Geocaching - a Swag Rant!

I love Geocaching!  LOVE IT!

 I love looking for them, finding them, finding cool locations I would have never found (like an amazing little park and baseball diamond in Bellfountain Ontario) and seeing my cache count rise.  It's a sense of accomplishment.

I think the trading of "Swag" is cool too (loot!) and I find it has helped to sell my son on the whole Geocaching thing... to him it's become a bit of the icing on the cake of finding a geocache.

Unfortunately, lately I've been getting frustrated with the quality that others are leaving... my neice and I recently went on a hike to a bunch of caches and didn't find a whole heck of alot... I almost emptied my very full "Swag Bag" repenishing the caches along the trail.  Then yesterday we went to one that had balled up pamphlets, bent business cards, beads that I'm guessing used to be attached together, a broken plastic car and a Crystal Light pedometre (the ONE non-broken and complete item).  It was peanut butter type jar hidden under a lamp skirt at a Go Station, so it's not like it's been savaged by animals or people had to hke for miles with their swag in their backpacks. 

My son took an already assembled but incomplete Kinder Toy, I dumped the garbage and we left a cool wooden puzzle and a bunch of Silly Banz.  I didn't have my Swag Bag or I might have left more.  Then again I was pretty bitter about the whole thing.

As for what we leave and what I'm saying isn't crap, it depends what I've come across in my travels... I've gone through our stuff at home,  I've gone to a couple of second hand stores and some clearance bins. Which sounds a bit ghetto but it's really not. 

My Swag Bag has either contained or is currently containing some of the following - new dinky cars, scrapbooking punches, a book on love, a small unused photo album, a wooden puzzle, Silly Banz, a new breast cancer bracelet, keychains from around the world, collector spoons, stickers, McToys (still packaged), Kinder Toys (still in the plastic egg, unassembled and never played with), a deck of cards, a 50 pack crayons, rings, jewelry, stickers, glow in the dark necklaces and bracelets, mosquito repellant patches, cookie cutters and more. I've also rebagged logbooks.

I know some people complain about the McToys, but I always leave wrapped ones that are new.
Some cool stuff we have found are stickers, a five pack of dice in a little case, army men, an Armed Forces carbinner and a shiny polished stone.

I just wish people would be more respectful to other geoachers and the cache owner... to leave a cache at the same value in swag or better...

I've read some people saying they're not organized enough to get together some cool swag and their kids really want what's in the Cache... I know when I took my kids to their first cache with tradables and we had nothing in exchange, I told them we couldn't take anything but maybe we could come back another time and maybe the stuft that they want will still be there.   This also applies if we forget the Swag Bag.

My Swag Bag is a small giftbag where I put my Swag for Geocaching when I find something neat... like I was shopping at Shoppers Drugmart and found a bunch of Silly Banz for 50 cents a pop.  In the bag they went (I also like them for Micro Caches to wrap around the log book... it's a bit of a signature item I guess).  I was cleaning out my scrapbook area and found a bunch of stuff I've never really used like stamps and punches.  I was at a thrift store (Bibles For Missions in Guelph...  best thrift store EVER!) at their $1 clothing event and found a bunch of keychains from around the world, jewelry and similar stuff.  Spent hardly anything and none of it is garbage, broken or worn out.

I also try to remember to bring extra ziploc baggies and such to replace worn ones.

There's a big difference between CHEAP and THRIFTY...

What sort of stuff do you carry when you geocache?  Where do you get it?
I'm always on the look-out for neat stuff and ideas...