There is an age-old question that once again has been raised within the Scouting Memorabilia hobby. The question is whether a collector piece is more valuable as a whole, than as the sum of its parts.

Recently, several antique patch blankets have sold on the auction sites and discussion among collectors has been fierce. Some hold the position that a patch blanket represents the sum total of a person’s scouting experience and thus take exception to the very idea that someone would come along and purchase the blanket (or jacket, or uniform) with the sole intention of removing the patches and using them to fill holes in a collection and perhaps selling off the remainder.

Others suggest that the buyer has a right to do with his property as he wishes and can deconstruct the collection in anyway he sees fit. Others have likened deconstructing a patch blanket to removing a stash of old patches from a shoebox and placing them in your own collection.

I have an interest in vintage Scout Uniforms and find them all the time with one or two patches, or sometimes all of them removed. You can almost always see the holes left behind by the stitching where a patch was once proudly secured.

I don’t advocate that we should commit to leaving every piece of memorabilia intact, because I know full well the thrill of finding that one patch you need to fill a hole in a collection. And I’m not really talking about the 60′s, 70′s, 80′s and even 90′s uniforms floating around – there are thousands of them. In fact, I tore one apart last night. But the patches were in the wrong place.

What I am referring to are the uniforms from the 1910′s, 20′s, 30′s and 40′s, of which, there are fewer and fewer around.

I am sometimes haunted by the guilt of knowing that I may have defrocked a proud scout’s prized possession, his uniform – the one he worked so hard in depression times to earn the few dollars he needed to purchase it, or the one that he so proudly opened on Christmas morning in 1934, because he was signed up to go to a National Jamboree in 1935 that never happened. Perhaps that very scout was lost at sea during WWII, and his mother held onto his Boy Scout Uniform as her fondest memory of her little boy.

Look, it’s one of the greatest thrills you can have as a collector to go through a box of uniform parts from the 30′s or 40′s (or earlier, if you’re Mitch Reis!) I’ve had that thrill a few times. It’s also a fact that the number of these pieces that exist is a finite number. It can never increase, but only diminish. At some point in history, the last old uniform will be gone.

All I ask is that you please think about the history of an old uniform before cutting it up. Yes, I know that those boys from long ago are dead and gone, but I can recite all the words to “Puff, the Magic Dragon”, which tells us that “Dragons live forever, but not so little boys.” The 12th Scout Law commands reverence, which I think not only includes reverence toward God, but also to considering and respecting those who walked this path before us.

I confess, I’m as guilty as the next guy.

For years, I have been making fun of the immediate run up in pricing of Scouting memorabilia after (or sometimes during) events. I have tried to avoid the hype surrounding certain Jamboree Shoulder Patches (JSP’s), NOAC Flaps, Two-part patches, and other “Collector” issues. For the most part, I have avoided collecting these items because of the market volatility.

As recently as a month ago, I was laughing at a friend of mine, who is also a memorabilia dealer, when he told me he was going around to Scout Shops and buying up the remaining supplies of the 2010 Commemorative Rank patches. I got a little perturbed with him when he told me he was going to put some sets together for himself and maybe sell some at shows and on the auction sites. I accused him of speculating of these patches, like I try to refrain from doing with JSP’s.

“I thought council offices and scout shops has restrictions on purchasing rank,” I said. “I thought you had to submit an advancement report to buy them.”

“Depends on who you know,” he replied.

“Figures.” I thought.

Imagine my surprise when a local scout shop manager called me and asked if I’d be interested in their remaining stock of – you guessed it – 2010 Commemorative Rank!

I don’t know why I thought I could resist. It’s what we do in the hobby – buy low, sell high, try not to look like an idiot doing it. Everybody has the same formula. So, tomorrow, I’m driving over to the office to purchase about 500 pieces of “out of stock” merchandise. Cheap.

I have even done the same thing before. At the 2010 Jamboree, I was able to stand in line each day to buy the Daily patch for $5 each at the Trading Post, then list them on ebay later that same day and command $40-$50 apiece for them. Items have value only relative to the collector’s ability to get them. In theory, if you weren’t there, you couldn’t get them. We were told that the supply was limited to those in attendance, who braved the lines at the Trading Posts to get one of the patches – and you were limited to one per day.

