posted 10-26-2010 02:58 PM               

At the moment he's selling an impressive collection of signed covers from the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo eras including a mixture of Autopens and genuine signatures.

The seller identifies many of these signatures as probable Autopens but obviously some people think he's mistaken and bid accordingly.

In fact these signatures are challenging to judge for two reasons:
1) Early Autopen signatures are often executed using fountain pens, which results in quite natural-looking pen strokes with some variation in line width etc. When they later switched to sharpies Autopens were much easier to spot.
2) When Autopens were used on covers these often slipped around, resulting in significant displacements of parts of the Autopen signature. People often mistake these differences for evidence of natural signatures as they don't exactly match the known AP patterns.

Today there were a few Grissom and Young signatures like this which I believe are all APs (as the seller suggested): three Grissom covers, two Young covers, and four Grissom/Young covers. Many of these signatures show some displacement of elements and slight differences in loops etc but I believe this is down to the covers moving under the pen.

posted 10-26-2010 04:15 PM               

For me the key with these two signatures is not in the long strokes/loops which seem to be more suspectible to displacement but in the formation of the small letter sequences.

In particular the "oun" and top loop of the "g" in Young in both signatures are absolutely identical in every detail and this just doesn't happen with people's natural signatures.

Contrast these multiple Young and Grissom signatures that are so nearly identical with each other with a great set of three early Schirra signatures. Now here is an example of a person signing with the same basic signature. Even if this did vaguely resemble one of Schirra's Autopen patterns you wouldn't need to try to find tiny displacements of individual elements to see if they're Autopens or not, the natural variation in these genuine signatures is enormous - letters are different heights, loops of different sizes, lines at different angles, flourishes are of wildly different lengths and end in different ways.

posted 10-27-2010 02:08 PM               

Overall, it's a very impressive assortment of astronaut signed covers, with some autopens (the mentioned Grissoms, Grissoms/Youngs, and Youngs, plus Armstrong on a GT-8 cover, and a few Shepard secretarials, etc.), but the seller tried to identify his autopens, but also id'ed some genuine autographs as autopens.

There are some really special signed covers listed, including a scarce GT-12 (Lovell/Aldrin) crew signed cover; a GT-7; an Apollo 9; four Apollo 10's in one lot (!); a bunch of authentic and early Schirras, Cunninghams, Lovells, Scotts, and Staffords; plus what look like to me as a number of authentic Wernher von Brauns.

posted 10-28-2010 04:00 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by MarylandSpace:
Any opinions on the Gemini 6A cover I bought from gastampman with the 4 Mercury autographs?

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All four signatures are perfect in my opinion.

posted 11-04-2010 07:57 AM               

Glenn authentic

Grissom autopen (the rarer type-2)

Schirra secretarial

posted 11-04-2010 08:21 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by spaced out:
One of the listings that's about to end features what appears to be a Grissom Autopen on an Apollo 11 cover. Has anyone seen this kind of thing before?

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posted 12-10-2010 07:44 AM               

Anyway, two lots in particular caught my eye today. Early Mercury Seven signed covers frequently contain a lot of Autopenned signatures that can look deceptively natural due to the fine ink pens used at the time so it's always interesting to take a look at this kind of multi-signed cover. This time we have:

Lot of 3 covers from Mercury Project 1962 & 1963:
On the Mercury 7 signed cover, in my opinion the Glenn, Carpenter, Schirra and Slayton are hand signed. The Grissom and Cooper signatures appear to be Autopens. The Shepard is odd (more below). On the other covers the Grissoms appear hand signed, as does the Cooper.

2 Covers with the signatures of 7 astronauts:
On both these covers in my opinion the Glenn, Carpenter, Schirra, Cooper and Slayton are hand signed. Both have Grissom Autopens. The Shepards are odd...

What strikes me on all three of these Mercury Seven covers is the Shepard signatures. To me they look decidedly odd, quite unlike his normal flowing signature style and yet not like any Autopen or secretarial I've seen myself.

They could be the result of a previously unknown Autopen pattern with some movement of the covers under the machine. Of note:

• The "Alan" is identical in two and similar with some slippage in the other. All three have an odd loop at the lower right of the "A" that I've not noticed before in his signatures.
  
• The "B" is unusual but seems to follow the same pattern, with significant displacement in one case.
  
• The "S" one one example seems to misshapen in a way that is difficult to imagine coming from the pen of the astronaut or a secretary, as the whole lower loop seems to have gone.
  
• The rest of the surname in all three cases appears to follow an identical pattern, followed by a long comma to the lower right in all three.
  
• The final "Jr" is near identical in two examples apart from the length of the final stroke. The other example seems to have the same upper loop but the lower part slips to the right.

posted 12-11-2010 07:01 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by yeknom-ecaps:
Has the original owner of these been identified? Quite an impressive collection.

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posted 12-11-2010 08:20 AM               

Compare to this, signed (or at least, dated) just the day before (!):

posted 12-21-2010 09:21 AM               

As before there are sometimes single lots consisting of multiple covers with rare signatures, noted as 'may be Autopens' when in fact very few are.

With apologies to those dealers hoping to pick up bagfuls of bargain signed covers for resale, here's my opinion of some of them:

• 140492046903 : 2 John Young signed covers - top one hand signed, lower Autopen
  
• 350423852472 : Ted Freeeman signed cover - hand signed. GT3 cachet added later obviously.
  
• 350423853346 : Ed White signed cover - this is actually an Autopen
  
• 140492049598 : GT4 crew signed cover & White signed cover - both hand signed.
  
