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.

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Recently on eBay there surfaced three patch blankets. This is a tale of how not to sell your Boy Scout patches. Not the eBay portion but before they got to eBay or to us.

First some history. These blankets surfaced around 1962-1963 when collector Paul Myers took this photograph of west Chicago Scouter Paul Price:

Mr. Price was an Owassippe lodge Garrision chapter member inducted in 1949. After he took the picture Paul M. lost track of Mr. Price. Paul believes Mr. Price had a brother in Phoenix. Mr. Price was not married and had no children. Paul M. remembers that Mr. Price’s stock trading items were Garrison chapter activity patches and old lodge 470 shark’s tooth odd-shape.

We bought two of the blankets and collector/dealer Frank Kern of Washington state bought the other one. Together they brought about $10,000 with our expectation to pull our needs and re-sell the rest to break even.

I talked with one of the sellers. He was very forthcoming in how they got the blankets. They attended an estate auction in southern Illinois north of St. Louis. They weren’t real knowledgeable about specific prices of Boy Scout patches but knew there was some collecting interest. Although prepared to go higher they bought the three blankets for $150. There was virtually no competition. There was a local collector interested in some box lots of more modern Boy Scout patches but not the blankets.

Now, I don’t begrudge these guys getting these blankets for this price. What was stupid was the family who had these and then used a local estate sale agent to sell them. The estate seller clearly did not know what they were doing, didn’t research it (they rarely do) and left thousands of dollars on the table which these guys handily picked up. The gentleman I talked with mentioned, “The house was auctioned for $6,000 and just one of the blankets brought almost that much money.”

So if you have Boy Scout patches you’re wanting to sell but aren’t sure what you have, get educated. Get advice, from us or other dealers. We’ll give you the truth. Sometimes its that the Region 10 patch that you were offered $100 for in 1969 won’t bring $20 today but more likely that you’ve got more value than you realize. We field these kinds of calls and e-mails all the time. Digital pictures work very well and if we need more clarification we’ll let you know and then advise on ways to sell.

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That was the question I received from collector friend Roger Schustereit of Texas who is helping out another friend that inherited a collection in 1998. As Roger asked:

I am sending this at the request of my friend, XX.  XX is the person who gave me the information on the origin of the 307 R3 I wrote the article on way back when.  It was his home that had the fire that left the patches smoke damaged &, when cleaned, the blue was not color fast.

Anyway, XX is now selling some Scout items on eBay (Akcent).  He wants to be fair to Uncle Sugar for tax purposes.  He inherited the items in 1998 & would like to know a general percentage Scout items have increased or decreased in value since 1998.  I had no idea, but I thought of you immediately.  If you can’t help, no one can.  I know you like a good challenge, so here is a great one.  Will appreciate any help you might offer.

Probably hoping for a simple answer all I could say was no such luck. It depends upon what one has.  Here’s my first response:

But it matters what he has. If he’s got Scout mugs – that’s 100% decline in value. Same for modern handbooks. If he’s got early 1950s OA, good stuff is up, common stuff is down. If its 70’s era OA, its flat to down. If its insignia, its flat to up. If its camp patches, its up to really up. If its CSPs its generally down but red&white community strips are up by a factor of 10 to 20 times higher. …..

Depends upon the area. I know I may be over analyzing but if he’s going to use my observation for tax purposes I need to be able to defend it. There are items that have pulled back from 5 years ago but are still twice what they were in 1998.

I then got into looking at his listings and made these notes:

I just looked at some of the items he has:

1998 value for the N/C slides – $2 – $3 each – now selling for $10 – $25
Philmont patch with segments – he’s asking $300. Fair market if sewn is $85 – $100. Price in 1998 – $150
Region 9 jewelry pieces – in 1998 $5/each – 2011 – $10 – $30 each
1950 Jambo canvas patch – 1998 $25 – 2011 $20
1953 Jambo patch – 1998 $25 – 2011 $20

1950 Jambo emb. patch – 1998 $40 – 2011 $25-$40 so either no change or a decline.

1955 Silber WJ buckle – 1998 $125-$150 – 2011 current bid is $52 may go to $75.

So depending upon what he’s got, his stuff has gone down 40% or gone up 600%. Its not one number. Now this is assuming he wants to be honest with the IRS. And they’re one group I’m honest with.

In reflecting on this further, back in 1998 one could buy community strips for $0.10 to $0.25 each. Now they can bring $3 – $30. And for those who are math challenged that’s a 3000% to 30,000% increase in 13 years from the low end. I’ll have to dig into this deeper for things like First Flaps. More later.

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Last night nine of ten Michigan councils (the entire lower peninsula) voted to take the next step in creating a new structure for Scouting. This is the outcome of the BSA Area Project . The Chief Scout Executive has described it as one of the two most important new initiatives within the BSA (the other being the Summit base in West Virginia).

