{"title":"Maine","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe way life should be\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"vintage-sugarloaf-usa-embroidered-mountain-patch","title":"Sugarloaf USA Mountain Patch (Cream \u0026 Blue) — c. 1970s-80s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Sugarloaf\/USA ski patch, probably late 1970s or early 80s, a triangle on navy with a navy merrowed border — a gold outlined peak rising inside it and sugarloaf\/usa in gold lowercase at the base. Faded and fuzzed across the face from wear.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe USA came along to distinguish it from Sugarloaf, Michigan — a straightforward piece of housekeeping that has since aged into something that reads like a boast the mountain never intended to make.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt stuck anyway. Two letters of administrative necessity, now permanently part of the name.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eMichigan's Sugarloaf, for the record, has itself closed. Which means two letters added purely to avoid confusion now distinguish a working mountain from an empty one, and nobody at either end has ever thought to take them off.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge, faded with wear. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55524387750193,"sku":"RV-ME-132","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-sugarloaf-mountain-patch.webp?v=1785541868"},{"product_id":"vintage-sugarloaf-mountain-ski-resort-embroidered-patch","title":"Sugarloaf\/USA Goggle Face Patch — c. 1970s-80s (replica)","description":"\u003cp\u003eModeled on a vintage Sugarloaf\/USA ski patch, probably late 1970s or early 80s, cut to the shape of a ski tip — pointed at the top, rounded at the foot — with a blue merrowed border. A blue peak at the apex, SUGARLOAF in red beneath it, and filling the lower half a round pink face wearing enormous green goggles, with two pink cheeks and a small content smile. USA at the base.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNobody at Sugarloaf will claim this one now. There is no mention of him in any official history, he does not appear in the anniversary retrospectives, and if you ask, people squint and say they vaguely remember something.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhich is exactly why it is worth having. Every institution curates itself backwards — the serious parts get kept, the World Cup and the Snowfields and the founders with their handsaws, and the goofy years get quietly left out of the story. A pink and green cartoon in goggles does not fit the narrative a mountain tells about itself at its fiftieth anniversary dinner.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is a decent argument that this is the single most awesome thing in the Sugarloaf section, precisely because it is the least dignified. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55524387815729,"sku":"RV-ME-131","price":70.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-sugarloaf-ski-patch.webp?v=1785541884"},{"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-sugarloaf-mountain-skiing-embroidered-patch","title":"Sugarloaf Mountain Ski Patch (Kingfield) — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Sugarloaf Mountain ski patch, estimated to date from the 1970s, cut as a fan — flat across the top, curving to a point below — with a gold merrowed border. A skier in red carves across a white summit under a pale blue sky, SUGARLOAF MOUNTAIN arched in red above him and KINGFIELD, MAINE in red beneath.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe patch says Kingfield, which is the town next door rather than the one the lifts are in. That is not an error — for years Kingfield was the address, the post office and the place you stopped for gas, and Carrabassett Valley barely existed as a town. A patch that names the wrong town is usually a patch old enough to name the right one.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSugarloaf held the first World Cup races ever run in the East, in 1971, which for a mountain in western Maine took a genuinely surprising amount of nerve. The circuit came to Carrabassett Valley, which at that point had barely enough beds to house it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThey pulled it off. The patch has gold thread in it, which was not an accident that year.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eGold thread cost extra and was used for a reason. Somebody wanted this patch to look like an occasion, and that year it was one.\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":55524387979569,"sku":"RV-ME-129","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-sugarloaf-mountain-ski-patch.webp?v=1785541923"},{"product_id":"vintage-sugarloaf-mountain-embroidered-patch","title":"Sugarloaf Mountain Patch (Blue Triangle) — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Sugarloaf ski patch from Carrabassett Valley, Maine, estimated to date from the 1970s, cut as a triangle on deep blue with a blue merrowed border — a white outlined peak with a jagged snowline near its apex, SUGARLOAF in white caps across the base. The triangle is the mountain. There is nothing else on it and nothing else needed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThat triangle is the mountain itself. Sugarloaf runs above the treeline — the Snowfields, the only lift-served above-treeline skiing in the East, where there are no trails because there is nothing to cut a trail through.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eOn the right day it is the closest thing to western skiing available in this part of the country. On the wrong day it is a wind tunnel with ice in it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAbove the treeline there is no reference for anything. No trees to judge pitch against, no edges to the trail, no indication of speed. People who have skied their whole lives come off the Snowfields genuinely rattled the first time.\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":55524388012337,"sku":"RV-ME-128","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-sugarloaf-mountain-patch_e16d044f-17bc-4638-b790-431da8c63712.webp?v=1785541947"},{"product_id":"sugarloaf-ambulance-rescue-embroidered-patch","title":"Sugarloaf Ambulance Rescue Patch — c. 1990s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Sugarloaf ambulance and rescue patch from Carrabassett Valley, Maine, estimated to date from the 1990s, a white round with a black merrowed border carrying a pale blue mountain outlined in gold, a navy Star of Life at its center, AMBULANCE running up the left side and RESCUE down the right, SUGARLOAF across the foot.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe Star of Life is not decorative. It is the recognized symbol of emergency medical services, its six points stand for six specific stages of care, and it is not put on a patch by people who are guessing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eCarrabassett Valley is remote. When something goes badly wrong on that mountain — a bad fall, a cardiac event in the lodge, a car off Route 27 in a storm — the people wearing this are what exists between the incident and a hospital that is a long drive away in good conditions and a serious problem in bad ones.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis was earned, not bought, and the people who earn them generally keep them. It is the single most serious object in this catalog.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eMountain rescue patches are collected seriously, and mostly by people in the field rather than by skiers. An EMS collector will know exactly what this is at a glance and exactly what the six points mean.\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":55537881809201,"sku":"RV-ME-127","price":95.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-sugarloaf-ambulance-rescue-patch.webp?v=1785620209"},{"product_id":"vintage-sugarloaf-usa-security-embroidered-patch","title":"Sugarloaf USA Security Patch — c. 1980s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Sugarloaf\/USA security patch from Carrabassett Valley, Maine, estimated to date from the 1980s or 90s, a triangle with a white merrowed border — a deep purple mountain with a white snowcap at the apex, sugarloaf\/usa in white lowercase across its face, and S E C U R I T Y letterspaced in white along a bar at the base. Issued with the uniform, never sold at any counter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIssued with the uniform. Returned with the uniform, in theory. Never sold at any counter on the mountain.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSugarloaf sits in Carrabassett Valley, a long way up Route 27 from anything, and in the eighties running security there meant being one of a very small number of people responsible for several thousand visitors in a place with limited options if something went seriously wrong. The nearest real hospital is not close.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003ePurple is an unusual color for staff issue. Somebody wanted the security crew visible from distance in flat light, which is a practical decision that happens to have produced the best-looking staff patch in the catalog.