Trackables – Yours to Discover
This past Sunday (14th), Cache Up NB hosted the very first Geo-Trackables Expo in Sussex. This event saw a pretty decent sized group of cachers come out and share their love of all things trackable. Some just stood around and chatted, while others brought out their collection to show others. Many folks have collected quite a few geocoins in our adventures in geocaching so it was nice to see what others have obtained and collected.
One of the things I saw some people doing at this event, and other events similar in nature, is the “discovering” of bugs and coins. For those unfamiliar with the practice, it goes something like this. A geocacher see a travel bug or other trackable item and makes note of the trackable code. They then log a “discover” on www.geocaching.com. This discover log is basically the same as saying “I saw this bug”. They aren’t retrieving it and have no plans to move it. They just want to log the fact that they saw the coin or bug. When they log it, the “Trackables”
tab of their GC profile is updated and the “Trackables Moved/Discovered” list now has an entry for each of the bugs they have discovered. In many cases, each coin/bug might have their own icon and so the cacher now has a new icon listed in their trackables list.
I have been to some fairly large coin events in the US and at many of these events, there are tables and tables of people with huge books of coins and many folks are going from person to person, writing down every single trackable code they can get their hands on. They then turn around and “discover” every one of those coins. It is this act of “discovery” that I have always found quite perplexing.
It seems that there is an entire genre of geocachers who are very enthusiastic about the idea of “discovering” new coins. Not moving them. Just discovering them. I have never been able to quite understand what the fascination is with trackable discoveries. I mean, I have logged the occasional one from time to time, but for those who go around and collect as many trackable codes as you can and then log them, what is the appeal? I am actually genuinely interested in what those folks find fascinating about the art of discovery.
Are you one of those discoverers? If you are, tell us your story about what drives you to discover so many bugs and coins.
I do not discover either. I do know that many others do and that is fine with me. I don’t like logging my finds all that much let alone taking the time to discover a bunch of trackables. I am trackable and I never have the patch on me, actually I can’t find it…lol. I think maybe it was a “discover Junkie” that gave Ma&Pa all the trouble this summer over taking the TBs from his hotel before he could log them.
I don’t discover unless it is a chance encounter with a vehicle decal on the road or in a parking lot. In that case, I might take a look to sees who’s vehicle out is out of curiosity.
I used to do it with gusto when I was a newbie cacher, and it appeared popular around the area at the time, but it is one of those things that seems to have fallen by the wayside. Very few that I interact with do any discovering of trackables nowadays. I would imagine it depends on the type of cacher and location.
I did not see a lot of people discovering trackables at the event on Sunday. My girls were pretty keen on it when they found some really cool coins they liked, so I am going to help them get those squared away.
I discover once and a while but mainly look for the neat ones that I liked or personal trackable items like cars, sticks, necklace. etc. At both events on my trip overseas they were all discovering everything that went by their eyes. They are huge on it over there, one guy has over 2600 trackables logged. To each their own, I enjoy moving them far more.
I like the old Jeep TBs that GC.com put out a few years ago, so I discover/move those. If the coin has it’s own icon, and I think of it, I’ll discover those, but the generic TB’s or coins without an icon don’t interest me, so I guess that makes me more of an “icon” collector.
The great thing about geocaching is that we all do things in different ways and we all have different aspects that we love. We know a lot of people who love to discover but it is not something we do.
As far as I can recall, we have never discovered a TB or coin. That means when someone shows us their auto decal or tattoo, we apologize and say that we do not discover.
I can understand that someone may see a beautiful coin at an event and would want to discover that coin to get the icon.
But what if you are going though someone’s collection writing down all the numbers without even looking closely at the trackables?
And what about those people who hand out a list of the numbers of all their trackables and you dont even see the coins.
And what about the cachers I see at big events, who go around the parking lot taking pictures of all the auto decals.
I have sometimes seen FOUND logs on caches where a cacher has simply discovered the TB’s sitting in the cache, and left them there, even though the TB’s could have been there for months.
As I have said before, we love trackables. We grab all we can and move them quickly. We try to bring and pick up as many as we can on our trips. We have brought and picked up over 50 on each trip to California and did the same on our last Virginia trip.
Our stats on GC.com show that we moved/discovered 1055 trackables. The person in Trois Riviere who chastised me for emptying his TB Hotel has moved/discovered over 4000. It seems that he gets many of his numbers by discovering (and not moving) TBs in his Hotels.
I read an arrival recently about a young cacher who has discovered 25000+. Some folks might be challenged to attain a huge number like that. That is a long time to spend young in obscure numbers. But, like pa said, caching is something different for each person. That’s what I like about it.