Always file a police report
 

This post was meant as a reply to:
http://forums.greekchat.com/gcforums...threadid=38322

I'm sorry for getting the "new thread" and "post reply" buttons mixed up.

Forgive me if this is long winded, but it's a great example of why a police report helps.

Recently a Kappa badge was for sale on ebay. The seller had provided the member information on the back. During the auction, the owner was located. The pin had been stolen from her home over 20 years ago!

The seller refused to end the auction. Another Kappa placed a high bid to rescue the badge for the owner, but her bid was blocked by the seller (yes, this is possible if the seller knows an ebay id and refuses to accept a bid). The auction was won by someone with a lower bid.

The Kappa bidder contacted ebay, but received only a form-letter response. So, she contacted the police. The police in the owner's area, and the seller's area of the same state became involved. The seller and winner were contacted by the police, and told not to complete the transaction.

The police arrived at the seller's house to retrieve the stolen pin, and the seller initially refused. Her attitude was "finders, keepers," as she'd purchased the pin at a pawn shop. After some pressure, she turned over the pin.

After 20 years, the owner got her pin back... and her picture in the local paper with her pin!

Sometimes Justice does prevail!:)

If the Police wanted to get sticky about it, they could have charged seller with having stolen property!

Its a shame the Officer had not been a Greek!;)

Wow, EEKappa! Thanks for sharing! That is quite a badge story!!! I wish all missing badge stories had such a happy ending!

Wow, I'm glad everything worked out and she was able to get her pin back. It makes me wonder why people who are non-greek, have no family that is greek, care so much about our pins.

EEKappa, you gave great advice, always file a police report. That is so important. Thanks.

Brianna
Alpha Delta Pi

Wow! That is a great story...I'm so glad she was able to get her badge back. The thing that these sellers and collectors don't understand is that these badges encompass our entire experience in our respective organizations; whereas it has little significance to them except monetary value. I'm so glad she was able to get it back!

She did the right thing! That is great advice well taken! I love a happy ending (sniff)!

http://smilies.jeeptalk.org/contrib/...milecrunch.gif

Its a shame the Officer had not been a Greek!

Sorry, Tom, but how do you that he/she wasn't a Greek??? After all, the police did "persuade" the seller to give the pin to the owner.

I am a member of the Gamma Phi Beta Badge Task Force. As far as I know only the Kappas and us have such entities monitoring badge auctions on ebay. The Kappas are total pros at it thought they sometime lose auctions to collectors as do we. There is something called auction sniper that can usually get your ebay bid in the last seconds of an auction presumably to win but if a collector does it too, the auction is won by whoever's sniped bid gets in the closest to the end of the auction time.

Here is my little Panhel badge story:
Here in Atlanta, on the first weekend of every month there is something called the Lakewood Antique Market -- though I have lived here for almost five years now, I had never been. Two of my girlfriend finally persuaded me to go with them and check it out -- it was really neat but I did not have anything in particular I was looking to buy so I decided I would look for sorority badges. I asked at every jewelry vendor I came across but none of them had any NPC badges and two vendors told me that someone had bought all their sorority badges out the day prior on early bird day (costs extra to get in but you get to see everything first). Well at the last bldg we were browsing in, I dejectedly went to another jewelry counter where an elederly man and his wife were selling some vintage jewelry to two ladies. I started to look in his case and EUREKA! I see a badge -- it was a Kappa badge! So I took my girlfriend aside who was browsing this bldg with me (she is an AChiO; our other friend is a ChiO) and I told her to remember everything I recite out loud when I got to handle the badge because I was gonna read off the name and chapter and year etc. The vendor finally was able to wait on me and I asked to see the badge - as I looked it over I read the name on the back out loud along with all the other markings I could see. My friend slipped away and write it all down. As I prepared to leave the vendor, I asked for a card and though he said he usually doesn't give out cards, he gave me one. He and his wife were actually pretty nice and I think they had no clue what the badge was etc. Anyways, after I got home I immediately emailed the Kappa badge group -- known as "Keepers of the Key" and told them everything including the vendor's name ph# etc...the next day I got an email from them and they were so grateful for passing along what I had found. They were in the process of sending a check to the seller with extra for postage and were expecting to get the badge back in Kappa hands promptly -- sounds like a happy ending to the story doesn't it? Well it gets better -- while the Kappa Keepers were waiting to receive the badeg, they continues to try and ttrack down the owner...here is wehre it gets really good: turns out the badge had been stolen over 20 years ago in Kansas when the owner lived there and she now lived in Seattle and always regretted not having her badge any more esp since she now had a legacy daughter she really would like to give her badge to!!!! The badge is now back in the original owner's hands and I know she could not be happier...can you figure the odds of all the things that happened to lead up to her getting her badge back? It really is wonderful! And it does not end there -- my ChiO friend who was with me that day at Lakewood now tries to retrieve the badges she can afford and she has contacted her Chi O Hqtrs to see what procedures they have in place vis-a-vis the Kappas and Gamma Phis -- she was told none were in place so now she is trying to get something started for the ChiO's!

I know there are some GCer's who are collectors and they think badge collecting is okay...but I think it stinks!

I tell you all -- I wish I was a gazillionaire so I could buy all the badges that get sold on ebay and in antique markets etc...and then hire a lawyer to find a way to stop ebay badge auctions forever!

