Dave Leubitz, THE Trader, passes away
We heard from Ray Czech that Dave Leubitz passed away the morning of September 9th.
Here’s Dave at the 1993 Rochester, IN TOR. This was after he sold his collection. The storage boxes next to him contain approximately 150 patches each and there are over 100 of them. These were just his DUPES!
I first met, and traded with, Dave at the 1973 Jamboree. It was a one for one CSP trade. I was just amazed at a guy having a suitcase crammed full of patches on both sides. Later, after being out of collecting for a while, I ran into Dave at a Pittsburgh TOR. He had a lodge 206 issue I needed and we again traded one-for-one from my dupes. I’m sure what he got from me was a dupe for him, a 101 blue twill flap, but he made a trade to help me out.
Most collectors never knew the breadth of Dave’s collecting. He collected everything Scouting related. In part it was to have trading stock so if a cross trade need came up he could cover but it was also just how passionate he was for Scouting memorabilia. Most know of the OA but he also had CSPs, RWS, merit badges, merit badge books, handbooks, national jamborees, world jamborees, insignia, camps (and not just one per camp but every camp patch). His mind for patches was incredible. Having tens of thousands of patches in his collection he could remember what he needed as to what he already had.
Dave told me once that he and his trading friend, Tom Baskay, hit 13 weekends in a row going to TORs or conclaves to trade. He brought along many of the Ohio patch gang like Warren Kuhfeld, Ray Czech and Gary Gole. It was not uncommon for Dave to call them up and say “Lets go to a TOR this weekend.” They’d say, “Sure. Where?” And Dave would reply, “Florida.” Fourteen hours later, after stopping at every council headquarters possible getting what ever that could be gotten to trade, they’d be set-up their patch blankets and trade away all weekend long. Dave created many new collectors as he shared his passion.
I called Paul Myers to pass on the news of Dave’s passing. We discussed some of the contributions he made to the hobby. He was an editor of the Trader magazine. Certainly at the time, it was the most influential hobbyist newsletter. Actually some think we probably need something like that again even in the age of e-mail and the internet. Dave also resurrected Forest Reynold’s Blue Book of OA issues. This listed what issues lodges had but we only had the detail of twill (F) vs. solid (S) flaps or odd-shapes, pies and arrowheads. We didn’t have the detail as to border color, edge, background, etc.. Still it was better than anything else out there. Later it was Dave’s collection that was the basis for Arapaho II that Al Hoogeveen compiled. This was the OA images before there was oaimages.com. EVERY serious collector had a copy of Arapaho II just to be able to identify issues and know what you had. If it wasn’t for Dave’s collection, we wouldn’t have had the book that moved this hobby to a whole new level.
We handled the sale of Dave’s collection after he made his original transaction with Dr. Horne and Bill Topkis. Dr. Morley at the time observed that he thought Dave had the best middle-issue collection ever put together. It still took us years to work through its sale given its size. Just amazing. Its probably fair to say that most collections these days have a piece that came through Dave’s hand.
Dave’s later years were very hard. He commented how his father passed away at an early age, 52 I believe. This, combined with very bad health side effects due to diabetes, lead to a certain fatalistic view. It was sad. He’s hopefully in a better place now. I miss him.
