eBay the Right Way
Learn how to sell on eBay the right way. Suzanne A. Wells has been selling on eBay since 2003 and has been an influencer in the eBay community since 2007. This podcast is designed for the full or part time at-home seller who loves the reselling process including the thrill of the hunt, rehoming used items, and building a home business they love. eBay is a way of life, not just a side hustle. Suzanne has been featured in Money Magazine, Martha Stewart Magazine, Women's World, and All You magazines as an eBay expert. You can find her on YouTube and Facebook as Suzanne A. Wells.
eBay the Right Way
eBay Seller Chat with Jason in NC: Boy Scout Memorabilia Specialist 🏕️
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Hello, friends, and welcome back to eBay the right way. I'm your host, Suzanne Wells, and this is episode number 274 Thank you so much for joining me this week, whether you're listening while driving, exercising, walking the dog, shipping orders, or just enjoying some downtime. I'm glad you're here. My guest this week is Jason from North Carolina. He has developed a fascinating niche in Boy Scout memorabilia and shares valuable insights into what collectors are looking for how to identify desirable pieces and what items can be worth much more than they appear at first glance, so grab your favorite beverage, settle in, and enjoy my conversation with Jason. Hello everybody, and welcome back. I have a special guest with us today, and actually local, so that's fun. How are you doing well this afternoon, Jason? I'm
Unknown:good. Hello, neighbor.
Suzanne Wells:Hi. So, I guess we're about like 20 miles apart, maybe.
Unknown:Yeah, it kind of depends on traffic, so you have to be careful what time of day. But I'm just over in southeast Charlotte, and you're kind of on the other side by Lake Wiley, so not too far, right?
Suzanne Wells:Right. So, what are you near in that area? I'm trying to picture where you are, but I'm not a stalker that way, so
Unknown:no, it's all good. Yeah, so southeastern Charlotte's kind of like if you pass like Valentine, and then going up US 74 which is kind of a route that people will use to head east towards the beach. So I'm right off of 74 in fact, hopefully you can't hear too much of the highway noises, trucks go roaring by my building, so is the
Suzanne Wells:other end of 74 is that Independence Boulevard?
Unknown:Yeah, actually, this is some people do call this Independence Boulevard, exactly. Okay,
Suzanne Wells:back in the day, yeah, I knew that, and actually my daughter works up at Valentine.
Unknown:Oh, there you go. Very
Suzanne Wells:familiar with that area. So, okay. So, now our favorite
Unknown:restaurants are in Ballantyne.
Suzanne Wells:Yeah, they have a lot of good places there. You're right. Okay. Well, you reached out to me to come on the podcast for several reasons. You're familiar with podcasting, you have your own, and you have a very rich history with eBay. Do you want to kind of summarize how you got into it and your journey to where you are now?
Unknown:Sure, yeah, I'll just sort of jump in, and then you can pause me and ask some questions. But, so, Suzanne, I sell probably one of the smallest niches of any of your guests? I know you have a lot of what we call everything sellers in the, in the business,
Suzanne Wells:right? Yes, treasure
Unknown:hunters. I'm probably one of your only guests that never goes in a thrift store. I never do any of those typical things that everyone does, but I am only interested in Boy Scout collectibles, Boy Scout memorabilia, that's my jam, and somehow by niching down and doing that over the last 25 plus years, I have built this, you know, big eBay business with my own building and employees, and the whole deal, a mortgage and all, but it's really just because that was something that, as a, as a kid, I got into scouting, and it just was, you know, I just took to it really well. Collecting scouting memorabilia was something I started doing as a teenager, when all my friends thought it was cool. And then later, when they all discovered other hobbies, I just somehow never got into golf or playing poker, or whatever men are supposed to do, watching NFL on Sundays. So I just kept at it. I was always involved in the scouting program, and really, along that time, I was in college. I know that you went to Queens, I went to the University of South Carolina, go Gamecocks. I still wear my ring, and so I majored in history. I was going to go and be a school teacher, which I did for over a dozen years in public schools in South Carolina, but this little thing called eBay was invented, or auction web, I think, maybe it was in 95 So, being that I was already in a collectibles hobby, eBay kind of like really crept into the conversation pretty early there, and I think I signed up in November of 98 primarily just doing probably buying, but. You know, because I was of the generation who, you know, our parents got a computer when we were in high school, so we actually understood how to get on the internet and do things, and I was on America Online back in the day, you know. Now we're dating ourselves, right? Gen X,
Suzanne Wells:yeah, you've got mail, yeah, you've got mail,
Unknown:yeah, might have hung out in the two, too many chat rooms, you know, late at night, all that silliness, but so, anyways, I started dabbling in selling, and so pretty much I would say, once I got married in 98 and we moved to North Carolina, it's Eastern North Carolina, eBay was always a way that I could sell things in order to have money to buy things for my collection, and it's kind of funny, I recently heard another podcaster say that you should never sell things that you love. I think he sells pallets, so let's be honest, he's not selling anything he loves. But honestly, that's the only reason that I'm selling on eBay, is because I have a passion for this particular niche, and I'm a collector as well. So, and one of the rooms in my building is literally like my collection storage room, and I'm, I have not yet gotten there, but I'm building one of the rooms is going to be my display room, I don't want to call it a museum, because that's a bit of a loaded word, but it'll be a display room, where if I have some people that come visit me, I could take them, let them see all the, you know, the jewels in my collection that I put together over the last three or four decades,
Suzanne Wells:yeah, and people have those for Barbies or Christmas ornaments, or whatever their thing is. And I'm going to backtrack here and call out whoever that person was that said don't sell what you love. I get it, because you don't want to be emotionally involved with it, but if you don't love it, you're not going to want to do it,
Unknown:exactly, exactly. Yeah, my wife has jokingly talked about her retiring early from work, you know, like before 62 or whatever you're supposed to magically retire, and I said,"Well, don't worry, because I'm never going to retire, because I'm doing exactly what I wanted to. So I've just, you know, yeah, I never.. I literally sometimes will come out to the, to my building, you know, after dinner or something, if we have nothing going on, or on a Sunday, and it's just like bonus time for me, like this is my little man cave, if you will, but you know, it's my business, right? So I'm sorting stuff, listing stuff, answering questions, making little YouTube videos, whatever.. it's just very fun to me, so it's a lot better than teaching middle school social studies in rural South Carolina. I can tell you that.
