Boy Scouts Stamp Collecting Merit Badge

Hi everyone,

I'm working on earning the Stamp Collecting Merit Badge for the BSA, and I need to expand my collection. If anyone has some duplicate stamps they could spare, I would be very grateful. One of the requirements I am stuck on is to have cancelation, surcharge and overprint stamps. If anyone has any or knows where I can find some for cheap it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

Wow, I'm happy to hear that they still have that.

You might run into a small obstacle as you cannot contact members until you have 50 'quality' posts. Since you are not allowed to post contact details, it might be difficult to receive duplicates from members.

Maybe someone can suggest a good alternative. You could visit a local philatelic society. Its members might have some spares for you and teach you more about the hobby and the stamps.

As for specific stamps: try hipstamp, or ebay and enter 'overprint,' 'surcharge,' or 'used' and click the 'stamps' category. You might find cheap stamps. Used stamps, often, are cancelled. You might get more hits using used and look for a used stamp with a nice cancel than use 'cancellation.'

Another way to get a cancelled stamp is to send yourself a postcard at the basic rate. Hopefully, it is cancelled. Or go to the post office and ask for a nice cancel to be sure it is cancelled.

Thank You NKS for the info!! I'll definitely go into my local post office and see if they can cancel it. Also thanks for telling me about how messaging works here!

One of the requirements is to visit a stamp show. Hopefully there is one in your area you can visit. Most large cities still have them, especially in the fall.

A good place to seek this type of help is on the Reddit "askStampCollectors" or "philately" sub-Reddits. Plenty of people there who may be able to assist you and send stamps. HTH.

Scott

Ad123re - have you checked w your counselor for stampa? I am a counselor for this badge and always have sufficient stamps for scouts to complete the badge. The same is for other counselors I know.

I'll do that thank you

What does the current stamp collecting merit badge look like? Is it the same as it was during the 1960's?

Good luck, Ad123re!

Stamp Collecting was the first merit badge I earned when I was a Scout. I'd already been collecting for four or five years at that point, so I didn't have to work very hard to get it!

Some years ago, there was an exhibit in the youth section of WESTPEX on the history of the Stamp Collecting merit badge, which was very interesting. Short version: The requirements have gotten easier over the years.

The stamp collecting merit badge was introduced in 1931. The central design has remained essentially unchanged to the present. It is one a small number of badges produced in all 12 major styles of backing cloth, border style, etc. (classified as types A-L, see Fred Duersch, Jr's "Merit Badge Field Guide", which also gives data on how many of each madge were awarded each year.)

The 2008 printing of the 2007 revision of the stamp collecting booklet looks like this:

To speak broadly about the BSA booklets, the BSA makes periodic changes to the cover style of the entire series. Additionally the contents/requirements of each badge are reviewed on a rotating cycle about every decade and updates made as necessary also with a cover change maintaining the general theme of the whole series.This results in about 15 major cover-different booklets over the past 90+ years. To save warehousing space and keep inventory low, there are near-annual printings of each merit badge booklet, so one should be able to find nearly 90 different print editions of the stamp collecting merit badge booklet!

To continue on the memorabilia tangent, here is one of many versions of the generic merit badge card filled out for the stamp collecting merit badge. This one dated 1933 and the first version with collector Franklin D. Roosevelt as the honorary president of the BSA.

I was an assistant Scoutmaster for a boy scout troop and a merit badge counselor for many merit badges. Was disappointed that none of the scouts ever wanted to work on the stamp collecting one during my time in the troop. :-(

Ad123re - Good luck, hope you catch the stamp collecting bug!