Souvenirs when geocaching - colorful pictures for geocachers

Souvenir means something like memory, keepsake. These can be memories - souvenirs - of a holiday, of a person, of a building or an area. We often associate it with a good feeling. (that's what Wikipedia calls it)

Geocaching is no different. Only that these souvenirs cannot gather dust…. Souvenirs are virtual, small works of art, beautifully designed pictures that you get from Groundspeak for a certain service, usually finding a cache. The souvenirs are visible on the public user profile. CacheWiki states: “Souvenirs are an award from Groudspeak for achieving a specific goal. Groundspeak itself refers to them as "Virtual artworks with an accompanying text."

A very rough distinction is made between country souvenirs, event souvenirs and souvenirs for special, unusual caches.

country souvenirs

These "little pictures" are available permanently and without time limit. Groundspeak has already given away souvenirs for many countries with geocaches. If you just log a cache in the corresponding country online, the corresponding colorful little picture migrates – completely unnoticed – to the geocacher’s public profile. While Europe has a very good coverage with souvenir pictures, there are only a few souvenirs for the rest of the world.

Particularities

While there is a souvenir for Germany and a separate souvenir for each federal state, there are no country souvenirs for Canada, the USA, Ireland and Australia, but souvenirs for each state.

Event souvenirs

As the name suggests, in this case the colorful pictures are awarded for specific events. This is probably the most well-known of the mega-events. As soon as you log such an event, you have the souvenir in your own statistics. Groundspeak also announces and awards such souvenirs on certain days (New Year's Eve, February 29, etc.).

The list of event souvenirs given out so far is long. In addition to "special days" there are also souvenirs for actions that are only anchored in the geocaching game. Mary Hyde should still be known from the past. But also the Dönerstag or Leap Day or the FlashMobs are part of it. As a rule, these event souvenirs are linked to a specific log condition, e.g. having found a cache on February 29, 2016.

Souvenirs for special caches

In addition to country and event souvenirs, there are three souvenirs for special caches. The Geocaching Headquarters, HQ for short, in Seattle has such a special cache. Under the code GCK25B you can log the cache of the HQ and get a souvenir at the same time. A special cache and souvenir have also been dedicated to the spot where it all began: https://coord.info/GCGV0P.

For a long time, the souvenir for an APE cache was only available for the “Mission 4 – Southern Bowl” cache in Brazil (https://coord.info/GCC67). The "Mission 9 - Tunnel of light" cache has been active here again since 2017 and, in addition to an old cache found - after all, from the year 2001 - it also contains the APE souvenir.

How to get an overview

On the Groundspeak page you can find detailed information about which souvenirs are available: https://www.geocaching.com/help/index.php?pg=kb.chapter&id=29&pgid=792

Pro and Contra

If you talk about the colorful pictures or if a new wave is coming our way, geocaching souvenirs will be discussed again in the community. There are cachers who think the pictures have nothing to do with geocaching. For others, souvenirs are at least an incentive to visit a certain region or perhaps to go cache on a day where they would not otherwise have done so. There are also one or two challenges related to your own number of souvenirs.

Incentives are important and good. Challenges drive us forward. And while half of the geocachers simply enjoy the colorful little pictures and with the help of which they like to remember something in the statistics, they don't hurt the other half of the cachers. From Groundspeak's point of view maybe a small, additional marketing strategy to get the cachers to go out again, take a trip and find a cache. For this purpose, graphic artists are employed who try to come up with thematically suitable images for the respective souvenir. In any case, the colorful pictures do not prevent a cache find and only change statistics in the area of souvenirs. Badges, country points, D and T ratings - all part of your own geocacher statistics. It's a game - the souvenirs are another facet in the great game of geocaching.

What's next?

Not all countries listed on Groundspeak have received a souvenir picture yet. These are always added here. Of course, as cacher trips, we are always particularly pleased for our trip participants when we learn about new souvenirs.

New souvenirs are often announced via the Groundspeak newsletter and then spread via social media.

We would like to present an absolute novelty to you:

New: GeoTour

You have already heard of GeoTours, after all there are now 4 of them in Germany. A GeoTour in Amsterdam and another in Austria are at least within reach. There are far more in the US. With GeoTours, a large number of caches, mostly thematic, are combined into one tour. Often in connection with tourism, the city in question has an interest in visitors learning more about its importance, sights and events.

Surprisingly, each GeoTour now has its own souvenir. Daniel Pflug explains how to get there very impressively in the video that you can find here: https://youtu.be/4i8lkGr_Lqg

You can also find the GeoTours themselves on the Groundspeak website. If you open the first drop-down field "play" you will also find Geo-Tours. Here you can see very well on a world map where such tours are located. And you can find out which GeoTours there are based on a list of names. If you complete one of the tours, i.e. find all the associated caches, you will also receive a souvenir.

And now have fun hunting for the colorful virtual pictures and searching for caches! So that many cachers can remember particularly beautiful cache moments with the souvenirs.