{"title":"Homepage","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"vintage-sugarloaf-mountain-ski-club-embroidered-patch","title":"Sugarloaf Mt. Ski Club Patch, Felt — c. 1950s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Sugarloaf Mt. Ski Club patch from Maine, estimated to date from the 1950s, cut from a round of cream felt with no applied border — a red ring carrying SUGARLOAF MT. across the top and SKI CLUB around the foot, and inside it a red figure skiing down a slope of red and cream stripes with a red snowflake beside him. Soiled and soft with age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe club came before the resort. Around 1950 Amos Winter and a handful of men from Kingfield walked up Sugarloaf and started cutting the first trail by hand, because they wanted somewhere to ski and there was not anywhere. They were known locally as the Bigelow Boys and they were doing this on weekends, with saws, for no money.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEverything that exists on that mountain now — the lifts, the hotel, the World Cup history, the whole economy of Carrabassett Valley — descends directly from a few people deciding to clear trees on their own time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA club patch from the organization that did the cutting is not a souvenir of the resort. It is a souvenir of the thing that had to happen first, and there are far fewer of them.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWinter ran the operation for decades afterward and the mountain is effectively his, though the corporate ownership has changed hands several times since. Very few ski areas in America can point at one person and say it began with him.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on felt, cut edge, no applied border, with soiling throughout. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55524387881265,"sku":"RV-ME-130","price":90.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-sugarloaf-ski-patch_9e4659f3-d839-4cc4-97a7-42ab21090fa8.webp?v=1785541900"},{"product_id":"vintage-sunday-river-viking-embroidered-patch","title":"Sunday River Viking Mascot Patch — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Sunday River ski patch from Newry, Maine, estimated to date from the 1970s, a pointed shield with a gold merrowed border on kelly green — Sunday in white blackletter across the top, River at the foot, and between them the face of a Viking in a brown horned helmet with gold horns, eyes closed and an enormous white walrus mustache spreading from one edge of the shield to the other. A Viking. In Newry, Maine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA Viking. In Newry, Maine. The connection to skiing is Scandinavian at the absolute outside, and nobody involved appears to have worried about it for a moment.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the kind of mascot a mountain adopts with real enthusiasm, puts on everything for four seasons, and then retires without comment when new management arrives and asks what exactly the Viking is doing. There is no announcement. He is simply not on next year's trail map.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eMascot patches are what collectors actually chase, and this is why. A logo is a company's property and gets protected, archived and re-released. A mascot is somebody's idea, and when it stops being the idea, every trace of it goes in a skip behind the maintenance building.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHe survived. Look at that mustache.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThere is no archive of retired mascots anywhere in American skiing. No museum collects them, no resort keeps the artwork, and the people who drew them were almost always freelance and unnamed. What exists is whatever happened to get sewn onto a jacket and survive.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537882759473,"sku":"RV-ME-125","price":70.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-sunday-river-viking-patch.webp?v=1785620269"},{"product_id":"vintage-lost-valley-auburn-maine-skiing-embroidered-patch","title":"Lost Valley Ski Area Patch, Auburn — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Lost Valley ski patch from Auburn, Maine, estimated to date from the 1970s, a tall oval with a light blue merrowed border — the state of Maine outlined faintly in grey, the same cartoon skier in his orange striped sweater standing on it under a small yellow sun, and LOST VALLEY set so that the skier's own skis form the V. AUBURN MAINE beneath.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe skis making the V is the kind of idea that takes a designer about four seconds to have and forty years to stop being pleased with. It works. Nobody who sees it once fails to see it every time afterward.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eLost Valley opened in Auburn in 1961 as a small hill with lights — the format that has taught more Americans to ski than every destination resort in the country put together, and gets about one percent of the attention.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt is still running, which puts it in a minority of the places in this catalog.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNight skiing deserves more credit than it gets. A lighted hill forty minutes from a city, open until nine, is how a person with a job and children actually learns to ski. The destination resorts get the photographs; the small lighted hills got the students.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537897799985,"sku":"RV-ME-101","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-lost-valley-ski-patch.jpg?v=1785621891"},{"product_id":"vintage-saddleback-mountain-ski-resort-embroidered-patch","title":"Saddleback Patch (4,120 Logo) — c. 1970s-80s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Saddleback ski patch from Rangeley, Maine, probably late 1970s or early 80s, the mountain reduced to two blue blocks forming a saddle — with a red band driven through them carrying the word \"SKI\". Rounded triangle, white ground, red merrowed border, SADDLEBACK in red block caps along the base.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOut west, 4,120 feet is a parking lot. In Maine it is the fourth-highest summit in the state, and a mountain that had spent twenty years being four hours from anywhere had earned the right to stitch the number into the merchandise.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA triangular patch is a commitment. It fits nothing, it sits badly on every sleeve ever manufactured, and the corners are the first thing to catch and start coming away.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut it looks wicked anyway, which is why mountains kept ordering them against practical advice for about twenty years.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537898488113,"sku":"RV-ME-095","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-saddleback-ski-patch.jpg?v=1785622100"}],"url":"https:\/\/ropetowvintage.com\/collections\/homepage.oembed","provider":"Ropetow Vintage","version":"1.0","type":"link"}