Here’s a PDF of the announcement from the Area 2 President:

Sept 16 Announcement by Area President Younkman

Previously we covered this back in January Area Project – Designing Scouting for the 21st Century.

There’s still much to do and many things to be worked out. The councils will make one more vote over the next 45 days to ratify the recommendation to integrate. Exciting times. Scary times. But necessary for us to improve our ability to serve our country’s youth.

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If paper could talk. I wonder what the requirements were for the “Schiff Society of Singed Eyebrows”?

This is a cute piece of our history. I don’t know what it was for but through Scouting’s 100+ years we have had many gifted volunteers and staff create some of the most innovative programs and ‘recognitions’. As the certificate makes reference to the person being a “Full, Fledged Fire Bug”. It is part of the fun in Scouting. Scouting builds community and memories. I’m sure all of those recognized by the Consolidated Conflagrationists of America can attest to. Maybe some of them will chime in with their rememberances.

From a collecting perspective, these documents, more so than than just the patches tell the ‘story’ of Scouting. If you can add such items in to your collection, you’ll set it apart from the run-of-the-mill

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Or sub-titled “Where have all the great rank insignia gone?”

Yesterday I fielded two separate e-mails from very senior collectors about early rank insignia. One was about a Type-3 Life patch (the red knot with HOR red embroidery circa 1919) and the other was about an early Tenderfoot Achievement 2 patch (this was the rank program for disabled Scouts in the 1930s-1940s).

My responses to each separately was the same but different. That is, these are incredibly rare and seldom seen patches. And that their values are understated in the current market precisely because they’re not seen. These can be found for less than their scarcity would indicate but even if you have an open checkbook you can’t find them when you want them. Go figure. For the first, the T-3 Life (and we’re using Paul Myers’ book on Rank Insignia in Color for catalog numbers), we’ve NEVER had one come through in the collections we’ve handled!

In the random rumblings in my head as this discontinuity rattles around I’m thinking there are several pieces/examples of Scout insignia memorabilia that come to mind that are not seen these days. Here’s some of what’s on my list:

• Type 3-Life (red knot, HOR red)
• Veteran patches 15yrs and above on SS white or blue
• Life with yellow knot outside of heart on SS blue or especially SS white
• Rover Rambler pin (do collectors even know what this is?)
• Type 1 Tenderfoot (yes this is the lowest rank but originally the rank was represented by a pin. The patch did not come out until 1924 and the design was quickly changed).
• Tenderfoot Patrol Leader Bugler or T’foot Patrol Leader Scribe (basically a Scout had both positions, PL & bugler or scribe, and their rank was Tenderfoot). Paul taunts us by showing one of these on the cover of his reference work.

What’s on yours?

Note, I didn’t put Type 1 Eagle (the 1924 WJ) or Eagle on Sea Scout blue or the much rarer Sea Scout white. The first patch can bring $10,000 – $15,000 alone. The first Eagle on SSwhite can be $1,500 – $5,000 depending upon condition. The thing is, these patches DO turn up from time to time (say once every few years) but not the pieces on the list above, IMHO.

Update: Here are some sleeper, i.e. rarer than folks realize, issues that you CAN find:

• The six ranks on fine twill (used during the later part of WW2 say 1943-1945 when the heavier khaki was used for the military). The lower ranks seem to be harder to find than the higher ones.
• The 2nd Class and Star of the 1980’s series ranks when the badges were bordered and had colored cloth back ground (green on the 2nd Class, blue on the Star) with HOR stitching in the yellow field.
• Air Scout ‘Explorer’ ranks followed by the no words Air Scout ranks.
• The thin knot Eagle from the 1960s (Type 5)

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Granted we’re in the dog days of summer as I write this but still I was shocked to see the decline in listing volumes on eBay both at set price (55,370) and auction 9,977. Yes there have been some listing special days and we’ve allowed some of our inventory to time out but there’s also the pouring in of stuff from this summer’s World Jamboree. I blogged about this back in May and we’re down nearly 20% from there. We’re back to 2005 levels and lower. Interesting.

I’ve been of the opinion for a while that eBay is NOT a technology company. If it were, we’d get better service at a lower price over time. We’re getting the exact opposite. They’re looking desperate as they’ve been running more listing fee specials trying to boost their GMV (gross merchandise volume) as that’s a metric the stock market analysts watch. Its not lasting though, IMHO. I know of several dealers that have dropped eBay as a channel. The ‘take’ rate, eBay and PayPal fees, are truly onerous particularly for the price point of our collectibles. We’re doing as much private placement activity as ever before or through our web-site shopping cart.