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eStaff patches also carry a small ethical weight that resort patches do not. Somebody worked a season for this, and the fact that it is now for sale means that person is probably gone, or has stopped caring, or had their things cleared out by somebody who did not know what they were looking at. That is true of most of what is here. It is just more obvious on a uniform patch.\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":55537882104113,"sku":"RV-ME-126","price":85.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-sugarloaf-security-patch.webp?v=1785620229"},{"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-sunday-river-embroidered-patch","title":"Sunday River Ski Patch (Red Arch) — c. 1970s-80s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Sunday River ski patch from Newry, Maine, estimated to date from the 1970s, square with a blue merrowed border on a blue ground — a yellow sun rising behind a white ridge with a red arc drawn over the whole thing like a sunrise framed in a doorway, sunday river in cream lowercase beneath. Soiled and worn from the years it spent on a sleeve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe arch device shows up on ski patches all over New England in this period and nobody has ever satisfactorily explained where it came from. Some mill had it in the catalog, presumably, and sold it to everybody.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt works. A frame around a mountain makes the mountain look like somewhere you are about to enter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eYou find the same frame on patches from mountains four states apart that had no connection to each other beyond a shared supplier and a catalog of stock borders.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge, with soiling and wear. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537882988849,"sku":"RV-ME-124","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-sunday-river-embroidered-patch.webp?v=1785620295"},{"product_id":"vintage-sunday-river-embroidered-fabric-patch","title":"Sunday River Ski Patch (Pink Border) — c. 1980s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Sunday River ski patch, estimated to date from the 1980s, square on a black ground inside a merrowed border of hot neon pink — a gold sun rising behind a white peak ringed in pink, a blue river band beneath, sunday river in pink lowercase. The pink is the entire story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe pink border is the entire story. This is a spring-skiing patch from the decade that put neon on everything including, eventually, actual skis, and it is completely unimprovable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSpring at Sunday River means corn snow, shirtsleeves by noon and a parking lot full of people who have given up on pretending it is still winter. The border is the forecast.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSpring is also when the patches got discounted. End of season, clear the rack, and whatever was left went out at half price to whoever was still around in April.\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":55537883382065,"sku":"RV-ME-123","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-sunday-river-embroidered-patch_8151e34c-55c8-4dfe-ace9-f1d52d8f3347.webp?v=1785620324"},{"product_id":"vintage-sunday-river-embroidered-patch-1","title":"Sunday River Patch (Black Ground) — c. 1980s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Sunday River ski patch, estimated to date from the 1980s, square with a gold merrowed border on a black ground — gold rays climbing behind a blue peak with a blue river band beneath it, sunday river in gold lowercase. Black grounds read as night skiing whether the mountain meant them to or not.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBlack-ground patches read as night skiing whether the mountain meant them to or not. There is something about a sun on a black field that suggests the lights are about to come on.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe practical advantage is durability. Dark grounds hold their color while pale twill goes the shade of a tea bag.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSunday River does run lights, which makes the reading less accidental than it looks. A black-ground patch from a mountain with night skiing is at least arguably literal.\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":55537883709745,"sku":"RV-ME-122","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-sunday-river-embroidered-patch_8a1179e5-999d-4583-9179-0b849375fd81.webp?v=1785620356"},{"product_id":"vintage-sunday-river-ski-resort-embroidered-patch","title":"Sunday River Landscape Ski Patch — c. 1980s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Sunday River ski patch, estimated to date from the 1980s, square with rounded corners and a red merrowed border on a black ground — an orange sun rising behind a white peak, a blue wavy river across its foot, sunday river in red lowercase beneath. The water the place is named after rarely makes it onto the merchandise.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe river is on the patch because the river is the name. There is an actual Sunday River, it runs through Newry, and the ski area took its name from the water rather than the other way around.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNobody who has driven Route 2 in the dark in January needs this explained to them.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eRivers almost never make it onto ski patches. Mountains, snowflakes, skiers and suns, endlessly — but the water that gave the place its name usually gets left off entirely.\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":55537883939121,"sku":"RV-ME-121","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-sunday-river-ski-patch.webp?v=1785620375"},{"product_id":"sunday-river-ski-resort-maine-embroidered-patch","title":"Sunday River Patch (Ski Resort Oval) — c. 1990s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA Sunday River ski patch, probably 1990s, an arched oval worked almost solid in maroon — SKI RESORT arched in white across the top, MAINE letterspaced along the bottom, and across the middle a maroon banner carrying sunday river in white script over a scene of a white sunburst, blue sky and blue-and-white peaks.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBy this point Sunday River had grown to eight interconnected peaks and the patch had to carry a whole range rather than a single hill. You can watch the mountain expand across its own merchandise.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt is one of the few places where you can date a business decision by counting the bumps on a piece of embroidery.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWatching a logo accumulate detail is watching a business accumulate debt. Every added peak on that patch was a lift, a lodge and a loan, and the company that assembled them did not survive the decade that followed.\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":55537884168497,"sku":"RV-ME-120","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-sunday-river-ski-patch_a64705f1-6431-49cb-a573-bfda7a348772.webp?v=1785620400"},{"product_id":"sunday-river-maine-embroidered-souvenir-patch","title":"Sunday River Maine Souvenir Patch — c. 1980s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Sunday River ski patch from Maine, estimated to date from the 1980s, round on a white ground inside a red merrowed border — a yellow sun rising behind a solid black peak, a blue wavy river beneath it, sunday river in red lowercase and MAINE in small caps below. Three shapes, four colors, one idea.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThree shapes, three colors, one idea. A ski area logo from the years before logos needed a usage guideline, a minimum clear space and an approved secondary palette.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt works at two inches across and it would work at twenty feet. Very little designed since does both.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt also survives in quantity, which is worth saying plainly. This is not a rare patch. It is a good one, from a mountain people have actually skied, at a price that makes it the obvious first thing to buy if you have never bought one of these before.\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":55537884365105,"sku":"RV-ME-119","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-sunday-river-maine-patch.webp?v=1785620420"},{"product_id":"vintage-sunday-river-maine-embroidered-souvenir-patch","title":"Sunday River Ski Souvenir Patch — c. 1970s-80s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Sunday River ski patch, estimated to date from the 1970s or 80s, round with a gold merrowed border and a red ring around a black center — a gold sun rising behind a white peak with a blue river band beneath, sunday river in white across the top and maine at the foot.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe base-lodge souvenir format in its purest form: buy the patch, sew it on the parka, prove you were there. It was the check-in of its day, and it lasted considerably longer than any of the digital versions will.