Suzanne Wells:So, where were you in South Carolina? Down at Columbia, by the university.
Unknown:Yeah, actually, I grew up in a little small town of Sumter. My dad was in the Air Force, and there's an Air Force base there, and I don't know if you've traveled through Sumter, it's not, you know, like a major..
Suzanne Wells:well, is that near Fort Sumter?
Unknown:So, Ford Sumter is in Charleston Harbor. Yeah, so that's where, you know, the Civil War started, right? Let's get our history there. But it's east of Columbia, and so that's where I grew up. Went, went to South Carolina, did marry a Columbia girl, but she was a journalist, and so she had got a job in Fayetteville, North Carolina. So we moved up there, and we lived in this little town of Lumberton, which is off Interstate 95 And so I, being that I was interested in South Carolina state history, I drove across the border to Dillon, South Carolina, to teach eighth grade South Carolina history, because apparently in North Carolina, they don't teach South Carolina history, although you know it was all one state for a while, but anyways,
Suzanne Wells:right.
Unknown:And then eventually I did that for about seven or eight years, and eventually got a job in another rural county, like I said, for about a dozen years I taught middle school social studies until I did this eBay thing full time in 2010 that's when I, we had, we had our son, who was our second child. We'd always tried to balance somebody staying home with, you know, the newborn, and so kind of this inflection moment where I said to my wife, why don't I stay home and let's see if I can make this eBay thing work. So, yeah, I haven't looked back.
Suzanne Wells:Good for you. Back to Fort Sumter. We used to go to the beach, you know, growing up in Atlanta, we would go
Unknown:to the
Suzanne Wells:coast, the Georgia, South Carolina coast, and our dad was very much into history,
Unknown:and
Suzanne Wells:so we, we saw all of the Fort everythings down there on the coast, and you know, as a little kid, it's like, so boring. We just, oh, do we really have to go look at another, another for battle place with cannons, and it just, we wanted to go to the junk stores and get airbrush t-shirts and snow cones and all that.
Unknown:Absolutely, you want to go
Suzanne Wells:looking back, he passed a little over a year ago, and you know we can appreciate it, his interest in history and where it came from, but you know, as a little kid, you're just, you're not really into it, but we, we remember all of those for everything down by Saint. Simons and Charleston, and that whole coastal area, so yeah, I've heard of it, and kind of remember the concrete of
Unknown:it, yeah, definitely. I mean, I've taken a lot of school field trips, that was one thing I was blessed to do. We had some grants that allowed us to take the kids on field trips, so we took them down to Charleston and to Patriots Point to see the aircraft carrier, the Yorktown, and then out to see Fort Sumter on the island, so
Suzanne Wells:yeah, so yeah, we'll go look at that stuff, Dad. But you know, you need to take us out for seafood or something afterwards,
Unknown:right? Yeah,
Suzanne Wells:okay. So, has your only product line ever been Boy Scout stuff? Is
Unknown:no, no, it really is. I know that'll sound so strange with people. The only, the only other thing I've ever sold is, I sold a 1967 Volkswagen bus, one of those split window fans, and that was because I had one that I had for about three or four years, and when the engine blew on it, my wife was like, "That's it, we're done. You know, this was like my little project car you have before you have children, you know, you have these little things that you spend money on. So, anyways, I listed that on eBay, back.. oof, that's been a long time ago. And so I think it sold like 900 and something dollars, and a Marine, actually from Jacksonville, North Carolina, drove up and picked it up and towed it home, and I have no idea whatever happened to my Volkswagen bus, but I'm sure that if he just put it in a barn, it's probably, you know, going to be on some American Picker episode now, because those split windows are the real classic ones. But this one, it had a lot, it was lacking a lot. But, anyways, that was, that was sort of my unusual sale. But other than that, I really have stuck to the Boy Scout stuff, and we've just grown the store over the years, and now I just have a, you know, a lot of items. We have, you know, I say this not to be braggy, we have like 100,000 items listed on eBay, and really, yeah, yeah, it's kind of crazy, but kind of, we have to, because, you know, some people probably listening to this are like, who's buying Boy Scout stuff, and so it is kind of like a volume business, like we have, we're selling a lot of things for five and 10, $15 and we just have to sell a lot of them in order to, you know, pay for all the overhead and everything, keep it going. So, and luckily, with eBay, during Covid, this was kind of the big thing, which I don't know if they really intended for this to be game changing, but it was for me, anyways. During Covid, they actually had this special deal where they allowed people in certain categories, including collectibles, for your store subscription price. You actually got like bonus listings, so for example, I have a an anchor store, which I think is like supposed to be, I don't know, 10,000 items or whatever for a normal seller, but in my collectibles category, I actually can list 100,000 items for that one price, and so it just kind of turned it just turned off all the breaks. There was no reason to slow down. We just figured out how to list more efficiently within spreadsheets and CSV files, and just loaded it up so
Suzanne Wells:well. And if you're, you're talking about patches and pins, and you know that's a lot of stuff to get all that listed is amazing to me, but where do you get your items?
