posted 11-22-2010 01:37 PM               

From what I understand, per NASA Headquarters, that policy remains in effect. Space shops and souvenir stores still cannot produce the flags for sale to the public.

So how is it that Annin & Co. flags are being listed and sold on eBay?

Within the past several months or so, what began as a small order at Kennedy Space Center spread to encompass two very large batch orders by NASA and contractor employees at all the centers and facilities. By very large, I mean thousands of flags, if not also thousands of sets of flags (each of the orbiters, excluding Enterprise but including Challenger, for which an original Spaceflight Awareness flag never existed).

Because of the size of these orders, the flags were available to employees at $20 each, or $100 for the set of five.

Some employees (presumably) ordered extras for friends and/or themselves and listed a few on eBay. The initial auctions were met with strong interest, driving the price up to about $200 a piece and subsequent listings followed suit.

(It sounds like Annin & Co. might be basing their own quote on what they have seen the flags sell for on the secondary market, but that's just a guess -- it may very well be that at a per flag rate, the retail price is that much higher.)

For what it is worth, when the second large NASA batch order was still on-going, several cS readers who are also space program employees offered to order flags on behalf of our readership. I tried to get NASA to sign off on that first -- the last thing I wanted to see happen was to start advertising the flags on this site and then as a result, have the agency decide to step in and not only block our own orders, but cancel the order for the employees, too. Unfortunately, a response never came.

posted 08-11-2012 10:03 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Spaceguy5:
There were a few I was considering buying until the seller raised the mininum from $20 to $99.

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posted 08-12-2012 12:49 PM               

Amazon lists large U.S. historical flags for $90 retail, marked down from $125.

posted 08-12-2012 02:26 PM               

We picked up one from a KSC employee at cost, one at an auction ($150 after premium and shipping) and the rest on eBay for around $100 each. We are okay with all the price points as it is what we needed to complete the set.

I would be upset if it would turn out that there was a website somewhere that sold them for $20 and we paid that much more, but it appears that is not the case.

Here is our final display that we put in our bonus room which has vaulted ceilings.

posted 08-13-2012 01:01 PM               

Plus I've even seen a US flag which was flown at the Kennedy Space Center during a launch sell for $173, and several small space-flown flags sell for around $115. I could understand these orbiter flags being around $100 many years from now, but they're brand new, made in fairly big runs, and were available to employees for only $20.

Hopefully the prices creep down once the big-spender collectors get their flags (and the sellers realize they aren't going to get $100 for all of them). Many times, a high auction hammer price will only be representative of a few people with disposable incomes. For example, I've seen items worth maybe $5 sell for close to $100 on ebay as a result of badly-configured bid-sniping bots competing with each other.