Memory Lane - neue Souvenir-Aktion

Geocaching turns 20! And milestone birthdays are celebrated, right?

Unfortunately, things aren't quite going as planned this year. A big celebration party was planned in Seattle in August and many Mega's and Giga's had already been published in Germany for the 20th birthday and there was a lot of planning work involved. Already at the Mega Beethoven on February 29th, not all geocachers took part due to precautionary measures.

But how do you celebrate a birthday without guests? You move it! The big party in Seattle will take place in August 2021 – by then, geocaching will be out of its infancy and of legal age in the United States too.

But even if the celebration is postponed, the birthday is still there.

On May 2, 2000, the US government turned off artificial degradation of GPS signal accuracy for non-military users. This meant that GPS signals could also be received by private individuals with an accuracy of approx. 10 meters instead of the previous 100 meters.

Dave Ulmer came up with the idea of using this for a game. He combined the already existing letterboxing, which works without GPS signals, with modern technology. On May 3, he buried an empty bean can filled with "toys" and posted the coordinates on the internet. Geocaching was born!

Anyone who has been around for a while knows that Groundspeak occasionally “offers” souvenirs for a certain period of time. You have to fulfill a task and receive a colorful picture for your collection. On the subject of souvenirs, we refer to our blog articlehttps://www.cacher-reisen.com/de/Blog/Souvenirs-beim-Geocaching-bunte-Bildchen-fuer-Geocacher::86.html

And for Groundspeak's 20th birthday, we geocachers have the opportunity to receive up to 5 of these little pictures.

The action, which bears the name Memory Lane, is made as a kind of game board. Perhaps one or the other is reminded of a "ladder game".... Personally, we think the game board is really nicely designed - one can commend the graphic artist/designer for that! Nice the path that led us to our 20th birthday.

There are 5 different souvenirs that you get for a certain number of points each. Here we want to explain what points there are and which souvenirs you can get.

First the souvenirs and how many points you need for them. The souvenir names are "commemorative names", precisely what the souvenir was named after. It has nothing to do with what we geocachers have to do for it. We are allowed to collect the points and after reaching the respective number of points we receive the colorful little picture in our inventory.

1. First geocache hidden souvenir for 10 points
2. First Geocoin souvenir for 50 points
3. First Mega Event souvenir for 100 points
4. One million geocaches hidden souvenir for 150 points
5. Souvenir "20 Years of Geocaching" for 200 points

The points add up, i.e. the first 10 points are necessary to obtain the first souvenir, but also the foundation for the 2nd souvenir. Means: For 200 points, all 5 souvenirs have been developed.

Perhaps interesting to take a look at the data behind the 5 souvenirs.
It is the way of memory, i.e. a kind of time beam. As already described, the first geocache was hidden on May 2, 2000 and published on May 3. The first geocoin was released in 2001 and the first mega event took place in Texas in May 2006 (Geowoodstock4, GCRRC6).

The fourth souvenir commemorates March 2010 when Groundspeak reported 1 million hidden geocaches. And the 20th birthday, to which the 5th souvenir refers, will be celebrated in 2020.

Now you have to see what you can get points for. Even if we assume that most German geocachers do not change their caching behavior to get a certain number of points, but simply go to geocaching, it is interesting to see what you get for what:

- for each found cache (including Lab cache): 5 points
- is the cache found a mystery or multi: 7 points
- if the cache found has more than 10 favorite points: 10 points

It is important that you only get the highest score for a cache. So if you find a multi that has more than 10 Favo's, then there are 10 points TOTAL for this cache.

If you are logged into Geocaching.com and click on the memory lane on the website, you will receive your current score. You can see from our picture that we cached a bit at the weekend, sometimes at least 3 caches....

The souvenir series started on June 1, 2020, and the campaign runs until January 3, 2021. You must have logged by January 6, 2021, otherwise the logs will no longer count towards the number of points. The UTC time applies, i.e. the coordinated universal time. So if the log time is running out at the end of the promotion - there are supposed to be geocachers with log jams - then make sure that you have logged by 1:00 p.m. on January 6, 2021 (12:00 p.m. UTC) in order to get the souvenirs receive. All caches found by January 3, 2021 at 11:59 p.m. are counted.

The relatively long period of this souvenir campaign is dedicated to Covid19. There are countries where there are still major restrictions and all geocachers worldwide should have the opportunity to receive the souvenirs. Of course, you can also start later, for example when geocaching is not on the daily schedule​ Or you may also start with this hobby.

We had posted our first souvenir on our social media channels on the first day, June 1st. The reactions show that some geocachers in Germany received all the souvenirs on the first day of the campaign. In the first week there will certainly be even more cachers. Congratulations on that. Everyone who takes it easy, have fun with the colorful pictures (we don't have them all colored yet, as you can see)                                          

 The geocoinshop also has accessories to match the souvenir campaign: coins, patches, pins, etc. are available to match the souvenir campaign(https://geocoinshop.de/Memory-Lane-Souvenir-2020:::164.html)

Okay, for most geocachers in Germany, the conditions for receiving souvenirs will not be a major challenge. This is often criticized. However, we must not always only assume our well -thanked Germany. Geocacher in other countries often have significantly further arrival for a new log and it is a worldwide game….

We wish all cachers lots of fun hiking along Memory Lane.