[Az-Geocaching] Geocoins

[Jake Olson]

At the April Fools event people asked about how to get ahold of some
coins of their own.  So, here's some links to help you out.

http://www.geocities.com/team_fisur/geocoins/

Team Fisur's site is to my knowledge the oldest listing.  It has nice
pictures and links for how to track or buy them.

http://www.beckydavis.com/Coins-Metal/index.html

Nurse Dave's site has some coins that I've never seen before and is
pretty good too.

Coins are available in many different ways.

1.  Individual coins - Some time small groups or individuals have a
coin minted and it is up to those in the group or individuals to
release, trade or sell.  (Vacman, Conejo, Greenman and Oh Yeah are
some like this.  I'm pretty sure there are others.)

2.  Group coins - These are usually state coins or cacher
associations.  They will have a coins designed, most oftenly by group
concensus.  Then as the coin goes to mint, people in and outside the
association put in a request to pay for the minting of these coins. 
You can usually order as many as you want and they will adjust the
order to cover all the requests.  You may have to pay up front for
these, but I've never heard of any problems with this method. 
Distribution of the coins will sometimes become event caches.

3.  Country Coins - USA and Canada coins are readily available on the
net, a quick google search will locate a place to order from.  Some
states like Texas have made their coins available without waiting for
a mass minting.

I believe that Moun10n Bike coins are the first to be available.  The
original coins are hard to come by, but  our own Randman has #144. 
These coins are tracked on Geocaching.com's website as a special case
for Moun10n Bike.  USA coins are tracked there too, but as far as I
know there isn't much room for adding other coins to the site, but I
could be wrong.

I don't like to take coins from circulation in caches.  My collection
is mostly un-registered or in my name.  Coins that are in caches with
tracking numbers were put there like travelbugs.  One of my coins I
put into circulation wound up on an Ebay auction and I'm still kinda
ticked off about that.  I'll be posting that story soon for those who
haven't heard it.

If you are interested in keeping current on new coins coming out, the
two links i've provided do a good job of keep up with the newest
mintings.  You can also find alot in the local forums and the travel
bug forums at http://forums.groundspeak.com/gc/ .  Local webpages
similar to our own azgeocaching.com site for different regions will
have discussions on creating new coins.  If there is an area you are
interested in check out their sites.  There are links to them under
the "license plate" cacher picture on the state page at GC.com


I hope this help anyone interested.


Jake 
Team A.I.