Unknown:Yeah, so that's actually the only way I can really make this work is I don't ever have to go out and find items, they actually find me, and this happened very accidentally, to be honest. I started in 2010 One of the reasons why I left teaching to do this full time was I had started an email newsletter called the Scouting Hot Finds, and originally it was just this idea of, you know, I would share with people - actually, you would appreciate this - I had a Shopify store, and everyone knows when you have a Shopify store, the thing you have to do is drive traffic there, because no one's going to stumble across it on the internet. So I created this email newsletter, and I had all these emails from past customers who I had bought stuff from me back in the day, and so started sending this out, and so that started building a little bit of an online presence, and then really the breakthrough was years later I've started dabbling and sort of fumbling around with YouTube, and I one day I decided to film a video of me unboxing a collection that I had purchased, you know, what we now would call an unboxing video, probably, you know, lots of genres have those, and so that is really what has caught on, so now I've, I forget exactly how many, but it's over 100 unboxing videos I have filmed from buying collections from people, and so now it's kind of a, it's kind of a loop, it's like I make more unboxing videos, and of course in there I'm sharing the history, telling about the person, sometimes it's a loved one who's passed away, and at the end I sort of say, hey, if you have a, you know, box sitting in an attic sitting in a basement that no one is interested in, they reach out to me. Every week I get usually emails, but sometimes text messages and phone calls from people who have scouting memorabilia, whether it's from, you know, a loved one who passed away or someone who did the. Program, and they've just held on to this stuff for years and years and years, and they'll reach out to me, and you know, they just don't want it to be thrown away, and I know you've talked about that in a lot of your podcasts, is that if someone was an Eagle Scout, or they went to a jamboree, or they hiked film on out New Mexico, they had these like childhood memories that were just mountaintop adventures for them, then a lot of those people keep this stuff for their whole life, and everywhere they move, as you've moved, you know, you got this box of stuff, you're just not going to pitch it, you're not going to donate it to Goodwill, and so eventually, when they do decide it's time to pass stuff on, they'll reach out to someone like me and see if I'd be interested in buying it, so I kid you not, I literally, you can't make this up, Suzanne. To this morning I checked my email, I had two messages from two brand new people interested in selling me stuff within seven minutes of each other. That doesn't happen very often, but it's just ironic it happened today as we're recording this. So that was that was a lot of fun. So some of these collections are so small they're like a little tiny bubble mailer, and some of them are so big I have to fly out in an airplane and rent a U-Haul, bring it all back. It's like, you know, lifetime accumulation of a collector, so that doesn't happen very often either, like maybe once a year. I do have a collection I'm hoping to go get in Pennsylvania later this year, where a guy had basically a shed in his backyard, like a 10 by 20 shed, and he turned that into his own personal scout museum, and so he's now passed away, and the family and I've been talking about, you know, what would I offer for it, and that sort of thing. So that's hopefully my next big trip is to do that. So we're still working out some details,
Suzanne Wells:well, and that is very important to the family. When someone passes on, they want that collection to go to someone who will appreciate
Unknown:it, right?
Suzanne Wells:Some things, yeah, you can have a garage sale and estate sale, but those sentimental items that they're going to have to let go of eventually. You talked about the things that we keep and carry around with us our whole lives, and it's just every few years you open that box and it's nostalgia, and you go down memory lane, and it makes you feel good. The families want that. I'm still trying to get my hands on my dad's University of Alabama football, that was signed by Bear Bryant.
Unknown:Oh, wow, yeah, that's a trivia.
Suzanne Wells:Got it. And I was like, you know, a collector would just love that, they would just love it. And, well, you know, he had that displayed in his office his entire life, you know, that we knew him. And,
Unknown:yeah,
Suzanne Wells:we're not ready to let that go yet, and I
Unknown:literally just, just yesterday, drove to Little Town of Clemens, North Carolina, and met with a widow that I've been talking to for months, and after her children kind of checked me out online, I spoke to her daughter, and everything, you know, got the family's permission, I went and bought the collection of her late husband, who was 84 years old when he passed away, and this woman was so appreciative that I was going to buy these items that at the very end she said,"Do you do you drink wine? And she would, she gifted us a bottle of red wine that she had from a North Carolina winery, because she was just so appreciative that I'd come up there and helped her really clean this bedroom out and get all the scouting memorabilia, so of course I've, you know, paid her for it, and it was kind of fun. We haggled back and forth on the price just a smidge. I, I made her an offer, and she said, well, that's about halfway between what I thought you were going to offer and what I want, and so she bumped me up just a little bit, and we settled on it, but you know that's kind of good, for that's how I sort of try to operate. I want to make sure that people that I'm buying these collections from, that they feel happy and they're satisfied, and, and like you said, that they know that the stuff's going to be appreciated.
Suzanne Wells:Well, and how did she find you?
Unknown:So she actually got a recommendation from someone else, who I guess my name is kind of out there in circles. We do have, like, you know, I'm sure, like, as you mentioned before, Barbies and Hot Wheels, and all these other collectibles. We do have a Facebook group with 20,000 people. Okay, you know, we have - it's actually pretty to say it's sophisticated might be a stretch, but we actually have reference books, and we have collector clubs, and we have all these - we have weekend memorabilia shows just for scouting memorabilia, so it's kind of a.. it's even though it's very tiny, we have a, you know, pretty well-grown hobby here that's organized, and so through doing these email videos, my name's kind of out there, so someone.. someone put her on to me.
