I have one Pathtag that I’ve never actually logged.  I received it at last year’s Geowoodstock.  The idea of an open geocoin standard is something I would like to see.  We might never see that though.  I suppose that might like letting you track your UPS shipment on the Fedex website.

For a while now I’ve been running a script in my browser that adds Geokrety support to my cache listing pages on geocaching.com.  In this way it is “kind of” open in that I can see if a cache has a Geokrety in it or not while on the geocaching.com website.    Geokrety is similar to Travel Bugs and are more popular in Europe.  I inquired about buying a list of numbers from Geokrety for use in the minting of a coin but that is not a service they offer.

As of now there is no way for an independent operation to produce products that are trackable on geocaching.com.   It makes sense for Groundspeak to get paid for making that service available.  There are costs associated with offering the tracking service.  Right now every geocoin you buy that is trackable at geocaching.com pays a fee to get a tracking number from Groundspeak.  Depending on the minting cost of the coin the fees to Groundspeak can represent 20-50% of the cost of the coin.  Starting at $2/coin Pathtags offer a much cheaper alternative to geocaching.com geocoins.   At those prices I can see them being price competitive as a signature item.  Geocachers still want to be able to track geocoins on geocaching.com.

Maybe I should ask Pathtags if they would be willing to sell some tracking numbers but let me mint my own coins?

Related posts:

1. OGA Geocoin Coming Soon
2. Grab A Light, Cache At Night
3. 2009 BCGA Geocoin

If you are like me you enjoy geocaching enough that you want to do it year round. If that is the case you are going to at some point be caching at night.  It is unavoidable. Where I live darkness arrives around five o’clock during the winter months. Caching at night can sometimes be easier than during the day. Some types of camouflage actually reflect the beam of your flashlight making for fast finds. There are even some caches specifically created to be done at night.

For the last year or so I’ve been occasionally joining a group of cachers known as the BFL Crew. This is a loose assortment of characters that go caching every Friday night, rain or shine, light or dark. Some of those caching experiences have been a lot of fun. The BFL Crew also hosts an annual night caching event called the BFL Bootcamp. I’ve been attending the BFL Bootcamp since its second year. For the latest event I was part of the organizing committee and along with my caching partner Bakers Dozen created my second night cache, Alien MacGyver. My first night cache, Beacon Pond, has been in play for about a year. You won’t find a reflective trail marker on either of these caches.

Having done a fair bit of night caching in the last year Bakers Dozen and I decided to create a coin to commemorate our experiences. In creating the coin we wanted to do something that applied to the night caching theme so we added glow in the dark elements. The coins seem to be a popular collector’s item for anyone that sees them in person, and a few that have seen them online.

We were very lucky to have taken delivery of the coins prior to the BFL Bootcamp. The delivery date allowed us to provide coins as a first to find prize in each of this year’s BFL Bootcamp caches. We were certain that many of those cachers crazy enough to go out in the dark at the end of October would appreciate a coin that captures this spirit of adventure. We were not wrong. The gold finished coin was very popular.  There are only a few of those left.  It seems that people all over the world like night caching as the coins have been sold to cachers in the US, Norway and Germany and across Canada.

To see a glow in the dark picture of the coin visit www.cacheatnight.com.

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Related posts:

1. 2009 BCGA Geocoin

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