• 140492052102 : 2 x Ed White signed covers - both hand signed
  
• 350423901016 : GT4 cover - has a Shepard secretarial sig under cachet
  
• 140492117625 : GT5 cover with Oberth sig - hand signed
  
• 140492119538 : GT5 cover with Sehpard & Cooper sigs - Shepard is a secretarial, Cooper hand signed
  
• 350423946032 : GT6A signed covers - all hand signed (on 3 covers shown)
  
• 350423946387 : GT8 Scott signed cover - hand signed
  
• 140492163612 : Scott signed GT8 cover - hand signed
  
• 350423947035 : Armstrong signed GT8 cover - nice vintage signature
  
• 140492164322 : 2 x Scott signed GT8 covers - both hand signed
  
• 140492164773 : Bassett signed GT9 cover - hand signed with later cachet
  
• 350423948365 : See signed GT9 cover - hand signed with later cachet
  
• 350423948828 : Gemini 9 crew signed cover - hand signed
  
• 350423949325 : Bassett signed GT9 cover - hand signed with later cachet
  
• 140492167226 : 3 x Collins signed GT10 covers - all hand signed
  
• 350423950565 : See signed GT9 cover - hand signed with later cachet
  
• 350423951044 : Aldrin signed GT12 cover - hand signed
  
• 140492387207 : Oberth & Ley signed covers - hand signed
  
• 350424152583 : Eisele signed Apollo 7 cover - hand signed
  
• 350424153590 : Cunningham & Eisele signed cover - hand signed
  
• 350424154188 : Eisele signed Apollo 7 cover - hand signed
  
• 350424171278 : 3 x Anders signed Apollo 8 covers - all hand signed
  
• 140492413289 : 2 x Anders signed Apollo 8 covers - hand signed
  
• 350424172728 : Anders signed Apollo 8 cover - hand signed
  
• 350424173962 : Group 2 signed cover - hand signed by Lovell, Stafford, Borman, McDivitt, See, Armstrong, Young. Conrad Autopen. Missing White.
  
• 350424175254 : 3 x Cernan signed Apollo 10 covers - all hand signed
  
• 140492419312 : Apollo 10 crew signed cover - all hand signed
  
• 140492388767 : Freeman signed cover - hand signed, later cachet
  
• 140492388190 : C.C. Williams signed cover - hand signed, later cachet

posted 12-29-2010 06:17 AM               

• 140494941795 Collins Autopen
  
• 140494941286 Aldrin hand signed
  
• 140494940274 2 x Aldrin both hand signed
  
• 140494939576 4 x Aldrin all hand signed
  
• 350426314545 Anders hand signed
  
• 350426313611 Aldrin hand signed
  
• 140494936577 Aldrin hand signed
  
• 350426309923 3 x Armstrong hand signed

posted 12-29-2010 06:25 AM               

I have bought a similar collection in one of the last Superior sales and based on the type of covers and items I'm fairly sure that these offerings originate from the same source: Margery Himes from Cranberry, PA.

I have never heard that name before but my covers bear lots of references to her. Some items on eBay were almost identical to those I got at Superior so what you see here is only a percentage of what she really had.

Apparently she got all her stuff herself through the mail (have letters and other inquiries, too) back then.

posted 12-29-2010 06:49 AM               

I've known, traded, worked with and serviced her covers since the 1970s.

posted 12-29-2010 09:36 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Tykeanaut:
I always thought that Neil Armstrong would only sign once for one person?

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posted 12-29-2010 11:17 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by spaced out:
I can't help thinking those three Armstrong signed covers should sell rather well...

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posted 12-30-2010 10:48 AM               

• 350426615426 - Collins hand signed
  
• 350426615131 - Armstrong hand signed
  
• 350426614351 -Armstrong & Aldrin hand signed
  
• 350426613892 - Armstrong hand signed
  
• 350426613042 - 5 x Collins all hand signed
  
• 350426612592 - Collins hand signed
  
• 140495264617 - Collins hand signed
  
• 350426609786 - 5 x Collins, 1 Autopen, 4 hand signed

posted 12-30-2010 11:30 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Tykeanaut:
I always thought that Neil Armstrong would only sign once for one person?

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posted 01-04-2011 06:55 AM               

• 350427747539 - Apollo 15 crew - hand signed
  
• 140496653666 - Scott - hand signed
  
• 140496653152 - Mitchell - hand signed
  
• 350427745455 - Apollo 14 crew - hand signed
  
• 140496650589 - Roosa - hand signed
  
• 140496649409 - Apollo 14 cover - Shepard (secretarial), Cooper (probable Autopen), Carpenter (hand signed)
  
• 350427742924 - Apollo 14 cover - Slayton hand signed, Shepard secretarial
  
• 140496647812 - Conrad hand signed

posted 01-05-2011 04:40 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by JasonB:
I remember my Dad getting a letter back around 1991-1992 from him stating he'd only sign one autograph per person per lifetime. Before that he'd sign 1 item per request I believe.

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I suspect Armstrong probably preferred to sign only one item per person per lifetime long before 1991...otherwise, it wouldn't make sense to limit it to one signature per request (because that would guarantee that people would just end up sending in multiple requests). By 1991-1992, Armstrong (and his secretary) were probably noticing that many people were indeed making multiple requests...which is why they probably communicated that they only want to send one signature per person per lifetime.

posted 01-07-2011 04:17 AM               

• 140497615338 Irwin - hand signed
  
• 140497616668 Worden - hand signed
  
• 140497617727 Worden - hand signed
  
• 140497618398 Irwin - hand signed
  
• 140497621368 Mattingly - hand signed
  
• 350428638250 Duke - hand signed
  
• 140497622700 Oberth - hand signed
  
• 140497649820 Apollo 17 crew - hand signed
  
• 350428665853 Evans - hand signed
  
• 140497651550 Michel - hand signed
  
• 350428669155 England - hand signed
  
• 140497652763 Cernan - hand signed