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNobody ever scrolled past somebody's patch collection.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNewry is a small town on Route 2 in western Maine and the ski area is considerably better known than the town, the river or the county it sits in. That is true of a lot of these places and it is never true the other way around.\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":55537884528945,"sku":"RV-ME-118","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-sunday-river-maine-patch_95d6d720-e181-4185-90f1-ecb11bc1a0ee.webp?v=1785620439"},{"product_id":"sunday-river-embroidered-round-patch","title":"Sunday River Sunny Ski Patch — c. 1980s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Sunday River ski patch, estimated to date from the 1980s, round on a medium blue ground inside a navy merrowed border — a yellow spiky sun with a face, wearing navy wraparound sunglasses and grinning, SUNDAY arched in navy across the top and RIVER around the bottom. Maine, in February. The sun is wearing sunglasses.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eMaine, in February. The sun is wearing sunglasses.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSomebody was doing their best under difficult circumstances, and the result is the most cheerful object in the catalog. You cannot look at this and be in a bad mood, which was presumably the entire design brief.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSunday River also became, fairly or not, the mountain most associated with making its own snow in enormous quantities. A sun in sunglasses on a hill famous for manufactured winter is a joke the marketing department probably did not intend and definitely earned.\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":55537885086001,"sku":"RV-ME-117","price":55.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-sunday-river-sun-patch.webp?v=1785620464"},{"product_id":"vintage-sunday-river-maine-ski-resort-embroidered-patch","title":"Sunday River Patch (Sunburst) — c. 1980s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Sunday River ski patch, estimated to date from the 1980s, built as a charcoal disc set inside a triangle so that three white points show beyond the circle. Red rays rise behind grey and white peaks, sunday river runs in white lowercase around the top, and MAINE sits on a red band at the foot. Worn soft across the face.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eMaroon and charcoal on a ski patch could only have been decided in the eighties, by somebody who had seen a corporate identity manual and wanted one.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt has aged considerably better than most things that decade produced. Restraint usually does, even when it was accidental.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe sun is the one constant. Sunday River has redrawn it perhaps a dozen times across forty years — stylized, literal, wearing sunglasses, reduced to a sunburst, set on black — and it has never once been tempted to replace it with something else. That is an unusual amount of discipline for a mountain that changed almost everything else about itself.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge, with wear across the face. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537885544753,"sku":"RV-ME-116","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-sunday-river-ski-patch_87eb72a3-b911-4fc2-ac6f-e1c9a0824840.webp?v=1785620499"},{"product_id":"vintage-sunday-river-ski-resort-embroidered-patch-1","title":"Sunday River Ski Resort Patch (Early Logo) — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Sunday River ski patch from Newry, Maine, estimated to date from the 1970s, cut as a slanted parallelogram with a blue merrowed border on a cream ground — the early mark worked all in blue: a sun rising behind a peak with a wavy line of water running beneath it, sunday river in lowercase alongside.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is Sunday River before Les Otten bought it in 1980 and started acquiring peaks — back when it was one hill in Newry, the snowmaking was whatever fell out of the sky, and the whole operation would have fitted in a corner of what it later became.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eOtten went on to assemble American Skiing Company out of mountains like this one. It ended badly for the company and extremely well for the skiing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe eight peaks came later, one at a time, each one bought or built by a company that was expanding faster than anybody around it thought was sensible.\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":55537885937969,"sku":"RV-ME-115","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-sunday-river-ski-patch_91fdf3a8-16e7-4cae-abb6-e4f5ea63a866.webp?v=1785620536"},{"product_id":"vintage-agamenticus-embroidered-fabric-patch","title":"Mt. Agamenticus Ski Patch (Caricature Logo) — c. 1960s-70s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Mt. Agamenticus ski patch from York, Maine, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, arched-top with a blue merrowed border on a cream ground. The figure on it is a caricature of a Native American — pink skin, a long nose, a single feather in a headband — running forward with a tomahawk raised. AGAMENTICUS in blue beside a red A at the base.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eListed as a record of what the hill printed, not as a thing to celebrate. Agamenticus is an Abenaki place name, and the mountain ran this mark into the seventies before the ski area faded out. It is here because taking it out of the record does not take it out of the history.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAgamenticus is a 690-foot hill about six miles from the Atlantic, and for a stretch of years it supported a genuine ski area with a chairlift on it. Six hundred and ninety feet. You can see the ocean from the top.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThat was not considered absurd at the time. If a hill had enough pitch to slide down and a road to get to it, somebody would try, and a surprising number of those attempts worked for twenty or thirty years. The sport was not yet organized around vertical feet and snowfall averages. It was organized around whether there was somewhere to go on Sunday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe area closed in the mid-seventies and the summit is conservation land now, with a road up it and a view. The mountain is entirely still there. The lift is not.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAs for the axe: no idea. He seems pleased about it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eCoastal Maine in winter is a strange place to ski and was never going to sustain a lift operation forever.\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":55537891213617,"sku":"RV-ME-114","price":95.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-agamenticus-embroidered-patch.jpg?v=1785621225"},{"product_id":"bald-mountain-dedham-maine-embroidered-patch","title":"Bald Mountain Ski Patch, Dedham, Maine — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Bald Mountain ski patch from Dedham, Maine, estimated to date from the 1970s or 80s, a rectangle with scalloped shoulders and a black merrowed border — BALD MOUNTAIN in black on a blue sky, a white-headed bald eagle in profile with a gold beak filling the middle, and below it a green band with a white summit mark and DEDHAM MAINE. Bald mountain, bald eagle. Nobody thought about it for long and it is better for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBald mountain, bald eagle. Nobody involved thought about this for more than four seconds and the result is better than anything a longer meeting would have produced.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThere is a whole genre of this: small ski areas solving their design problem by taking the name absolutely literally and drawing the first thing that came to mind. It produced some of the most memorable graphics in the business, entirely by accident, because nobody was trying to make something memorable. They were trying to get the patches ordered before the season started.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDedham is inland from the coast, a long way from anywhere anybody would call a destination. The hill is not operating. The eagle, as far as anybody knows, was never seen on the premises.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt is also, as a piece of drawing, considerably better than it needed to be. Somebody took the job seriously even though the brief was a pun.\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":55537893802289,"sku":"RV-ME-113","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-bald-mountain-patch.webp?v=1785621334"},{"product_id":"vintage-rangeley-bald-mountain-ski-way-embroidered-patch","title":"Rangeley Bald Mt. Ski Way Patch, Felt — c. 1950s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Rangeley Bald Mt. Ski Way patch from Maine, estimated to date from the 1950s, cut from a round of cream felt with no applied border — a red ring chain-stitched around the edge carrying RANGELEY BALD MT. ME. over the top and SKI WAY around the foot, and in the middle a figure in red and black standing upright on his skis with one arm raised.