Scouting Hot Finds Boy Scout Memorabilia

Richard Mori has been collecting Scouting memorabilia and specializing in rare books for many years.  In this interview he reveals a strategy for success that he feels confident nobody can duplicate.  What is really interesting about the way that Richard makes money in the hobby of collecting Boy Scout and Girl Scout memorabilia is that he does it the old school way.  You won't hear the words Internet or eBay mentioned in this interiew.  However, that's not to say that there aren't some nuggets that any collector can take away and relate to.This episode represents the third in a series I am doing on ways that people have taken their passion for a hobby and figured out how to make it pay for itself by earning a little money.  In Episode #67 we focused on how to sell on consignment and in #68 we talked about having an antique mall booth.  I hope that you will enjoy this episode of the show just as much. Richard Mori lives in New Hampshire but can be found traveling around the country to shows throughout the yea

When the Boy Scouts of America announced they would be building a permanent Jamboree site in the hills of West Virginia Todd Kelly started making some trips to the "Mountain State" to scope out locations for a Trade-O-Ree. One of the results of that venture was deciding to rent out a booth in two different antique malls in nearby Beckley, West Virginia.  Along with his partner at the time Todd got into the business of selling Scouting collectibles at an antique mall.  It's been almost four years since he dipped his toes into this strategy and Todd is now doubling down on this idea.Tonight on Scouting Hot Finds Radio I have the second show in a series on interesting ways that people in the hobby of Boy Scout memorabilia collecting can turn over some of their inventory and make money.  Sure we all know about selling on eBay but in this series I am uncovering some of the lesser known strategies that people are using.  We've already covered selling on consignment in Episode #67 of the podcast. As Todd and I both

Her eBay user ID was a perfect choice several years ago - my_real_job_is_tattoos.  Ironically as her eBay business grew she was able to leave behind that "real job" and make a full time living as a work from home eBay Powerseller.  Angie Diller is my guest on Scouting Hot Finds Radio and our topic is essentially sourcing.  For Angie she runs a business totally based upon consignment with regular pickers that bring her items to sell on eBay.  This interview is the first in a series of shows that I'm going to publish describing strategies that people in the hobby can make a little money to feed their habit.  I got my real start on eBay as a consignment seller about 10 years ago so this interview brings me back to my own eBay roots.  As you listen to the interview we dive into how Angie runs her business including talking about unique sticky points with selling on consignment.  How do you determine the consignment rate?  What happens with returns? How do you handle your consignors to make sure there are no bad s

Chris Jensen of Streamwood Inc. has been in the Boy Scout memorabilia hobby since the 1960s and as a full-time memorabilia dealer he has hosted more than forty trade-o-rees including ones for the National Order of the Arrow Conference (NOAC).  In August of 2015 the Order of the Arrow will be holding it's 100th Anniversary NOAC at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan.  Streamwood will be running a NOAC trade-o-ree for the three days leading up to the event on August 1-3.  In this interview Chris Jensen goes over all the details for the Big Monster NOAC TOR.  We also talk about his impressions as to why there are so many new TORs popping up on the calendar. If you want to know more about the TOR visit his website at http://www.streamwood.net. Find more Scouting memorabilia content and all of my podcasts at http://www.scoutpatchcollectors.com.

My guest is Bob Sherman who is a well known figure in the hobby of collecting Boy Scout memorabilia.  Some have taken to calling him the "camp patch man" as he has been writing the camp patch column in the ISCA Journal for a whopping 22 years now.  The focus of our interview tonight is discussing the brand new edition of the Camp Book II that has just been published and is available as a PDF either through instant download or CD on eBay.  The book comes in at 1250 pages but you can still purchase it on eBay from my partner there RadarBSI.  One of the key things about the Camp Book II is that is also the best reference piece for the history of Scouting councils.  It is packed with information about early teens and twenties councils that most people don't even know existed.  Towards the end of this interview I reveal a pair of special bonus items that I am committing to give away with every sold copy of the Camp Book II V2 (2014).  You'll just have to listen in to hear what I've got up my sleeve. Find more Scou

When Boyd Williams attended the 1981 National Boy Scout Jamboree and traded a few patches he probably never thought he'd eventually become one of the well-known collectors in Tennessee.  However, after moving back home to Franklin, Tennessee in 1994 and getting back active in Scouting he soon caught the patch collecting bug.  As an active Scouter in the Middle Tennessee Council and Wa-Hi-Nasa Lodge 111 he started collecting everything local.  Along the way his passion for that local stuff led him to dig deep for council and district activity patches - something that many collectors ignore.  In fact one of the reasons he states for getting into that niche is that others were'nt interested in it.  So back around 2005 even though he admits to not being a computer genius he started building a website to document his collection and preserve the history of the activity patches from his council.  http://www.mtcpatches.com was built using a now defunct software program so when it crashed in 2013 he got help from a lo

