Collectable Preference

I am getting a lot of comments, both on Facebook and by email about the new Collectable Preference status on their personal trackables. It doesn't really make itself clear what this means. When you go on to the Edit This Trackable page you then get a message "Is Collectable" YES or NO. This again doesn't really explain itself. It has led to quite a few people thinking that if you tick the YES box it means that whoever finds it can then basically grab it and add it to their collection. I myself am no wiser and I don't class myself as thick! I am hoping that someone can clarify it properly for us.

Whilst I am on the subject of trackables, I thought that it was about time that I blew my own trumpet! Blog readers will have now seen on here the design of my latest geocoin. Well here are some photographs of all the coins that I have had made.

The first one is of the Border Collie with the sea in the background. This is a photograph of our oldest collie, Meg, which was designed using a photograph that I took of her running towards me on a beach on Shell Island in Wales. I had 100 of these coins made and they proved to be very popular sellers on Ebay.

By now I had really got the bug (excuse the pun) and decided to look through my collection of photographs to see what else could be made in to a coin.

For a while I had liked taking photos of postboxes, I don't know why, I just kind of liked them. So I chose to have the King George V postbox made in to a coin. Again I had 100 produced and again it proved to be popular. A lot of expats bought it and I posted a lot out to America, Australia and New Zealand.

Staying with the postbox theme I decided to have the Victorian coin made. Although this has sold well too, it is my least favourite out of the coins that I have had made.

Next to one of my favourites, the telephone box. I love this coin. I am one of those people who is very sad to see the decline of traditional phone boxes in this country. Even in small villages now you are more than likely to NOT see one. These phone boxes are a true British icon and are identified world wide as being British.

the final coin is the green version of the border collie. It was never my intention to have another collie coin made. However, I got so many emails from people who had bought the original asking if I would have another version produced that I decided the easiest way was just to change the colours on the original.

I haven't decided yet whether to have a 2011 collie made, but if I do, it will be produced from a different photograph and to make things fair, a photograph of one of the other two dogs, either Rum or Fen.

UPDATE On Collectable Preferences

Whilst I have been writing this I have had a Facebook message from Dan1980 of nwcaching.co.uk who has clarified the Collectable Preference question very well. He has very kindly agreed that I can copy and paste his write up. Thanks Daniel.
Here it is

GC.com has just been updated and one of the many changes that have been made is the addition of "Trackable Collections".

In some ways this is good, as if you have a large collection of coins you can add them to your own personal collection which will take them out of your inventory (rather than having to virtually dump them all in to one of your own caches).

Unfortunately Groundspeak have also made it possible for other cachers to add your trackable to their own personal collection. This means that they can find your TB or geocoin in a cache, move it to their collection, hold on to it and never move it on again.

You have the option of setting whether your trackables are collectible or not when you activate them, but for any that are already out in the wild you will need to edit the details to make them non-collectible (the default is rather stupidly collectible).

To do this go to your trackable's page, click "Edit This Trackable Item". Near the top of the page you should see "Is Collectible:" - click the No radio button and then click Submit Changes at the bottom of the page.

You will need to do this for all of your trackable items that are currently out in the wild (assuming that you don't want someone else to add them to their collection).

Right, that's me off for now. I am going to try and get some caching done today. Even if it is just one cache, I want to check that I can still log my finds easily with my Oregon 550t as since GC have done all their messing about, it seems that people have been having problems logging. I'd better have a pen and paper with me just in case..................I'll keep you informed.