Newbie FAQ

About the talk list? What will everybody think of me if I start posting? What are the 'rules' for posting?

As for posting, there aren't really any rules per se. However, if there is one rule, it'll be don't post a stupid post. I discuss this topic more thoroughly in my Posting Guidelines webpage, which I highly recommend checking out.

Everyone on the board is human. They make human mistakes. Sometimes what's meant to be a joke gets taken seriously. Sometimes there'll be differences of opinions. And arguments will insue. Hopefully they stay reasonable and don't degenerate into a bunch of name-calling, but that doesn't always happen. When you get a large group of hundreds of people to discuss all matters of letterboxing, arguments WILL occur, it won't be pretty, and you may wonder why you want to meet up with a bunch of those 'assholes'. Eventually the argument dies out and things become civilized once again. Most people on the boards are wonderful people you'd love to invite into your homes, and keep that in mind if you're ever wonder why you're reading those posts.

Panic. Just kidding. =) First, be discreet and try not to get "caught" in the first place. Have lookouts while searching or rehiding the box. Stamp in in an out of the way place where no one would be likely to see you. And, if you do get caught red-handed, there are several excuses you can make:

• You're practicing your orienteering skills. (This works better if you have a compass in your hand.)
• Your participating in a scavenger or treasure hunt.
• You're looking for that contact lens/wallet/whatever that you think you lost near there.
• You're having lunch. (This works especially well if you have the box already open and tuperware spread all over the place. Make sure it's actually lunchtime, though!)
• You're birding. (This works better if you have binoculars on you.)
• Start crying. This may not answer their questions, but they'll be so disturbed they'll forget their original question. =)

If all else fails and they're still not satisfied with your answer, tell them you're looking for a geocache. If you sound loud and obnoxious enough, we can continue giving geocachers a bad name. ;o) (I'm kidding, people. Sheeze!)

In all seriousness, though, if you have someone of authority giving you the evil eye, do not tell him what you are really doing. More often than not, they'll give you a stern lecture about "littering", potential fines involved, and might pull the boxes completely at the first opportunity they get.

If you want to be politically correct, yes. But if you ask, there's a real possibility they'll say no. The beauty in not asking is that they can't tell you no. And heaven forbid, if others have already placed letterboxes in the area and you let the owners of whereever the place may be know about letterboxing, they might not only tell you no, but they might even pull all the existing boxes! In any case, to be politically correct, you should ask permission. I know for a fact that most people do not, and what you do is ultimately up to you. Many places don't mind letterboxes, as long as they're placed where others can't harm the environment, which is a good thing to keep in mind while placing ANY letterbox.

Of course you can! However I'd like to strongly urge against it for several reasons. One, many letterboxes do not like geocaches, and they will not like your box if it's also a geocache. In fact, based on polls, most people do not like combined boxes. If you combine the two, I can guarantee your letterbox will not be well received. On my Creating Great Letterboxes page, the first thing it says is to choose your audience. If you can't even choose between a letterbox or a geocache, you've already failed in creating a great letterbox. (Or a great geocache, if that's your primary hobby.)

But if you need more reasons....

Second, many geocachers have never heard of letterboxing, and I've heard stories of geocachers 'exchanging' the stamp with some small, worthless piece of crud. Third, geocaches tend to be much larger, consequently they're much more difficult to find good hiding places for. Forth, if some authorities decide to pull all the geocaches from a site, they're gonna nab your letterbox at the same time. The opposite could happen as well, although geocachers tend to get more flack by the authorities because there's more of them and they're more noticeable. But hiding a combination box doubles your chances of it being pulled by authorities. Fifth, how many reason do you need anyhow?! =)

If you've got a favorite place that you want to share with as many people as possible, I recommend hiding both a geocache AND a letterbox there, but in separate boxes. Everyone--both letterboxers and geocachers--will enjoy the boxes more, and it solves a lot of the problems involved with trying to combine the two.

In the olden days of letterboxing, hitchhikers were exciting finds. You might hunt down over a hundred boxes before finding a hitchhiker. Today, they've become so common one might be inclined to call them 'pests' instead. By all means, if you find a hitchhiker, go ahead and pick it up to move to another location, but if you're thinking about hiding one, I'd recommend against it for a couple of reasons:

One, like I said, they're so common they just aren't nearly the amount of fun they used to be. A newbie letterboxer might get excited, but an experienced one will just roll their eyes in annoyance. If you want to maximize people's letterboxing experience, hiding a true letterbox will go a lot farther than a hitchhiker.

Two, the creator of a hitchhiker tends to acquire the reputation of being too lazy to hide their own box. You don't have to find a new hiding place for it, you don't have to create a clue for it, and you don't have to maintain it. Talk about lazy and pathetic! Serial hitchhiker creators may be developing an unwanted and/or undeserved reputation.

Three, you may hope to hear about all the exotic locations your letterbox ends up and get all sorts of e-mails from people who've found them, but it's been my experience most people do NOT report boxes when they're found. It may be months and months before you hear anything about your boxes.

