Table of Contents

Cover Page

The World of Geocoins

Confessions of an Addict

"Yes, Officer, ..."

An Interview with Baad Daata

Regular Features

Chuckles

Credits

Back Issues of the UTAG Magazine

Background:
The first geocoin was produced by a Washington state cacher who goes by the name of Moun10Bike. He was looking for something unique to use as a signature item to place in caches he's found, beginning with his cache find #100. A link to his story appears in the box at the right.

Not only was Moun10Bike's geocoin the first geocoin, it was also the first to be trackable on the Geocaching.Com website. For quite awhile, his geocoins and the USA geocoins were the ONLY geocoins that were trackable on that site. Since then, Geocaching.Com has allowed, for a handsome fee, other geocoins to be trackable on their website. Indeed, in the geocollecting community, trackability on Geocaching.Com and having a unique icon on the site, are desired features that enhance the marketability of new geocoins being minted.

Who Produces Geocoins?
Geocoins are designed and produced by a wide variety of groups and individuals for a variety of reasons. I'll try to mention the more common ones here, though others I've missed could exist.

Coin manufacturers and/or marketers have produced coins that mark different accomplishments such as 100 Cache finds or 100 Travel Bugs found. They have also minted coins that feature items or icons readily recognized by all geocachers.

Event organizers will often have a coin produced to commemorate the event. The event could be as large as the Geowoodstock events or as small as our recent Brakeman's Breakfast in Farmington.

An individual or group may produce a series of coins with a common theme generally related to caching destinations. Examples have included a series of geocoins featuring mountain peaks, lighthouses, national parks, and Civil War sites. I've included the five geocoins in the National Park series because I happen to like them.

Variations in Size, Style, and Shape:
As you have already seen from the samples shown above, there is a wide variety in the coins produced. They vary in size from micro coins, which are about 1/2 inch in diameter, up to coins that are 2 inches in diameter, or more. There are as many different styles as there are coins. They can be plain metal, or colored on one or both sides. They can have a single color or a LOT of colors. They can have 2-D or 3-D images sculpted into them. (2-D basically has two depths while the 3-D coins have deeper and variable depth images.) Paints can be hard or soft enamels or even glow-in-the-dark. Some coins have an actual photo. The coin may have a clear epoxy coating on one or both sides to protect the paints or image. Edges may have fancy cuttings: bevelled, reed, ropes, etc. A few examples of these variations are shown here:

And though the most common shape, by far, is the typical round coin, they can come in any shape. Coins have been produced in the shape of Altoids Tins, Ravens, Maple Leaves, GPS Receivers, Lamp Posts, Bears, Horseshoes, Peppers, Boots, and Shamrocks just to name a few.

Often a coin will be produced in more than one metal or finish. Typical metals are bronze, silver, gold, nickel, brass, pewter, and black nickel. Finishes can be polished or antiqued. My own coin is 16-sided, polished silver or gold, with a bit of color in the text. It has a 3-D image on the front and the back is 2-D. It was produced in 3 metals: the more common one was polished silver. A more limited edition was polished gold that I only used for trading. And I had a few coins made in an extra special two-tone finish, gold on silver, to be used for gifts and those extra special trades. Here they are:

Numbering, Icons and Tracking:
Another popular feature of geocoins relates to numbering. In the beginning, a cacher only had to decide whether or not to have each coin printed with a unique number. Except for the Moun10Bike coin and the USA geocoins, there was no easy way to track their movements using the number, assuming the coin moved at all.

Trackability was seen as a valuable feature and many more coins were numbered. However, due to the significant cost of having them trackable on Geocaching.Com, many resourceful individuals and groups developed their own tracking software for their coins. The downside was that none of these were ever as popular as Geocaching.Com tracking -- probably because it was just another, non-standard, website to access. Plus, you didn't get credit on your Travel Bug Counts for finding and logging a coin tracked elsewhere.

Now, if you pay to have your coin trackable on Geocaching.Com, a cost of $1.50 per coin, you receive a unique ID number for each coin. Geocaching.Com provides another activation code for each unique number so that the eventual owner of the coin can "activate" it using that activation code. It then becomes "owned" by that individual and shows up in his or her Travel Bug inventory just like any other trackable item.

Recently, the coin designer has also been given the option of paying Geocaching.Com an additional fee to have their coin display a unique icon on cache pages and individual profile lists. Many people have gone out of their way to find or own a coin with a new, unique icon that they don't already have in their profile. The icon for Utah's 2006 coin is a sego lily superimposed on a blue outline of the state of Utah, one of my little contributions to the coin design.

Moun10Bike's original purpose for making his coins was to place them in caches as his signature item and then having them move from cache to cache like other travellers. However, the reality is that very few coins dropped into caches that way ever move farther than the finder's personal collection.

Collecting and Trading:
As you can well imagine, the main reason so many geocoins are being produced is because so many people are willing to buy and collect them. Collectors usually obtain their geocoins in two ways: they buy them, or they trade for them. I got my collection started by buying 5 or 10 of a new coin and then trading the extras to other cachers who had a coin that I wanted. One of the reasons I had my own coin made was so that I would have a bunch of coins to trade that nobody else had.

If you are interested in beginning a collection of geocoins, there are a few popular websites that collectors use to indicate which geocoins they have in their personal collection, which geocoins they have available to trade, and which geocoins they are looking for. The more popular of such sites also have good photos of the coins so you can see what you're getting. That would be a good way for you to see more than the few I've included in this article. A few of these sites are:

In Summary:
Hopefully, I've presented a decent overview of the wide and wonderful world of geocoins. They are a delight to behold and, who knows, they might even be worth some real money someday.