Suzanne Wells:Okay, okay. Well, what the listeners are waiting to hear is about some things you've sold and what types of items are valuable, because they might be out at estate sales, or wherever, and just see this stuff, and I'm sure that the estate sale companies know that Boy Scout stuff has value, but I'm sure there are also very specific things. Things that are more valuable,
Unknown:it's a trick, you know. We, and I'm going to tell you about probably my favorite sale that I made. I'll save that one just for a minute, but it's a trick, you know, giving people advice, because so much Boy Scouts, if you think about it, like during the 1960s I think the number is there were 6 million scouts at any given time in the 1960s so that's 6 million at that time boys who have the same green uniform, the same hat, the same belt, the same, you know, merit badges, the same rank patches they earned, and so I'm not quite sure I can help, I can communicate this exactly, but what you're looking for is you're looking for the things that not every kid had, so oftentimes the things that you find in antique malls, for example, where it's the.. and I have an antique mall booth, so I know this is how it works. Ah,
Suzanne Wells:okay,
Unknown:yeah, it's a sleepy poet in Charlotte. Shout out to those guys, you know, the things that you see, like the mess kits and the canteens and the green uniforms.. a lot of that kind of stuff is so ubiquitous that it really is really hard to find a market for, but there are things, especially I would say we in the in the Boy Scouts, there is an honor organization that a lot of scouts will get, will join when they become just about high school age, it's called the Order of the Arrow, and it's kind of like the Honor Society of the Boy Scouts, it's an honor camping organization, and that particular genre is one that is highly collectible, and the way you can tell those items apart, number one, a lot of them are very beautifully made, a lot of, you know, design elements in it, and stuff, and they're very local to each group, so for example, the one here in Charlotte, their totem is a hornet's nest, because Charlotte, you know, from the Revolutionary War, I think it was Cornwallis, or one of those guys, or Tarleton said that, you know, it was about a hornet's nest, and so each of these lodges, which are like geographical ones, they have their own designs and their patches, and so we catalog all the issues and keep track of them, and so the way you can spot these is a couple of things. One is oftentimes they'll have three letters on it, www, which is kind of weird, but it stands for three Indian words that translate to Brotherhood of Cheerful Service, and that's kind of the idea of this Brotherhood of Camping. The other thing is, the patches, some of the more common patches are flap shaped, so they look like they would go on the pocket of a shirt, and those are ones that are really desirable as well. The other thing I would say is just look for things that are very old and dated, so if you find patches like, say, from the 1950s those are, you know, before the 1950s those are very sought after, but even someone like me, who's been doing this forever, you could not even.. there's no way to imagine how many different patches have been made for every little weekend event and every little council and every little town in America, and so a lot of times I still didn't find myself buying things and just running them at auction, just to see if this is the rare border that everyone's been looking for, because you know I'm here in the Carolinas, I don't know everything about everything, hopefully that helps somebody, probably I'll probably do a YouTube video about this, but I don't want to create competition for myself, so that wouldn't be, yeah,
Suzanne Wells:you can't give away all your secrets,
Unknown:right? Well, what is your
Suzanne Wells:sorry, what is your YouTube channel?
Unknown:Yeah, yeah, so it's Santee Swapper, S A N T E E, Santee, that's like in South Carolina, that's an Indian tribe, and then Swapper, like trading, so that's my eBay handle, and then pretty much on all the places like YouTube and such, and whatnot, and all that, that's where my, where I am, Santee Swapper. So I do have some videos up there that talk about, you know, getting involved in collecting, and that sort of thing, but the unboxings have kind of been my most popular thing.
Suzanne Wells:I have to ask, is there one specific merit badge that is like the holy grail of the badge? Absolutely,
Unknown:yeah, yeah. So, there's one, it's called Invention Merit Badge. So, when the Boy Scouts originally started, you know, 1910 they sort of borrow a lot of things from the British scouting Baden Powell was the founder of Scouting, and they sort of adopt this merit badge program. Well, one of the early badges was Invention Merit badge. Now, Suzanne, Invention Merit Badge was so difficult to earn. One of the requirements was you had to get a patent from the US Patent Office as a kid, right, you had to invent something and get it patented, and so the whole history of scouting, only 10 kids earned this merit badge, 10 were ever awarded before it was discontinued, because it was not really that able to get. Now this, I'm talking about the original version of this patch, there's only one known to exist. A family has it, and they know all about it. There's been stories written about them, and everything else that patch, if it ever came up for sale, it would sell for probably upwards of 30 or $50,000 and I know people with that's crazy that a boy scout would pay that for it, but kind of what happens in the. Collectible hobbies, and I'm sure you've seen this. People in collectibles hobbies, they tend to have money, they tend to have disposable money, because whether it's a, you know, a die-cast car collector, you mentioned Barbie, or whatever the thing is, you have to be well enough off to have play money, and so some of the people in my hobby have a lot of play money, and they can just buy anything they want, right. And so that's kind of what happens. These things, like you mentioned, that are like the rarest of the rare item, it's always going to demand astronomical prices. Your viewers can go look this up. There was an eBay auction that sold last month, in April of 2026 that sold for over $60,000$1,000 in the Boy Scout category, and it was a lot that somebody in Michigan had, and it had a bunch of really old patches, but one of the patches in there was a patch from New England that, like, less than 10 are known to exist, and it's on everybody's needs list, and so it, two people just went head to head, and we were literally watching it go live. We just, we watched the auction, and we couldn't believe it. People in their money, I get, you know, they just, okay, what
Suzanne Wells:about the jamboree? Do you get patches for that if you went to a jamboree?
Unknown:Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that, because this is another thing I should, you know, to sort of clue your viewers in on your listeners, so the normal jamboree, when it happens, there's there used to be in the past, it's not this big anymore. There used to be 30 or 40,000 scouts would go to the jamboree, and so, because of that, if you think about how many patches and neckerchiefs would they have to make to sell in the trading post for this many scouts, literally, they might have made half a million patches for each of those jamborees. So that's why you see them so much in the antique mall booths and everywhere, is because they made so many of them for me. The problem with jamboree stuff is every collection that I buy is has them, either people have gone and collected them, and they have a selection of them, or a lot of people that I buy from went to a jamboree, and they came home with five or six of the same patch, the same neckerchief. So, literally, in my, in my warehouse here, I literally have just like boxes full of them. I mean, I have hundreds and hundreds from each jamboree, but it, I would say, with the jamboree stuff, it is true that the older, the older ones are better, but then what you really want to find is you want to find the Jamboree stuff that was made for a local troop, so like let's say you grew up in Georgia, in Atlanta, Georgia, maybe the Atlanta contingent made a patch just for their group, and they only made like two or 300 of it, versus like, you know, two or 300,000 of them for the generic jamboree piece, so that's a good one to be on the lookout for.
Suzanne Wells:Okay, so it's very specific.
