EAGLE SCOUT MEDAL OWNER SOUGHT

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V21 2018 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 21, Number 34, August 26, 2018, Article 30

Eagle Scout Medal in box with six Eagle Palms

When a Scout from North Carolina found, among his grandmother’s possessions, an old Eagle Scout medal and six Eagle Palms, his reaction was instant.

Hayden Stanley is a First Class Scout in Troop 334 of Raleigh, N.C. As someone on the trail to Eagle himself, he knows how much work goes into earning the program’s highest rank.

Hayden knew the medal didn’t belong to anyone in his family. And his grandmother died two years ago, so Hayden and his parents aren’t able to ask her how she came in possession of the Scouting artifact.

“I can only speculate,” says Hayden’s dad, Dwight. “In retirement, my parents would often go to auctions in Fayetteville, N.C., and many times they would bring home boxes of random stuff auctioned off as a lot.”

For background I reached out to George Cuhaj, author of the Standard Price Guide to U.S. Scouting Collectibles (Standard Price Guide to U.S. Scouting Collectibles (Krause Publications, Iola WI, 2001 (C) George S. Cuhaj. 400 pages). Autographed copies are available from the author for $11.50 postpaid media mail. G.S. Cuhaj P.O. Box 433, Iola WI 54945. -Editor

There are plenty of them with or without IDs available on eBay. The box has been damaged in a fire. The retail value of the medal is 65-80 dollars. The palms are awarded for each 5 merit badges earned above the 21 required (or 24 for a brief time in the 1970s).

So there would be 1 bronze palm for 5, 1 gold for 10, 1 silver for 15, and then it would start combinations, 1 silver and 1 bronze for 20, 1 silver and 1 gold for 25 and 2 silvers for 30...(for a total of 51 or 54 merit badges.). Currently a scout can earn about 134 merit badges in the program.

(Some folks on-line have surmised that they are all silver palms, thus indicating the scout earned 90 merit badges above his 21 (or 24) thus putting him near the max available in the 1970s.

The Manufacture of this variety was the Stange Co. who held the contract from 1968-1999, at about 30-40 thousand awards each year. There are varieties, and generally common.

This is a link to the official annual totals.
https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2017/03/01/number-of-eagle-scouts-per-year/ .

I am generally not in favor of trying to find the original owners or the family of original owners. Just finding out about them thru ancestry or SSI information, or Newspapers.com is fine. There is usually a reason that something gets sold.

Good point, although one never knows the true situation without investigating. Sometimes the recipient or their families are happy to relocate lost medals. But I believe a marketplace should exist, as collectors provide a means to preserve medals and research their history long after the families cease to have an interest in them. -Editor