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSki Way. Not area, not resort, not mountain. That word puts this in the fifties or very early sixties, when the vocabulary of the sport had not settled and every operator was calling their hill whatever sounded right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEverything about the construction says the same thing. Felt ground rather than twill. Chain stitch rather than the dense satin fill that came later. Two thread colors, because more than two cost more than the job was worth.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is close to as early as New England ski patches get. It was made by a process that was already old when it was new, for a hill that was charging a couple of dollars, for customers who were skiing on wood with leather bindings and getting down however they could.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003ePatches this old are also frequently mistaken for later reproductions, because the construction looks crude to an eye trained on modern embroidery. Crude is the tell. Nobody reproducing a patch for the collector market chain-stitches it onto felt in two colors.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eChain-stitched on felt, cut edge, no applied border. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537893900593,"sku":"RV-ME-112","price":125.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-rangeley-ski-patch.webp?v=1785621353"},{"product_id":"vintage-bald-mountain-skiing-embroidered-patch","title":"Bald Mountain Ski Patch, Rangeley, Maine — c. 1960s-70s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Bald Mt. ski patch from Rangeley, Maine, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, a pointed shield with a red merrowed border — a blue sky above a white snowfield cut on the diagonal, a skier in red folded into a tuck across it, BALD MT. in red at the top and RANGELEY ME. in red at the base.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the same patch as the Saddleback shield a few listings over — same shape, same sky, same diagonal snowfield, same red skier, same hand. Two rival Rangeley mountains, four miles apart, buying from the same mill and getting the same drawing with a different name stitched across the top. That happened constantly and almost nobody notices it, because you have to own both to see it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eRangeley is a town of roughly twelve hundred people with a lake, a main street, and at one point two ski mountains. Bald was the smaller one, and it ran before Saddleback took over the region's attention entirely.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the most common way a ski area dies, and it has nothing to do with bad management or bad snow. A bigger hill opens nearby with a longer lift and more vertical, and within a few seasons the people who used to come here are driving past the turn. The small mountain does not fail dramatically. It just stops being the obvious choice.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eTwo mountains, one town, and only one of them still sells tickets. Both of them printed patches.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWhat is unusual about Rangeley is that both mountains kept operating alongside each other for years. Normally the smaller one folds inside a decade. This one hung on long enough to produce a reasonable quantity of souvenirs, which is why you are reading this at all.\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":55537893933361,"sku":"RV-ME-111","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-bald-mountain-ski-patch.webp?v=1785621382"},{"product_id":"vintage-black-mountain-ski-school-embroidered-patch","title":"Black Mountain Ski School Patch, Rumford — c. 1970s-80s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Black Mountain Ski School patch from Rumford, Maine, estimated to date from the 1970s or 80s, a pointed shield with a black merrowed border — BLACK MT. over SKI SCHOOL in black caps on a grey sky, a cream summit flanked by black rock, and an instructor in an orange jacket working down the face.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSki school patches were uniform, not merchandise. You taught, so you had one.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eRumford is a paper-mill town in western Maine, and whoever wore this spent their winters teaching wedge turns to the children of people who worked shifts at the mill — in cold that makes the job a vocation rather than a career, for money that would not have covered the gas.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eInstructors are the most consequential and least documented people in the sport. Almost everybody who skis was taught by somebody, and almost nobody can remember that person's name. They are the reason the thing propagates at all, and this is roughly the only object that records they existed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe orange jacket is not a design flourish, by the way. Instructors wore bright uniform colors so that a class could find them in flat light, and every ski school in the country settled independently on roughly the same solution.\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":55537893966129,"sku":"RV-ME-110","price":65.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-black-mountain-ski-patch.jpg?v=1793564416"},{"product_id":"vintage-bowdoin-college-embroidered-patch","title":"Bowdoin College Seal Patch — c. 1980s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Bowdoin College patch from Brunswick, Maine, estimated to date from the 1970s or 80s, cut with a scalloped edge and bordered in black — a black ring carrying BOWDOIN COLLEGII SIGILLUM in white caps with ★ 1794 ★ at the foot, and at the center a yellow sun with a human face, ringed in red flame. The college seal rather than a ski area, out of the same drawer as the ski patches.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNot a ski patch, strictly speaking. It came out of the same drawer as the ski patches, which is how a great deal of this material actually survives — somebody's accumulated life in a tin, sorted by nobody, kept by accident.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt belongs to the same New England outdoor tradition all the same. Bowdoin has been sending people onto the winter carnival circuit for about as long as there has been one, and college skiing in Maine and Vermont was for decades the most competitive skiing in the country, full stop.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe design is unusually good for an institutional mark of this period — a sun, rays, a hard black field, and the discipline to leave it alone.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt is also a reminder that these objects were never sorted by category when they were in use. A person had a jacket, and on that jacket went the ski area, the club, the college and wherever else they had been. The categories are ours. The drawer did not have any.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, scalloped merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537896161585,"sku":"RV-ME-109","price":90.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-bowdoin-college-patch.jpg?v=1785621630"},{"product_id":"vintage-camden-snow-bowl-embroidered-patch","title":"Camden Snow Bowl Ski Patch — c. 1970s-80s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Camden Snow Bowl patch from Maine, estimated to date from the 1970s or 80s, a pointed shield with a blue merrowed border — SNOW BOWL in white on a blue band across the top, two red peaks on a white field, a gold compass rose laid over a pair of crossed gold skis, and CAMDEN MAINE in white at the base. The compass is not decoration. This is the hill where you ski toward the ocean.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eCamden is the only hill in the East where you ski toward the ocean. Penobscot Bay sits right there at the bottom of the trail, and on a clear day the view off the top takes in the islands, which is not a thing any other ski area in New England can offer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe compass on the patch is not decoration. It is the only honest way to draw the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe Snow Bowl also runs the toboggan chute, which hosts a national championship every winter and is exactly as dangerous as it sounds.\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":55537896358193,"sku":"RV-ME-108","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-camden-snow-bowl-patch.jpg?v=1785621658"},{"product_id":"vintage-colby-ski-team-embroidered-triangle-patch","title":"Colby Ski Team Patch, Waterville, Maine — c. 1970s-80s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Colby Ski Team patch from Waterville, Maine, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, a triangle with a blue merrowed border and a cream ground carrying COLBY over SKI TEAM in blue block caps. No mountain, no skier, no snowflake. Team issue, and it shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eTeam patches went on the parka once and stayed there. That is why so few of them ever reach a table.