Turns out that after the Jamboree was over, the folks at National Supply (or whoever makes those kinds of decisions) made Daily Patch SETS available to any and all who wanted them. I do not know if there was a limit – but I know I ended up with a few sets, paying less for each complete set than I got for some individual patches during the event. For the arithmetically challenged, that equals $40 for a set of 10 patches that would have cost me $50 ($5 apiece) at the Jamboree Trading Posts.

Some of you remember back in 1997, the Jamboree pocket patch was scarce. They ran out during the event at the Trading Posts and unless you pre-ordered, you couldn’t get any. The third party market was cashing in on the patches. Ebay was in its infancy and I opened my ebay account specifically to try to sell a few Jamboree pocket patches and some of the 5-part rocker sets I had accumulated in my role as a subcamp program director. Now, those 1997 PP’s are relatively common, at least compared to the late 90′s – but not compared to the 1973 PP’s, which are incredibly common. Is there more supply? Or less demand?

So my question for the community is this. Is it wrong to take advantage of a situation in which you can, even to a tiny degree, manipulate the marketplace? Is it wrong to sell a patch for 10 times what you paid for it early on, even though history says that prices will likely go down, or someone will release a ton of supply into the chain?

Why shouldn’t electronic publishing of a trading or collecting manual be a natural extension of the countless hours of  research you have put into your collecting manual or trading reference guide?

One of the concerns most people share is protecting Intellectual Property rights.

First, the most basic concern is preventing people who buy your book from copying it and sharing it with their friends. My initial response would be, “What prevents them from doing that now?” I have seen photocopies of pages or entire books of most every book in the hobby floating around at shows and Trade O Rees. Some of them ONLY exist in photocopied form, because they are old, or because their original authors have died (I think we all know which ones I’m talking about).

With electronic publishing, we can mitigate some of that danger by using “Digital Rights Management” that is built into the e-books that we produce. Here’s how it works: if I purchase a copy of a book on the Amazon Kindle store, I can load it onto any device that is registered to my account, but I can’t copy it, print it, or share it with anybody, unless the publisher has allowed the “Lending” feature, by which I could lend it to a friend for use on his device for a limited amount of time, but while it’s on his device, I cannot access it on mine (similar to me letting you borrow a traditional book.)

A further benefit of e-publishing, using Digital Rights Management is that you can add hyperlinks to the e-book, that would take purchasers to a secure website for additional information, like printable checklists, revised information, etc.

Quick Response Code

You can also do this in paper books by using what’s called a Quick Response Code (a 1″ x 1″ 2d Barcode) that any reader can scan with a smart phone that would take them to a similar website.

Think of the advantages of this functionality. In most of the collecting categories, new products are being added almost weekly. These could be added to secure web pages, accessible by those who purchase your manual or guide on their computers, smart phones, iPads, or other devices.

In addition, through these additional web pages, you can contact these readers and give or sell them additional information. Then, these people become more than readers – they become “Followers”.

Imagine hoards of your followers circulating through Trade O Rees using their smart devices to track which CSP’s, JSP’s, Flaps, Merit Badges, Patrol Medallions, Books or other items they need.

I can’t quantify the number of copies of collecting guides and trading manuals have been sold to date, but I suspect that by doing some marketing to owners of Kindles, iPads, iPhones, Droid Phones, Sony e-Readers, Nook’s, and other devices, a significantly larger audience than those who just attend Trade O Rees or visit Scout Shops could be reached.

The Jamboree Market Research Experiment

During the 2010 Jamboree, I did some informal research and estimated that of the 50,000 or so “official” attendees of the Jamboree, only a couple of thousand of them attended one of the two Trade O Rees in Fredericksburg. My guess is that there were 20-30,000 people inside the gates actively trading CSP’s/JSP’s/Flaps, etc. Of the 5-10,000 daily visitors, maybe only a couple hundred each day attended one of the two Trade O Rees. This is a VERY small slice of the overall Scouting Community – and these are only ACTIVE scout participants who were in Virginia during July 2010. This doesn’t include the hundreds of thousands of people with some interest in scouting collectibles in the general population – whether or not they are active scouts or scouters. That was mind-boggling to me to consider the total available audience.