Justin Carlisle began collecting Boy Scout cancer awareness patches about the time that his Order of the Arrow chapter issued a patch to help raise funds for the local chapter of the Susan G. Komen Foundation in Greenville, SC.  Soon he discovered that several OA lodges had produced memorabilia to help find a cure for cancer and he was hooked.  With his own father falling a victim to cancer he decided to write a reference guide for others Scouting memorabilia collectors who were interested in this niche.  Teaming up with Brett Estrade who runs Patchtrends.com he put together a guide that has all known issues including pricing data.  In this episode of the Scouting Hot Finds Radio Justin and Brett share the story of this new collectors guide.  For other Scouting memorabilia collectors who have notions of writing a similar collecting resource guide Brett Estrade is willing to partner with them by offering his database of prices realized from the Boy Scout category of eBay.  At the time of this episode that cata

During the centennial of the Boy Scouts of America in 2010 John Soresen got the idea to create a traveling display that he calls Scouting History on Wheels.  In my interview with him today John shares the story of how he put together the display and what he is trying to share with the audience.  Perhaps the most unique thing he has done is assemble a patrol of Scouts in vintage uniforms to perform flag ceremonies in classic fashion.  John's story and willingness to be a Boy Scout evangelist for the movement should be an inspiration for all memorabilia collectors. Find more Scouting memorabilia content and all of my podcasts at http://www.scoutpatchcollectors.com.

In the conclusion of my interview with Brad England the coufounder of the Scout Patch Collectors Facebook Group we reflect back on how the group has impacted the hobby.  Brad and I also talk about how in many ways the group is an anomaly for Facbook in that is is uber-active.  Finally we make a wish list for tools that we lack as admins of the group. Find more Scouting memorabilia content and all of my podcasts at http://www.scoutpatchcollectors.com.

Brad England and I literally launched the Scout Patch Collectors Facebook as a direct result of this radio show two years ago.  I noticed Brad swapping Boy Scout patches on Facebook and lined him up on an interview to share his strategy.  Out of that conversation was born the idea to create a group on Facebook devoted to trading patches and the group was born.  In this interview the cofounders look back as the group climbs over 5,000 members with no signs of slowing down. Find more Scouting memorabilia content and all of my podcasts at http://www.scoutpatchcollectors.com.

For more than a decade the Scout Patch Collectors Base Camp has been the goto reference directory for those interested in Scouting memorabilia.  Glenn Chase is my guest tonight and I consider him to be one of the Internet pioneers of the hobby.  As the curator of the base camp since it launched he has probably seen every patch collecting website there is including many that are now long gone.  In this show Glenn shares the story of where he got the idea for the project and how he has kept it going all these years.  We also talk about his other hobby websites and he gives some great advice to those seeking to get started on a website project. Find more Scouting memorabilia content and all of my podcasts at http://www.scoutpatchcollectors.com.

Matt Delk has been collecting Scouting memorabilia just about his whole life. One of the most unique collections he has is Order of the Arrow belt buckles. This is a very niche collection and he shares his passion for it in this interview. Find more Scouting memorabilia content and all of my podcasts at http://www.scoutpatchcollectors.com.

When Gary Beadle looked up at the tall pine paneled wall of the Gulf Coast Council BSA Scout office he had an inspiration.  Why not decorate the beautiful wall with a true council collection of memorabilia.  He pitched the idea to the council board and Scout executive who were more than happy for him to undertake the project to commemorate the Boy Scouts of America's centennial celebration in 2010.  Tonight on Scouting Hot Finds Radio we dive into the question of how he did it.  Gary got retired professionals, families of deceased Scouters and even serious collectors to give him the pieces he needed to fill in the collection and he did the rest.  You'll even hear me ask some thorny questions about what the diggers thought about him having an official letter of introduction from the Council Scout Executive.  One of the reasons I wanted to bring Gary Beadle on to share his story is so that other collectors might be inspired to follow his example.  The idea of working with the council and or camp to put up a per

