Masonic Jewel Return Cards
Squared Circle
There's a long story, and a short story, to this project. Want the Long Story?
The short story is best summarized as, after accomplishing a personal goal (paying off my mortgage), I made a presentation on Financial Security. In that presentation, I talked about how having income available, because you have no debt, that it leaves the money available for whatever the Grand Artificer puts in front of you.
Shortly thereafter, the Grand Artificer put in front of me a Deputy Grand Master Jewel to save, which I was fortunately able to do.
This experience led me to save a number of other jewels, DDGM, PM, etc, from Ebay and other resellers, and get them returned to their lodges.
Out of this came the thought "Why are these jewels getting on Ebay at all?".
Further inquiry and conversation with those who originally took possession of the jewels after the passing of the brethren who held them, that ignorance of the desire to have the jewels returned and reissued was the overwhelming reason. So to remove ignorance as a cause of Jewels ending up on Ebay and such, I began this project to design a card that requests the return of the Jewel in the Brother's own voice, and identifies the Lodge/Chapter/Council/Commandery/Valley/Shrine/etc, to which the Jewel should be returned.
Here are the quick and dirty details:
The card is 3 inches tall and 2.5 inches wide, and should fit the dimensions of both single and double Jewel pocket holder.
It is made out of the same plastic that our pocket name badges are made, and so will not damage the jewel.
The card is attached to Jewel Pocket Holder or Jewel Case by adhesive/velcro tape, which is pre-applied, and allows the jewel to be moved to a new holder or case
The only pieces of information that are needed to print is the name of the Masonic Body and the Municipality in which it resides.
The Grand Lodge of Massachusetts reference should remain, even if the Jewel is not Blue Lodge,
for the simple reason that GLMA the most easily Googled/contacted group for Massachusetts Freemasonry, and can most easily redirect any non-blue lodge inquiries to the appropriate body.
The cost is $5 per card.
Even if a lodge had 50 living PMs, at this cost, it would only take $250 to attach these cards to every single PM Jewel.
Even if these cards only rescue a single PM Jewel per Lodge,
the savings of $4000-$6000 for the average PM Jewel to be remade
is a return on investment of over 1600%-2400%!
To have these cards made for you personally(or even better, for all living PMs of your lodge),
please reach out to Worshipful Brother David LaPlante, using the phone number and email in the picture below (to save his number/email from website scanning bots).
Feedback?
If you bought a Jewel Return Card, I'd love to know, so I can keep track of any jewels saved.