The 1998 NOAC Black Eagle Lodge Flap
Why talk about the 1998 NOAC flap several years after it was made? Rumors and mysterious sightings of another version of the flap. Like all mysteries they started somewhere and this one has been fueled by a misprint in the Blue Book way back at its debut. It does not help matters when a picture of the supposed flap is shown on John Pannell's The Internet Guide to Order of the Arrow Insignia website.
As far as I know, no brown border versions of this flap exists officially. That does not mean the patch company that made the patches for Black Eagle did not make a brown border version of the flap. Why would the patch company do this? Well, the lodge has re-ordered patches in the past with the only changes being with the border. The 45th Anniversary flap is a perfect example of this. A red border version of the 45th Anniversary flap was made and sold out in days and a re-order was placed fairly quickly with a yellow border. Years later, a blue border version appeared on an auction held by SPA. I was the high bidder for that flap. It was not an auction on Ebay if I remember correctly. A year or two after that another one surfaced with a blue border on ebay along with a gray border version. Both were won by the same Ebayer with the userid of hyperbaricmedicineinc.
Why do I assume the same thing happened with 98 NOAC issue? Well, the lodge ordered 500 in its initial run and a few months later re-ordered an additional 500 flaps. It was probably done because the lodge feared they would run out of flaps for everyone...especially for the contingent members. Somewhere I have the merchandise receipt from the Council to prove this. Right now I can only find the records up to 1995 but not everything is unpacked yet from the move back to the United States. The Transatlantic Council was throwing all these old records out but I decided to keep them for historical references back when I worked for the council and have proved useful in situations like this.
In case I have you confused:
1.) Blue Book listing is wrong. 1998 NOAC Flap has a BLACK BORDER.
2.) The picture on John's site is either a very bad picture or a sample made by patch company.
I was highly involved with the lodge at this time and being one of few collectors in the lodge...I would of noticed a brown border version of the flap. The flap pictured on John's site never arrived in Europe. :)
Lastly, I apologize for not updating my blog more often. It was simply because the chair I used to scan patches on was full of clutter. ;)
