It starts like this a couple of weeks ago. People at Geocaching HQ had been sharing stories about some of their personal highlights of celebrating 15 years of geocaching. Jeremy Irish, the CEO of Geocaching and one of the founders who launched Geocaching.com in 2000 said, “So, I have a mystery story to share…”

This mystery dates back to the beginning of geocaching. It was 2001. A new game piece called a Travel Bug® had recently been introduced into the geocaching. Although most players had not yet heard of Travel Bugs many players, including Jeremy were sending out the trackable tags attached to items.

Jeremy says, “When we first started Travel Bugs, I released 7 Deadly Ducks in the wild.” Each of the new trackables were based on one of the deadly sins. Devil ducks with the names of Sloth, Envy, Pride, Gluttony, Lust and Anger head out into the world to travel geocache to geocache. Did you catch that? Only six of the deadly sins were listed.

Jeremy says, “Well, I actually only released six, since the Greed Devil Duck, conveniently enough, was placed in a geocache that was never listed on Geocaching.com and may still be hidden in Virginia.”

 

Get your detective hats fitted.

Here’s The Search for the Lost Sin of Greed – A Trackable Tale.

 

Jeremy went on to say:

On December 16, 2001 I was visiting Scott Martin, a longtime friend who lived in Franklin County, Virginia and we decided to place a geocache there together. He had an old decoy duck and I put my Devil Duck in there along with some trade items and a logbook. We then headed over to either Waid Park or Franklin County Recreation Park – we’re not quite sure. I remember hiking on a short loop trail and going down a hill next to a small pond to place it. Sadly, the coordinates were lost before I was able to list it as a geocache. It may still be there today.

Currently Franklin County Virginia offers fewer than than 100 active geocaches to try to find. Geocaches are also located in both Waid Park and Franklin County Recreation Park, locations where Jeremy believes he may have hid the lost devil duck. So maybe the most difficult geocache find in Franklin county is a geocache that’s never been active. If you lived near Franklin County Virginia, would you search for The Lost Sin of Greed?

So, do you think you know the history of geocaching? Check out the 15 Years of Geocaching quiz.