Unknown:Yeah, that's why it's kind of a hard thing to get into, and it's, it's a little bit like, I'm sure other collectibles, you know, like I don't collect Lionel trains, but I'm sure someone who's very sophisticated in it knows which ones are the good ones, you know, and so it's kind of that old adage of you have to put in the 10,000 hours in your hobby, or in which I'm sure you have done, and others have done, you know, kind of being everything sellers, right, with your premium library, all these little things you've identified, that's your 10,000 hours of training to be a really expert reseller, for someone like me, it's just been in this one little tiny niche, right? I also have, well, you know,
Suzanne Wells:my eBay journey, reselling journey has been all over the place, like I tried Amazon, I tried Etsy, I tried retail arbitrage, I tried all these different things, and I've come full circle back to vintage collectibles, because that's where my heart is, and I love the research. I love that part, and you know, an hour can go by, and I'm like, oh gosh, I've been researching this, and the day's getting away from me, but you know, they say when you're doing something and you have no concept of time, that's what you're supposed to be doing, because your, your heart is in it, and your mind is in it. So, I can only imagine the research you've done over the years on all these different pieces of Boy Scout memorabilia. I want to call you an expert, I don't really do that, but as an expert, the more you know, the more you realize you don't know, and oh, I need to learn about that. I need to learn about uniforms, I need to learn about, like you said, the neckerchiefs, or whatever it is, and I can see that you probably just do research all the time. There's still new things you don't know,
Unknown:you know, we have in my hobby we have some what I call rain men, and I say that, you know, to give them a compliment. Some people who like, they memorize everything, and they have, like, their head is like its own little computer, and I confess, I do not have that kind of a brain, and so I still have to go look things up, and you know, research, but that's where you. Have worth point, you know, with all those years of history, and, like, I mentioned, we do have some reference websites, and also we have reference books people have written over the years, and now, of course, with AI, ChatGPT, although it'll kind of lead you astray, it doesn't, doesn't know everything, it's much easier with Google Lens, you know, to look things up, so yeah, I do spend a lot of time looking things up.
Suzanne Wells:What about the handbooks? Are those something to look for?
Unknown:I would say not just, just to be honest, unless it's pre-World War Two. The problem with handbooks is they're all beat up, you know. And so it's, it's like in collectibles, you want to have something in pristine condition, and most of the time old handbooks are all beaten up. And so when I get them in collections, which I get them all the time, because they made so many of them. You can open up the handbook, and, like, the second page, it actually tells you how many were made of that printing. It's typically, like, a quarter of a million were made, you know. And it's the third printing, 1964 And so they just made so many of them, they're just kind of everywhere. So I usually stick them in my antique mall booth for five or$10 and hope someone buys it from me. So,
Suzanne Wells:so that's one of those things that it's old and it's beat up, because you know they took it camping and they took it outside and
Unknown:they used it.
Suzanne Wells:We kind of look for, like, oh, if it's old it might have value, but
Unknown:right,
Suzanne Wells:not in this case.
Unknown:It goes back to the rule of, like, you know, how many were made, and then basically every kid had one, right? So that's kind of the trick, is like every kid had to have a handbook, and so they just, they just made so many of them, and you know, collectors kind of look for the things that are rare. Collectors also have checklists, right? So, whatever the checklist is, you know, you're like, oh, I got to get, I have five needs left, right, and those are the ones you're going to pay up for when they become available, and the reason why you don't have them is because they're pretty rare, so things like handbooks that are just very common, really easy to get, you know, I tend to sometimes give them away to young scouts, I'm still plugged into the program, and so those kind of things I think they could appreciate versus someone who's more of a serious collector would kind of just be like, yeah, I got a bunch of those, and they're also heavy, so
Suzanne Wells:right, I found a few Girl Scout handbooks along the way, and they weren't worth anything, so now,
Unknown:yeah, what
Suzanne Wells:about pins?
Unknown:Yeah, actually, ironically, later today, probably will be tomorrow, before I get over there. I have all my mail delivered to a UPS store locally, so that it doesn't sit on my porch at my house or here at the building. And so I have a wonderful pin collection arriving from California that I'm really looking forward to getting into. So they have made a lot of little gimmicky hat pins since the 1980s like Taiwanese made originally, and now they're really, you know, common. Those aren't necessarily very special, but I, in this collection, the guy had a lot of pins from, like, the 1960s and before, and those are ones that I even, in my own personal collection, I don't really have them all vetted out, and I'm not sure what I have, what I don't have, so I'm looking forward to that, and if it just to say, if you were to interpret pins as medals, then yes, Boy Scout medals are very collectible, because you can think of a medal as being something that not every kid got, whether it's an Eagle Scout medal or some of the other programs we've had, like Air Scouts and Sea Scouts, they had medals, but they were always very hard to earn things, they were kind of rare, and so now collectors that are going back, trying to piece together a complete collection. Those are very hard to find, and so, yeah, definitely a medals. I would say
Suzanne Wells:so. Are those like military medals, where there's a little bit of ribbon and there's a circular metal hanging from it? Okay, yeah,
Unknown:exactly. Yep.
Suzanne Wells:Okay. And I have, I just have a mental list of what I wanted to ask you. Uniforms, what's special about the uniforms? Is you know, is it sizes or dates or types or colors, or what's special?
Unknown:Yeah, so I would say that sizes are important in terms of reselling, because it just so happens, I don't know what happened to the size of human beings, but everybody in 2026 is big, and everybody in 1960 was skinny, and so you know, you get these uniforms, and they're like, they look like they could fit like a toy, you know, a mannequin, or I don't know, they're just really super small, so that is a thing, oftentimes if I get like what, what really is like an extra large or double extra large uniform, that's one that I would hold on to, you know, and would try to resell it and get a little bit of money for. I would say with uniforms, the trick it kind of goes back to the patches, what patches are on the uniform, and again, that's where you're looking for that order the arrow flap patch, that's often going to be one that could be really special. We have other patches that kind of adorn the uniform, sometimes metals are on them, so in this kind of will be an oxymoron, but the problem with collectors is, is they want patches that have not been sewn. It's kind of like any collectibles, right? It's about condition, and so we will pay more for one that has not been sewn on a uniform, even though the whole purpose of a. Hatch was to be sewn on a uniform, it's kind of an oxymoron, everyone can
Suzanne Wells:see what you accomplished. Yeah, you want to wear it proudly, but and who would not put it on there?
