Birmingham Area WBS Confirmed
I was talking with ISCA column editor Blake Keasey about a recent acquisition. How is it that 40 years or longer after the fact, these were phased out when CSPs came in, we are still discovering new red and white council strips or in this case a Sea Scout white and blue council strip? Up to this point this Birmingham Area C/Alabama strip has been unreported. That means neither Art Hyman nor Rob Kutz had it reported to them. Nor Bruce Raver. Nor Blake. Some of these have got to be real hens teeth. But its also why this collecting area is both fun and legitimate (that’s on my mind with all of the new, crude issues coming out for the 2013 Jamboree). They could be ordered as few as a “half order” or six.
on July 27th, 2013 at 5:31 pm
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on July 29th, 2013 at 12:06 pm
The thing about Sea Scout strips (WBS and BWS) is that I know at least some Sea Explorer units took pride in wearing them long after the arrival of CSPs. So it’s possible that some of these were ordered into the 1980s, well after the basic RWS strips were stopped.
I know that in Baltimore Area Council the Sea Explorers continued to order WBS/BWS from a third-party supplier even after BSA stopped manufacturing them.
on July 29th, 2013 at 12:51 pm
This is a BSA manufactured one without a doubt. The ones you’re talking about were not of BSA manufacture as far as I know.
on July 30th, 2013 at 4:07 pm
The late 1980s ones were not of BSA manufacture, but I believe that they were using strips from the BSA through at least the early 1980s.
That aside–my basic point is that Sea Explorers, not only in Baltimore, kept using BWS/WBS for a while after CSPs came out, and that it would not be surprising for some little-known Sea Scout strips to have been manufactured relatively late in the game.