As the “lost n’ found” basket fills up, we thought it would be a good idea to remind players to please: label your shit.
Labeling your shit is less about loss prevention and more about us being able to tell you: “hey we found your mag”, or “we found your radio”.
A good example: Morsel found a Baofeng radio on the field a couple weeks ago. We already knew who it belonged to because there had been only one Baofeng reported missing. Regardless, the radio was marked with “1i”, so had Field Aunt One-eye not reported her radio missing, we’d know (or have a really good idea) to whom it belonged.
Yes, that means absolutely everything. Let’s start with your replica. Find a good out-of-the way place and put your initials/name/callsign/something on it.
Now find another good out-of the-way place and mark it there too.
Lost replicas are traditionally not a problem getting lost; having said that, we do have a replica that’s been here for a couple years, with absolutely no clue to whom it belongs.
Typically, smaller items are a Very Good Thing to label. No, don’t label your individual BBs, but label your BB bottle/bag, your speedloader(s), magazines, radio, handguns, goggles, ExFog, eye/facepro, etc. A lot of magazines (as well as Odin Speedloaders) come with a “marking grid” on them. Utilize it!
How does one mark their items? While regular Sharpie-type markers can work well, they are not as indelible as one would hope for. Their silver markers will work for awhile, but will get rubbed off fairly quickly.
All the photos we’ve posted in this blog were marked with Elmer’s “Painters” pens. They are decent and hang one for awhile, but they are acrylic paint. Sharpie does make oil-based paint pens, which are used a lot in the realsteel community as well.
The color doesn’t really matter.. just anything that contrasts with the color of the item you are marking. It doesn’t matter if you use neon blaze orange or a muted OD green… if someone is close enough to see it, you were already spotted. A bonus of using brightly-colored paint, however, is for those times you drop your mag during a firefight.. you’ll be better able to see it on the ground!
If there are multiple airsofters in your household, they can each have a different color! Bear likes green; Morsel likes blue. If we had any sense of standardization here, all his shit would be marked with green and hers would be marked with blue. At-a-glance identification while sorting and organizing stuff!
TL;DR -> Label. Your. Shit.
Thanks!