Two more “IP” questions come to mind:

First, exactly what is the intellectual property? I ask that question, because there are many lists available showing CSP’s, JSP’s, OA patches, not to mention all the paper and ephemera. I collect books and paper, so I have dozens of different book lists. My question is, who “owns” the data. The list of every edition of the Handbook is static. It is only going to change going forward, so the historical list is not a “living” list.

If you are the author of a collecting manual or trading reference guide, when you compiled the date for your book, where did that information come from? Is the intellectual property the list itself along with the photos, or is it the process by which you collect your data, or it the compilation of a list, plus photos, plus pricing information?

Either way, technology allows us to protect that information more securely electronically than we could in paper.

Is e-Publishing Expensive?

I know that it is expensive to publish through traditional channels – either by self publishing or by using a publishing house to print books. You simply don’t get as much as you deserve for each copy sold.

Also, when you make a new edition, you may be holding inventory of previous editions. This goes away with electronic publishing, because to create a “new” edition, you simply upload the new file, the new cover photo, then begin marketing the “New Edition”. The extras we discussed earlier are constantly being updated, so purchasers of e-books have the newest information at their fingertips.

At Big Rock Publishing, we are dedicated to making the hobby more accessible, more user-friendly, and available to a greater number of new collectors than ever before.

One question that I am often asked is “What happened to the Sons of Daniel Boone or the Boy Pioneers?” One scouter asked me one time, “What happened to the Sons of the Pioneers?” to which I replied, “I guess that they and Roy Rogers rode off on a Happy Trail together.”

Over the next few weeks, in order to answer some of the questions that I frequently hear, I will be posting some information about a few of the key youth organizations that preceded the Boy Scouts of America.

Beard in Profile, Praying at Roosevelts Grave

Today, we will discuss Daniel Carter Beard’s “Sons of Daniel Boone”. Disclaimer: This is partly a reprint of a blog article in wrote for DanielCarterBeard.net in May 2010.

As Editor of Recreation magazine, Daniel Beard created the Sons of Daniel Boone in 1905 as an organization to carry his life’s work of conservation and outdoor life to American boys. By the early 1900′s Beard was as famous as nearly any American. As an outdoors man I often consider him like Steve Irwin, “the Crocodile Hunter” of his day. He was a well known writer, illustrator, and teacher. He had written quite a few books by this time, including The American Boys Handy Book (1882), The American Boys Book of Sport (1890), The Outdoor Handy Book (1896), Jack of All Trades (1900), Field and Forest Handy Book (1906), Handicraft for Outdoor Boys (1907), among them.

Developing Ranks and the Patrol Method

The Sons of Daniel Boone did not use rank advancements like the Boy Scouts, although all members were considered “Tenderfoot” until they attained the level of “Scout”. They used a method for identifying its members that was similar to the patrol method. The members were assigned to “Stockades” (similar to patrols), eight boys made a “Stockade” and four stockades made a “Fort”. Each officer within the Fort took the title and totem (symbols) of one of eight different American frontiersmen:

• Daniel Boone -President. Totem, powder-horn.

• Simon Kenton – Vice-president. Totem, tomahawk.

• Kit Carson – Treasurer. Totem, arrowhead.

• John Audobon – Librarian. Totem, bird.

• Johnny Appleseed – Forester. Totem, tree.

• Davy Crockett -Secretary. Totem, coonskin cap. (D’uh.)

• George Catlin – Totem Painter. Totem, buffalo head.

Later, after Recreation magazine was sold off, Dan Beard joined the staff of Woman’s Home Companion and took the organization with him. Shortly afterward, Beard resigned from Woman’s Home Companion, but the magazine retained the name “Sons of Daniel Boone”. Beard was forced to recreate the entire organization from scratch, and called it the “Boy Pioneers” – not to be confused, as it sometimes is, with the later “Boy Pioneers” organization of the Communist philosophy.

