Focus on Fakes: Wahunsenakah 333
Posted in Patch Collecting by John E. Pannell on May 27th, 2007 at 10:49 am 
This is outside the normal group of lodges I normally write about here, but I thought it was still worth sharing.
Tim Ewing recently sent me an image of what the folks in Wahunsenakah lodge are considering a fake of their “Honor flap”, Blue Book S11. He wrote:
“It does not match the issues of the flap.
Now on these that you see in the picture, Logs are darker, Duck wing is more dark blue, brown on duck is different. If you look at it close, you can tell it is a copy. These are fakes on eBay.”
I don’t know about everyone else but I find it very diffcult to tell these two flaps, pictured at the top of this post, apart. If I had only one, I don’t think I could tell which I had without the benefit of a reference collection. If the fake is to be listed in Blue Book, I wonder how the Viriginia editor would handle this. How do you succintly describe such differences?
Tim wrote me back addressing these questions and concerns:
Look at the log, different brown and look at the blue feathers on the Wood Duck different. Doc Green told me that he uses his dentist eye glasses and could see the different in making of the patch.
I would say 90 percent are fakes from some patch company that is making them.
Now do the people know they are selling fakes? No, since they are buying up overruns as the one person told me.
We don’t have over runs of the flap and we have not changed anything in the design.
Our lodge has only re-order one time, and that will get us thru also 10 years or better, since only about 30 are given out a year.
I suspect Tim meant to say the lodge has only ordered these once, not re-ordered once. I know he’s trying to be helpful, but I still couldn’t tell which was which when only having one of them. I wonder if even lodge members could pass a “blind” identfication test on these: give them only one flap, with no other information or reference collection to use, and challenge to identify it as real or fake.
It seems the true determinant of its authenticity is where the patch came from. It’s real if the collector knows it to have come from a recipient within the lodge. Otherwise it’s likely a fake. Knowledge of the flaps prior owners, and the ability to verify that information, would seem to be very important here.
What do you all think? Are there any Virginia OA collectors reading this who would like to comment?
(Not a Virginia collector; my opinion may mean squat). If it were an “overrun” (lodge ordered 100, manufacturer made 50; overrun of 50 patches), then the colors would match those received by the lodge. The fact that there are different color shades would indicate an order different from the first patches received.
Is the punch pattern on the fake the same as the original? Even with a computer-stitched patch, two orders made with the same pattern would match in its stitch placement (taking into account tension on the thread that may create thicker and thinner lines and lettering). Similar stitch patterns but shifting colors may indicate a second run from the same manufacturer.
This also shows the folly of creating a “special” patch, full of limitations, scarcity, and inflated value, but manufactured in a location with extremely low production costs, that doesn’t give a whit about trademarks and intellectual property rights.
Robert Mathis
In this instance, it’s also really hard to distinguish between real (minor) differences and possible scanner color adjustment differences. The image linked appears to be two separate scans joined together; even if they were made on the same scanner, it’s possible that an “auto-adjust” feature might have been responsible for color differences.
I would support the theory that if you can’t tell which one you have unless you have both, there’s not much point in making the distinction.