Tom -- FYI - our Gamma Phi Hqtrs will reimburse for badges bought on ebay or elsewhere if they are historically significant; they of course have to be returned to the Hqtrs...If you have any historically signifcant LXA badges, maybe your Hqtrs might want them for the archives?

I am in the process of drafting an NPC resolution dealing with the badge re-sale issue -- I know it is not necessarily binding but feel unity will eventually be what puts collectors out of business....

CELE, Ya Still One of The Very, Very Best!:)

Dont Worry, Ya Still My Love Doll!:)

i've lost two badges so far from my house; it never occurred to me that they could have been stolen; i have a feeling that they both got thrown away during family moves; i did find one that my dad found around the house in his top dresser drawer, but i have since lost that one too; i think i need jewelry box, or some other really good place to keep one when i'm not wearing it; where does everyone else keep their badges when they're not being worn?

I have a badge pillow that was given to me at my Initiation. When it's just at home, the badge sits on there. When I'm travelling, I'll actually pin it to the pillow and put the whole thing in my jewelry box.

I wish I was close enuff to slap you!:mad:

Did it take you time and love to get them?

For Shame!:(

If I sound harsh, I am sorry, but?

After 38 years, I have the Local Badge and Pledge Button that I designed for my Chapter and My Original LXA Badge!

If you ever get another one, I hope you take much better care of it!

I apologize for My Vent but My LXA and BX mean so much to me!

I still walk the walk and do not just talk the talk!


I am sorry for the first part of the post and was going to delete it, but maybe this will make you more aware pof what it cost you to get That Badge and The Friends that you Made!

it's tradition in my chapter to be given a pin box at initiation to keep your badge in. i keep my pin and my 150th ribbon in mine.

i totally understand what you're saying tom; i guess i honestly never thought of what its takes to really earn a badge; but i PROMISE that i will take much better care of my new one

Just one little clarification.

Members who purchase an historically significant badge and donate it to the Foundation, can take a write off on their taxes for a charitable donation. Gamma Phi Beta does not reimburse them for the purchase.

Well Melanie is right -- she said what I meant to say but sometimes I am a total SFB...:(

Actually, the auction is won by which sniper has the highest bid. ;)

This is a great story, GPhiBLtColonel. I have also worked with Keepers of the Key to return Kappa badges from my collection. But the above quoted part really grabbed my attention. This is the single biggest frustration for rescuers and collectors alike these days, I think.

I go out hunting at least twice a month, so I can tell you this started happening almost INSTANTLY after the NY Times article came out *. The most amazing part of your story is that a dealer actually had a Kappa key available for sale. They must have been living under a rock. I haven't seen a single one since that infamous article came out. As you say, dealers are paying the higher prices to hit the shows before anyone else, grab up all the badges and get them on ebay. Almost every single time I go out hunting, a dealer mentions that article to me. Ugh.

The moral of the story is... be discreet. The more noise you make in public about rescuing badges, the more you'll pay, and the less you'll find (off-eBay anyway).

wptw

EDIT:
* As I said it would at the time, here on GC, and others told me I was just bitter and being overly dramatic. :p
http://forums.greekchat.com/gcforums...threadid=21927

I guess I just don't understand why a seller would refuse a higher bid in the first place. Are they just being bitter or what? I mean, if you're really heartless enought to sell the badges in the first place, wouldn't you want top dollar, regardless of who they go to? Besides, if you think about it, every time a soroity gets a badge back (assuming no other ones are lost/stolen/sold, which I know isn't going to happen, but for the sake of argument) it would make those pins more rare for the collector, driving up prices...(which is the point of collecting for some....)

You got to keep your Phi pin?!

I keep my badges in a jewelry box that is specific for Gamma Phi jewelry...it's one of those swarkovski boxes with our letters and a crescent moon engraved on the top.

Mine goes in a little heart-shaped box my mom got when she lived in Australia.

It's less important where you put it, I think, than that you know *exactly* where it goes -- it'll both keep it safe and ensure you know just where to find it when you want to wear it.

This is actually the whole goal of our group.........

Not to mention the fact, that last thing we need to do is inadvertently get our members selling their badges because they suddenly realize they can make some money.

ZTA had a similar story. A badge showed up on eBay that had been stolen over 20 years before. The seller refused to end the auction and the owner's daughter couldn't get the police report to eBay in time to stop it. Fortunately the owner's daughter did end up winning the badge and returning it to her mom but we all sweated it.

Pin collectors and sellers get so many e-mails claiming that a listed badge is a stolen or lost one that they are incredibly cynical and often rude. You'll notice that many sellers won't reveal initials.

Don't even bother to e-mail unless you have a question about the condition or year of the pin because they simply don't care about your GLO. It's harsh but true.

On a different, but kind of similar note to the badge reunion stories...

Earlier this summer I got a call from our University Director of Alumni Relations. She had gotten a phone call from an officer with the Connecticut State Police. He is a police diver, and found an SIUE class ring on one of his dives. (we didn't find out if it was a crime scene dive).
It was engraved with the letters Sigma Pi, some initials and the year 1974. The officer wanted to return the ring to its rightful owner and had called the University. The Alumni Relations Director asked if I might have some way to find out who it belonged to (yeah, I know, I know, our Alumni Relations office doesn't even keep track of those records). So I made a quick call to Sigma Pi HQ. It didn't even take ten minutes for them to make a match, and we were able to return it to it's rightful owner who had lost it back in 1979!