Developing a Suitable Uniform

For the uniform of the Sons of Daniel Boone, and the Boy Pioneers, Beard worked with Colonel Gignilliat of the Woodcrafters, another boys’ organization to adopt a somewhat standard uniform for all the organizations.

They adopted the cowboy Stetson that Beard described as being “interwoven with the winning of the Western plains”. He had long used it and felt there was nothing better as a shield against the weather. Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, upon returning from the Spanish American War, showed Beard how to fix the barbiquejo, or back strap, so that the hat would stay on the head.

The remainder of the uniform consisted of a short sleeved woolen shirt, open at the neck, shorts or “flappers”, with long woolen stockings.

The bandana around the neck, or neckerchief, also came from the cowboys.

Roosevelt Calls the Shots

In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt met with Daniel Beard in Washington, DC.  At the meeting,  Roosevelt suggested John Muir, Joaquin Miller, John Burroughs, Admiral Dewey, and his Chief of Staff Maj Gen Bell, along with Beard and Ernest Thompson Seton would make a de facto board of directors of a new organization that later would become a combination of these groups, or The Boy Scouts of America – an organization that would be incorporated by W.D. Boyce, who also later owned and operated the Lone Scouts of America.

Next Time

In our next article, we will discuss the Lone Scouts of America and how that organization split from, competed with, and eventually became part of The Boy Scouts of America.

This is a questions that I get all the time at memorabilia shows, Trade O Rees, and at speaking engagements. People want to know why you can almost always find plenty of smaller old uniforms – even ones dating back as far as the 1920′s with regularity. But, “Why,” they ask, “can I never seem to find any in larger adult sizes?”

The answer to this is simple, really, when you consider that as a people, we are much larger now than at any time in the past. Generations ago (and I guess the 1920′s would be about three or four generations ago, depending on whose scale of time you use) a man was considered to be large when he had a 44″ chest. A dude with a 46″ chest was either a blacksmith or a giant.

I discovered a Boy Scout uniform order blank from 1919 the other day and saw that the BSA only had regular stock of adult jackets up through size 44. That would mean that for me to order one that would fit my large frame (size 50), I would have had to special order. What that special order would have cost in 1920 dollars, I can only imagine. The “regular” size adult uniforms cost less than $10.00 complete (a couple dollars extra for wool) and came in a special cardboard suitcase, with sections for jacket, shirt, breeches or trousers, stockings, belt, campaign hat, leggings and shoes.

As for more contemporary examples, I have in my stock of adult scout leader uniforms, several production samples from the 1990′s that are size 4XL (much too large for me!) with a 23 inch neck! I also have some Venturing Pants with a 54 inch waist. Considering that I have sold several of each of these sizes over the past year, I’m guessing that the folks who ran the BSA Supply office in the late teens and early 20′s might never have dreamed of such large human beings donning Scout uniforms.

I can supply you with large uniforms, (check out my ebay store for that)  but don’t be looking for any from the 1950′s or earlier. I’ll save you the trouble – they weren’t produced in sufficient quantity to make your efforts bear fruit.

The February 1919 issue of Boys Life Magazine is significant for a couple of reasons. First, its cover illustration by Norman Rockwell is “The Daily Good Turn”, one of his early, famous illustrations.

Second, this issue pays tribute to Col. Theodore Roosevelt, who had died on January 6, 1919.

I was browsing through the February 1919 issue of Boys Life magazine today and came across the following bit of information, from the editors:

“NOW THEN YANKS, QUIT CALLING NAMES. The Department of the Interior, through the Bureau of Education, asks everybody, boys especially, to pledge themselves not to use such names as Dago, Wop, Sheeney, Kike, Heinie, Greaser, Spaghetti, Mick, and others that you fellows will doubtless recall. (A Scout is kind.)”

I notice no mention from the Department of the Interior of “Jap”, “Chink”, or the dreaded “N-word”.

