Working through the collection consigned to us in August we’re going through the next step after photographing each item. Thoughts include: fun, interesting, exciting. And….drudgery. First you break it down by 100s or alpha, then into 10’s, then into individual lodges or councils or camps or…..

Several years back Bill Topkis posed this question to me as we were working up parts of his and Dr. Morley’s collection, “How many patches have you (Roy) looked at?” I didn’t have a ready answer. First thought was over 100,000. But as Bill reflected that this is way too low. That his and Jeff’s collection had over 20,000 issues plus duplicates. He figured he  had looked at several 100,000 patches over the years and patches area a hobby for him, not a business.

We’re quickly closing in on our quarter-millionth picture for listings, auction and web-site. That’s 250,000 patch pictures. That’s just from 2003. Many of those pictures are group shots. Many more patches were looked at but never pictured or weren’t in our hands.

At a jamboree or NOAC it is common to look at over 4,000 patches/day even though we have fewer councils and fewer lodges. Going through a multi-1,000 patch collection can be just an afternoon project. A good trade-o-ree can mean looking at 10,000 patches/day. This isn’t even counting eBay viewing.

The fun part with this collection is seeing so many new issues even though I’ve been on several Jamboree and NOAC staffs. The other thought that comes to mind is how well the patch armorers are doing, i.e., the patch manufacturers. We the collectors have been part of the problem as we start putting different borders on everything whether justified or not.

So back to Bill’s question-easily half-million and may well be a million plus. Its one of the reasons we were asked to take over Blue Book. Oh well…back to sorting.