In the past few years, the BSA Supply Division has made changes to the front designs to several merit badges. Also, starting around 2006 they began to have “Scout Stuff” printed on the back of the patches. Fred Duersch is the current editor of the Merit Badge Field Guide and author of the current classification system for merit badges. These new ‘SSB’ (Scout stuff back) merit badges are called “Type – J”.

Well, with any transition across an existing inventory and new products coming out, not everything is done consistently. Too many moving parts. While doing some cataloging and updating our inventory of merit badges I noted having one not yet listed as a type H – plain plastic back called Auto Maintenance. In theory this badge should not exist as it came out in 2008, after the conversion to SSB.

Another one is Composite Materials.

Fred and Craig McDaniel are working on an article for ISCA to catalog these transition oversight issues. They are likely to be quite scarce. It is like the transition from square merit badges to wide crimps. Many of the rarest, and most valuable, square merit badges are the ones that just came out before the transition (e.g., Pigeon Raising, Rowing, Mechanical Drawing).

Update: Talked with Ron Oslin at the Dallas TOR about these. What he pointed out was some of these post SSB badges had problems with the Consumer Protection laws that limited the use of pthalates (sp?), a chemical used to soften plastic on the backing of these patches, so that some came in to this country without SSB even though they never existed in the plastic back era. Still, they are going to show up on Type H – plastic back collecting lists as that is where they fit in.

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I’m not a member of the National Rifle Association but our incoming council president is. When we met recently for lunch he had the December, 2010 issue of American Rifleman. In it they have a wonderful article about the Marksmanship merit badge, this year’s National Jamboree and the NRA’s partnership with the BSA. Check it out on their web-site.

As the article points out:

“Marksman” was one of the first 14 Badges of Merit (later termed Merit Badges) offered in the original 1910 Scout Handbook

Aritst Joseph Csatari

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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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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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There have been some recent articles in ISCA about merit badges. One part of the discussion was questioning whether merit badges were made using silk thread. We brought this up a couple of years ago as we offered up narrow tan merit badges (circa late 1930s to 1945) that identified versions embroidered with silk thread and versions embroidered with cotton thread. This change over in thread types occurred sometime during the WW2 years. The collectors of adult insignia or youth rank badges have known of the thread difference for at least a decade (see Terry Grove’s books on Eagles or Paul Myers’ books). Some collectors of merit badges though have still been in denial. Unfortunately Terry and Paul’s work was ignored by some merit badge experts.

Well, as we have been preparing the auction of a very nice collar pin collection we opened up one of our favorite reference books Uniform Badges and Insignia the BSA published in 1933.

Going into the book, there is a section on merit badges. In black and white they note that the patches are embroidered in silk on khaki cloth. I am not sure what better documentation to come up with for those still in denial.

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We have running the cloth back, green border version of the Colonial Philadelphia merit badge. This was a special merit badge issued by Philadelphia Area Council. We got some more information in from a collector:

This badge was only made from 1975-1976 for the Bicentennial. This cb variation was a manufacuturing plasticizing error. It’s not a (true cb) as it wasn’t made from 61-71.

I’ve got in my collection the merit badge booklet, locally made, for this badge. We’ll try to get a picture posted as well.

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There’s always something new in this hobby. Just answered a customer’s question about the type of plastic back on a merit badge we’re auctioning. He needed to know if it was a plain plastic back or has the BSA logo in the plastic. Learn something new everyday. And some thought that those of us who collect thread type, i.e. silk vs. cotton, in tan merit badges were crazy.

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