yeah yeah yeah. I knew someone would want me to respond to this thread.
for the record, there is no offical Theta badge-rescue group.
let me be clear: I am a
collector, not a rescuer. I buy Theta badges, and badges from other greek groups as well, and typically buy/sell/trade with collectors from other groups. I have some wonderful NPC/NIC friends, whom I've met through this collecting hobby. We all look out for each other and I have a number of items in my collection that have never exchanged hands on ebay. I wear my collection (not all at the same time!
), because in so doing, I feel like I'm honoring the women who wore the badge before me. if you are at convention, you'll want to come find me to see which special ones I've brought!
Some in our midst see things differently; they believe ALL badges should be sent back to HQ. I see their point, but hope that they also see mine. I don't want to engage in a debate. PM me if you want to discuss offline.
I started buying on ebay in 1998. IMHO, while there has definitely been a spike in online sales of badges in recent years, this is only a movement of the existing offline traffic over to a more popular (and visible) venue. I bought my first badge in 1991 for $50 IN GOLD WEIGHT from an antique store in Boston. Back then (and even now) many jewelers and dealers treat these fraternity/sorority pins as SCRAP GOLD AND MELT THEM. More and more they are learning that ebay is an option to sell these items instead of melting them for the mineral content. Hence why the badges are showing up online. I firmly believe there were just as many badges trading hands 20 years ago before ebay; they were just mostly being melted down instead of being sold in a public forum.
In the last 3 years, there have been over 200 Theta badges sold on ebay.
Less than 10 of these were what i would call "historically significant". I am going to sound very callous, so I apologize to those I offend, but I don't feel we need to organize a group to buy what is, for the most part, ordinary badges.
Even for the historically significant badges, there's a significant amount of competition amongst both the Theta rescuers & collectors and non-Theta collectors. No bidding group is going to be able to control that kind of an auction, so overall there probably isn't a point in putting forth the hours of time to run & maintain such a group..
Okay my 2 cents are up.
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