The Talk of the Town – Old Camp Patches

I subscribe to Patch-L and there was a lively talk regarding the recent run of old camp patches on eBay that did very well. I want to quote who made an excellent point about why more of us should collect these pieces of memorabilia.

“Our emotional attachment to Scouting, in priority order, is almost certainly: (1) our old troop/Scoutmaster/buddies, but memorabilia limited to at most a troop neckerchief or maybe a patch with virtually no secondary market value, (2) our old summer camp (and how many of these patches ended up being given away one-per-person to attendees with very few left over), (3) our old OA Lodge (most active Scouts were members, but this is not a guarantee), and (4) high adventure/jamboree type activities that were limited to a very few, and often only the children of the well-to-do (and Philmont, while for many the Scouting captstone, generally did not drive much in the way of memorabilia until fairly recently).

Overall, I guess I am surprised that Camp items have not had stronger demand over the years. Limited trading stock and limited knowledge base (no Blue Book for Camp Patches) probably hurt. Probably a general feeling that “I’d be glad to trade for your OA flap, but I really don’t care about your summer camp”, and maybe a tradeoff of “I can spend my money on flaps and camp patches but I’m better off focusing on flaps.”

On the plus side, Camp items are for the most part still unaffected by contrived rarety issues (factoring out fundraising SAP’s and flaps). On the negative, supply is often very low, and when you factor in Staff items, yikes (larger camps would have a larger patch pool but also a larger demand from more collectors).”

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