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA resort patch circulates. It was bought as a souvenir, it gets traded, it ends up in a shoebox with forty others and eventually somebody sells the shoebox. A team patch was issued to one person, sewn onto one jacket, and then that jacket sat in a closet for fifty years because of what it represented rather than what it was worth.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThese come out one at a time, usually when a house gets cleared. There is no other supply.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eCarnival racing was also, for a long stretch, genuinely the top level of the sport in this country. Before the national team had money, the fastest skiers in America were at Middlebury, Dartmouth, Colby and Williams, racing each other on weekends in front of about forty people. The patches from those programs are the hardware of a period when college skiing was the whole show.\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":55537896489265,"sku":"RV-ME-107","price":85.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-colby-ski-team-patch.jpg?v=1785621681"},{"product_id":"vintage-colby-outing-club-embroidered-patch","title":"Colby Outing Club Patch, Felt — c. 1940s-50s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Colby Outing Club patch from Waterville, Maine, estimated to date from the 1940s or 50s, cut from a round of tan felt with a raw edge, soiled and holed near the top. COLBY OUTING CLUB chain-stitched in blue around the ring, and in the middle a blue peak with a small figure standing on the summit planting a flag.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFelt-ground club patches are older technology than the twill everybody moved to, and they age completely differently. Twill frays at the merrow and holds its color. Felt softens, picks up the shape of whatever it was pressed against, and fades evenly across the whole face.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis one has been somewhere. You can see it in the nap.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eCollege outing clubs ran the Maine outdoors for most of the twentieth century — hiking, canoeing, winter camping and skiing, organized by students with no budget and an enormous amount of enthusiasm, on equipment that would now be considered unsafe.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eOuting club patches are also the best evidence available for what people actually did outdoors before the recreation industry existed to sell it to them. There were no technical fabrics, no guided trips, no permits. There were students in wool with surplus gear walking into the woods in January, and the only record is a membership patch and a few photographs in a yearbook nobody has opened since.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eChain-stitched on felt, cut edge, with soiling, thinning and a hole at the top. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537896554801,"sku":"RV-ME-106","price":85.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-colby-outing-club-patch.jpg?v=1785621704"},{"product_id":"vintage-enchanted-mountain-embroidered-sew-on-patch","title":"Enchanted Mountain Ski Patch, Sealed (Lost Mountain) — c. 1960s-70s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Enchanted Mountain ski patch from Jackman, Maine, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, still sealed in the original Apatche-Totem bag, header card intact: washable patch, made in U.S.A. by American Craftsmen, 70 W. 40th St., N.Y.C. Through the cellophane: an arched shield with a white merrowed border, a deep blue sky, a turreted white castle standing on a white summit, a yellow moon hung at the upper left and one dark bird crossing beneath it. ENCHANTED MOUNTAIN in yellow along the bottom.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the best drawing in the Maine collection and it is still in the bag. Sealed stock from an area that is long quiet, with artwork nobody would commission today from a mountain nobody can ski — it is the only patch here where every single thing that makes one of these worth owning happens to line up at once.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eJackman sits fifteen miles from the Quebec border, in a county with more logging road than pavement. For a run of winters in the seventies it had a ski area, and somebody there decided to call it Enchanted Mountain. Not Eagle. Not Summit. Not Northern Peak. Enchanted. Then somebody had to draw the patch, and whoever got that job made a choice no committee would approve today.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThat gap is the entire point. The people who cut these small mountains were not selling a destination. They were selling the idea that on a Saturday twenty minutes from your house, something slightly magic was going on, and that you could be back by supper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe lifts are gone. The castle is still up there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge, unopened in the original packaging. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537896718641,"sku":"RV-ME-105","price":135.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-enchanted-mountain-patch.jpg?v=1785621756"},{"product_id":"vintage-gorham-kiwanis-ski-slope-embroidered-patch","title":"Gorham Kiwanis Ski Slope Patch — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Gorham Kiwanis Ski Slope patch from Maine, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, round with a gold merrowed border — a navy ring carrying GORHAM KIWANIS arched in gold across the top and SLOPE across the bottom, and inside it a gold disc with white peaks and SKI in heavy navy caps, the I drawn as a ski standing on end.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA service club built a ski slope for a town. That sentence used to be entirely unremarkable in New England and now reads like something out of a different country — the Kiwanis raised the money, cleared the hill, ran the tow and put the lights in, so that the children of Gorham would have somewhere to go in February.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNobody does this anymore. The liability alone would end the conversation in the first meeting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe slope ran on volunteers, which meant it ran until the volunteers got tired, which is a more common cause of death than bankruptcy.\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":55537896784177,"sku":"RV-ME-104","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-gorham-kiwanis-ski-patch.jpg?v=1792336368"},{"product_id":"vintage-hurricane-skiing-embroidered-patch","title":"Hurricane Ski Area Patch, Falmouth (Lost Mountain) — c. 1960s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Hurricane ski patch from Falmouth, Maine, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, a pointed shield with a red merrowed border — HURRICANE in navy across the top over FALMOUTH, MAINE, a skier in red mid-turn, one small green fir, white peaks behind, and a blue wave curling up out of the bottom corner.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA small hill just outside Portland that ran in the middle of the century and then stopped. No lifts now, no lodge, no sign at the road, and nothing on the ground to tell you anything ever happened there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA few thousand people learned to ski on it. That is not a guess — that is simply what a hill near a city does for twenty or thirty years. Every one of them has a first-day story and almost every one of those stories has now gone with the person who had it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHurricane is the pure case of what this whole catalog is about. There is no building to photograph, no historical society file, no anniversary to mark. There is a name, a location, and a patch with a skier on it, and if the patch goes, there is a name and a location.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003ePortland has grown out toward it in every direction since. Whatever that hill was, it is somebody's neighborhood now.\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":55537896882481,"sku":"RV-ME-103","price":45.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-hurricane-ski-patch.jpg?v=1785621812"},{"product_id":"vintage-l-l-bean-snowfields-lodge-embroidered-patch","title":"L.L. Bean Snowfields Lodge Patch — modern","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn L.L. Bean Snowfields Lodge patch, pointed shield with a cream merrowed border — SNOWFIELDS in brown block over L O D G E letterspaced beneath, a pale blue sky, grey-blue mountains, a skier in brown dropping the face, and L.L. Bean 1912 in script at the bottom. The fraying along one edge looks deliberate: this is a styled-vintage piece rather than an old one, and it is listed as such.