327 YS1: Unique Or Not?
Posted in Patch Collecting by John E. Pannell on October 1st, 2007 at 10:40 pm 
Can anyone help Irv Block with this mystery? Back in 2002 he sent me this image of the 327 YS1, a piece he believed to be unique. A major collector offered him a significant sum of money for the piece, which he tells me he still has.
He was therefore surprised when he saw this piece show up in the site’s price guide. It sold on eBay in August, item number 260146166303 (this link will become inactive over time). The seller of the lot is in Pennsylvania.
It seems a bit unusual to me that someone in Pennsylvania would have a very rare piece from a smaller Texas lodge. I would have expected these to remain in Texas, or with someone who has ties to that area. Sure recent rare piece leave their home territory frequently, but it is still notable when they do. Combined with the relatively low sales price on the piece ($27.67) and it leads me to wonder that this is not as rare as first believed.
Can anyone clarify the situation with this piece? What’s up? How many were made? Where did they originate? Is this the object of “Chang-style” fakers? Will it turn out that Irv should have taken that offer?
I disagree with listing pieces as Y issues if they are identical to a real issue if they are simply missing a border. It’s a piece without a border. To me that’s similar to a thread break. Should thread breaks be Y issues also? If you look at the patch in the auction there are thread defects in the snake. If you look at the Irv Block example there are thread defects in the upper left yellow and at the bottom yellow at the point. These are manufacturer defects and nothing more. Manufacturers sell their defects by the boxful all the time. Yes, Irv should have taken the offer for his piece.
I have previously been a member of Huaco lodge and can only comment on a bit of this flap history. Many of us knew the original lodge flap as “the worm” since that’s what it more closely resembled instead of the rattlesnake it was intended to be. This patch is a 45th anniversary commementorive, again a very similar fat snake. Camp Tahauaya, if I remember correctly, started around 1940 or 1950. The lodge started some years after and has in the past couple years consolidated with much of the restructuring.