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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