Sam Fairchild through his Scouting Century Foundation is putting on a special museum display at the Jamboree. Now the Foundation has significant holdings but it was needing a few pieces for their displays. Sam flew in and we went through my camp patch collection to help fill in a few holes. Particularly we were matching up camp patches as best as we could that were contemporary with the formation of the the various lodges.

We also provided some patches for other areas of the display:

Explorer Service Scout Honor Guard for Mackinac Island

Segregated Scout Camp in Central Florida Council

Canalino Lodge 90 Sun Dance Camp 1948

Red Jacket Council - merged in 1939

While we were working on this collector Rick Hubbard of Iowa drove in to personally deliver some incredibly rare, vintage Jamboree staff armbands (see the cell phone picture below)

The loan was made a local restaurant. We got some interesting looks from the wait staff as we carefully laid out these armbands.

The display at the Jamboree will be the most extensive of its kind. Not to be seen at the National Museum and of a different take than the best permanent display which is at the Las Vegas International Scouting Museum.

Over at the Collections Merit Badge  & ISCA booth we’ll be smashing pennies again, technically called ‘elongates’ for the cost of a penny (or free if you don’t have one as a Scout is prepared and we have a supply of pennies.)

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Doing our eBay surfing Destry came across this offering. Now this is not the rarest patch in the hobby but think about how many four digit troop numerals have you seen over the years all as one piece? And then to see it in Cub Scout colors. This one is embroidered on felt. They typically come from VERY large councils where the first two digits indicate the district and the next two the troop or in this case the pack. (I sincerely doubt that they had 3,300 packs.) Still, they would have had 33 districts and this was the 49th pack in that district. Kind of trick.

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At the recent Pittsburgh TOR I was going through Joe Klos’s merit badge collection. Joe has a very extensive collection and is passionate about this area of the hobby. Flipping through the recent issues I did a double take. I saw something that was not supposed to exist. Joe was with Ron Oslin who also collects merit badges. After seeing the patch in Joe’s collection, I asked Ron if he had it. He did. See the two patches below.

BSA merit badge Made in China

Now what is wrong with this you might ask? Most of the current BSA merit badges are made in China. Lets look at the front:

This is the American Labor merit badge. It recognizes the contribution of the American labor movement to this country. The Boy Scouts of America are having this patch from China! This is BS (I want this to be a non-R rated blog but it is VERY HARD with this one not to get very coarse.) I am not a “union man” but I respect their impact on this country and to Scouting. Is the BSA asking China for financial contributions? For volunteer leadership? For help in building our camps? The BSA can’t excuse this away as being a fluke. This was two separate collections from two different areas.

What adds insult to injury is that I forewarned the BSA in 2007. In my position in Scouting and as a member of the National Council I am allowed to submit resolutions. I actually submitted the resolution which first runs through my council and then through the Central Region. I received a timely and nice set of exchanges with the then Region Executive Brad Farmer. He checked with the Supply Division and said they were on top of this. Wanting to be a team player and since it had gotten the attention of leadership I withdrew my resolution for submission at the upcoming national meeting.

Well Brad’s been promoted. I don’t fully fault him as this is not his area. It was clear I could have gone ahead with my resolution but I did not want to make waves where they were supposedly not needed. Wrong. I hope this does not get picked up by those who want to attack the BSA. Head(s) should roll on this. This is a slap in the face of all of the American labor supporters of Scouting. I wonder if they have added a new merit badge requirement: “Describe how your job will be shipped overseas? Describe how to sign-up for unemployement. Describe how to get food stamps and get aid from food banks.” Maybe we need to out-source the Supply Division. They can not be any dumber.

If someone knows the union representatives to the BSA Relationships Committee, please pass this on to them. This needs to create some pain in our organization if we are to improve. What did Forrest Gump say? “Stupid is as stupid does.”

Where is the George Meaney Award now made? The knot? The Whitney Young Award and knot? The American Flag patches on our sleeves? If you find any with “Made in China” stickers, please let me know.

