![]() ![]() The price: $1,500.īy contrast, other badges cost as little as $25 or $30. The badge is solid gold with a sterling silver arrowhead in the center. The shield belonged to a lieutenant in the Lake Arrowhead Police Department, which is now defunct. Hedges, a retired Santa Ana police officer who wrote and published a book on badges. 11 in Sierra Madre, which is advertised as California’s longest-running patch and badge swap meet.Īt the Bell show, the most valuable badge on display belonged to William B. The next big collectors event is the 11th annual Porky D. Alviso, located at the south end of San Francisco Bay, was absorbed by sprawling San Jose in 1968.)Ĭollectors such as Schulberg and Chambers build their inventories at shows and by pleading with other departments for insignia. (Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies took over law enforcement duties in Avalon on Santa Catalina Island in 1962. With more than 200 patches, including one from the Pago Pago International Airport Police in Greater American Samoa, Chambers is believed to have the world’s third-largest shoulder patch collection. Most of the estimated 2,000 patch and badge collectors nationwide are active or retired law enforcement officers.Ī former airport police officer turned Los Angeles County park ranger, Chambers was among about two dozen collectors who rented space to display, sell and trade their patches and badges at a show last weekend in the Bell Community Center. “There’s only four airport patch collectors that I know of, that I communicate with, that have Tucson.”Ĭhambers belongs to a small but dogged band of collectors who stalk police department patches and badges when they are not stalking lawbreakers. “Tucson, Tucson’s the rarest,” he declared. That explains why Richard Chambers can get so excited about his Tucson Airport Police Department shoulder patch. ![]() For those caught up in the collecting mania, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, whether the object of desire is a priceless painting or a painted beer mug.
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