posted 01-07-2014 04:03 AM               

The second pin has provenance (in terms of awardee and date) but unfortunately the original documentation has been lost. This is a new variant of the cross-eyed, non-Robbins hallmarked style of pin where the UFC copyright text is stamped. I added this to my site yesterday as variant XXVIII (28).

If we assume that the origin of this pin is correct then the award date is interesting as it corresponds to the period immediately following the final Shuttle ALT flight.

Almost no Silver Snoopys were awarded in the period between the end of the ASTP program and this time, but over 500 were awarded in the period between the final ALT flight and the launch of STS-1. I strongly suspect that the pins awarded during this period may have been flown on the 5 ALT flights although it is of course possible that NASA instead stockpiled pins carried on the Skylab and/or ASTP missions.

posted 01-21-2014 07:52 AM               

The pin mentioned above, item 261376996409 is a variant II and is listed with an award letter signed by Jack Swigert. However, as the seller notes he is actually listing two pins from his father. The other pin, item 261374315995, is difficult to make out from the photo but comes with a photo of Deke Slayton presenting an award.

The award date mentioned above - October 30, 1981 - comes from the SFA award database using the name given in one of the two auction listings above. This can only correspond with the Slayton presentation since Swigert left NASA in 1973.

If it was someone here who bought the second pin I'd like to see a clear photo of the back in order to be sure of the type.

These sales imply that one person was awarded two Silver Snoopy pins. Although officially against the rules this wouldn't be the first case I've seen.

One problem I have here is - how can we be sure which of the two pins was awarded when? They were likely stored together in a drawer or cupboard somewhere over the years along with the letter and photo but which pin is which?

So now you have two pins sold separately, each with one piece of documentation, but with no way of knowing if that documentation goes with that pin.

posted 01-22-2014 04:19 AM               

The pin being sold with the Swigert letter has a white insert of some kind but it's not clear if this is really the original way it was presented. All the Silver Snoopy presentation boxes I've seen have had black inserts apart from maybe one or two with dark blue. These inserts do tend to disintegrate with age however, so it wouldn't be surprising to have an insert from the 1970s replaced at some stage.

So I don't think the insert colors in this case can rule out the possibility that these two pins have the documents reversed.

It's really very hard to make out the Robbins hallmark on the listing photo of 261374315995. In some ways it almost looks like an uppercase "R" but I lean towards it being a tall lowercase "r" which would correspond to a type III. That variant would definitely be consistent with an award letter signed by Swigert in the late 1960s or early 1970s.

Since this is all uncertain and one of the pins has already been sold I don't see there's much to be gained by contacting the seller at this point.

posted 01-29-2014 03:53 AM               

One of these is another type II of unknown date and the other was a 1969 presentation of unknown pin type.

Unfortunately I still don't have solid date examples of type II pins being awarded but this circumstantial evidence does indicate that a type II pin in a white insert box could be consistent with a Swigert presentation letter.

This would imply the letter and photograph in these two lots are more likely to have been sold with the right pins.