The other night on eBay this lot sold:  1946 FELT NATIONAL CONVENTION PATCH-CHANUTE FIELD, ILL

Over the past week I have been answering e-mails with Bruce Shelley, ISCA OA editor, and Dr. Ron Aldridge, author of the two volume book “OA at National Events”. This is the second known specimen to surface in the 60+ years since the event. The participant’s badge was a pin-back button. There was no patch. As Ron pointed out to Bruce:

The first one was found by Dennis Sydlowski in the Richard Marshall collection, sold or traded to Breithaupt, and pictured in the Arapaho book.  It is now a part of the Las Vegas International Scout Museum collection.  When I published my set of books, I was leaning toward the prototype theory as only one was known at that time.  The second one was given to Dennis Sydlowski’s council by R.L. Van Horn.  One came from Michigan and one came from Indiana – this patch might well be a patch made by a council in the mid-west for wear by their contingent members.

In all the years I have researched these early patches, I have seen no evidence that this patch was made or ordered by National.  But then this was one National Meeting before the BSA took over the OA.

• » Comments (0)

Just received an interesting pic. Its a 1953 National Jamboree flag from a council I’ve not seen before. See Lower Rio Grande Valley Council in the title. This council name does exist although it was listed as going out in 1947. Other than this flag I’ve not seen anything with this name on it. Anyone have anything?

• » Comments (0)

Destry has been trading e-mails with ISCA OA columnist Bruce Shelley regarding something Destry discovered recently while antique hunting. He came across a can of Swift Premium lard, fortunately empty. What jumped out at him was the logo for the company is exactly that of a patch that surface a few years back and was attributed to Suriarco Lodge 239.

Some background. Suriarco is derived from the home council  “Suwanee River Area Council” out of Florida. Records indicate that the first OA lodge there was named Suriarco. Up until about ten years ago, this lodge was not known to have any patches or issues such as neckerchiefs.

Then the following patch surfaced (see front and back below):

The possibility of this being a Boy Scout Order of the Arrow patch from a lodge with no known issues could turn a piece of cloth from being a curiosity into something worth thousands of dollars.

Here are examples of the Swift Premium Company’s logo at the time. The exact same “S”, arrow, and red-white-blue colors although laid out differently.

Swift & Company Logo on Fort Worth Building

As Bruce noted:

Interesting, but not conclusive. I wonder if the badges had been worn on
uniforms of delivery people or something?

And a tub of lard, which the patch might turn out to be as well:

• » Comments (4)

Interesting – eBay Boy Scout auctions now under 10,000 and we’re 750 of these.
Boy Scout category is under 80,000 total listings, that’s last summer’s low when there was a National Jamboree.

EBay’s fee structure may be hitting the collectibles area hard. Most of our items are low priced which makes eBay’s and Paypal’s take too high. IMHO.

• » Comments (1)

Heard an interesting, plausible possibility. Right now the BSA, along with the Scouts of Canada and the Scouts of Mexico, are scheduled to host the 2019 World Jamboree at the BSA’s new Summit site. The 2015 Jamboree is scheduled to be held in Japan. The rumor running around is that the dates will be switched as Japan may not be ready, or folks may be leery of going, to a jamboree there in 2015 due to the nuclear plant problems. Has anyone else heard this? Any truth to it?

• » Comments (2)