How many people here would buy a GPSr to get their box in this database?

Anyone who has a smartphone already has a GPSr. Considering friends and boxing buddies, most of us could come up with one without spending any $$$.

But I wouldn't be willing to post coords of my boxes. That'd allow finders to just hunt them down like geocaches rather than following the clues. What I would like to see is the "location" field in the box listing replaced with a set of coordinates which can either be picked off a map or marked using a GPSr while in the field -- but the coordinates to be provided are for the starting location for finding the box, usually the parking lot or trailhead or whatnot. Sometimes it'd just be a general vicinity indicator. It'd never be the precise location of the box itself. And, of course, this location would be of zero help in preventing geocache/letterbox conflicts.

The one thing it might accomplish is to get more geocachers interested in letterboxing. They could view each letterbox as an offset geocache: use the GPSr to get to the parking area and then follow the clues to find the box. That's right up their alley for some of them -- although admittedly most of them are just in it for the numbers; if the box isn't where the coords say it is, they get peeved.

Then surprise surprise when the box is the one that gets raped and pillaged while the cache continues to sit high and mighty over its fallen foe.

When a geocache and a letterbox conflict, the letterbox always loses. That's an inherent result of the difference in the games. You can't really hurt a geocache, and even if you could there's nothing a letterboxer would do to hurt one if he accidentally found it. But the swag-trading that is fundamental to geocaching spells disaster for any letterbox found by accident. Sooner or later somebody's gonna trade some useless garbage for your hand-carved stamp.

This is so true... a geo cant be damaged...

So sad that a letterbox can.

This is so true... a geo cant be damaged...

Yes they can. I've had many geocaches muggled, including ones that were very well hidden. I've had one practically buried that went missing. It was in a natural hole under a tree root. It was a large hole. I put a rock in front of it.

Muggles seem to find things. It's not always a geocacher, but sometimes it obviously is. If geocaches couldn't be damaged them there would be so many archived (retired).

So sad that a letterbox can.

So, so true. You need to do what you can to keep it from happening. "Do or do not. There is no rant." ;-)

Yeah, but all a cacher has to do is drop a canister with a scroll of paper at a location and get the GPS location. That's it. No effort.

We can hide boxes in a cache desert and in a few months/years time have caches everywhere around the box that was once safe.

hx6

We can hide boxes in a cache desert and in a few months/years time have caches everywhere around the box that was once safe.

A reason to make friends with a geocacher so that they can place a protective geocache. Or you could stoop to place your own protective cache. You don't have to actually find any caches to do that.