Retired Official Badges can still be earned and worn on the front of the uniform. The only difference between a retired badge and a current badge? They don’t make them or sell them in the Girl Scout Shop.

So how do you find a Retired badge for your daughter to wear?

Here are a few sources we’ve found (in Alphabetical Order):

• Badge Fairy
• Ebay (Search for the specific badge and sometimes add the year, but will usually be more expensive when purchased on Ebay)
• Etsy (Search or there are shops like All Thing Girl Scouts)
• Facebook (Various unofficial Girl Scout Buy and Sell Groups)
• GS Treasure Hunters
• Amazon often has some available (but it’s better resource to buy the retired handbooks)

Use Resources Wisely has a great short article about earning retired badges and links to amazon for the various retired handbooks. Girls love looking through older versions of the Girl Scout Handbooks, so if you have an interest, you can try to find some.

Girl Scout Leader.net also has an article on several places to find retired badges and their requirements.

Most badges are released in a specific handbook and the year is associated with that. Many older handbooks were reprinted with slight revisions, usually called “impressions”. Some badges were additional releases by GSUSA without an official new handbook released. However, usually if they aren’t in a handbook somewhere, it’s a Council’s Own or Troop’s Own original creation.

The 2011 program changed from a handbook to a binder where new released badges could be added in, but they stopped making the binders in 2020. When the binders sold out for a level, they started selling only the booklets and the handbook in a bound form. Most are offered in a digital download now as well. But even the 2011 program started retiring older Cookie Business badges in 2021 and older Financial Literacy badges in 2022.

All links on this page were last checked in May of 2020.