Were our badges ever customized?

[misscherrypie]

We recently saw one of our badges on a website for sale and were really intrigued, since it looked nothing like any of the badges that we've ever seen, even the full-jeweled ones. One of my chapter sisters fell in love with it, so I hope that she'll soon find the means to purchase it rather that it ending up with someone who isn't a Beta Sigma Phi.

I'm just curious, were our badges ever able to be customized? I know that we have the ritual pins now, and full-jeweled badges with pearls (which seem to be on the road of being phased out), but this one had rubies down the middle of the Phi, which made it look very unique with the pearls around the rest of the Phi.

My sisters in council don't have an answer for this question, so I'm turning to GC for more information.

Thanks

[pas]

Interesting. Can you post the link? Have you tried emailing some of the council sisters about it? Do we have a national historian? She might know...

[badgeguy]

If you can post a photo of the pin you saw, it is possible that this may be a pin from another group. Over the past 150 years, there have been a number of groups who used the Greek letters Beta Sigma Phi.

BG

[misscherrypie]

Link is:
http://www.fratpin.com/betasigmaphi.htm

It's the first pin on the top of the list.

[badgeguy]

Oh, yeah that looks like the pins I've seen before, made by LG Balfour back in the late thirties early forties....

[misscherrypie]

Thank you badgeguy. I've never seen a photo of such an old badge from my organization and it sure is beautiful. I'll definitely let my sister know what you said!

[erica812]

How unusual! The color and the thickness of the badge are really different from any that I've seen before.

[ElleLeann]

Bump!

This was one of the first pictures I ever pinned on Pinterest with a question about the rubies to any sister who might see it. The response I got was from a sister who stated that the customization was done by the owner and was allowable because the full-jeweled and miniature badges are not considered ritual badges. She owns an Exemplar with diamonds down the phi.

The customization wasn't officially condoned by International, but since these aren't considered our official official badges, it can be taken to a local jeweler and done there.

I thought it was gorgeous, and if you were to choose to do a customized badge, the stone possibilities would be endless.

[misscherrypie]

Originally Posted by ElleLeann

Bump!

This was one of the first pictures I ever pinned on Pinterest with a question about the rubies to any sister who might see it. The response I got was from a sister who stated that the customization was done by the owner and was allowable because the full-jeweled and miniature badges are not considered ritual badges. She owns an Exemplar with diamonds down the phi.

The customization wasn't officially condoned by International, but since these aren't considered our official official badges, it can be taken to a local jeweler and done there.

I thought it was gorgeous, and if you were to choose to do a customized badge, the stone possibilities would be endless.

Thank you so much for letting us know! My sister that I mentioned in the OP has decided to buy a Full-Jeweled badge soon and THEN have it blinged out with rubies by a local jeweler. I'd like to do the same with buying another full-jeweled badge when I hit Laureate degree, but with sapphires!

[ElieM]

Question:

Is this Nu PHi Mu us? Obviously, as there aren't many chapters around - I've never seen our badge

[misscherrypie]

I showed the picture to one of my sisters in council and she says that it's definitely a Nu Phi Mu badge.

[ElieM]

Cool. Thanks