Quote:
Originally posted by ThetaDancer
Sorry if this is a dumb question but I have to ask:
How does this happen???
Can someone help me understand this?
|
Well there is unfortunately a variety of reasons as to why this happens.
The top reason most likely is that as our senior members die their pins often end up at estate sales/auctions because they have not made arrangements in their wills (if they have one) for their pins. Non-Theta and Non-greek family members then dont know how special our badge is so they sell them or put them up for auction. So people that should not have them get them that way. This is why you usually have strangers or non-member collectors if you will that are usually only out to make a buck and care not of the significance of our (and other GLO's) badges.
Other times you have members that resign their membership for whatever reason and instead of sending the badge back to HQ, they decide to sell it on eBay. I have found that this usually applies to "disgruntled" past members who have had some kind of negative experience with the fraternity(which again can be a wide variety of reasons regardless of what we may think).
Other times you may find a member who innocently sells the badge on eBay because she may have fallen into hard times financially--though I have only heard of one case of this happening and I cant remember if it was another Theta or a member of another sorority. I would say this is most rare.
Best way for this not to happen is to have a will, and have it stated in there that your pin is to be passed on to either another Theta(that needs to be named such as your legacy) or returned back to HQ. My fiancee knows these instructions and it will be written in our will as well once we are married.
Hope this answers your question