Here’s a link to the actual magazine. Page 30

I have now lived through three or more generations of Boy Scout Uniforms. When I crossed over from Cubs to Boy Scouts in 1976, we still wore the olive green uniforms with no collars, neckerchiefs and either red berets or field caps (my troop wore both). I remember the complaints during the transition in 1981 to the khaki shirts/dark green pants uniforms, and also the more recent transition to the “new” uniform for the 21st century.

You may already know that I have about 2,000 Scouting magazines in my warehouse, and I happened to be reading through the first issue, April 15, 1913 and found an interesting article. In this article, Chief Scout Executive James E. West announces the formation of a newly expanded committee on uniforms and equipment. He further solicited suggestions from Scoutmasters on what features they would suggest. He gave the following letter as an example of the kind of information the committee was looking for.

“Will you kindly place the following points before the new committee on Uniforms and Equipment?:

Breeches: That the buckle be taken off the back. That they be cut off at the fourth hole below the knee; that the manufacturer be requested to make smaller sizes, as his 12-year-old sizes are altogether too big for a boy of that age.

Shorts: That these be made on the English model, to conform to the shape of the leg, and not to be made like track shorts. They should be a little bit longer, so as to just come to the top of the knee, and be more shapely.

Shirts: That we discard the present shirt, as it is impractical and unhealthy, and that in its place we adopt the flannel shirt of the same color, without pocket and without collar, opening at the neck, so that a boy could wear a bandanna handkerchief.

Leggings: That the leggings be discarded and that in their place we use footless golf hose, with colored stripes at the top to designate patrols or troops, and that with these footless stockings, boys be requested to wear white socks. The stockings would be kept up by garters.

Knapsacks: That we adopt the English model. Our present knapsack is no good.

Coats: That the coats be made more simply, and fit better; that the two upper pockets be dropped off and that the collar be made a stiff single standing collar, to close with two hooks and eyes.

Hats: That we adopt the new low crown, stiff brimmed hat.

Cooking Kits: That we adopt the U.S. Infantry cooking kit, which consists of frying-pan and dish, closing up. In this you can place knife. fork and spoon. In addition to this, the boy can carry a tin cup and a tin pail in which to boil water. This gives them an entire cooking kit at a cost that would be under 50 cents.

Belts: That we have a fabric belt instead of a leather belt, with the Boy Scout device on the buckle.

General: I would not alter the general appearance of the uniform for two reasons: First, we must protect the vested interests of the boys; secondly, it has already become the trademark of the Scout, and therefore, so far as the hat with the dented crown and stiff brim, khaki colored uniform, etc., arc concerned.

I would stick to them, as they have already created a good trade-mark value, if I may use the term.”

See? Complaining about Scout Uniforms is nothing new. It has been going on since the beginning.

The genre of Scouting fiction became wildly popular with American boys almost immediately after the birth of the BSA in 1910, and was one of the most profitable genres in publishing during the period 1910-1930.

Ernest Thompson Seton and Daniel Carter Beard, who were two of the founders of the BSA were avid writers, illustrators, adventurers, and naturalists. Both Seton and Beard had written numerous books by the time Scouting began in America, but these were mostly non-fiction books about animals or adventures or their own travels.

Scouting fiction was published in numerous serials by quite a few publishing houses of the day, including the Stratemeyer Syndicate, later famous for “The Hardy Boys” and “Nancy Drew” series.

Many of the “authors” of these novels were pseudonyms for house writers, staff writers, or other so-called legitimate authors.

As a cost cutting measure, many of the books were re-published under different titles, credited to different authors (house pseudonyms) with different cover art. Interestingly, these re-issues would be printed from the same plates as the originals, and included identical typographical errors and misprints.

Among the most popular series, one would find the work of Percy Keese Fitzhugh, a real person, who authored more than 100 titles in the genre, including series about Tom Slade – based on a 1909 silent film, Roy Blakeley, Pee Wee Harris, Westy Martin, Herve Willets, and Skinny McCord. Fitzhugh became so famous in the 1920’s, that entire Scout Troops would sometimes visit his home in New Jersey, just to get a glimpse of the author and to meet the boys about whom his stories were written.

