Geocoin trouble

[Merge!]

Hey everyone.

I have a geocoin, Merge (TB1PKQW). Some strange things have happened with it, and I was wondering if anyone here has encountered anything like this. It was last seen in a cache in Illinois. Two days ago, I looked at its current location, and it was listed as "Unknown Location", yet the logs showed that it had been dropped in the cache in Illinois. One of the logs in the cache's logs noted that this geocoin was not in cache, and I emailed user to verify.

I emailed Support at gc.com, and they replied saying nothing was wrong. I looked at the geocoin's logs again, and sure enough, it was once again listed in its last known location. Although this 'error' had been displaying for two days, until gc.com looked at it. It seems pretty obvious to me that there was some sort of anomaly with geocaching.com's database, and something went screwy. But, gc.com has not been very helpful.

My concern is that someone tried to log the grab, the database had its anomaly, and now its lost in oblivion. Unless of course the person decides to drop it in another cache. So, either someone stole it, or its in someone's hands, and just not logged at gc.com, or something went wrong with gc.com logs.

I'm wondering if anyone here has seen this happen where your geocoin / TB is no longer listed in any cache, and it just says "Unknown Location" with a question mark next to it.

The most frustrating thing is that since I didn't provide gc.com with a screenshot, they say it didn't happen.

Any thoughts?

-Merge

[EastVillageFamily]

We have had terrible luck with trackable items. Several of them have suddenly been logged as 'Location Unknown" by cache owners who simply say they never saw the item in their cache. None of our trackables have fulfilled their missions either. As I'm sure you know, there are many unscrupulous geocachers out there who derive more fun from taking the toys away from the sandbox rather than playing the game with everyone else.

The cache owner always has the option of logging a trackable item as 'missing', if it is logged into their cache at that time. Once an item is logged 'missing' by the cache owner, it comes up as 'Location Unknown' on geocaching.com. The only way for that to change is for someone to log it back into a cache. We grew tired of asking cachers if they saw our stuff, so we don't play this game much anymore.

[halijusapa]

Unfortunately we had to give up too! Our first TB went missing almost at the start, our second is sitting with a "seasoned veteran" who apparently has stopped caching for now. Luckily our geocoing has gone "across the pond" to the UK. This aspect of the game is fun, but it's often a bit of a gamble.

[cookiequeen]

I recenty received an email from gc.com-- a cacher was looking for a travelbug of mine, and it was not in the cache as indicated on the website. It seems to me (and I would assume, to most people) the combined aspects of human nature, anonymity , and distance can inherently cause this system to break down. I like the idea of travelbugs/geocoins in theory, but in reality they seem to be a crapshoot.

[Bonick0]

My Law enforcement coin went missing as soon as I dropped it off in central park. I changed its location to "unknown," and it's now permanently in limbo.

[Merge!]

Ahhh, I see, so 'Unknown Location' is an actual option...

So, it seems that gc.com decided to switch it back to its previous location after I emailed them. Thanks for clarifying. It still logged over 2,000 miles, so I'm happy. Hopefully someone will decide to log it. It was an ugly coin, don't know why someone would want to keep it.

Oh well.

[Tatanka49]

There are tooooo many people out there who collect, rather than move coins. I've stopped putting coins out for that very reason. I still play with TB's though and have about a 40% success rate. I just received an e-mail from a cacher in California who said he found my missing TB. I didn't know it WAS missing.. But he's reset the clock and sent it on its way again.

[Merge!]

[Merge!]

Well, after all that, my geocoin turned up again!

People aren't that bad after all...

-Merge

[buttaskotch]

I was reading about this problem on the GC.com forums.
Apparently, there are a slew of unpublished caches used by unscrupulous individuals that will log the coin in them and use that unpublished caches as a holder for all the ones they collected. These caches apparently are unpublished for years.
I think GC.com should enact a time frame of sorts for unpublished caches.
Very pathetic and disturbing.

[addisonbr]

Just from watching the coins logged into some of my caches, I've found that what Merge ran into isn't that uncommon - sometimes people will go two, three, four weeks or more before logging that they picked up a coin. I can't really explain it, except that vacationing cachers sometimes wait until they are back home to log everything they did all at once.

To buttaskotch's point, I have heard that at least in the NY area the admins are now starting to look closer at unpublished caches. Whether this is to flush out bogus coin prisons, or to head off potential proximity conflicts, or for some other reason I haven't thought of - I'm not sure. But I thought it was interesting that folks are starting to get feedback from Groundspeak about their unpublished listings.

[G.O. Cash]