Where's George

[+Kai Team]

How do people regard "Where's George" bills left in caches: Are they traveling items that do not require a trade (the basic idea behind Where's George being similar to a travel bug, although I believe Where's George actually discourages placing them in caches as an unnatural form of circulation), or are they trade items (take a WG, leave something worth a dollar or more)?

 

Edit: Clarify the distinction

Edited August 1, 2005 by Kai Team

[+Renegade Knight]

They are spending money. I've logged all the ones I've gotten then spent them, and I can't say it's ever been worth it.

[+TotemLake]

Actually, these days, the Where's George web site will stop tracking the bills if they have been logged as being placed in a Geocache. The intent for logging the bills was to track the bill through normal commerce. Geocaching skews it enough to make the data useless.

[Dinoprophet]

Because it has inherent value, I would say trade item. Leave something worth at least one US dollar.

[+Kai Team]

Actually, these days, the Where's George web site will stop tracking the bills if they have been logged as being placed in a Geocache. The intent for logging the bills was to track the bill through normal commerce. Geocaching skews it enough to make the data useless.

Actually, I've logged four in as found in geocaches and they're still tracking them. The WG Rules say:

#1 Natural Circulation.  The purpose of Where's George? is to track the natural and geographic circulation of currency. ...In general, the Where's George? definition of natural and geographic circulation is spending your cash in the course of any normal transaction with any unknown person/entity.

The WG rules also say that it is the account holder, not the bill, that may be penalized:

Any user violating these rules can have their account suspended or terminated without warning.

Since I'm returning bills to "natural circulation", it's the person placing it in the cache that's violating the WG rules. It's interesting that the people who leave them in caches around here tend to be very heavily involved in WG (I only log them when I find them in caches, and I only take them because I feel that they're intended to circulate, like TB's, not sit in caches).

 

Back on topic, I've been treating them as trade items, but was contemplating the travel bug-like nature of the bills, and wondering how others treat them. I suppose if most people who leave a Where's George take something, then it's only fair to the cache to leave something when you return the WG to circulation. Then again, maybe the people leaving WG's in caches shouldn't be trading out in the first place...

[Jeremy]

I spend them. WG frowns on using their site as a tracking system.

[+Team Cotati]

As opposed to data that has no use?

[+Glenn]

Where's George was created to track the natural circulation of money.

 

Unfortunately, you had some people who thought that they had found a cheap travel bug. A dollar bill tracked at Wheres George only costs the one dollar. The problem is that this is not considered natural circulation because the Wheres George bill, or in some cases just the dollar bills serial number (and series), was being circulated between a small group of people ,geocachers.

 

Wheres George frowns upon leaving a Wheres George bill anywhere specifically for a designated person to pick up. The goal of the website is not to see how many hands can touch a dollar bill. The goal is to were your dollars end up after you spend them.

[+Glenn]

Here is what I was looking for...

 

Rules for using Where's George? with Geocaching

 

Greetings Where's George?/Geocache User.

 

The "Top 10 Geocache Bills" report has been permanently removed from this site.

 

Due to recent events, it has come to our attention that there is a conflict

between the rules of Where's George? and Geocaching.com.

 

Apparently, Geocaching.com allows (and even encourages) friends and family

to place and remove Travel Bugs from Geocaches and log each as a separate

event along the way for the Travel Bug.  When a family is involved, this can

cause multiple events or logs of the Travel Bug in a very short period of time.

While this is fine for most Travel Bugs, it presents a serious problem for

Where's George? bills placed in Geocaches as Travel Bugs.

 

The general rules of this site (available here) specifically prohibit trading

or exchanging bills with friends, family or anyone known to the bill distributor.

This rule is to encourage "natural circulation" of the currency, and to prevent multiple

"fake hits" from happening on any bill. Afterall, the purpose of Where's George? is to

track the manner in which currency naturally circulates throughout the country and the

world.  Allowing people to arbitrarily enter multiple hits to track that a bill was

traded among a circle of friends and family defeats the entire purpose of this site.

In reality, nobody really needs Where's George? to track that they traded some

bills with friends/family.

 

When it comes to Where's George? bills being used as Travel Bugs, this rule

conflicts with the Geocache site which allows such exchanging and logging of Travel Bugs.

Therefore, if you are going to use Where's George? bills as Travel Bugs or in any Geocache,

the rules posted below now apply.

 

In addition, it is apparent that the existence of the "Top 10 Geocache Bills" report

had created competition to get the top bill listed.  As it is trivial to log entries

of a bill and make any bill the "Top #1 Bill", the existence of this report was causing

several bills to be hit repeatedly in violation of the general rules of the site.

This is not the purpose of this site, and the report has been removed to prevent the

site from being abused in this manner.

 

In the future, if this site continues to be abused for this or similar purposes, all Geocache

bills will be removed from this site.  I do not want this to happen as there is great synergy

between the sites, so please follow the rules and keep this site "Geocache Friendly".

 

Thank you.

 

As you can see. You arn't going to get your Wheres George account banned by simply placing a Wheres George bill in a geocache. As long as you don't include an information sheet asking for the Wheres George bill to be treated as a travel bug your account will be safe from banination.

 

For the record. I trade out Wheres George bill and then put them back in circulation, usually by buying more cache swag.

