With the glacial pace at which the update to the Blue Book has taken I think many local lodge historians have jumped into to create their own local patch guides. Especially with the excitement around the recent OA Centennial I'd say in my area about 1/2 of the lodges now have a pretty formal patch guide. Not all of them...Read More
From the collection I purchased Friday the coolest thing was a 1975 lodge NOAC contingent t-shirt. I can't imagine many of those have survived the 40+ years since the event. It will go up on eBay tonight but who knows if people from Skyuka Lodge 270 will appreciate it like I do. Sometimes what I love most about getting a...Read More
As most of the readers know I've had a foot in both Scouting worlds as a parent and leader. For four years I served as a Girl Scout troop leader working with Brownie - Junior and Cadette aged girls with my daughters troops. One of the things I kinda bragged about (in this newsletter) was that I got the girls...Read More
Monday I spent the better part of the day working in my antique mall booth. Then the darndest thing happened. Two teenage girls spent about an hour in my booth giggling and going through the shirts and dollar patches. Eventually both picked out vintage green shirts and a handful of patches and I asked them what they planned to do?...Read More
It's not very often that as an eBay seller you come across things that never recorded a sale all those years that John Pannell was tracking things on his OA images website. Not only did I hit upon some of that with a collection I bought this week but I also picked up a chapter activity patch that was never...Read More
What was interesting about this collection is that it was clearly picked by somebody prior to me getting a call from the family. Even some of the children were surprised at what was left. North Carolina is a small state when it comes to Boy Scout patches so I probably know the collector who got into it and cleaned out...Read More
Can you keep a secret? The collection included over 300 mugs. That's grounds for divorce so I got smart and had the guy meet me in the parking lot of my storage unit in Charlotte. After the deal was done the books, coffee mugs and Boy's Life magazines went into the storage unit (hopefully never to be seen by my...Read More
Have you ever heard the phrase will work for patches? I have a rising freshman college student that wants a bunch of cloth from me for his collection but is low on cash. We are going to talk in a couple of weeks about him helping me with eBay listing remotely to see if we can really see if it's...Read More
This week I did an epic sort of all my dupes from my home lodge in anticipation of getting our new patch guide published at the end of the month. Yesterday I got about 70 listings made for the flaps and other issues from the lodge and threw them up on eBay. I got the most interesting message from a...Read More
Have you ever had three Scouting weekends in a row and on the other side of that just peace and quiet? Being an active leader cuts into my TOR travels. I would love to hit Alabama next weekend and Chicago at the end of the month but I think my family needs some calm. Next week should be fun. I'm...Read More
This trip we had 20 Juniors and Cadettes along with a dozen adults. Saturday was the monster day with a dolphin cruise (turned out great) and the night cap was a ghost tour of Savannah that the girls ate up. Not exactly the same itinerary as perhaps the Boy Scouts would have chosen but it was fun being a tourist...Read More
Can you sell an entire collection in one swing using a Facebook album? I've been playing with different strategies this week and one I'm trying out is selling a big Kentucky Boy Scout collection as a whole piece. There are 54 pictures in the album and over 200 items in the collection. I'm taking offers so let me know if...Read More
So yesterday I dumped out a large Rubbermaid tote full of stuff that hasn't seen daylight since I moved last summer. I did a quick sort and started making scans of stuff that I could then throw up on the Facebook group. At the end of the project I had about 100 scans ready to go. Now mind you this...Read More
The good thing about Sunday morning's is that on eBay is the highlight reel. Often times the best listings in the category close on Sunday. The beautiful early jacket with merit badges on the sleeve is my favorite in this block. It's conclave season for many OA sections and that means it's all trickling onto eBay. I missed out on...Read More
All of this hopefully plants a seed that a year from now she can be making the leap to joining a Venturing Crew. We won't give up on Girl Scouts but since her troop only meets every other week already it's not all consuming. There are some crews in Charlotte and in a perfect world we could plug into an...Read More