Forth, it's fun going back to one of your letterboxes and reading what people have wrote. With hitchhikers, you lose this ability and one of the best reasons to be hiding letterboxes in the first place!

If, however, you do decide to create a hitchhiker, there's one thing you can do to help 'redeem' yourself, which is to creat a public webpage so EVERYONE can enjoy seeing the hitchhiker's travels. Someone who finds a hitchhiker might like to know where it goes after they've re-released it into the 'wild' or where its been before they found it. An interactive page like this goes a long way to making a hitchhiker worth remembering.

Some people prefer hand-carved stamps. I've never actually met anyone who will admit to prefering a store-bought stamp, but I'm sure they exist. The vast majority of people seem to prefer hand-carved ones--even ugly ones--to the most beautiful of store bought stamps. If you don't care what others think of your letterbox, though, you have every right to hide store-bought ones. =) Don't expect many people to get excited about it, though.

People appreciate having a reason to go out and enjoy the great outdoors. Letterboxing is fun. It's a treasure hunt. They'll enjoy themselves regardless of the type of stamp you hide, but based on conversations I've had with others, they enjoy it more when there's a hand-carved stamp at the end of the rainbow. We like to see the imaginative creations people can carve.

Who cares? If nobody likes your stamps, they don't have to look for them. There's no such thing as a perfect stamp, and it doesn't matter how long you've been carving or how good everyone thinks you are, there will always be someone who isn't going to like your stamp. Tough noogies for them. They'll just have to deal with it.

We all know that every stamp carver has to start somewhere, and few people carve their first stamp and have a masterpiece to show for their efforts. Stamp carving takes practice, practice, and more practice to become really good. We all understand if you're new to carving and the stamps are something less than perfect. Most people don't look for letterboxes looking for incredible works of art--just stamps that people put all their effort into. Do your best. If others don't like it, so what? There will be plenty of other people who will appreciate your efforts and thank you for hiding the letterbox.

Carving a beautiful stamp does not require artistic skills of any sort. If you can trace an image, you can carve a stamp! I've put together a class, Carving 101 where you can watch me carve a stamp. I'll explain the tools you'll need, carving tips, along with other Internet resources about the subject. You'll start carving stamps worthy of a professional before you know it!

In a perfect world, all stamps would look equally good to everyone. However, we don't live in that world. Everybody has favorite movies, favorite authors, favorite actors, favorite cars, favorite everything, and stamps and letterboxes are no exception. Anyone that tells you they don't have a favorite letterbox or favorite stamp is lying. Sorry to burst your bubble, but it's true. People will judge the letterboxes and stamps you hide whether you like it or not. It's built into our human brains, and there's no escaping it.

Not only that, but people will talk about your letterbox behind your back. I do it with all of my letterboxing friends, and even non-letterboxing friends. If someone doesn't like your particular letterbox, they'll probably be discreet and just not say anything about it at all to your face. Some people might even lie and tell you it's a cute and wonderful stamp even if they're really thinking it would look so much better at the bottom of a cess pool.

Yeah, it's horrible that people would actually lie and say a stamp is great even if they don't believe it to be true, but it happens. It's this thing about constructive critisism: A lot of people aren't very good at giving it, and a lot of people aren't very good at getting it. So it's not done nearly as often as it should be. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but if you hide ugly looking stamps, you'll get a reputation as a person that hides ugly looking stamps.

But as I said before, if someone doesn't like your stamps, so what? It's not like there's a gun to their head forcing them to hunt down your stamps. While everyone would prefer getting a brilliant, beautiful stamp, it doesn't mean they're not having fun hunting down the box in the first place. And don't take it personally if someone chooses not to hunt down one of your letterboxes. If that's the case, the letterbox obviously wasn't meant for them in the first place. It's no sweat off your back.

And if you want a reputation as someone that hides beautiful, well-crafted stamps, you can do it! Start with my Carving 101 webpage and start practicing on your own. By the end of the day, you'll be amazed at how good your carvings will start to look!

Absolutely not! Some letterboxers really enjoy tracking numbers. They're proud of finding 100, 200, 500, or whatever number of letterboxes, and want to share their accomplishments with others. People who consistently track their stats aren't in a contest with the rest of the world--they just enjoy this optional extension to the hobby. Others don't find the extra time involved in tracking stats is worthwhile, so they don't. Letterboxing is generally a solo sport, so do whatever you want.

It's impossible to post a complete list because people are always making up new ones--usually as a joke. One person added an R for 'rescues' after having been rescued by emergency personel during a letterboxing outing. (You have read the letterboxing Waiver of Responsibility and Disclaimer, right?) The 'Big Three' stats are the Placed, Found, and eXchanged. E for Event and HH for HitchHikers is common, but even for the Big Three you'll find arguments on the talk list about how a certain box or stamp should be counted. If you find a hitchhiker twice, should it be counted as one or two finds? If you 'exchange' stamps with a dog, does it really count? Can you 'find' your own letterbox if you've forgotten where it was placed? All these questions have been debated and probably never will be resolved completely. If you have a question about how something should be counted, count it like YOU think it should be counted. (In case you're wondering, my preference to those answers are: No, yes, no. In reality, I don't think pets should have their own signature stamps so exchanges with them shouldn't count, but I'm too lazy to figure out which ones in my book are from real human-beings and which are from pets. So I just count the number of stamps, regardless of the species it's from.)

