BadAndy Coin Statistics... a must read.

I found this thread on the Groundspeak forum. I found it impossible not to read it to the end. All though we all know this happens to geocoins, it's still crazy to read about...

*quoted text*
It's been 2 months since the gold/silver coin sets were delivered and I thought I'd do some research and see how the coins have fared. I kept a list of the tracking numbers so I could watch them and I am somewhat disappointed in the overall results, but here they are...

Of of 85 sets delivered:

49 have yet to be activated. I will assume that by now most of these will remain as intact sets and the copy will not be released.

22 have been activated but were never released into the wild. Most of these were "dropped" into the owners archived cache or an unpublished cache listing to remove them from their inventory. These copies apparently will not be released into the wild. 3 or 4 of them are kept inhand and allowed to be discovered at events.

Only 14 were activated and released into caches as intended.

Of the 14 released copy coins, all but 2 are still travelling the world.

One of the missing coins managed to get some miles before it disappeared (sorry AltlantaGal)
the other missing coin never made it out of the gate and went missing right away. (real tough break prntr1)

I'm still hoping that some of the 71 copy coins that are squirreled away will eventually be activated and end up in caches.

Overall, I still think this is a good idea in theory, but apparently it's a bust in practice. I'll check the coins again in a few months to see if much has changed, but I think I can safely draw a few conclusions from the test.

1. Collectors are generally reluctant to release even coins dedicated to travelling and marked as copies.
2. 1 in 7 geocoins released into caches will go missing in the first few months.

Special thanks to the following cachers for releasing your coins to the world.

slumbersix
Shootie
Team Honeybunnie
hybridgeek
The Dream Cachers
Cachanova
D@nim@l
horsegeeks
CachingCoins
AtlantaGal (stolen??)
TuuronTour
The Washers
Rubiconlwb
prntr1 (stolen)