Current souvenir campaign "Wonders of the world"

Anyone who has been with geocaching.com for a long time will notice that Groundspeak runs a souvenir campaign every summer. Really nice, isn't it? In the summer holidays you then have an (additional) destination for geocaching.

I remember well Mary Hide or Hidden Creatures…. This year it's all about the wonders of the world. Since the rules of the game are perhaps a bit confusing, we want to try to clarify them here.

If you want to find out more about what souvenirs are, you can find some information here: Souvenirs - colorful pictures for geocachers

Very important: the goal is to make geocaching even more fun than usual. So keep it sporty... In Germany and the surrounding area everyone will manage to get the 3 souvenirs during the event, if you want to. We have no doubt about that. But I also know that this is not always so easy for residents of smaller islands or sparsely populated areas. It is also not important whether you have all 3 souvenirs on the first day or only after 4 weeks. The main thing is that the colorful pictures in your statistics are a little fun.

This year's campaign is running (due to CoVid-19?) for quite a long time, a specific end has not yet been named, but at least until the end of the year. I'm convinced that by the time this blog post is published, the first ones will have been done and I'm already admiring the three souvenirs in their statistics. But that's not what it's about!

2020 is about wonders of the world. Almost a little ironic, names evoke memories (e.g. of the Great Wall of China) or arouse longings, where one would like to travel again. At the moment it's hardly possible or not possible at all - but the most important thing is to stay healthy or to become so.... So let's get into Groundspeak's virtual plane and fly to a total of 14 different caches with 14 different wonders of the world.... In the passport in your account, the itinerary is also shown with a small airplane.... The wonders of the world are small digital stamps to be found and collected in geocaches.

So how do you get the three colorful pictures?

Simple answer: You go caching... Yes, you can just keep on caching as before and for many the three souvenirs will appear automatically. Of course, you can also approach it in a targeted manner. That is what our attempt at an explanation should be about, and about understanding it simply. For collecting the Wonder of the World stamps, it doesn't matter whether you are a Premium or Basic member of Groundspeak.

The idea that Groundspeak "simply" builds something into existing caches is not entirely new. If you find this specific cache after a certain date (here August 12, 2020 logged from 2 p.m.), you have found "ES". It's about wonders of the world. First, 7 modern wonders of the world. Once you have found these, or found a cache for each wonder of the world, you will receive the first souvenir. And only after the discovery of the 7 modern wonders of the world do the signs for the 7 ancient wonders of the world appear.

Again very clearly: it's about no caches and the wonder of the world. You don't have to travel to the Chinese wall now (even if it's great there!). The caches have nothing in common with the world wonders either, it was "distributed", not looking for the title or reference to one of the wonders of the world. Many, many caches have virtually packed a wonders of the world. Every wond of the world is in a large number. In a radius of 5 km around my place of residence I can find all the wonders of the world and thus receive the 3 souvenires. Of course, this presupposes that the home zone is not cleared empty, which should also be the case with one or the other cacher. Then you have to pull the radius a little further. For me in the home zone, there are already so many new caches that I can find what I can find here on a fairly small radius with the souvenir campaign. You can see on my passport that I have already tried a little before I tell you something about it. I received the souvenir for the modern miracles, on which I am currently working on the ancient wonders of the world.

You can access your own pass page via Groundspeak's blog post. The blog itself is highly recommended and can be set to German. The same goes for your (new) dashboard page. In the (travel) passport shown there, the founds of the respective wonders of the world are shown with stamps. As soon as you log a corresponding cache that contains a wonder of the world, you will receive a stamp in your passport. This happens at the same time as your log, I could not determine a time delay.

On the same page, below the pass, you can say that you are looking for caches with all the wonders of the world.

The caches that contain such a wonder of the world are displayed in your home zone (or where you move the map to). In each cache you can do it in the right see column. Here's an example:

Some caches contain only one wonder, others one from each series (the modern wonders and the ancient wonders).

Mentioned again: the ancient wonders can only be played once the modern wonders have been completed and you have the souvenir for them. However, within the Wonders of the World series Modern or Ancient, the order of your finds or logs is irrelevant.

The search function is nice. If you now want to search specifically, you can use the usual filter. The Wonders of the World box has been added to the filter page (for the duration of the campaign). As soon as you activate the slider, the 7 wonders of the world that you are currently looking for will appear. You can now specify which one you are looking for exactly.

Important: Only caches that you log as a new found are valid. Caches that have already been found, caches that you logged before August 12, 2020, 2:00 p.m. our time or found before August 12, 2020, do not count. Likewise, there are no hidden wonders in lab caches and currently not in events either. Even a comment or a DNF does not lead to a virtual stamp entry in your passport. So it must be a found.

And how do you get the third souvenir? There is one for 7 caches with modern wonders and one for 7 caches with ancient wonders. The third souvenir is called "World Explorer" and it is available at the same time as Souvenir 2, because the condition for this is to have found all 14 Wonders of the World. So as soon as you have found the second 7, you also have the 14 full…. A small colorful picture as a gift.

I personally think that the stamp pass and the souvenir pictures in stamp species are very nicely designed. I really like them this time. What do you think? Write in the comments how you see it. Are you already collecting?