The last thing I though of to try as a signature item was clay coins.
It would be relatively easy to make poker-chip sized coins with a good relief. The dies could be 3D printed (at the totally reasonable price of $3 an hour, so probably under $20 for a set), then use a wooden base and pusher with a metal collar to keep it all together. The collar sits on the base, the bottom face drops inside. Put in a pre-weighed blob of clay, the top die goes on top and wooden pusher squishes it all together so the clay gets mushed into the design.
That's still too expensive.
The cheapest clay to get hold of is 500g of air drying clay for about $10, which would net me about 30 coins (average 14g per coin, plus wastage). That amounts to 33c per coin, not counting the cost of the dies or paints / sealers to make the clay last longer once dried.
Considering the number of caches that are available locally, it does not look like it is going to be practicable to have a signature item to drop in. Other than just signing. It kind of takes away from the point of doing geocaching, though I guess I can just keep at it for a while until I've done the majority of the caches in the area. Which roughly speaking, seems to be about a thousand or so (roughly guesstimating) within about an hours drive - though around 30% to 45% of those are either nano sized which wouldn't take an item, or are decayed caches awaiting archival.
So looks like I might use up the plastic tokens that I ordered and leave it at that. I'll need to find some other outlet to try and be creative. On the plus side, if I swing around to using epoxy to be creative with, then I wouldn't be limited to small little coin type things.
Or I could just buy a damn 3D printer. :)
