BSA merit badge -- need advice

Hi Badger,
I just read your old post. I also work with scouts and I am a counselor for the merit badge. I am impressed by your challenge coin. How do you make them?

 

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I hand cut the designs into steel dies and use a gorton pantograph to cut the text. I have a couple of screw presses, rolling mill, and heat treat oven in my garage where I can cut blanks and strike the tokens. It's a great way to relax after my day job.

Joe

 

Impressive. I do some blacksmithing and I've tried a little engraving. I have been looking for a reasonable price fly press and hope to make coins one day. Do you offer pantograph milling as a service?

 

I can, it is all hobby stuff for me. What are you looking for?

 

Looking at the Coin Collecting Merit Badge Requirements ( http://www.scouting.org/filestore/Merit_Badge_ReqandRes/Coin_Collecting.pdf ), I do not see anything regarding error's or cleaning which, while helpful, are often matters of "perception" that usually exceeds the interest level of a lot of kids.

I also do not see anything with regard to "problem coins".

I would simply stick to the specific requirements for the badge and not cloud it up with a lot of unnecessary stuff.

That's my advice.

 

Interesting viewpoint. I think it may be more damaging to the young skulls full of mush to not at least show comparisons of undisturbed surfaces vs. altered ones, and explain that the serious hobby cares and why. I agree that on the margin, some edge cases of cleaning may be matters of perception (like that crummy commem half that came back in a details slab), but by and large, most of it is fairly obvious.

 

The requirements change from time to time. It used to include information about error coins.

You can satisfy the requirements for this badge while collecting just 20 coins from pocket change. (assuming you are 11 years old, add one coin for each year over that.)

 

I don't really need anything. I'm getting ahead of myself, but I do hope to catch up to what you are doing someday.

 

Not quite, that is just one of three collecting requirements. The other two are pretty simple, though.

 

It's the top left (i.e., first) badge on my sash. Got in in 1977, my Eagle some years later. Remember that this is introductory material for kids. Use some silver quarters to show what a problem-free uncirculated coin looks like contrasted against a few examples of the same date that show why you shouldn't mess with coins, including polished, whizzed, overdipped (bake a coin in paper, dip, repeat), eraser-scrubbed, all the sorts of thing a beginner might try or be taken by. I suppose you could make a "clown paint and smurf vomit" AT coin, but then you'll end up discussing toning for a long time.

 

Requirement 6

6. Describe the 1999–2008 50 State Quarters® program. Collect and show your counselor five different state quarters you have acquired from circulation

That's five coins

Requirement 7

7. Collect from circulation a set of current U.S. coins. Include one coin of each denomination (cent, nickel, dime, quarter, half dollar, dollar). For each coin, locate the mint marks, if any, and the designer’s initials, if any.

That is six coins but the quarter can be one of the ones from Requirement 6 so we are up to 10 coins

Then there is Requirement 9. The option that requires the smallest number of coins is D

d. For each year since the year of your birth, collect a date set of a single type of coin.

If you are 11 years old that is 11 coins, but one of those can be from either Requirement 6 or 7, so it can be done with 10 coins. Grand total 5 from Requirement 6, 5 from Requirement 7, and 10 from Requirement 9. Grand total 20 coins.

If you select one of the other options from Requirement 9 it will require more coins and they can't be pulled from pocket change.

Frankly your toughest challenge will be getting the half dollar for Requirement 7.