[+beejay&esskay]

I treat them as trade items. I never spend them...their "natural" circulation is to circulate in caches.

 

(And I actually discovered geocaching by reading about it at wheresgeorge.com, so I have some fondnesss for that site.)

[Yankees Win!]

People still do the "Where's George" thing? I thought that had died down by now ... but "Where's George" is an excellent example of a simple, elegant activity that became less attractive as more and more stupid rules were instituted.

 

Back to the OP: Trade something for a WG you find in a cache, and then do whatever your heart desires with it. It's now your money. If you decide to leave it in the next cache you visit, that is natural circulation of your money. Ditto if you decide to spend it on 1/3 gallon of gasoline.

Edited August 2, 2005 by Yankees Win!

[+Glenn]

I treat them as trade items.  I never spend them...their "natural" circulation is to circulate in caches.

 

(And I actually discovered geocaching by reading about it at wheresgeorge.com, so I have some fondnesss for that site.)

Your join date here seems to be from right around the time that the whole Where's George bill as a travel bug exploded on the Wheres George forums and Hank (creator of Where's George) was talking about blocking all Where's George bill that ended up in geocaches. After much debate and, I think, he even talked with Jeremy. Hank desided that any Where's George bill would not show up in the top 10 leaderboards. From what I understand the way Hank found out that some people were using Where's George as a travel bug tracking site was that the top 10 most traveled bills where the ones being passed from geocacher to geocacher.

 

I've been trying to find a link to the R2D2 action figure that was using Where's George to track it's movements. But I think the website is gone now. Someone took an R2D2 action figure and attached a homemade tag to it that instructed you on how to track it via the Where's George website. The tracking number was the serial number form a dollar bill, but the dollar bill was't included to travel with R2D2. It caused quite a stir.

 

I do believe that Where's George bills can circulate naturally through geocaches. But when someone includes a sheet asking the next finder to treat the Where's George dollar as a travel bug, that is not natural circulation. For natural circulation to occur you must let the finder do with the dollar what they choose.

[+wandererrob]

Where's George was created to track the natural circulation of money.

 

Unfortunately, you had some people who thought that they had found a cheap travel bug. A dollar bill tracked at Wheres George only costs the one dollar. The problem is that this is not considered natural circulation because the Wheres George bill, or in some cases just the dollar bills serial number (and series), was being circulated between a small group of people ,geocachers.

 

Wheres George frowns upon leaving a Wheres George bill anywhere specifically for a designated person to pick up. The goal of the website is not to see how many hands can touch a dollar bill. The goal is to were your dollars end up after you spend them.

I logged 2 in the past. Both never surfaced again.

[+TotemLake]

I treat them as trade items.  I never spend them...their "natural" circulation is to circulate in caches.

 

(And I actually discovered geocaching by reading about it at wheresgeorge.com, so I have some fondnesss for that site.)

Your join date here seems to be from right around the time that the whole Where's George bill as a travel bug exploded on the Wheres George forums and Hank (creator of Where's George) was talking about blocking all Where's George bill that ended up in geocaches. After much debate and, I think, he even talked with Jeremy. Hank desided that any Where's George bill would not show up in the top 10 leaderboards. From what I understand the way Hank found out that some people were using Where's George as a travel bug tracking site was that the top 10 most traveled bills where the ones being passed from geocacher to geocacher.

 

I've been trying to find a link to the R2D2 action figure that was using Where's George to track it's movements. But I think the website is gone now. Someone took an R2D2 action figure and attached a homemade tag to it that instructed you on how to track it via the Where's George website. The tracking number was the serial number form a dollar bill, but the dollar bill was't included to travel with R2D2. It caused quite a stir.

 

I do believe that Where's George bills can circulate naturally through geocaches. But when someone includes a sheet asking the next finder to treat the Where's George dollar as a travel bug, that is not natural circulation. For natural circulation to occur you must let the finder do with the dollar what they choose.

Thanks for the updates. It had been over a year since I even looked at the WG site. When I read the debate going on then, I left the WGs alone.

[+StarBrand]

I spend them. Trade something for them. Left 2 in caches afew years back - nothing ever logged about them.

[+GeoJunkie]

I treat them as trade items. I never spend them...their "natural" circulation is to circulate in caches.

 

(And I actually discovered geocaching by reading about it at wheresgeorge.com, so I have some fondnesss for that site.)

Me, too! I do occasionally put a WG bill in a cache to be found, and if I find one, I'll make a comparable trade out. What I do with it after that depends. If I go to another cache before I've spent it, I'll usually trade it into the cache. Otherwise, it burns a hole in my pocket and must be spent!

[+sbell111]

People still do the "Where's George" thing? I thought that had died down by now ...

I think I read somewhere that it died. Of course, I think I read that geocaching was dead, also.

[Yankees Win!]

People still do the "Where's George" thing?  I thought that had died down by now ...

I think I read somewhere that it died. Of course, I think I read that geocaching was dead, also.

Yeah, I also heard a rumor that when Jeremy expires, his obituary is going to read simply "Published."

Edited August 3, 2005 by Yankees Win!

[+beejay&esskay]

Yeah, I also heard a rumor that when Jeremy expires, his obituary is going to read simply "Published."

Surely you mean "archived".