Unknown:It's like the merit badge, like why would a kid, why would a 12 year old earn a merit badge and not sew it on his merit badge sash, you know, even back in 19 teens or something. And so a lot of them are sewn, but, but anyways, so I would say with uniforms, the thing to stay away from is sort of these, the green ones, you know, this is sort of the ubiquitous green ones from the 50s and 60s, unless they have really interesting patches on them. I would, I would look more at what's on the uniform than versus the uniform itself, and then things like shorts and pants and socks and belts, that sort of stuff doesn't really have any, you know, reselling value, where you're going to like double your money or whatever. Those things are pretty ubiquitous as well.
Suzanne Wells:Well, if you go back to the sizing issue, if you look back at pictures of crowds of people in the 70s and 60s, you know, a concert or Woodstock or whatever, you see that the people are smaller, you know, everybody is smaller, so no, you're not imagining that, that it is true, yeah, and that's one thing about vintage clothing, is you just have to put the measurements, because if somebody's actually going to wear it, I would guess a Boy Scout uniform, they're going to display it, they're not going to wear it, but yeah, because the sizing is so different now.
Unknown:Hey, since you brought up uniforms, and I did mention a minute ago I had a selling story I wanted to tell you about. Let me, let me give you this one. So, literally, today we're recording this on the 26th This is the 5/5 five year anniversary of me getting an email from a Hollywood costumer. Yeah, this is fun. So I am getting ready. Five years ago, I'm getting ready to go to the beach with my family, and at the time I was a summer camp director. I was the camp director for the camp in Columbia, South Carolina, and so I was going to spend the whole summer running a scout camp, and I got this email, and the lady told me they were, she worked for an Academy Award-winning costume designer, they were working with a major Hollywood movie, and in there was going to be a scene in the movie where they needed to outfit over 100 boys in scout uniforms, and someone had given them my name and said I might could help them, and so I'm like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. So I actually scrambled and scrambled, and over the course of about a week, before I went to the beach and went off to summer camp, I think I put together about two or 300 pounds, maybe a couple 100 pounds worth of uniforms for her, belts, hats, neckerchiefs, slides, everything you would need, and she couldn't tell me who we know what the movie was. It's like all secret and Hollywood terms, you know. They can't release any of that. This was in 2021 so I send all that stuff off, and it's kind of funny. My sister-in-law lives in LA, she's not really in the music business or the movie business, but she's adjacent to it. She told me, whatever you think you want to charge them for these things, you should double it, because I'm thinking like fleece, flea market prices, right? Like, I've got this stuff in tubs, I'm just happy to get rid of it. But anyway, so I did get a little bit of money for the for all the stuff I sent them, and then lo and behold, it was my daughter who kind of pieced it together and helped me figure out what this movie was, and who was, who was important that was involved with it. So, my, I told my daughter, I said the only thing I really heard from the lady was there was, it was set in 1960 in Phoenix, Arizona, and there was going to be this scene where a scout got an award, and there was going to be, like, you know, other scouts there, and their parents, and so I sort of understood this to be like a court of honor, where a scout would get his Eagle Award, or whatever. My daughter got, you know, started Googling it, and she's like, "Oh, you mean Steven Spielberg? There's this, he's doing a movie, and I was like, "What? I mean, I mean, I'm a Gen Xer, right? So my mind is blown. So turns out, sure enough, you can go and watch this movie. It's online. It's called The Fablemans. And so Steven Spielberg.. I learned this later, not long after his father died. Within a year of his father dying, he finally did his semi-autobiographical movie about him growing up and becoming a cinematographer, and part of the plot involves Steven growing up in a Boy Scout troop and becoming an Eagle Scout, and his very first movie that he created was to earn his photography merit badge.
Suzanne Wells:Okay, and the
Unknown:boys in his patrol, his scout patrol, were the actors, along with his two sisters, who were the damsels in distress in a stagecoach robbery scene, and then later he films another short film that's sort of a World War Two version, but again the boys in the Scout troop are the actors, so the first about 30 minutes of the Fablemans, there's all these really nice depictions of the scouts and how that was important to him and feeding his. His interest in filmmaking, the rest of the film kind of goes off into the family drama of his mom and dad, who have, like, you know, some issues, but it's a really interesting film. But I was just, so, you know, I cried like a baby, Suzanne, when I saw this movie came out Thanksgiving Day of 2022 We watched as a family because I got to see all of these uniforms that I had mailed to California on these actors and I was just like, oh my gosh, it was such an amazing moment. It's like, you know, it'll never happen again. I still have that cool story, and it literally was five years ago today that I got the email. So,
Suzanne Wells:oh, okay, that's what a story we should all aspire to have a story like that. Yeah,
Unknown:I know, I know, it's, and I, and you've had people on who have sold stuff to, like, TV shows and things like that, like it goes to these prop departments, you know? I've heard you say that. So that's my little version of that, is, and I did. If anybody's curious, you know, my, my, my YouTube channel, I did actually today publish a video where I kind of reshared that whole story, and I showed the pictures, and you know, talk about the email. One of the ironic things that happened, just to squeeze this detail in, is that when the costumer eventually first reached out to me, and she was describing the uniforms they wanted, she shared with me a couple of pictures, and she said, this is kind of what we're looking for, and I said, okay, I recognize that, you know, as a couple of kids, and you know, I could tell it wasn't until I watched the movie on Thanksgiving Day that it hit me that, oh my god, she sent me pictures from Steven Spielberg's personal album, that was Steven Spielberg, you know, 14 year version, 14 year old version of him in those pictures, oh
Suzanne Wells:gosh,
Unknown:and they were trying to make it authentic to what he wore, and so I've got those pictures in the little video as well, so it's just kind of fun, you know, because we all grew up watching Spielberg movies in the 80s, and you know, so he just so iconic, so I, you know, someone joked, they said, did you get your name like in the credits, and I was like, oh no, it doesn't work out well, you got, you got to be like a major player to get your name, but you know, at least your listeners can't see this, but my, my employees were so generous when it came out, they, they got me a little Oscar, it says "Best Costume Design, The Fable Mans Jason Spangler" so I have a little plastic awesome, so you have
Suzanne Wells:a, you have a fake Oscar, that's fake dude, but you know you earned it in your own right. So, yeah, that's just that is an amazing story.
