relevantchair,
I was reading your detailed instructions with pleasure. But the very last sentence, the very last I mean. What do you mean by " Someone messed up " ?
The way i understand it you meant if we stumble on a marker that seems guaranteed to have been more contemporary than the Vault appears to be ?? Thank you
I shouldn't find your cache.
No need to over indicate it.
Imagine cache valley and a hundred fur trappers caches over a decades time..
Instead of my sending you with instructions to one confirming marker or landmark; I leave ten markers.
Now have the hundred caches (they were used as temporary storage so new ones were being constructed annually at times, an interesting art in itself) range from occupied to emptied and abandoned while all have ten markers each. Now there's markers all over when we send someone to find our markers?
And if someone moves any or removes any? If why anyone would do so needs considered ; go ahead and consider. The most basic reason would be someone wants what they found.
A knife? A gun? A piece of steel when tools were iron and steel was forged into the bit edges of plough and axe blades because steel was precious? Hard enough for me to give one up let alone a finder.
Brass wasn't to be passed up.
How about a plain button?
Caches of both have been found meaning people saved such things. Same with iron and steel.
Rust had a use in making gunpowder in remote or no barter or money for exchange areas. (So did chicken manure. Heck bat caves were important civil war resources in places for their guano. Relics found around a cave might not mean a hidden treasure today despite the imagined goins on back when. But back then the danged poop was precious. )
Where would someone acquire a small handful of rust dust? Ahh , off the iron collection. Hey that chunk there can go home to add to it too.
Durable materials were obtained how elsewise? Reuse recycle baby!
Once closed up a cache is blended/camouflaged to resemble the prior natural state so not to be obvious .
Banks have doors for a reason. A cache emptied after being opened; maybe not so much. Which is what someone stumbling upon a marker should expect to locate? A sign saying dig here isn't going to help us retrieve our stash when someone else finds it in our absence..
Dozens of individuals (more likely parties ) leaving multiple signs along obvious trails or natural traffic funnels and now what? A horse rolls a small rock or a shoe loses a nail and by golly that was put there for a reason in order to find a hidden store of great wealth!
Hey, this flat beer can is aligned N-S! must mean we keep going North!
Oh no look there's dirt where something was recovered. There's must not be no great wealth hidden anymore.
A breadcrumb trail of signs or objects to locate what we already know exists because we put it there and we want it kept private ; just inspires the attention of potential thieves in our absence. Or understandably, scavengers.
A keg of coins or two coins hidden on a farm don't need much advertisement.
Under the outside corner of a structure will suffice.
Inside a dirt floored structure in a corner will too.
Under a threshold or under stairs have been used a long time. Other staple sites exist as well. Sites no one but the owner/operator need occupy. Contrary to that ; who built the outhouse and how?
Should I leave a trail of arrows drawn around a room to arrive at the top of a door to reveal a cut or bored hole in the top with some coins in it ? I know where they are without the bread crumb trail. I can also instruct someone to make a recovery without a parade of markers and geometry required.
An obvious loose floorboard section stained from fingers on the edges that is spotted upon entering the same structure we touched the door to enter ; and an empty area below it with just a wadded up old paper means there's nothing hidden anymore? Oh o.k.. Maybe leave more signs and markers to locate it for someone who isn't supposed to find it. (Yes that's a doubly intentional decoy. Redundancy for our efforts.)
