METHODS
I defined a trackable in circulation as one having at least one retrieval, visit, or drop log during the calendar year 2020. I reject discovery logs as untrustworthy. The procedure I ultimately used was labor-intensive and not something I am likely to ever repeat. Working from the Owned trackables link on my Dashboard at Geocaching.com, I sorted the list with the Last Log function, the oldest logs at the end (see the screen-shot below).
I defined a trackable in circulation as one having at least one retrieval, visit, or drop log during the calendar year 2020. I reject discovery logs as untrustworthy. The procedure I ultimately used was labor-intensive and not something I am likely to ever repeat. Working from the Owned trackables link on my Dashboard at Geocaching.com, I sorted the list with the Last Log function, the oldest logs at the end (see the screen-shot below).
In February of 2020, I began copying and pasting part of each line of the list into a spreadsheet, beginning with 01/01/2020 and working toward the present. In this manner, I simultaneously captured the linked-name of each bug, the date of its last-log and the status of the bug on that date (see below).
The chief flaw in this approach is that, as trackables are moved, their last-log date changes. Therefore, the nearer my copying was to the current date, the greater would be the accumulation of obsolete last-logs. To get an accurate final count, these obsolete records would have to be deleted at the end of the year. To save work, I chose not to aggressively copy and paste until winter. However, in December, it was imperative to be current at the end of every day. This was done to capture every log of the most active trackables, before their latest logs disappeared into the new year. My year-end spreadsheet had well over 3,000 rows. After winnowing out the obsoletes, the result was just under 1,400 unique entries.
Given that cachers sometimes do not log their activities until months after the fact, almost certainly there were new, back-dated logs inserted after my copying moved past a particular date. So, I reconciled the winnowed list with other, current spreadsheets which have the history of each trackable in a series. This cross-check caught late-logged changes in status, as well as added a few more bugs whose previous last-logs had occurred in 2019. The final tally came to 1,421 trackables which is 33.6 percent of all trackables released in the years 2010 through 2020. This is a total much greater than I would have guessed, but the total includes all the trackables released in 2020.
Given that cachers sometimes do not log their activities until months after the fact, almost certainly there were new, back-dated logs inserted after my copying moved past a particular date. So, I reconciled the winnowed list with other, current spreadsheets which have the history of each trackable in a series. This cross-check caught late-logged changes in status, as well as added a few more bugs whose previous last-logs had occurred in 2019. The final tally came to 1,421 trackables which is 33.6 percent of all trackables released in the years 2010 through 2020. This is a total much greater than I would have guessed, but the total includes all the trackables released in 2020.