OAImages Blog

When I first saw this patch on Ebay I thought it was a really well made fake but once me and a friend started digging we quickly changed our minds rather quickly. This is a real issue from Nanuk 355 and here is the official letter that accompanies each patch sold by the lodge.

I have retyped it here for all to read:

How we got the flaps.

One of our lodge members was bidding on a flap pattern drawing for our first flap on E-Bay, and after winning the auction, asked the seller if they had any other items from Alaska. This seller, along with a few other people was handling the liquidation of stock from several different companies or one company with several subsidiaries which manufactured patches for different organizations. The seller said that there were literally thousands of items from the company(ies) spanning the years from the 1950’s to the 1990’s, including sample books to quantities of patches.

The seller said that there were no other pattern drawings from Alaska, but that he had a batch of lodge flaps the the design of the first flap from the lodge that were made sometime in the 1980’s or early 90’s. On further inquiry, it was revealed that an entire loom run had been made during that time, but for some reason, the patches were never sold.

He said that he would like to make them available to the lodge and we agreed upon a price.