Unknown:Yeah, that's fun.
Suzanne Wells:Mentioned Eagle Scout several times. Are there special things that are Eagle Scout related? Obviously a patch, but what else?
Unknown:Yeah, so they get a metal, and so you know, but again, it's kind of the same thing, of like every kid gets the same metal, so but they have changed the manufacturers over the years, and all collectors, we really kind of like, we get out little, you know, magnifying glasses to look at the differences, so there's there are lots of different eagle metals, so the one from the 1960s is not the same one as today, so and we do collect them all, so we have little checklists. So I would say generally any eagle medal that you find I would definitely pick up for sure. So,
Suzanne Wells:do you know what percentage of scouts make it to eagle?
Unknown:Yeah, it's always typically less than 5% and there's a lot of kids that, and the reason for that is, a lot of kids who drop off in the first year, they kind of, you know, go on the first camping trip, and they don't like it, or the food's not good, or they, you know, sort of don't like getting rained on, but so it's kind of a rare scout that's going to stick with it, and get to the, you know, the time three or four or five years later where they're going to achieve that Eagle Scout rank,
Suzanne Wells:and yeah, that's another thing, my dad was an Eagle Scout, and he was very much about respecting that, because let's see, he was born in 1938 so he would have done that in the mid 50s, and I guess scouting was just a really big thing,
Unknown:it was a big thing that that's
Suzanne Wells:what you aspired to be, I also had a cousin who made Eagle Scout, and it's like it's like the overachievers of the world want to become the Eagle Scout. Yeah, really, it
Unknown:really, there's few things that you can do as a young person that kind of like will stand up on your resume as much as that, and so you know maybe for that reason that's another reason we don't have to get into all this, but you know that now that since 2019 that girls have been allowed in scouting. I have met lots of girls who became Eagle Scouts, and let me tell you, these are some impressive kids. Oh my gosh, they are sharp, because you know, if you were, if you think of kind of being a groundbreaker, someone who's willing to go into an organization called the Boy Scouts of America, and you go and earn all the merit badges and do your ego project and all the things, so I've met a lot of really sharp kids, so I have a little more faith in the future, having met some of them. I was, again, I was a camp director, so I got to hire some of these young people and work with them, and you know, I've seen some of them grow up, so there's there's some good ones out there.
Suzanne Wells:I mean, it's a commitment, you just. Glad you're going to do it. It's definitely a commitment.
Unknown:Stick with what's the
Suzanne Wells:what's the average age that they reach Eagle Scout, like 16. Yeah, so
Unknown:it's definitely they generally you can start Scouts Boy Scout. Well, now we call it Scouts BSA around age 11 when you're a sixth grader, and so typically kids aren't going to get Eagle until they're at least 14, although some will jump it and get it when they're 13, but the ones who get it when they're 1415, that's a lot more typical. Yeah,
Suzanne Wells:okay. Well, we've covered a lot of bases on this. Do you want to take a few minutes to talk about your podcast?
Unknown:Yeah, well, you know what, let me mention whatnot for a second, because this is. oh, sure, of course, simply new. Yeah. Sorry to create a new topic for you, but so I went to a reseller meetup in East Tennessee back in September of 2025 and there's about maybe 6070, people there, and one of the.. there were several whatnot sellers, and one of them, this lady, Jennifer - I want to say her name out loud - she goes by Jenny down south on one day. I sat with her and asked her, I said, I have this tiny little niche here. I said, you know, do you think I could do what not? Because a lot of what not people are just palette sellers and all this, you know, maybe they have a niche. And she really encouraged me. And so I started in October, when I got back from that, I think, like the next week, I did my first What Not show, and then I just kind of stuck with the advice of doing it every week at the exact same time once a week. So, for me, it's Wednesdays at 8o'clock Eventually, I had a buddy of mine who decided to do a show as well, and so we sort of tag team it together. I do my show, and then we all raid into his show when mine wraps up at 930 and so we've called it Whatnot Wednesday, that's our little alliteration name for it, and so anyways, this has been going on now since then, and it's been amazing, I've done really well, we, we now get about 50 or 60 people in our show, they're mostly all scouting memorabilia collectors that we're pulling from Facebook and from my newsletter, and I include little flyers in all my orders that I mail out, and so we've kind of created this little, this little group here that likes that whole format, and so whatnot is actually done really well for me. So I did want to mention that, just because I know everybody has a different journey with whatnot, it can be a rough, it like people get run over and you know, bruised, and they're limping and beat up, but right, you
Suzanne Wells:have to have inventory to sell, like if you don't have a backlog or a death pile or just a huge inventory, you gotta come up with that, because it's all about selling,
Unknown:you're exactly right, and so, what you know, these people who buy pallets, they just have a whole bunch of whatever they're selling returns, and whatever, for me, I'm just buying all these collections, and so I just get so much stuff in collections. Some of it already have listed on eBay, and some of it is stuff that's newer, but I literally just take it from the box, and you know, process it for next week's whatnot show. So that's fun. My, you, you're asking about my podcast. I really, it was called Scouting Hot Vines Radio, and I kind of started it back in 2012 when I was, you know, kind of launching this whole thing of like doing a newsletter and a YouTube channel and all that, and I've done about 100 and maybe 107 108 episodes of it, mostly interviewing other scouting member video collectors and people like that, some of which have now passed away, so it's kind of nice to have their, their recollections and their story recorded, but we discussed a little bit before getting on the balanced juggling as being a reseller is you can do all this social media stuff, you can do all these little, you know, things like a podcast that are fun to do, but you know it still takes so much time to run an eBay business, it's primarily eBay, eBay, so I have a building, I have employees, I have, you know, a family and a son, and you know, daughter in college, and we just have a lot going on, so you just can't always make time for, for your, you know, pet projects like podcasts. So, kudos to you for sticking it out, you know, episode 200 and whatever we're on for today. You're,
Suzanne Wells:you're going to be episode 274
Unknown:there you go, that's a lot. So
Suzanne Wells:I know, I just, I just love doing it, and you know, you really don't make any money from a podcast in and of itself, you know, you can, you can drive people to your store, you can, you know, it, it's a marketing thing, but back when I started it in 21 everybody was doing it. It was right, right after Covid, and it was at home, and I was like, well, that's something I haven't done. Let me see how that goes. And I really enjoy talking with resellers. I learned so much. That's why I'm like constantly peppering people with questions. Well, what about this? What about that? Because I want to know more. And how many employees do you have? I
Unknown:have four part-time employees, very part-time. Don't only want to think this is like a big thing, but one of them is actually moving to Florida, probably next week, so I'll be down a little bit. So I really ought to just have about maybe two employees. Ironically, all of us have teenage. Children, so the teenage children all cycle through here to kind of get some hours during the summer, you know, so we get a little bump.