Ted Thompson was like many Boy Scout memorabilia collectors when he ran up against a collecting roadblock about five years ago.  His main interest was council shoulder strips but when he got down to a final list of the twenty-five toughies he had to come up with something new to pursue to keep his passion for the hobby going.  He remembered the words of his camp counselor, "if you ever get any Project S.O.A.R. patches pick them up for me."  Before long he had all the national issue items and was on to digging through trade-o-ree bins for council and district issued event patches with a S.O.A.R. theme.  The program was first introduced by the Boy Scouts of America in the early 1970s and stands for Save Our American Resources.  Listen in tonight for my take on side collections and hear Ted's story on how he got into a fun and inexpensive collection that might be unusual for some.  What interesting side collections do you have? Send me an email and maybe we can get you on the air too! Find more Scouting memorabi

Boy Scout memorabilia collectors in this episode of Scouting Hot Finds Radio I wrap up 2013 and look to new projects in 2014.  Over the course of the year there have been 18 episodes of the show published with interviews from interesting people in the hobby such as Russell Smart, Chris Jensen, Deryl Radder and more.  Some of my web projects such as BoyScoutTweet.com changed their focus while others like the Scout Patch Collectors Facebook Group continued to grow.  With the new year I'll be jumping right into some new projects including finding ways to help educate and bring up a new generation of collectors in the hobby. Find more Scouting memorabilia content and all of my podcasts at http://www.scoutpatchcollectors.com.

The effort to catalog and describe all known Order of the Arrow issues has been ongoing since the 1950s.  Many old collectors will remember the Bill Price books that had a picture of each flap and attempted to describe the restrictions.  David Leubitz had a book – the original Blue Book that tried to catalog the issues and introduced the vocabulary that many collectors are familiar with today such as “S” for solid embroidered flap and “F” for not fully embroidered flap.  Later Albertus Hoogeveen and Richard Breithaupt revolutionized this effort with Arapahoe that was published in 1976 with pictures.  The Arapahoe II Supplement was published in 1988 and reorganized the original catalog based on new information.  Perhaps it was this renumbering of issues that led some collectors to begin work on a new Blue Book effort that would have a structure of national (4), regional (18) and lodge (100+) editors to make the final determinations on cataloging Order of the Arrow memorabilia. In this session that was recorded

In the conclusion of my interview with Dan Coberly regarding American Scouting overseas we talk about what BSA Scouting has looked like in the War on Terrorism.  Dan discusses how Scouting has popped up in Iraq and Afghanistan led by soldiers who are reaching out to the community.  He also gives a neat history of the Overseas Arrowmen Association.  This is Part II of my interview so if you missed the first part I invite you to listen to it in the archives or in iTunes. Find more Scouting memorabilia content and all of my podcasts at http://www.scoutpatchcollectors.com.

Growing up on an Air Force Base in rural South Carolina I knew all about the Transatlantic Council and even had some members of my troop that had been in the Far East Council.  So when I got in touch with Dan Coberly and found out he is a Distinguished Eagle with an incredible knowledge and history with American Scouting overseas I had to get him on the show.  In this interview Dan talks about what BSA Scouting looks like in the far corners of the globe.  I discovered many things I didn't know about a big Scouting including some information about the Direct Service Council.  Since this is a show about patches of course in the interview we also zero in on the famous memorabilia from Baluga, Achsin and other far flung outposts. Find more Scouting memorabilia content and all of my podcasts at http://www.scoutpatchcollectors.com.

While patch trading wasn't the only thing happening at the 2013 National Boy Scout Jamboree it was just as popular as ever with the Scouts, Scouters, and visitors.  On tonights episode I'm going to give my personal take on patch trading at the Jamboree.  I'll give my opinions and share my experiences having gone in for all 7 days that visitors were allowed to do so.  My guest is Rick Bedsworth who was in charge of the Collections merit badge staff representing ISCA.  Rick will share news of the 600+ Scouts who earned the badge along with his take on how the patch trading went at the Jamboree. Find more Scouting memorabilia content and all of my podcasts at http://www.scoutpatchcollectors.com.

For the better part of a year I've been tweaking my own online strategy for selling Boy Scout memorabilia.  From closing my eBay store and Prostore in 2012 to reversing some of those decisions in the Spring its been a time of transition and testing.  Tonight I'll talk about all that and include an interview with Jody Tucker with details of one of the platforms that I've built a store on.  http://www.listityourselfauctions.com is a collectibles alternative that focuses right now on Scouting and military items.  Jody is the owner of Manions Auction House and he will give us the deal on this platform that he has been working on for a few years now.  I've been out of the studio for more than a month with Jamboree and I'm excited to get back into the loop with a new show! Find more Scouting memorabilia content and all of my podcasts at http://www.scoutpatchcollectors.com.