Those who occupy themselves a bit longer with the game geocaching, will sooner or later probably reach the point to hide a geocache themselves.
At best, some geocaches have been found and preferences have been developed already. Hopefully you know what you have enjoyed and what you have not. Also you have realised that some extraordinary geocaches get noticeably many favourite points and others less, or even zero. As a geocacher you will wish that your own geocache goes down well, gets good ratings and receives many favourite points and that everybody at the event is talking about it. A simple tin released as ‘Tradi’ is at least in Germany, not enough any more.
But, how do you do that? How can you create extraordinary geocaches? This post shall provide some answers.
Inventive Geocaches – What is Belonging to It?
Müssmannhaus, Vergissmeinnicht, Die Kinder des Buchbinders, … most geocachers have heard of theses extraordinary geocaches and have tried to get an appointment. And many have the wish to create something legendary, too. But, how do you do that? Obviously, the hideout or the location is an essential factor for a special geocache. But just that is not enough. The general idea is also important for a great cache. Does it contain something new? An extra challenge? A surprising experience? A gadget?
Let’s have a look at the list of the geocaches with many favourite points.
Geocaches With The Most Favourite Points
Often cachers need to book appointments to attempt these extraordinary hides. With some of the above mentioned geocaches the next free date lies a few days or up to 2 years in the future!
Theses caches have one thing in common: They are all very complex, include a number of stations and have a special ‘wrapping’ – a house, a vehicle, a complete garden, a container, …
By the way: Nearly all of these highlight caches are located in Germany. This shows, that geocaching is quite relevant here!
Of course, this is an extreme effort. But honestly: A simple PETling with a log stripe or even worse, a nano cache does not lure anybody behind the stove.
The owners of the above mentioned caches have neither avoided costs nor effort, to create something really extraordinary. Some have even released a special coin (for geocaching relevant collector’s coin). Only to find the cache hideout requires a lot of research, endurance, surely many conversations and stamina. But that is not enough. If such a special hideout is found, it must be equipped with worthy tasks and stations. Therefore creativity and manual skills are asked.
Must Have Geocaches – So You Will Find A Suitable Location
Nowadays, extraordinary geocaches need a special location.
The above mentioned extraordinary geocaches examples require all a bit more than a crash barrier or a tree root as hideout.
The question here is: How can we get such a hideout? Normally you will need a partner, someone who provides you the space for a container, a car or a trailer, at best without charge. At the end you will have enough expenses for materials, awesome stations and eventually external service (e.g. electricity).
Exactly for this challenge I want to introduce a possible solution, which has led to success many times with our own caches.
How do you get someone to provide you expensive bought or rented space for your nerdy game? How can you convince someone to create an extraordinary hideout on his property?
The answer is simple: Look for someone who in interested in the side effects!
Find A Partner!
An Example: Maybe you have a great idea for a car cache. You can get a used and non-functioning car on eBay for about 100 Euros. But you cannot leave the car somewhere in a public traffic area. Maybe you do not have an own parking space. Where would a car suite perfectly in the environment? Of course! On the site of a car dealer.
Just cruise through a random city. Often the car dealers line up at the exit routes. Most of them have a site that can be accessed free. And what does a car dealer want? Visitors! Visitors who look at the cars and in the best case become interested. Therefore car dealers make huge efforts. Look at your daily newspaper. How many large-size adverts of car dealers do you see there each week? Posters and radio adverts are also used to attract visitors.
What happens when someone hides a genius geocache? The geocache is searched, gets great logs and favourite points. Other cachers see this, become curious and come as well.
If you now go with your groundbreaking idea to a car dealer in your area and present that more than 100 visitors per year are to be expected, it can possibly happen, that the car dealer says: ‘Of course, you can get the space.’ This happened to me many times.
An other example is introduced in this Video
This does not just work with car dealers. Just think about who has the largest external area and is depending on visitors and walk-in customers. I can think of
– tourist restaurants
– construction markets (hardware stores)
– leisure facilities (e.g. parks)
If you play your cards right, it can even happen that the host of your hideout shares your material costs, or provides you a car, or eventually an old container. Everything has happened already.
Create Extraordinary Geocaches – Guideline Consistent!
Now you may argue like – yes, but the geocaching guidelines prohibit hideouts in businesses. And you are right. Strictly speaking the external area of a car dealer does belong to the business. But I experienced, that when the area is accessible, that means if it is not enclosed or locked, if nobody must be asked for permission to get there and if no access fee is charged, then it is mostly OK.
My recommendation: Work together with your local reviewer as soon as possible. Introduce your plan, explain why you need a special location and if you have found a partner, like a tourist restaurant, then state your geocaching reviewer that geocachers will have free access without business contact at any time. In the most cases together you will find a good solution.
