I just got 2 Tall 50 cal boxes for $20 the other day. The cool thing was these were vintage. One was from my birthyear and the other from 1969.
The only bad thing about them was the tall cans can be filled to the point I don’t want to carry them anywhere. The Shorter .50cl cans don’t get as heavy.
The cans for SAW ammo are a bit wider and I really like them too.
There is a company too that retrofits or sells you a kit to add a padlock to your cans. But honestly I think I could make one cheaper than what they offer. Of course the ones I have are all so stiff when shut I have a heck of a time opening them.
The 50 ml tubes seem better than the tiny microcentrifuge tubes, which nobody will find. I recommend leaving little ninjas inside them as tokens for other to take: you can get a bunch here.
In Australia at least the most common container for a nano is the Bison tubes as mentioned in another comment (small metal tube with screw top and o-ring). However, THE most common container that I have seen are metal mint tins with a clip lid, usually Eclipse mints (assuming the US has the same brand/container). They are readily available almost anywhere, are a useful size and can be painted or coated black, attached with magnets etc.
As for the original question (what to put inside): A handcrafted note congratulating the finder is a good start, and good creative outlet. Also, you could add a small semiprecious stone (think garnets, apatites, moonstones). The really small ones (usually leftovers of jewelry) are very cheap or you can buy them unprocessed and tumble them. On the same page, if you decide on the tumble route, glass can be tumbled for a very nice result. You can make a set of different colored glasses or stones and tease to find the set.
Those are brilliant! Even just finding SOMETHING other than paper to sign is good, but cute and colorful make the find significantly more worthwhile. And at that price and size, it’s do-able for most budgets and caches.
Yup, I’ve seen the U.S. equivalent of those: Altoids, usually. But they don’t work so well in northern climates where snow and ice either rusts them shut or invades the interior.
Take it from an experienced cacher – those have a very limited use. They are too small for most applications, and are not weatherproof. The best cache containers have a gasket. This includes:
Bison tubes (for micro size)
Lock-n-Lock (for small size)
Ammo Cans (for regular or large size)
You’ll find tupperware, gladware, rubbermaid, film canisters and pill bottles all over the place. The first thing you usually do upon opening them is to pour out the accumulated water. Then you add a new log page, which should last until the next rain storm. (Maybe 2 rain storms if you put it in a plastic bag first.)
Please, stop creating microcaches. The world does not need more tiny caches with room for little else than a log sheet. If you cant take the time to make and hide a container that can hold some stuff, just stick to finding them.
What about nanocaches? A rice grain sized NFC tag embedded in something (tree bark, pavement…), readable by the phone, and having some space in its memory to store and retrieve a digital object of few kilobytes?