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eL.L. Bean has been outfitting Maine skiers for longer than most Maine ski areas have existed, and for a long stretch the company's program patches, lodge patches and outfitter patches circulated alongside the resort ones without anybody thinking of them as a separate category.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThey are much harder to find now, for a simple reason: resort patches were sold to skiers, who collected them. Program patches were given out to participants, who wore them out. There was no secondary market, no trading, nobody putting them in a binder.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWhich means this documents a side of the sport that effectively has no archive — the outfitters, the programs, the people who sold you the wool and taught you to use it, rather than the mountains you took it to.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBean's relationship with Maine skiing is older than most of the ski areas in this catalog, and the company outfitted people for decades before anybody built a lift worth driving to.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge, with fraying that appears to be by design. Modern production. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537897570609,"sku":"RV-ME-102","price":28.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-llbean-ski-patch.jpg?v=1785621853"},{"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-lost-valley-staff-embroidered-patch","title":"Lost Valley Staff Patch, Auburn, Maine — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Lost Valley staff patch from Auburn, Maine, estimated to date from the 1970s, arched-top with a blue merrowed border on a pale blue ground — LOST VALLEY arched in black across the top, STAFF in black at the bottom, and in the middle a cartoon skier in an orange striped sweater standing on an outline of the state of Maine, a small yellow sun beside his head. That word at the bottom means it was never sold to anybody. It came with the job.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThat word means this was never sold to anybody. It came with the job.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eLost Valley is a small hill in Auburn with lights for night skiing, and working there in the seventies meant some combination of running the lift, teaching the lesson, fixing the rope tow, selling the tickets and shovelling the ramp — frequently all five in one shift, frequently for not much money.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eStaff patches get worn hard and then kept forever, because the people who had them tend to have strong feelings about that winter. It was a first job for a lot of teenagers, and the ones who stayed in skiing usually trace it back to a season exactly like this.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSomebody earned this on a hill in Auburn, Maine, in the cold, after school.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eStaff patches also tend to be in worse condition than anything else, and the reason is flattering to them. Resort patches sat in drawers. This one was worn every day for a season by somebody working outdoors in Maine in the winter, and it looks like it.\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":55537897832753,"sku":"RV-ME-100","price":75.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-lost-valley-staff-patch.jpg?v=1785621909"},{"product_id":"vintage-maine-east-ski-club-embroidered-patch","title":"Maine East Ski Club Patch (Ski \u0026 Crutch) — c. 1960s-70s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Maine East Ski Club patch, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, round on a white ground inside a black merrowed border — MAINE EAST stacked at the left, SKI CLUB at the right, and crossed in the middle a blue ski and a yellow crutch.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA crutch. Crossed with a ski, on the club's own emblem, ordered on purpose and worn in public. Every other patch in this catalog is selling you the idea that skiing is glorious. This one is the only object in the collection that tells the truth about it, and the club that commissioned it clearly enjoyed doing so.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eClub patches outnumber resort patches and get collected about a tenth as often, which is a mistake that works in your favor. The clubs filled the lifts. They organized the buses, negotiated the group rates and got entire towns of people onto a mountain who would never have gone on their own.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA resort patch tells you a place existed. A club patch tells you how people got there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eCrossed skis and a club name is about as plain as patch design gets, and it has held up better than most of what came after it.\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":55537897931057,"sku":"RV-ME-099","price":50.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-maine-east-ski-club-patch.jpg?v=1792336166"},{"product_id":"vintage-maine-outing-club-embroidered-patch","title":"Maine Outing Club Patch, Felt — c. 1940s-50s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Maine Outing Club patch, estimated to date from the 1940s or 50s, cut from a round of tan felt with no applied border at all — the edge raw, thinned and fraying away on every side. A navy ring carries MAINE across the top and OUTING CLUB around the bottom, with a dark pine standing alone on an olive-green disc in the middle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eOuting clubs are how most people in the Northeast actually got outdoors. A van, a sign-up sheet on a corkboard, dues of a few dollars a term, and somebody's father who owned a roof rack and was prepared to drive.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNo resort ever put that on a billboard, and no resort could have existed without it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe clubs also did something no resort has ever managed, which is make skiing cheap. Group rates, shared gas, borrowed gear and a bus. An entire generation got into the sport because somebody organized a sign-up sheet.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on felt, cut edge, no applied border, with thinning and fraying throughout. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537898029361,"sku":"RV-ME-098","price":85.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-maine-outing-club-patch.jpg?v=1792336392"},{"product_id":"vintage-may-mountain-embroidered-fabric-patch","title":"May Mountain Ski Patch, Sealed (Lost Mountain) — c. 1960s-70s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage May Mountain ski patch from Maine, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, still sealed in the original Apatche-Totem bag, header card intact: washable patch, made in U.S.A. by American Craftsmen, 70 W. 40th St., N.Y.C. Through the cellophane: a round patch with a white merrowed border, a blue upper field carrying May in white blackletter, three white peaks across the middle, and a lime-green lower field with Mountain beneath.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe design is generic almost to the point of anonymity — it could be any mountain in any state, drawn by anybody. Which is exactly why the name had to be stitched on, and exactly why the patch matters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eStrip the lettering off this and it becomes decoration. With the lettering it is evidence: proof that a place called May Mountain existed in Maine, sold souvenirs, and had enough of a business to justify ordering a run of patches from a mill.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThat is a low bar and it is also, for a great many of these hills, the only bar they cleared. Nobody is coming along later to establish it some other way. The patch is the document.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eCollectors mostly ignore patches like this, because there is no story attached and nothing visually remarkable about them. That is precisely the gap. The mountains that are genuinely gone are gone partly because nobody found them interesting enough to write down at the time, and the quiet patches are the ones doing the most work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge, unopened in the original packaging. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537898291505,"sku":"RV-ME-097","price":55.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-may-mountain-patch.jpg?v=1785622016"},{"product_id":"pine-haven-vintage-embroidered-skiing-patch","title":"Pine Haven Ski Area Patch (Lost Mountain) — c. 1960s-70s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Pine Haven patch from Maine, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, cut as a pointed gothic arch with a red merrowed border — an olive-green ground with one white trail winding down from the top, a skier in red halfway along it, two pale firs standing at the bottom corners and PINE HAVEN in black on a white band at the base.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003ePine Haven belongs to the long and badly documented list of small Maine hills that ran a tow, taught two or three towns to ski, and then closed without anybody writing it down.