Scout Patch Collectors

Sunday Scouting Hot Finds Newsletter September 02, 2018

Sometimes when you are sitting on a porch drinking that first cup of coffee in the morning do you ever think up patch projects where you can kinda see in your minds eye what the finished product looks like? I had that moment this morning and after the dust settles from moving I’m going to start working on it.

Like a lot of you I’ve organized and reorganized my collection a few different times over the years as it’s expanded and I’ve gone into new niches. Currently my collection is kinda stuck in the 2014 version of this when I put all my effort into a museum display at the SR-5 Dixie Fellowship. This system of organization centers around Boxware frames. You can see a bit of this in an old video I posted on Youtube.

I want to keep using that system for topical frames where the goal is just to have a smattering of stuff to show off. For example have a couple of frames for each Jamboree where the frames include all the neckerchiefs, patches and some cool paperwork. Same for NOACs and other national events. My idea there is not collect EVERYTHING from that topic but a respectable accumulation. A great example of that is Philmont. I don’t need ever durn PTC patch but one frame with some PTC stuff checks the box.

The collection that I’m really day dreaming about this morning is one that I want VERY organized and labeled. That’s my OA name/number flap collection. I’ve always been a collector that likes to label things. But for my OA flap collection I want to have all the council merger history, totem, charter year – just all the critical data on one label next to the flap. The perfect system for that is to use the Best Hobby Pages 3-pocket envelope which gives that ample space for a large data label.

My odd way about organizing that collection is I want to do it by state or possibly old 12 Regions. To me organizing by lodge number doesn’t tell a story of all the mergers etc. But instead if you can put them by state and show the predecessor lodges that merged right next to the one that was born that’s better.

The other piece of this project is I have the perfect item to display all these in. I have a double decker catalog rack that has a specially built shelf in my warehouse to house it. It even has a fluorescent lamp that I can click on to make it really jam up. I don’t have much time these days to work on projects but this will be one that I hope to tackle this fall. It’s time to make myself a bulletin board of little projects I can work on in-between days of listing and shipping which is the bread and butter of the operation.

CLICK HERE TO OPEN THE SEPTEMBER 02, 2018 ISSUE OF THE SCOUTING HOT FINDS NEWSLETTER