STATUS
The table at right is a status summary among the tabulated trackables. It shows the classification and their respective counts. However, one must be yielding about the values because of the vagaries of human behavior. All trackables will eventually go missing, but while they are active, they are constantly changing classifications. Characterizing this dynamic is complicated by the minutes-to-months lag times between an action and its posting by cachers.
A total of 119 (8.4%) of the trackables had last-logs reporting they were missing (the unknown classification). While most are truly lost or stolen, history tells me some number of these are not really missing, but were taken by a cacher who did not log a retrieval or, perhaps later, even the drop. I have reported elsewhere that around 60% of all drop-intervals are within the 60 days of the previous drop, and about 95% occur within a year. It is rare (1-5%) for a bug missing for longer than a year to get back on the road. Thus, a trackable marked missing late in the year is more likely to reappear than one that went missing in January.
There are 582 trackables purported to be in caches in 2020, but 86 of them were new trackables that had been placed by me into my own containers. Maintenance runs to my caches ending in the third week of January, 2021, showed that 21 of the 86 (24%) were AWOLs (absent without logs). My previous maintenance run, including restocking of trackables, had been in mid-December. So, in the span of a little over a month, a quarter of them were technically missing. Some will show up again, with logged apologies, more will show up without apologies, and some will have disappeared without a trace.
The Hands counts are similarly fluid. Annoyingly, it is increasingly common for bugs to be moved without logs at either end. I also have trackables that have been in the hands of cachers from my first year of caching (2010), and every year since. Based on their respective profiles and histories, some of the cachers were in and out of the game for a short time. Then, there are cachers who apparently use my trackables to document their own geocaching adventures, in one case for nearly ten years. These Hands are effectively missing since they are not likely to be shared, and that number also seems to be increasing every year.
The table at right is a status summary among the tabulated trackables. It shows the classification and their respective counts. However, one must be yielding about the values because of the vagaries of human behavior. All trackables will eventually go missing, but while they are active, they are constantly changing classifications. Characterizing this dynamic is complicated by the minutes-to-months lag times between an action and its posting by cachers.
A total of 119 (8.4%) of the trackables had last-logs reporting they were missing (the unknown classification). While most are truly lost or stolen, history tells me some number of these are not really missing, but were taken by a cacher who did not log a retrieval or, perhaps later, even the drop. I have reported elsewhere that around 60% of all drop-intervals are within the 60 days of the previous drop, and about 95% occur within a year. It is rare (1-5%) for a bug missing for longer than a year to get back on the road. Thus, a trackable marked missing late in the year is more likely to reappear than one that went missing in January.
There are 582 trackables purported to be in caches in 2020, but 86 of them were new trackables that had been placed by me into my own containers. Maintenance runs to my caches ending in the third week of January, 2021, showed that 21 of the 86 (24%) were AWOLs (absent without logs). My previous maintenance run, including restocking of trackables, had been in mid-December. So, in the span of a little over a month, a quarter of them were technically missing. Some will show up again, with logged apologies, more will show up without apologies, and some will have disappeared without a trace.
The Hands counts are similarly fluid. Annoyingly, it is increasingly common for bugs to be moved without logs at either end. I also have trackables that have been in the hands of cachers from my first year of caching (2010), and every year since. Based on their respective profiles and histories, some of the cachers were in and out of the game for a short time. Then, there are cachers who apparently use my trackables to document their own geocaching adventures, in one case for nearly ten years. These Hands are effectively missing since they are not likely to be shared, and that number also seems to be increasing every year.