Yes, don't hide your first box without finding several others first. By checking out several boxes in your area before hiding your own boxes, you can see what others are hiding and what people in your area are expecting. You'll get a sense of the types of containers being used and what people think should be included with them. You don't have to follow everyone else's model, but it really does help to know what the 'typical' letterbox is like. And you might get new ideas you'd never have otherwise thought of!

You'll also start developing the all-important sense of what makes a good hiding place, something many beginning letterbox hiders get wrong. After finding many boxes, you start getting this sixth sense about where boxes might be located. I've found letterboxes that half a dozen other people have missed for no other reason than I thought, "THAT looks like a good hiding place--I think I'll check it," and sure enough, there's a letterbox. Once I even did that and found a letterbox for which the clues hadn't even been posted yet!

Of course, not all parts of the country are blessed with hundreds of letterboxes to choose from, and if you live in a place where the entire state has just one letterbox, you may not have much a choice in the matter. But if you can possibly help it, finding a dozen or two letterboxes before hiding them yourself will improve your boxes by leaps and bounds. Think of the process as research. As excited as you are to hit the trails and hide your own boxes, you'll have a whole lifetime of letterboxing ahead, and there's no reason your first box can't wait an extra week or two.

One note I'll mention here--you should realize that sometimes letterboxes are found by people who aren't looking for them. Usually this isn't a big deal, but some people are a bit paranoid and might mistake it for a bomb. Which is a very, very bad thing. You might laugh, but this has happened. The article refers to a geocache, but from the outside a letterbox doesn't look a whole lot different! There are two things you can do to help insure such an event doesn't happen with one of your boxes: (1) Use clear containers so the contents are readily available, and (2) write on the outside of the letterbox that the container is a letterbox. Better safe than sorry!

I've also written some guidelines on what makes a great letterbox great, which answers these and other questions at http://www.geocities.com/rscarpen/Lb/Docs/GreatBoxes.

Mischief has also created a nice webpage, including pictures of her first letterbox at http://home1.gte.net/res0fpfm/letterboxes/tips.htm. She had a neat idea of including pre-stamped, pre-addressed postcards with the letterbox so finders of her box can stamp their signature stamp onto it with whatever message they want and send it off to her. I really like that idea, although I'll have to admit to being too lazy to get around to doing something like that myself.

Okay, this isn't a politically incorrect question nor does it have a politically incorrect answer, but it's something a lot of newbies don't consider before they rush off to carve their first signature stamp--myself included.

I would recommend a signature stamp no bigger than about one square inch. It's not much, but with the rise of micro-boxes being placed, if you make something larger, you risk not having the entire stamp fit into the provided logbook. One clever letterboxer I saw actually went for a series with two, but they both had small logbooks, too small for their signature stamp. It was of a bird, so they stamped the head of the bird into one logbook and the tail (butt?!) into the second one! Very comical! =) Between the two, you've got the whole signature stamp!

Anyhow, the smaller the signature stamp, the more letterboxes it'll fit into. The smallest logbook I've found provided about one square inch of area to stamp in with, so I recommend that as a good size for signature stamps.

There's two ways to get clues published on Letterboxing North America: (1) Post them to the Talk List, or (2) create the clue on your own website and post a link to it on the Talk List.

Creating your own webpage is really the way to go, because it gives you the ultimate flexibility in laying out your clue. You can update the clue if landmarks change or even update the last known status of the letterbox. You can include pictures with your clues showing just how beautiful the view at the end of the hike is, or you can include links to other relavent websites about the area or other nearby letterboxes. There's a little more work involved with creating and maintaining your own website, but in the end you get a more customized clue that can look great!

Webpages, at the simpliest, are created using HTML tags to "mark up" a page of text. These tags tell the computer what should be in bold or italics. Where picture should be displayed. And the best part is--it's extremely easy to learn. Even better, many places now have tools for doing all the tags for you, and it's more like using a word processor than creating a webpage. In fact, many word processors such as Mircosoft Word now allow you to save a document as HTML. Just save and put the page on the Internet. You're done!

I use Geocities for my website, mainly because it's free. (FREE!) The homepage has helpful links on how to create a page in HTML yourself, or if you want a little help, provides a PageWizard and PageBuilder to create your pages for you. There are plenty of other free places for websites to use as well, so if you don't like Geocities, search the web for other site that might fit you better. If you don't like the banner or pop-up ads, usually you can pay a nominal fee like $5/month to get rid of them. (I don't, as you can tell!)