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThere were hundreds of these in New England. A farmer's slope with a rope tow driven off a truck engine. A town hill with lights and a warming shed run by volunteers. They charged almost nothing, they operated for as long as somebody was willing to do the work, and when that person got old or the insurance got expensive, they stopped.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNo archive collected them. The local paper may have run two inches when it opened and nothing at all when it closed. What exists is this: a patch, made in some quantity, sold at a counter, and now the most substantial surviving record of the place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eRope tows were powered by whatever was available — a truck engine, a tractor, in at least one documented case a washing machine motor.\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":55537898389809,"sku":"RV-ME-096","price":45.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-pine-haven-ski-patch.jpg?v=1785622060"},{"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"},{"product_id":"vintage-saddleback-ski-resort-embroidered-patch","title":"Saddleback Ski Resort Patch (Shield) — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Saddleback ski patch from Rangeley, Maine, estimated to date from the 1970s, featuring a skier in a red suit folded into a low tuck on a white snowfield under a blue sky. Pointed shield, gold merrowed border, SADDLEBACK in red across the top and RANGELEY ME. in red at the point.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe skier is in a full racing tuck on what is quite clearly a green trail with no discernible pitch to it. Optimism was standard issue on ski patches in this period, and nobody ever wrote in to complain.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eYou bought the patch, you looked at the little guy going flat out, and you resolved that this season would be the year. It usually was not.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHonesty was never the point. A patch is an advertisement you pay three dollars for and then volunteer to wear, which remains the best deal in marketing anybody has ever designed.\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":55537898520881,"sku":"RV-ME-094","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_f3fc5264-1c1b-4451-9bca-9d9ae669174e.jpg?v=1785622116"},{"product_id":"rangeley-saddleback-mountain-embroidered-patch","title":"Rangeley Saddleback Mountain Patch (Oval) — c. 1980s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Saddleback ski patch from Rangeley, Maine, estimated to date from the 1970s or 80s, reduced to two overlapping peaks — one blue, one red — sitting in the middle of a white oval with a gold merrowed border. RANGELEY arched in black across the top, SADDLEBACK in black beneath. The dip between the two peaks is the saddle, and that is the entire logo.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eRangeley is a town of about twelve hundred people with a lake, a main street, a couple of restaurants and a ski mountain. The patch is roughly the same ratio — a bit of landscape, a bit of color, nothing surplus to requirements.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eTowns that size do not support ski areas anymore. A few of them did for fifty years anyway.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSmall-town ski areas and the towns around them are the same organism. When one of them stops, the other finds out immediately, in the hardware store and the diner and the school enrollment numbers.\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":55537898553649,"sku":"RV-ME-093","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-rangeley-saddleback-patch.jpg?v=1785622133"},{"product_id":"rangeley-saddleback-ski-resort-embroidered-patch","title":"Rangeley Saddleback Chairlift Patch — c. 1980s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Saddleback ski patch from Rangeley, Maine, estimated to date from the 1970s or 80s, featuring a black lattice lift tower rising right through the middle of the face, cables running off to both edges with a chair hanging from one of them, a red and a blue peak behind. Tall oval, white ground, gold merrowed border, RANGELEY arched in red above and SADDLEBACK below.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eLift towers almost never make it onto patches. Mountains sold you a peak, a snowflake or a skier; the machinery that made the whole thing possible stayed off the merchandise because it is ugly and industrial and nobody drives four hours to look at steel. Which is exactly why this one is worth having. Somebody decided the lift was the thing worth drawing, and they were right.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSomebody chose to put the lift tower on the patch instead of the mountain. That is a person who understood what people actually remember about a ski day — not the summit view, but the specific sound a chair makes going over a sheave wheel, and the cold coming up through the seat.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt is the least obvious choice available and the most accurate one.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eTowers also date a patch, if you know what you are looking at. The spacing of the sheaves and the shape of the crossarm are specific to an era of lift construction.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge, with a loose thread at the border. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537898619185,"sku":"RV-ME-092","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-rangeley-saddleback-ski-patch.jpg?v=1785622159"},{"product_id":"vintage-saddleback-mountain-ski-resort-embroidered-patch-1","title":"Saddleback Mountain Ski Patch (Worn) — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Saddleback ski patch from Rangeley, Maine, estimated to date from the 1970s — the same twin peak on blue, carried a great deal further. The red merrow has worn away almost entirely to a pale frayed cream, the white has gone tan, and there are loose threads all around the edge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe word resort is doing an enormous amount of work on this patch. In the seventies Saddleback was a lodge, some lifts, a T-bar and four hours of driving from Boston. Nobody arriving had any illusions.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eMountains used that word long before they had earned it, and the gap between what the patch claimed and what was actually at the end of the road is one of the more charming things about the whole era.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSkiing was in the middle of deciding whether it was a sport, a holiday or an industry, and the vocabulary ran ahead of the facts in all three directions.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge with substantial loss. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537898684721,"sku":"RV-ME-091","price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-saddleback-ski-patch_8ace7b7b-5251-4db9-a011-eba2b2f6a917.jpg?v=1785622176"},{"product_id":"vintage-saddleback-mountain-embroidered-patch","title":"Saddleback Mountain Ski Patch (Red Border) — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Saddleback ski patch from Rangeley, Maine, estimated to date from the 1970s, round with a red merrowed border — a deep blue sky with a pale twin peak rising into it, SADDLEBACK in red on a white band straight across the middle, Rangeley, Me. in blue beneath. Three colors and a shape, which in 1974 was everything a ski area needed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThree colors and a shape. That is the entire design, and in 1974 it was everything a ski area needed to say about itself — here is the mountain, here is the name, that will be three dollars.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe restraint was mostly budget rather than taste. It reads as taste now, which is the usual trick time plays on old graphics.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe merrowed edge is the detail worth looking at on any patch of this age. It is the rolled satin stitch around the outside, it is the first thing to go, and its condition tells you more about how a patch was treated than anything on the face.\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":55537898750257,"sku":"RV-ME-090","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-mountain-patch.jpg?v=1785622195"},{"product_id":"saddleback-mountain-embroidered-iron-on-patch","title":"Saddleback Patch (Saddle Outline) — modern","description":"\u003cp\u003eA Saddleback patch, the same saddle-over-a-peak device stripped back to outline — brown saddle, white ground, black keyline, die-cut to shape with SADDLEBACK across the middle. Modern stitching, clean edges, never worn.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eCleaner than the version before it, with the tooling and the stitching detail stripped out and the shape left to carry it. That is almost always the sign of a mountain that has just hired somebody who went to art school.