posted 08-27-2023 06:50 AM            

I can see (no pun intended) that they are visually attractive, I can also appreciate that they would be capable of a magnificent display by the right individual.

But! They don't seem (to me at least) to offer anything else that would entice me to even contemplate forming a collection. I shall list a number of 'concerns' that prompts me to say that.

• unlike philatelic covers, patches don't have any official date stamp that ties them temporally to the event they commemorate — therefore they could be produced for years into the future. And presumably can be sewn by anybody.

• and unlike signed covers, or unsigned flown covers, they don't have any direct connection to 'their' flight (at least not that can be verified).

• and unlike rocket parts, flown items, and the like, again they seem to have no actual connection to the flight they celebrate.

posted 08-27-2023 03:06 PM               

Working through your points in reverse order...

• Patches can be flown items. If your desire is to have something with a direct connection to the flight, you can collect flown patches (and even that falls into subcategories, such as astronaut-worn flown patches versus patches flown as mementos).

• On a related subject and pertaining to your second point, the patches that the astronauts wore and flew were sometimes different from those sold to the public as souvenirs in their design, color or other details. Chris Spain (spacedout) has done a fantastic job documenting these differences on his Crew Patches website.

  Finding and assembling a full collection of crew-version patches can be a challenge, which some collectors seek out and enjoy.

• As to your first point, and beyond the crew patches, there is also vintage to consider. A patch made at the time of a mission 40 years ago is going to be made differently and therefore look different than a patch made now.

  More specifically, though, as Kevin Randall can go into much more detail, the child-safely labels introduced on the back of A-B Emblem patches in 2010 do allow (sometimes) a direct connection to the mission. If it is known (and the research continues), you can trace a patch's design and date code to the same batch produced for the crew to wear or fly.

Personally, my current interest has been driven by assembling three albums: one devoted to every patch tracing the U.S. return to the moon, from the Vision of Space Exploration through present day Artemis missions); one devoted to having one patch for every launch I have seen in person (presently totaling 59 from six different spaceports); and my primary project, an album themed to collectSPACE with patches representing the articles, subjects, events and missions that the site has covered or taken part in over the past two and a half decades.

posted 08-29-2023 12:00 PM               

Certainly the focus for me is on human missions and human rated test missions, but that is not to say the others like SpaceX (when available) and Rocket Lab are not of interest to me however those have to be easily obtained for me to pick up.

posted 08-29-2023 03:54 PM               

I've seen disciplined collectors whose goal is no broader than collecting all the original Gemini crew patches. A noble goal for patches that can exceed $2500. I'm a generalist, I'll collect pretty much anything in the realm that interests me.

posted 09-05-2023 05:24 PM               

I only collect patches for missions I personally saw in the air or at least on the pad (such as the Viking 2 lander, when I was a little kid).

I was involved with NASA peripherally twice in a manner that I think might still be classified (I've been trying to confirm that one way or another), so I have the patches for those two missions. Neither are on my Space Camp helmet bag, though.