Suzanne Wells:And what kind of things do they
Unknown:do? Taking pictures and doing shipping. Okay, get your listings
Suzanne Wells:up. Okay,
Unknown:yeah, yeah. For us, it's luckily you're mentioning the patches and how this is a lot easier. We just need like a front and a back picture, so that's that's, you know, I'm sure some reseller listeners will be jealous that they don't have to take, you know, just front to back, that's all. And so we can, we can go through a box of patches in an hour or two and get them photographed and prepped to be listed. So that's good.
Suzanne Wells:The listeners are going to want to know, how much do you pay these people? How do you pay them?
Unknown:Yeah, yeah, so I pay them as 1099 contractors because they just set their own hours, and so I sort of pay all the children like $12 an hour, that's just my, you know, they're teenagers, but then the other employees I have some making over $20 an hour, because they've been with me for a long time, so these are just moms who that I've met in Charlotte since living here, one of them goes to church with me, is like in my Sunday school class, so I kind of recruited her, but for them it's really just it's about convenience, so if they need to take a week off, you know, go out of town, they, they come in whenever they want, they leave whenever they want, we kind of know we need to get all the shipping done, you know, the essentials, a very, very flexible job, and so I really appreciate them, you know, one lady is a retired colonel from the Air Force. She was a meteorologist. I got some sharp for me, Suzanne. Yeah, but she, you know, she's the one who's in my Sunday school class. She just didn't have anything else to do, and so she's come out here, and her daughters have worked for me, and it's just kind of a, you know, little bit of a little team we've put together.
Suzanne Wells:Is everybody always asking her, well, what's the weather going to be?
Unknown:I ask her that all the time. She also has a green thumb, so I ask her about plants and stuff. We've actually put some tomato plants that she grew as starts on the back deck of the loading dock of the building, and so we're growing tomatoes here. So
Suzanne Wells:people from all walks of life, good for you. Well, we've got time to wrap it up. We got your YouTube channel, your podcast. What do you want to share? Your eBay store name?
Unknown:Yeah, Santee Swapper, same thing. It's all Santee,
Suzanne Wells:and that's Santee, is a area in South Carolina.
Unknown:Yeah, yeah, it was a river there. It was, you know. When I mentioned that Order of the Arrow group, the Brotherhood of Triple Service, so right. So, my lodge was called Santee Lodge, and so that's where I grabbed that from. Yeah.
Suzanne Wells:Okay. Well, I learned a lot chatting with you, and I'm sure the listeners have too. So, what are you up to this afternoon?
Unknown:Well, I've got a guy who's coming tomorrow morning to bring me stuff to sell me. This is kind of great. This will be the third person I've met in person in the last week, which is very unusual for me. Mostly, I'm just dealing with people through emails and phone calls and text messages. But this guy has moved to Charlotte, and he's downsizing, and sees he brought some scout stuff with him that he wants to part with. And guess where he lives, Lake Wiley.
Suzanne Wells:Oh, really?
Unknown:From Lake Wiley tomorrow? One of my neighbors down
Suzanne Wells:here. How about that?
Unknown:Neighbors, I thought so too. All
Suzanne Wells:right. Well, I will let you go and get ready for your afternoon. And thanks again for reaching out and being available to come on, I really enjoyed meeting you, and best of luck with everything you're doing. Although it doesn't sound like you need it,
Unknown:well, it's all good. It's a lot of hard work, but I appreciate you, and especially I listen to podcasts all day long as I'm working, and I think that you know, you giving even the smallest of sellers, the new people, opportunities to be on your podcast is really great. So, you know, I realize I'm a totally different lane doing this scout stuff, and you know, maybe doing it at the scale we're doing, but I appreciate you very much, and like you said, stick with it, this, you've, you didn't pod fade, I think that's the word, I
Suzanne Wells:hadn't heard that one,
Unknown:yeah, even after moving, you know, all the moves you've had, you, this has been consistent, and you've stuck with it, so we appreciate. Yeah,
Suzanne Wells:my claim to fame is I have not missed a week in five years.
Unknown:That's, that's really.. I mean, you're like the 1% to be honest. That's..
Suzanne Wells:I'm trying to, trying to be like Oprah and Martha Stewart, that just are very consistent with their product. So, anyway, all right. Well, I'll let you go. Thanks again. It was great to meet you.
Unknown:Thank you very much, Suzanne.
Suzanne Wells:Okay, bye bye. Thank you so much for spending part of your day with us. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Jason and picked up a few tips that will help you the next time you encounter Boy Scout memorabilia at an estate sale, auction, thrift store, or flea market next week. My guest is Kelly from Texas. She has been sharing some fantastic sales in the Facebook group, and while she is an everything seller. She has developed a wealth of knowledge about vintage and antique linens. She'll be sharing what to look for, what sells, and some practical tips for identifying and marketing these often overlooked treasures. As always, thank you for listening. Thank you for being part of this wonderful eBay community, and thank you for allowing me to be part of your reselling journey. I hope you have a productive, profitable, and joyful week. Until next time, this is Suzanne Wells, and you've been listening to eBay the right way. Take care, everybody, and bye for now.
Unknown:Bye.