posted 02-20-2006 04:16 AM               

As the offerings have gone a bit quiet right now it seems like a good time to post my current statistics.

Apollo-Soyuz initialed patches sold to date:
TPS 50 ; DKS 30 ; VDB 48 ; BHK 3 ; AA_ 1
Notes: Includes a couple of unsold TPS and about 6 unsold DKS.

Apollo 17:
EC 27 ; HS 50 ; RE 35
Includes one or two unsold 2nd chance offers per set of initials.

These figures only count visible eBay sales from the three main resellers. If anyone made direct purchases of any of these patches and would like to share the numbers with me I'd be very grateful. It would help make the stats more complete and accurate.

From the above figures there seems to be a distinct shortage of ASTP DKS patches compared with the TPSs and VDBs. Perhaps one of the sellers has a big reserve or perhaps many were sold direct? In general the supply of ASTP patches seems to be slowing a little now.

It's worth noting that the Leonov patch and one of the three BHK patches apparently came from another source, so the Russian patches really seem to be exceptions to the main batches. There's no sign that one of the sellers has a box of 50 of these patches ready to sell.

As for the Apollo 17 patches, so far there have been significantly less EC and RE patches sold compared with HSs but the sellers may well be sitting on a reserve of 20+ of each or may have sold many directly. The supply has been fairly constant to date so there's no way to judge if supplies are running low yet.

Again if anyone can fill in some gaps in these numbers - particularly if you bought some patches directly - I'd be very grateful if you could email me. I'll continue to post here as the numbers change.

posted 03-19-2006 11:21 AM               

Apollo-Soyuz:
TPS 60 ; DKS 38 ; VDB 56 ; BHK 3 ; AA_ 1

posted 03-19-2006 12:20 PM            

Why would AB make, in 1972 (Apollo-17) and 1975 (ASTP), some many of these personal(?) patches... if they did not sell them right of with the other normal crew patch...

posted 03-19-2006 12:37 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Jacques van Oene:
Are all of these patches real?

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Why were so many extra produced? A hint may be found when taking a closer look at these newly offered patches. A few of my own examples are not perfect - they are slightly oval rather than round or the text is not perfectly centered. Nothing so wrong as to not be attractive but I could see AB picking the best 150 out of a run of maybe 250 (previously thought to be 200) for sale to NASA/crew members.

posted 03-24-2006 07:36 AM               

Apollo-Soyuz:
TPS 60 ; DKS 38 ; VDB 56 ; BHK 3 ; AA_ 1

posted 03-31-2006 01:48 AM               

Apollo-Soyuz:
TPS 60 ; DKS 38 ; VDB 57 ; BHK 3 ; AA_ 1

posted 04-05-2006 06:56 AM               

Apollo-Soyuz:
TPS 60 ; DKS 39 ; VDB 59 ; BHK 3 ; AA_ 1

Apollo 17:
EC 36 ; HS 66 ; RE 75

posted 04-06-2006 09:55 AM               

This 4 1/2" patch is one specially commissioned by the Apollo 17 crew. There were about 150 of these made for each crewmember, with the crewmember's intials sewn into the background between Apollo's shoulder and the galaxy... A star, visible in the artwork but in neither of the other embroidered patches, further distinguishes this set of patches. The lettering has the same pinkish cast as the smaller AB Emblem version. Still in it's original sealed plastic wrap, this patch bears a label on the back stating it was manufactured by AB Emblem.

posted 04-13-2006 04:07 AM               

Apollo-Soyuz:
TPS 60 ; DKS 39 ; VDB 64 ; BHK 3 ; AA_ 1

Apollo 17:
EC 39 ; HS 71 ; RE 82

Out of interest, I haven't seen a TPS patch sold in nearly 2 months and there's only been one DKS sold in the same period. REs have become the most common patch, with HSs and VDBs not far behind. Only one seller seems to be offering ECs still so they remain relatively scarce.

If anyone bought any patches direct I'd love to add the figures to the above stats.

posted 05-12-2006 01:29 PM               

Apollo-Soyuz:
TPS 61 ; DKS 40 ; VDB 68 ; BHK 3 ; AA_ 1

Apollo 17:
EC 49 ; HS 99 ; RE 96

posted 05-30-2006 07:33 AM               

Apollo-Soyuz:
TPS 61 ; DKS 40 ; VDB 70 ; BHK 3 ; AA_ 1

Apollo 17:
EC 50 ; HS 106 ; RE 101

posted 06-22-2006 07:04 AM               

Apollo-Soyuz:
TPS 61 ; DKS 40 ; VDB 71 ; BHK 3 ; AA_ 1

Notes: Only one VDB offered so far in June so far, compared with 6-8 per month prior to that. TPSs and DKSs appear to have dried-up completely.