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Last week I was at my Scout office for a meeting and stopped by the trading post. They have the new boy rank patches out commerating the 100th anniversary year of the BSA. I think these are neat but the quality control is poor. There are at least three major varieties in this group alone. Some appear to have been made by the BSA. Others have ‘Made in China’ stickers on the back. The latter is a separate sore point but we’ll leave that for another blog. Anyway, variety collectors are going to have a field day figuring these out. I’m told there’s an Eagle patch as well but I’ve not seen it. I’ve also been told that Scout shops are to have returned their inventory of the regular items so as to be replaced with these 2010 pieces.

Then Destry and I went to the Indy TOR this past weekend. Their hospitality was great as always (except for the 9″ of snow.) Several councils now have out 2010 patches. That got me asking around how many items do you think we’ll have for the 100th anniversary? By “items” I mean regular issue pieces - CSPs, JSPs, OA items. I’m figuring it will be up to 5,000. Could be more. And this is not counting camp and camporee items or Jamboree staff items. One could spend a lifetime just to collect this year. Also, I was hearing quotes for “rare, limited edition” varieties at huge prices. Councils and lodges could kill a good thing. If you know of some egregious abuses, please pass on the comment. Thanks.

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In a previous post I mentioned that we’re helping the folks at Scouting magazine for a new column of theirs. One idea we gave that they’re considering is some of the oddball merit badges. Here’s one, from R. Lynn Horne, MD of the Las Vegas International Scouting Museum that is seldom seen. It is the first Insect Life merit badge. It came out in 1923. The design shows a spider. But, a spider is not an insect. Thus, the design was changed in 1925. During the two years it existed, 73 insect life merit badges were earned.

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Information just out from the Top Hands meeting, the Scouts are on track for a record number of Scouts to earn their Eagle rank award. Fantastic!

The recent issue of Scouting reported that in 2008 Scouts earned 2.3 million merit badges. The top 10 were all Eagle required, no surprise there. The top one was First Aid (103,503) then Swimming (89,580) and Environmental Science (83,845). Think about how much better a country we are for having this many youth learning these valuable skills! Think how much better we would be if more were learning these skills. Where do the youth of our country get such opportunities? How many men got exposed to their eventual avocation through work on a merit badge? When do we open this up to females too? One of the strengths of this country is that we try to empower everyone. Scouting is part of the solution.

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We recently received a merit badge sash with an Air Scout blue Aviation merit badge but with major differences in the red embroidery. See below - standard variety on the left, strange/new variety on the right. Differences are in the prop, nose cone and detailing on the tail fins. Maybe this variation has been reported and we just missed it but I don’t think so. Maybe someone can provide some more insight or background. The rest of the sash had other narrow tan crimped merit badges. No fine twills so I’d date it to late 1930s to very early 1940s.

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The Scouting Century Foundation’s display of Sea Scout ship medallions and flag ship fleet patches won “Best of Show” at the recent 2009 Dallas Trade-o-ree. We caught up with the Foundation’s Executive Director Sam Fairchild to discuss and review for you the contents of this display. See the pod-cast below.

Sea Scouting is the oldest specialty program within the BSA. It started in 1913 and continues to this day. It has its own highly distinctive and coveted insignia and memorabilia. Some of its most distinctive badges are ship medallions, youth designed badges, for each Sea Scout unit. Also, starting in the early 1930s through the late 1940s there were national and then regional and local competitions for the best ships. The Foundation now holds what we believe to be the best collection in the country. Sam wanted us to be sure to note that Kelly Williams, President of the Krelman Co. originally built the collection and in the past year worked with the Foundation to move it to their holdings.

Here’s our interview with Sam.

 

 Scouting Century Foundation Award Winning Sea Scout display: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Coming from “patch–world” of Lingen, Germany on eBay we now have fakes of camp patches. This one is for the Transatlantic Council Camp Mohawk, their summer camp based in England, for 1957. Design is close but not close enough. Of course the description makes no mention that this was recently made, not 50 years ago.

We’re having trouble keeping up with all of the fakes coming out. We’re posting more of this guy’s fakes. No where in the titles of any of these does he indicate they are fakes or re-makes or private issues.

These include the 2000 Philmont staff arrowhead, 1953 National Jamboree jacket patch, region8 patch, 428 R1, 383 Tahosa dance team patch, 146 Tichora event first flap. The list is long and dubious.

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