posted 11-19-2012 10:23 PM               

The only thing that would make sense (at least to me) is that I bought 20 of the $250 sets but I don't think that was the case as I bought them on the first day they were up for sale, unless I missed the first sale entirely and bought 20 of the $250 items.

Based on the numbers from the Cosmosphere, nuts would be very rare as they would have been released along with more screws in the second series. Does that make sense? Folks don't like the nuts but they may be the rare pieces! Totally confused...

I later bought 10 of the large piece sets in the 8x8 (est.) sized boxes when they were later offered and still have those (NOT FOR SALE). The high priced sets have awesome pieces in them.

Anyway, something doesn't jive. My best guess is that the first sets were screws and nuts, not just screws. Logically there should be a nut for every screw but I will leave that alone...

posted 11-19-2012 11:03 PM               

Also, as I wrote, I bought 20. Now I have 10, just to clarify your last post.

I sold 10 to former members of a Yahoo group that I formerly ran at cost as I figured many would not be able to order any before they ran out. I kept the remainder that didn't sell to members at that time. I haven't thought about them for years and will now forget I have them once again.

Perhaps some folks might post what the actual size of the lucite block is. Length, width, height. It could be there is no difference in the $150 and $250 lucites but simply they were able to find a few more pieces and increased the price.

posted 11-20-2012 07:11 AM               

The large size with 3 inch or so sized pieces is: 5 by 7 by 1 and 7/8. I believe these are from the third batch.

Anyone have any different sized lucites for the MR-4? If a third size exists that may help resolve if the second batch was "truly" a separate issue or if there were just extra nuts and screws found and sold at a higher price. After a night's sleep, I think that might be the case. Also I do recall that the nuts and screws arrived in two differing sized boxes. That always confused me as to why.

Was there more than one Apollo 13 sized products sold? I only have one piece of a "seat" and it measures 4 inches high with a diameter of 2 and 1/2 at the bottom and comes to a "point on top" for lack of a better description.

posted 11-20-2012 09:58 AM               

• November 2000: Cosmosphere produces 250 "screws, nuts and washers" acrylic displays; their original intention was to sell only two-thirds of that batch and retain the others for dignitaries and gifts, but the demand resulted in them selling 230 of the original batch (the remaining 20 were gifted as planned).

  As a result of the demand, they identified 650 additional parts of varying sizes to be encapsulated and sold.

• December 2000: Cosmosphere produces 500 more of the "screws, nuts and washers" and continues to offer them for $150; it also produces and sells 50 "small pressure fittings" acrylic displays for $250 each and 100 "larger pressure fittings and segments of the landing bag assembly" acrylic displays for $400 each. This brings the grand and final tally to 900 acrylics produced (not counting the later offered film strip acrylics).

As for Apollo 13 couch segments, the Cosmosphere produced two acrylic displays: a smaller edition of unknown quantity to sell to the public (offered for $500 each, of which only 15 initially sold), and 25 larger acrylics (with larger swatches of couch fabric) for the cast and crew of the movie "Apollo 13."

posted 11-20-2012 06:11 PM               

If the size of the acrylic varied, how many different sizes of acrylics are there for the MR-4 flight?

posted 11-20-2012 06:48 PM               

The larger Apollo 13 acrylics have swatches considerably larger than 1-inch and are rectangular segments. You'd also know if you had one of the "Apollo 13" movie presentations as they are inscribed as such at the bottom:

This piece was among 25 similarly-sized swatches that were presented to the key crew members of Universal Studio's film "Apollo 13" as "a tribute to their participation in recreating one of the greatest human dramas ever to unfold in space."

posted 11-20-2012 08:10 PM               

The Certificate of Authenticity, signed by Max Ary, reads in part:

I hereby certify that the Apollo 13 acrylic that you have acquired contains an actual piece of one of the parachutes' shroud line removed from the spacecraft... The Kansas Cosmosphere acquired several of the recovered parachute shroud lines from the former NASA engineer in charge of the Apollo parachutes. These lines were obtained by the recovery crews before the parachutes sank and were used to conduct post-flight engineering testing. The shroud lines that survived the testing were obtained by the lead engineer until they were donated to the Kansas Cosmosphere in 1994. In an effort to share some of the dramatic history of the Apollo 13 mission the Kansas Cosmosphere has encased in acrylic several sections of this shroud line in the form that you recently acquired.

posted 11-21-2012 06:28 AM               

Acrylic, Lucite, Plexiglass, Perspex: What's the difference?

Other names, such as Lucite (Perspex) or Plexiglass(Acrylite) have all been used when referring to high grade Acrylic. They are all trademarked brand names of acrylic basically like "Kleenex" is to facial tissue or "Scotch" is to adhesive tape.