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBoth versions are better than what most ski areas settled for. A literal object, drawn plainly, beats a generic peak every time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe two of them together make a small case study in what happens when a ski area in the seventies decides it ought to look more professional, and spends money accordingly.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered, die-cut to shape. Modern production. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537898815793,"sku":"RV-ME-089","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-saddleback-mountain-patch_e0d01b27-0c2d-4cf9-bb90-b5e270f75760.jpg?v=1785622223"},{"product_id":"saddleback-mountain-embroidered-sew-on-patch","title":"Saddleback Patch (Saddle \u0026 Peak) — modern","description":"\u003cp\u003eA Saddleback patch cut to the outline of its own artwork — a brown western saddle slung across a white mountain, SADDLEBACK in white on a black band beneath it. The name taken completely literally, in a state with no horses on the hill. The embroidery is dense and modern, raised and crisp at every edge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe mountain is named for the dip between its two summits — a saddle, in the topographic sense, which is a perfectly ordinary word for a perfectly ordinary landform.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSomebody then took that absolutely literally and put an actual tooled western saddle on the patch, in Maine, where the nearest horse is a long way from the lift line. It is wrong in a way that is far more memorable than getting it right would have been.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe topographic saddle is clearly visible from the lake, which is presumably how the name arrived in the first place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered, die-cut to shape. Modern production. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537898848561,"sku":"RV-ME-088","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-saddleback-mountain-patch_a9bc766a-597b-4b4a-8d80-e7d232d0d921.jpg?v=1785622240"},{"product_id":"saddleback-maine-embroidered-fabric-patch","title":"Saddleback Maine Patch (Ridgeline) — modern","description":"\u003cp\u003eA Saddleback Maine patch, arched-top with a white merrowed border and a blue frame — a green ridgeline band with the saddle shape cut white through it, SADDLEBACK in blue block caps and MAINE beneath. This is the mark the mountain carried into its reopening, and the stitching is modern: dense, digitized, sharp at every edge. It is in the collection to complete the Saddleback run, not because it is old.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eRangeley Lakes, in the western Maine mountains, about as far from a city as organized skiing gets in the Northeast. The Appalachian Trail runs over Saddleback's ridge, which gives you some idea of the country.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eRemoteness was the whole proposition. You did not end up here on the way to anywhere. You came because somebody told you it was worth four hours.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFour hours from Boston, in a direction most people never drive, on roads that are not improved by February. The mountain's whole history is a consequence of that number.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEmbroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Modern production, reopening era. Photos are the condition report.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ropetow Vintage Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55537898881329,"sku":"RV-ME-087","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/ropetow-vintage-co-saddleback-maine-patch.jpg?v=1785622256"},{"product_id":"vintage-saddleback-maine-ski-resort-embroidered-patch","title":"Saddleback Mountain Ski Patch, Rangeley — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Saddleback ski patch from Rangeley, Maine, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, worked in two colors only — brown on cream. A skier hunched into a turn at the center, drawn as a single fine line, inside a brown ring, with SADDLEBACK arched across the top and RANGELEY, MAINE around the bottom between two brown dots.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSaddleback closed in 2015 and then sat silent for five winters — lifts standing, lodge locked, a whole town watching its largest employer not open. It came back in 2020. Very few ski areas get a second act, and the ones that do usually get it because somebody local refused to let the thing be written off.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis patch is from long before any of that, when the T-bar still ran and the glades above the treeline belonged to whoever knew where they started.\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":55537898946865,"sku":"RV-ME-086","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-maine-ski-patch.jpg?v=1785622272"},{"product_id":"pleasant-mt-ski-school-eagle-on-a-ski","title":"Pleasant Mt. Ski School Patch, Bridgton — c. 1960s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Pleasant Mt. Ski School patch from Bridgton, Maine, estimated to date from the 1960s, featuring a brown eagle with its wings spread, riding a single white ski across the snow. Arched shield, red merrowed border, PLEASANT MT. in navy across a blue sky, SKI and SCHOOL in red either side of the bird, BRIDGTON, MAINE arched along the bottom.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn eagle. On a ski. Not above a skier, not beside one — ripping arcs, wings out. Somebody drew this on a deadline in the early sixties and then went home, and nobody at the mountain ever asked them to explain it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis one came with the job: instructors got it when they were hired and wore it every working day of the season, outdoors, in Maine, in winter. The ones that survive are the ones somebody kept in a drawer after they stopped teaching.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePleasant Mountain has been running above Moose Pond since the thirties, and in that time it has been called Pleasant Mountain, then Shawnee Peak, then Pleasant Mountain again. This patch is from the first stretch, before any of that started.\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":57373831201073,"sku":"RV-ME-190","price":75.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/shawnee-pleasant-01.jpg?v=1794065918"},{"product_id":"ski-shawnee-rainbow-bands","title":"Ski Shawnee Patch (Rainbow Bands) — c. 1970s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Ski Shawnee patch from Bridgton, Maine, estimated to date from the 1970s, round with a red merrowed border on a white ground. A blue mountain range runs across the middle, SKI SHAWNEE in blue block caps beneath it, and five bands of color — red, orange, yellow, green, blue — run along the foot. At the center of the range sits the mountain's mark of that era: a head in profile, in red and white, with two feathers behind it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe hill carried the Shawnee name and this mark for roughly three decades before reverting to Pleasant Mountain in 2021, and it's here because taking it out of the record doesn't take it out of the history.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFive horizontal stripes under a logo was the single most common graphic decision in American skiing between about 1973 and 1980 — it turns up on lift tickets, trail maps, rental skis and the side of ski-school bibs from Vermont to Colorado, and then it vanishes almost overnight.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBridgton sits in the lakes country of western Maine, an hour from Portland, and the hill above Moose Pond has been the town's winter economy for the better part of a century under three different names.\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":57373831430449,"sku":"RV-ME-191","price":45.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/shawnee-pleasant-02.jpg?v=1794065887"},{"product_id":"shawnee-peak-arc-logo","title":"Shawnee Peak Patch (Arc Logo) — c. 1980s","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vintage Shawnee Peak patch from Bridgton, Maine, estimated to date from the 1980s, round with a red merrowed border on a white ground. A heavy black arc rises across the middle like a hill drawn in one stroke, and inside it the mountain's mark of that era: a head in profile with a single feather, in red and black. SHAWNEE PEAK in blue block caps beneath.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe mark ran on the hill's merchandise through the Shawnee Peak years and was retired with the name.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe hill itself never changed. Same pitch above Moose Pond, same view of Mount Washington from the top on a clear day, same drive out of Portland. Only the name on the merch changed.\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":57373831692593,"sku":"RV-ME-192","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/files\/shawnee-pleasant-03.jpg?v=1794065813"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0996\/2048\/7473\/collections\/maine-collection.png?v=1792351011","url":"https:\/\/ropetowvintage.com\/collections\/maine.oembed?page=2","provider":"Ropetow Vintage","version":"1.0","type":"link"}