OAImages Blog

A hotel I worked at had posted in its back office area a list, from the local police department, of signs of potentially suspicious activity.  The list was meant to alert the hotel staff to possible illegal activities being conducted by guests in the hotel.  Many of the items were completely ordinary and normal,  but when several were found together they might indicate some nefarious activity is afoot.

Now mind you, this was a rather nice hotel and not some seedy fly-by-night operation.   However, it was on a busy interstate highway and drug trafficking was a concern. The local police requested the desk staff notify them if illegal activity was suspected.

With fakes, overruns, private issues and other items of dubious authenticity becoming common on eBay, I propose a similar list for Scout patches.    No single item is enough to brand a patch unauthentic, but when taken together and combined with a healthy dose of skepticism identifying dubious items and sources can become much easier.   This list is specifically focused on identifying Order of the Arrow patches.

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The 2007 World Jamboree has officially begun.  

According to the Sunday Times (London), HRH Prince William of Wales visted the Jamboree on July 28th.    Unlike their grandmother, the Queen, who was a Girl Guide as a child, neither Prince William nor his brother, Prince Harry, were Scouts.

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This message was sent to me earlier today from the OA Trading Post Online.  It was asked it be passed along to those who might be interested: 

*****
Today, more than 1,300 of the Order of the Arrows leaders converged on Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana to roll out the OA’s five-year strategic plan and to prepare for next summers ArrowCorps⁵ event. In connection with this event, these beautiful nine-color patches have just been released, one for each of next summers ArrowCorps⁵ sites. Even if you could not make it to Indiana, you can click here to get these ArrowCorps⁵ patches.

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Greetings from Florida!  I am Robert Mathis, and John has allowed me to write about OA issues from the Sunshine State.  Along with David Weda, we write the Florida Collectors’ Newsletter, where we cover Scouting patches and collectables (OA lodge, chapter, and section, along with council shoulder patches) in the state of Florida.  We’ve been publishing for 15 years (think of it as a slowly-updated blog, mailed four times a year).  And since 2006 we have been creating an on-line edition, found at  http://floridacsp.com/fcn/ . 

For our purposes here, I will stick with the lodges of eastern Florida (Seminole 85, Echockotee 200, Aal-Pa-Tah 237, Semialachee 239, O-Shot-Caw 265, Tipisa 326, Timuquan 340, and Osceola 564).  I do not have nearly as many contacts in Yustaga 385 to properly report on their emblems, so I hope the Alabama contributor can pick up my slack.

So, for my first entry in the blog for Florida stuff, I’d like to write about two non-OA patches that cannot be explained by The Rule Of Duck.

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It’s been a while but I have finally updated the membership statistics on this site to use 2007 membership data.  I don’t know if the donor of the membership data wants to be publicly acknowledged.  So thanks to the anonymous donor.

For those who are interested, the largest and smallest lodges by membership follow.

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This image of two unusual pieces was recently sent to me.   The emailer told me these were in a collection of various other items and had reason to believe that at least the neckerchief might be from Shu-Shu-Gah lodge.

I sent this to Bill Mulrenin, Blue Book editor for New York.  He was confident that these pieces did not originate with Shu-Shu-Gah lodge or any of its chapters.   Neither of us have a clue what these items are.

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Well Lola Qam Geela 491 finally beat Wauna La-Mon’Tay to the punch on issuing a set for an event.  With three of the ArrowCorps5 projects in the Western Region, Lola is the first to issue a set for the Shasta-Trinity Project. 

The set has the old Shasta-Trinity ArrowCorps5 logo on it along with Lola’s improved totem design.  This set was well designed and should be in high demand in the upcoming monthes.

A section item may be in the works since I am on the Section Merchandising Committee, too soon to verify, as I will bring it up at the next section COC.  W1A is proud to be the neighboring section for ArrowCorps5 Shasta-Trinity.  W3B is the host section.  Part of the project is in W1A.

I know that Wauna La-Mon’Tay is going to produce something for ArrowCorps5 and possibly Tsisqan 253 also.  I will do a blog on those when that happens.

Never tickle a sleeping dragon.

Those who understand the title and first sentence know what I was doing Friday night and all day Saturday.   Those who don’t, or can’t quickly guess, must have been living under a rock for the last several months.

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Darrell Green has sent me images and word of the first two issues from Ca-nu-pa chapter of Atta Kulla Lodge.

The chapter issued two round patches, with the same design both depicting a clock tower.  

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Atta Kulla Kulla lodge has issued a second chenille.   Thanks to Darrell Green for telling me about this new issue.

The design is similar to the ”C1?”, but the chenilles are not individually numbered.    It was planned from the beginning to issue these unnumbered chenilles, once the supply of numbered ones was sold out.

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This Occoneechee item has been around for a while now, but never catalogued. From what I have been told, there seems to be some disagreement as to whether this is a lodge issue, which should be added to Blue Book, or not

Thanks again to Greg Grimes for sending me the image of this piece. He reports that this is presented to all of the lodge’s Vigil candidates once they are called out for this honor. After completing their Vigil, the new Vigil brother is presented another copy of this leather with their Vigil name inscribed upon it.

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A couple of months ago, I wrote about a patch from this lodge that I dubbed, with tongue firmly implanted in my cheek, the “One True Fake“.   In that post I told the tale of what I have listed on my site as the Tslagi 163 ZS1? and also made reference to a second private issue, believed to be unique   I will tentatively label this the ZS2? since, even though this was likely made before the “ZS1?”, it was the second of the fakes to see the light of day.

The patch labelled ZS2?, like the ZS1?, was created by a collector in my lodge.   He had put together a display of Tslagi issues and was lacking a YS1 but was able to find a company that would produce a computer designed flap with a similar design.   It was believed only one of these was made.   The patch I previously described as the ZS1? came about at the same time.   It now seems that more than one of the computer designed copy of the YS1 were created.

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