These were like quality unit awards but for Senior Scout units. These are MUCH harder than similar red and blue patches that say EXPLORER UNIT. This program ran from 1935 to 1949 although most Senior Scouts were in troops rather than their own unit. Thus why these patches are so scarce. You could spend a lot of time trying to track these down! Actually the National Standard is the easiest as most units would try to qualify at this level. The Regional and Local Standard are the hard ones to find with Local being the hardest.

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Now here’s a ‘sit up straight patch’ – the first issue from lodge 241 out of Kentucky. This is the kind of patch that the big time collectors of thirty years ago (think Marv Gershenfeld, Hal Rudd, John Sell) would sit up straight if it showed up in someone’s hands. I’ve handled only one others of these and that was fifteen years ago when it sold at that time for $4,000. Besides being a first issue of an old name lodge, you need to understand where this came from. This is coal mine, appalachian-poor country territory. People there, in general, did not have extra money for Scout patches. Further, people have tried to dig for this or the first flap and you just can’t find these people. They are spread out. There are no major towns and those who could afford to leave have left. This patch is probably a late 1940s era item. I’m estimating that the R2, a twill patch, is early 1950s. There are probably 4 or 5 of these R1s in collections.

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