it seems these are really just another colossal waste of time. Some view them as yet one more thing Groundspeak has tried to add to geocaching that has not really improved the sport at all.
What’s your take on this aspect of geocaching?
Souvenirs are not something that I put any thought into – seem more like a gimmick to me. If I get one that’s OK (I guess)but I don’t go looking for them.
I agree with the last of your article. Souvenirs lost me with the “31 Days of August”. For me personally, souvenirs are not important anymore.
The important souvenirs are the memories of a good cache or a good hike or a good event.
Where is that souvenirs page anyway 😉
I did not see any value in the 31 days of August ones. What I do like about souvenirs are that they act like a memory album. Every once in a while I take a look at them and recall the event that I earned it at. I reflect on the people who attended the event and the memories made that day. It is so easy to forget different events as we attend so many in the run of a year and it is nice to have a visual reminder of the time spent with friends doing something we enjoy doing together.
for us, the things we want to remember about caching are not measured by these details so well.
the caches and events where we ran into our friends (or fans) in the local community are what matter. we’ve had loads of fun hosting events and going to them. geocaching is almost always fun. local approval and appreciation is just gravy.
To me it feels nice to get a souvenir but I rarely ever go back to look at them.
When a souvenir is announced we usually think it is pretty silly because it seems to be the kind of thing that would be added to draw little children to the hobby.
However we do not ignore them, we use them like our caching numbers or the countries we visit or the states that we add. Nobody goes in our stats or souvenirs to see how we are doing and we don’t go and see how you are doing. We use all those items to make things a little more interesting or give us goals.
On our trip to Spain we had a few hours at an airport in Germany, so we spent quite a bit of time walking around the large airport trying to locate a virtual cache, which we finally did. It was interesting thing to do and we added a souvenir and country, but we don’t go and check our souvenirs or stats.
In Spain there was a day that we needed 5 caches. Why? well we are aiming to have 15 caches on every day of the calendar. It is a personal goal which motivates us. The Spanish cachers thought it was a bit strange thing to do, especially since most of them likely have less than 500 caches.
OK back to souvenirs. When we were in California, there were two pi day souvenirs. You had to go to an event on pi day and also you had to get a puzzle cache on that day. There was an event at a Marie Callenders (famous for pies)so of course we went and had pie and met some great cachers and even got one of their geocoins. After the event, a number of cachers followed us to get a puzzle that we had solved.
This New Year there was a souvenir for finding a cache on December 31 and another one for finding a cache on January 1. It sounded kind of silly, but it seems a lot of cachers liked the idea and went out to get them. In early December we put out two caches, named for each of the souvenirs, and placed them near each other. Quite a few cachers went for those caches to get the souvenirs. The most interesting was Petitcache, and wbbill and family. They went for one just before midninght and took a photo of the time on their gps, and then went for the other one after midnight and again took a photo of the time on the gps.
PAul
It’s very interesting to hear souvenirs compared to how you get various states. I really like that comparison. It’s something you CAN go for if you want to, but ultimately most people don’t pay much attention to that stuff so it truly becomes something that an individual can go for if they want to.
Actually I think that all of geocaching is like that. We use numbers, souvenirs, countries, states, etc to motivate us and give us goals. But like all of geocaching, it is personal goals.
I guess I found this item to be a bit of an excuse to say stuff that has been bothering me since the big brouhaha about supposed cheaters. I find the whole thing kind of depressing and had kind of ruined the good feeling that geocaching gives us.
As evulc says, there are no rules. Just enjoy the friendships and camaraderie
It’s unfortunate when Trolls hijack good topics. I find the whole cheating thing kind of depressing and ruined the good feeling that geocaching gives us too. The great thing about playing within your own morals and/or ethics is that nothing anyone says could ruin geocaching for them. Don’t be influenced by others #playyourowngame
Sorry but we play honest, even based on your definition. The fact that you spend time accusing everyone is really depressing and ruins it. I guesss maybe Zor should start a topic about rules, cheating, etc.
Bottom line Teta, you are ruining it for everyone one. You are upset because you feel the top COAP players are cheating and you get a geocoin because of that. Your can have our coin or whatever other prize there is. We have spent much more than the value of that coin trying to entertain and support geocaching
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB3fi7opDBc