chang

Does the name HENRY CHANG sound familiar? If it don't, the name will in a short moment. He is the one that produces copies (fakes, overruns, or whatever you want to call them) of hard to find/rare patches. Many of the patches he produces are special anniversary patches, NOAC patches, and restricted lodge flaps. He is most famous for the Great Salt Lake CSP fakes.

Somewhere towards the beginning of 2000, a lot of patch traders recieved an email with a listing of OA flaps and CSP's for sale from Mr. Chang. These CSP's and flaps where priced at no more than $2.50 each. He offered them as "overruns"*(see below) Personally, I have recieved about 4 or 5 of these emails since 2000. There was an order form on the bottom of the email. Just print it out and send it in and youv'e got yourself a killer deal on some hard to find patches. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. I did not take part of it and never will. As more and more people bought from him, buyers took notice to small descrepencies when compaired to the real thing. The plague of the patch trading community had evolved.

On Patch-L**(see below) we have discussed this many times. The general patch trading community accepts the theory that Henry Chang works for a patch maker in Tiawan. He then must have stolen or made copies of the patch "blueprint" disks. Chang must have then taken those designs to another patch maker. Next, he would email patch traders/dealers in the U.S. to buy his patches that he claimed were the real thing.

Many of his fakes are hard to distinguish between the fake and the real thing. Since a lot of these "Chang Specials" ended up on online auction sites, here are a few guidelines to observe when bidding on hard to find patches that may have been Chang fakes. Click on 2 banners above to see the lists of known fakes on both sites mentioned below to see if what you are about to bid on could be a fake. Here's a few tips for online bidding:

       -Do a search for a hard to aquire item, such as a lodge 31 flap. If your search discovers 34 flaps of    the same design, I would be hesitant to bid on any of them. A lodge 31 75th OA Anniversary flap is          one that's been known to be produced by Chang. I have seen many of them up for auction.

       -If you see a seller with a lot of hard to find flaps at extreamly low starting prices, and most of the       designs are on a list of fakes, I would not buy from that seller. When in doubt, ask. Since many       details are extreamly minute, you can not always tell if the item is a reproduction or the real deal. By           taking a look at both lists on the sites below, you can be better equiped when shopping at the online             auctions.

       -A Great Salt Lake FOS CSP starting at $1.25 with no reserve is unreal. Most fakes have opening       prices that are very low. That may be because the seller knows that the patch is a Chang issue and     wants to sell it at a low price to get more attention to his other auctions.

Just because a patch is a know chang issue, that does not mean that every patch with that design is a fake. Some fakes have completely different border colors, different background colors, ect. There are the few that look so close to the real thing, only minor differences can be found. Take a look at patchtrade.com for side by side comparasins of the fakes and the real things.

*-Overruns. When a patch maker gets an order for 500 patches, they normally make extras. This is because if there are a few imperfections with some of the patches they made, they can be replaced by the overruns. Since overruns are the exact same patch with absolutly no differences between them, there is no way to differenciate a patch sold at a council office than an overrun. Chang said that his patches were overruns, but since differences can be found, they are labeld as fakes.

**-Patch-L. Patch-L is an online disscussion email service. I HIGHLY urge you to join. You make a lot of trades and friends at the same time. You will also be able to stay on top of almost all new patch issues and be able to gain more nformation as a patch collector. Special thanks to the list owner, Kevin, who was the one that designed the "Chang List Patches" graphic used on this page. Click on PATCH-L below to go to the homepage.