I remember that I was on my way home after a cub scout meeting when I was stopped by a man asking me if I was a scout. I was in my cub scout uniform. The man was a food stall operator selling noodles. I stopped and had a long chat with him. He asked me many questions about my meeting and what I liked about the "Scouts". My answer then was I did not know anything about scouting as I was only a cub scout. Well, he told me that he had been scout and had earned his king scout years back. Our conversation was on how to get badges and at last he asked me to come back another day and he would like to give me a badge to commemorate the starting of a friendship.
The badge that I got from the man was a british pre-apr first class (blue). The badge looked strange to me then as Malaysia Scouts were already using badges with our own design i.e. the 1st Issue of Lencana, Usaha, Maju & Jaya badges. I kept the badge for a while without really looking into what it really was until years later when I researched about it. Since then I have been collecting pre-apr badges and can say that it is really fun and challenging looking for the illusive ones.
Along the way, I made friends with many collectors who share the same interest and of course spent quite a bit of money. I guess collectors of these badges are just too happy to pay for them and so it is always too many people chasing for too few badges especially the very early issues of the King Scout/Queen Scout badges. The other award badges for the Senior Scouts and Rover Scouts are doing equally well if not better.
The small badge which has shrunk is the one that was given to me. The others are quality replicas which I can swap or sell.