Great Geocaches – So Your Geocache Will Be Among The Most Popular Geocaches in Germany
If you have now a suitable location for your hideout and have clarified all open issues with the reviewer, the main work will start: Implement your great ideas! Clearly, the main aim with each geocache is to get the log book anyhow. But for most geocachers the way to get it is much more important then entering their names in the log strip. At least this is it what we will remember years later – the challenge, the nicely created stations, a consistent story, great handcraft.
I cannot do this work for you. And there is no magic formula. My recommendation: Study the above mentioned geocaches. Search for more with high favourite points. They do not have them in vain. Let yourself be inspired, look what others have made well and develop own preferences and hideout styles. Often you will get information about what is worthwhile on geocaching events.
But some minor details may help though to make the experience perfect. Here are some hints.
1. Banner
Most geocachers love their statistics and preferably colourful profiles. Beside souvenirs and various icons there are other possibilities to decorate profiles: With banners!
The geocaching YouTuber MixiTV provided a small tutorial on his channel on YouTube, which explains step-by-step what you have to do.
The advantage of geocaching banners: Other geocachers see them and learn that there are banners available as reward for solving your geocache!
2. Calendar
Most of the above mentioned geocaches have a high rush of visitors.
To avoid queues there, booking calenders are used upstream. Cacher teams can book their wished date, to have an undisturbed experience.
But this makes only sense, if your treasure accordingly extravagant.
The effects of the calendar: As soon as you use an upstream calendar (that is, you need an appointment to attempt the geocache) the searchers think: “Oh, this must be something very special if I have to make an appointment.” This even works, if your treasure is just published and the word of mouth has not yet created a visitor rush. It is, so to say, a self fulfilling prophecy. With this tool you can configure a calendar for your treasure: http://gck.cacherbande.de/
3. Geocoins
For some caches there are special geocoins, which are often bought by players as a souvenir of this great experience. Some geocache owners even use the sale of these geocoins to partly refinance their geocache. If you issue a geocoin (or short coin) for your geocache, please be aware, that you have to make advance payments. But it can be worth it. And: On an event geocachers make extra advertising for your geocache by showing your coin.
4. Token
In the last years tokens have developed as popular collector’s item among cacher. These are small, personalised objects which are produced by owners and are distributed to the visitors. The objects are mainly from acrylic glass or wood which are cut into nice forms by laser cutters. Similar like geocoins, they can be made trackable. The production costs are much lower than for geocoins.
5. ‘Bessercacher’
There are many hideouts out there. It is not easy to find the really rewarding ones. A good tool are the favourite points, which your fancy geocache will surely soon get almost automatically. But there are more possibilities to sort the wheat from the chaff. One of these is the platform, or the list www.bessercacher.de.
Here geocachers suggest very unusual treasures, the suggestions are reviewed and then entered in the database and the map.
Here is a detailed explanation of how you can enter your cache in this list: https://bessercacher.de/vorschlag
6. Bonus-Caches
Most geocacher are very numbers-driven. This means, it is important for them to find many geocaches and thereby many points.
Make use of that! How? By putting coordinates of a bonus-cache into your cache.
The bonus-cache must not be as special as the main cache, but geocachers are pleased by creativity anyway!
Do not forget: These additional hints round-off the geocaching experience. But therefore, the quality of the hideout, the realisation and your idea must be right. Otherwise it will only be whitewash. I am curious about your journey. I bet, we will experience many geocaching highlights in the next years.
Have you used these tips to create any extraordinary caches? Tag us in photos of your caches – @geocachetalk on Twitter and Instagram; @Geheimpunkt on Twitter and @geheimpunkt.de on Instagram. Have you found any of the geocaches mentioned in this post? How can you use these tips in your own area?! Let us know!
Daniel, aka daniel354 (private, just for searching) and geoheimnisträger (business, just for hiding), started Geocaching in February 2008 while working with disabled kids and organizing their free time activity. The first cache made him addicted and on that same night he bought his first GPS Device on eBay. It got big pretty quickly in his life, so he started thinking about how to make it his job. First idea was a geocaching webshop which he started in 2010. Shortly after this he started with organized geocaching events for companies as an incentive. That is how “Geheimpunkt” started. Later on he came up with the idea of a geocaching travel agency (http://cacher-reisen.de/) and a geocaching marketing agency (https://kundenschatz.de/). Daniel prefers Night-Caches, Lost Place Multi Caches, T5 geocaches and really extreme caches like this long distance cache https://coord.info/GC3JH5D (900 miles on my bicycle).
The Geocache Talk blog wants your geocaching-related stories and insights – and cache hiding tips! Please contact me, Angie (aka @GeoJangie), to write a guest blog post or if you have any recommendations for subjects or authors. I can be reached via my email: JangieGoWest@gmail.com or through Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.
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