Fitzhugh’s work told tales that boys were interested in. For example, in Roy Blakeley’s Camp on Wheels, the gang spends the night on an abandoned rail car, only to find that during the night, the car is moved to a remote location that happens to be immediately across a lake from a Campfire Girls’ camp. Suffice to say that uproarious adventures ensue and the reader finds boys and girls in the 1920’s engaging in similar activities that contemporary teens might engage in today. A current television preview might say, “Young lives will never be the same.”

During the World War, many of the scout fiction titles had wartime settings, like Boy Scouts in France, Boy Scout Aviators, and Boy Scouts with the Cossacks or Poland Recaptured.

P Todd Kelly is a nationally recognized expert in Sales and Use Taxation. Todd is President of Tax Traxx, located in Johns Creek, GA.

He is also the founder of Big Rock Publishing and is excited about the upcoming release of the Centennial Edition Boy Scout Adventure Series.

You can read Todd’s blogs at ptoddkelly.com. He also discusses Scouting issues at Scouterblog.com and DanielCarterBeard.net.

The Boy Scout Handbook 3rd Edition, 11th Printing, (1930)

In the early 1990′s, I was the newly minted camp director at Camp Rainey Mountain, BSA,, the Boy Scout Camp of the Northeast Georgia Council in Clayton, Georgia. During the third or fourth week of camp, I took a day off and drove up to Dillard, Georgia to meet some friends for lunch. The Dillard House is an institution around the north Georgia mountains, but that’s a different article.

On this particular day, after lunch, I didn’t feel much like going straight back to camp, so I stopped in at a little antique store in Mountain City, GA (halfway between Dillard and Clayton, and barely noticeable as you zoom by.) It was in that store, on that day, that my life changed paths forever.

On a dusty shelf, in the back corner of the store, I found a dusty old blue book with a cracked cardboard cover and a picture that I had seen many times hanging on the wall of our Scout Office. The picture on the cover was a Norman Rockwell illustration, showing a Boy Scout in silhouette with the faces of historical figures in the background.

Of course, by now, if you know anything about old Scouting memorabilia, you may  have guessed that the treasure I discovered that day was a third edition Boy Scout Handbook, this one was the 8th Printing from 1928 and it was the first one I had ever seen. I thought to myself, “Wow! A sixty year old Handbook. How cool is that?” I paid the shop owner the six dollars she wanted for the book and headed out to my car, satisfied that my “collection” was complete – who needed more of these?

I got back to camp that day and shared my discovery with our camp cook, a guy I had known for years and still keep in touch with today. He said, “Six dollars? You got ripped off. If you want to waste your money on Handbooks, fine. Now, let me show you something really collectible.” And with that, he pulled another dusty, cracked, broken-spine little book out of a box on his desk and said, “If you’re ever in some antique store and find some of these, buy ‘em and I’ll double your money.”

Well, that book turned out to be Archibald Lee Fletcher’s The Boy Scout Rivals.

I asked him to let me hold the book, and he screamed, “Too fragile. People COLLECT these, nobody HANDLES them, much less READS them!” And that was how I was introduced to the genre of Boy Scout Fiction. Thanks, Mark Keefer.

If you have read my previous blog articles, or if you have visited us over at Big Rock Publishing (www.bigrockpubs.com), or have been to one of our shows or historical displays, you already know that I am an avid Scout Book collector. I’ve been collecting these “little books” for almost 20 years now, and have bought, sold and traded thousands of them. Ironically, I have never sold any to Mark, who promised to “double my money!”

Over the next few articles, I want to share with you what we’re doing over at Big Rock Publishing, and about the Boy Scout Book Project, where we are releasing reproductions, reprints, and ebooks of the more than 350 titles in the Boy Scout Fiction genre. Look for www.boyscoutbookproject.com to be launched soon!

In the meantime, if you’re a fellow collector, or if you just have a question about Scout books, feel free to contact me by commenting here. And please add us to your RSS feeds, or join our site above.

Todd Kelly aka BigDawg243