Scout Patch Collectors

Tuesday Scouting Hot Finds Newsletter March 1, 2016

Recently I asked for advice on how to make displays useful when showing Scouts. Tracy Mesler responded back with sage advice.
“Take a lead from the NOAC museums the last two times. Hold text down to short-speak. Headlines and brief captions. To expedite the lines at NOAC, Bill rewrote every text block holding virtually everything to under 140 words. Many to a single simple sentence. You/we are trying to give a brief overview and some context, not the history lessons we all enjoy telling. i.e., start short and simple. Embellish only if critical context is missing.”

On the question of Patch-L and the Facebook group I heard back from Hank who said. “I’m a member of Patch-L, thus have seen the pro/con as it were email traffic from the various members. Personally, I refuse to use Facebook, Twitter, and the other venues as I HATE Spam both in the can and email ….Additionally, those “old timers” if you will in my Lodge that still collect also refuse to use Facebook. They prefer using good old email, mail, phone, TOR’s and even eBay to find their needs.”

On the idea of how to organize an OA name/number type OA collection Richard wrote: Your idea of organizing your flap collection by states and original 12 regions sounds appealing at first glance. However, it depends on what you are trying to accomplish. If you want to illustrate a specific historical point, it might make that easier. However, it seems to me that it would take a lot more effort for the general collector. You have to have a map of the regions and a list of what lodges were in each state. Seems like a lot of work unless you are focusing on one state or region. My immediate preference would be to organize by number. A card at the beginning of each lodge can be used to identify regions, states, areas & trace merger activity.

I got home yesterday and was doing a happy dance. In my mailbox was a nice check from a collector who is getting some good stuff from me. On the doorstep was the collection I purchased that is going to keep me busy for the next month. I thought Monday’s were supposed to be bad?

CLICK HERE TO OPEN THE MARCH 1, 2016 ISSUE OF THE SCOUTING HOT FINDS NEWSLETTER