Apollo 17:
EC 57 ; HS 113 ; RE 121

Notes: Still about 5 ECs being sold a month, although they remain by far the scarcest of the AS17s. About 8-10 HSs amd REs being offered a month.

Overall, it seems that an overrun of perhaps 150 patches per initial may have been produced for AS17, but I get the impression that the number may have been lower for ASTP - perhaps 75 or 100?

posted 08-07-2006 07:13 AM               

Apollo-Soyuz:
TPS 62 ; DKS 41 ; VDB 71 ; BHK 3 ; AA_ 1

posted 10-10-2006 10:07 AM               

Apollo-Soyuz:
TPS 70 ; DKS 48 ; VDB 71 ; BHK 3 ; AA_ 1

Apollo 17:
EC 61 ; HS 129 ; RE 137

STS-3:
JR 8 ; CG 14

posted 12-31-2006 11:11 AM               

Apollo-Soyuz:
TPS 73 ; DKS 51 ; VDB 72 ; BHK 3 ; AA_ 1

Apollo 17:
EC 61 ; HS 139 ; RE 147

STS-3:
JR 11 ; CG 14

I only saw one ASTP VDB sold in the last 6 months of the year so it looks like they've run out. Still a slow trickle of TPS and DKSs from time to time.

I haven't seen an AS17 EC sold in the last 3 months and only 2 sold in the two months before that, so they remain much more scarce than the HSs and REs.

posted 04-03-2007 03:47 AM               

Of course the listing was spotted by all the usual suspects (people are clearly watching eBay very carefully these days) and brought in four bids over $200. This is not too surprising as it's only the fourth BHK I've seen sold so far. I've also only seen one Leonov patch sold to date so I'd hate to imagine how much one of those would go for it if turned up now.

Since things are pretty quiet now, a year and half after these initialled patches first started appearing, here's a summary of my count so far:

Apollo-Soyuz:
TPS 78 ; DKS 54 ; VDB 72 ; BHK 4 ; AA_ 1

Apollo 17:
EC 61 ; HS 140 ; RE 152

posted 04-03-2007 09:37 AM               

As near as I remember it, the Slayton Estate contained one intact cellophane wrapped bundle (no, I didn't think to count the patches in it but it was about 4" high and tightly packed) of wrapped DKS patches as well as 2-3 loose ones. Not wishing to flood the market, and not knowing how deep the market demand was, I have been doling the patches out, one by one, in the Sales (which have been held 2x a year over the years). There is one coming up in the RS April sale and I will continue this pattern until I see that demand has slacked off and prices have dropped. I try to get the best realizations for my consignors as well as the buyers so it is a bit of a balancing act.

Let me know if this at least partially helps to clear the mystery of, at least, the DKS patches.

Michael Orenstein

posted 04-03-2007 10:02 AM               

It's understood that each of the Apollo 17 and ASTP astronauts received 150 patches with their initials on. The DKS patches you mention are certainly part of this supply. Likewise the EC patches sold by Cernan through Astro-Auction.

posted 06-26-2007 07:03 AM               

Here's my running totals.

Apollo-Soyuz:
TPS 80 ; DKS 57 ; VDB 73 ; BHK 4 ; AA_ 1

Apollo 17:
EC 61 ; HS 140 ; RE 152

STS-3:
JR 21 ; CG 14

posted 12-29-2007 03:16 AM               

There were a few STS-3 JR patches sold recently buy the seller told me these were the last he had. No CG patch has been sold for over a year.

Of course these totals ignore the apparently modern smaller replica ASTP initialled patches that seem to have been produced recently by someone trying to cash-in on the scarcity of the originals.

These are the totals:

Apollo-Soyuz:
TPS 82 ; DKS 59 ; VDB 73 ; BHK 4 ; AA_ 1

Apollo 17:
EC 61 ; HS 140 ; RE 152

STS-3:
JR 24 ; CG 14

I still find it interesting that examples of the Skylab II wives patch still fetch big money - one example fetched $178 on eBay recently - despite the fact that 320 were produced. I wonder how many were held back and how many distributed.

posted 08-23-2008 03:46 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by ilbasso:
This Leonov patch is slightly under 4 inches, but exactly 15.5 cm, which makes me think it was manufactured in Europe or Russia.

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