Not sure where this goes but the trend is clear (when in this kind of economy one would expect eBay volumes to tick up not down).

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I write articles for the International Scout Collectors’ Association, ISCA, journal on trends in the hobby. In thinking about an upcoming article and reviewing market conditions in different areas of the hobby prices are holding up or appreciating in some areas but not others. A common thread between the two, in my opinion, is where there has been and continue to be active collecting guides for active areas of the Scout patches.

One of my current thoughts is about major impacts on our hobby that are standing the test of time. One of those is the focus on first flaps. I recently posed some questions to one of the principle authors, Dr. Jeff Morley of California, about the first book on first flaps. When did you begin this focus? Why? What other things when  doing the research that the hobby should know or remember?

Dr. Morley responded:

Hi Roy,
I started collecting first flaps in earnest in the mid 1980’s right after I
completed Green Book II. The information was incomplete and sometimes vague
as there was no picture guide and all we had to go on was a listing in the
Arapaho guide that, as you remember, was fairly good but lacked the
detailed information to make a positive ID on many of the flaps.

After the 1988 NOAC, I had reached a “wall” in my first flap collection. I
was down to about 20 needs (as far as I knew from the info that was
available at the time). So I made a decision to invest in placing ads in
local papers soliciting the first flaps that I still needed. I was not the
first collector to pursue this approach as Gene Berman had been placing
some very limited ads in communities where he was looking for specific
things (like the 214x) but he had never gone after first flaps. At the
time, my effort were very successful and produced some unexpected results.
First and foremost, by 1989, I had located and acquired all 20 of my
remaining needs, the last being the 311 Koo Ben Sho. However, in the
process, I also got a lot of new information from the people that were
contacting me, much of which was either new info or contradicted the
prevailing thoughts at the time of what constituted the “first flap”. The
former arrowmen that I came in contact with were simply members form the
1950’s that had received the flap, they were not leaders, arrowmen that had
continued on in the program or collectors. They were just your average Joe
that received a flap and knew the one or two years they were in scouts and
in the OA.Their info was very factual and not influenced by “folklore” that
had developed in the hobby by the 1980’s. I still have all of my research
correspondence from the late 1980’s with the orignal arrowman rom the
1930’s-50’s that contacted me with information.

My close friend and patch/OA historian extraordinair, Bill Topkis became
very interested in the first flaps in the late 1980’s and by 1990, was
helping with the patch research and information. The original difficulty
ratings for first flaps was developed by both Bill and I as a result of us
both determining what were our last fast flap needs and comparing our
independent collection lists.

So it turned out there were some new discoveries of what the first the
first flap from a lodge was and in particular, which variety was the
“technically correct” first flap. The hobby started to see OA collecting
more in terms of “varieties” in the late 1980’s, I believe largely as a
result of Green Book II (published in 1985) which began cataloging
California OA patches as issues and varieties. Also, what started to become
clearer as time went on was that in some cases (like lodge 96, 146, 189,
237 and others), the first flap issued by a lodge was for an event.
Previously, event patches were not considered actual lodge issues and were
not listed anywhere. But the truth was, like it or not, they were the first
flap shaped patch issued by that lodge and they were the first flap worn on
the uniform from those lodges.

As a result of these efforts, Bill, our friend and past Malibu Lodge 566
chief ,Tom Gould and I talked about how great it would be to publish all
the information we had acquired on first flaps and so in 1991 we started on
the original book. After it was published in 1992, the book became very
popular and at times, controversial. In some cases, local folklore in a
particular lodge considered their first flap to be different from what we
listed. That promoted vigorous discussion and more research. The results
improved the listing. Sometimes Bill and I were right and the folklore was
corrected. Other times, we had a few of the first flaps listed incorrectly
and we were corrected.

The final evolution in the first flap project developed when Dave Thomas
asked if he could collaborate with us to republish First Flaps in a large
glossy color book. Dave was instrumental in taking the information to the
next level and I believe that First Flaps in Color is now considered in the
Scout Collecting hobby as a classic and one of the seminal books in patch
collecting along with the Wabiningo Lodge Emblem handbook, Arapaho, Blue
Book and others.

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We’re not going to blog about every interesting item that comes through eBay but every once in a while there are pieces that speak to trends in the hobby. This is one of them. Offered up was a felt field cap, probably Army surplus, that had several felt camp patches on them including one from Prince Creek Scout Camp dated 1930. The item realized $1,476. There were two other felt patches on the hat, also probably camp patches but with initials only. So that works out to about $500/patch or more likely $1,000 for the one with wording and $500 for the other two. And that’s the story here. The right camp patches can be four figure values, so long as the buyers are there. For those who did not track the Phil Parlett estate auction conducted a few years ago, the most expensive item sold was a felt Camp Josepho felt staff strip at $3,600.

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