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posted 11-06-2021 03:05 PM               

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Still a nice piece though.

50 year old souvenir of the era. And a good reference page. I have a few autopen samples now and use them as a guide. It can be more interesting than the website.

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posted 11-07-2021 05:08 AM               

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Just another thought Rick as I was thinking, after having acquired hundreds of space collections from NASA, military, and aerospace contractor employees for more than half-a-century now, let me repeat a brief story from one or more of those collections mentioned above.

Very similar to your situation with a collection gifted with "an Apollo 11 crew litho by a friend of his who worked for NASA," I can very much relate to something like this and more than once or twice even.

During the 1990's on a visit to a veteran NASA-KSC official in Cocoa Beach, FL, now deceased, I was being shown several "signed" Apollo crew lithos, which included the Apollo 11 crew. Upon a quick observation of the crew signed photos, Rick, he told me that all had been hand signed in his presence while at his O&C Building work station and offices.

After my examination of them, I only found three of them, in my opinion, did have genuine crew autographs, but that all the others were indeed autopen machine-applied signatures. Upon hearing such news, his face seemed very puzzled and somewhat confused.

He said to me, "That can't be Mr. Havekotte as I was there when all of the photos were signed for me!" It's an expression that I have heard beforehand as well. He even showed me a photograph of the Apollo 12 crew at his work area signing a picture for him, which is fine as I did inform him that I believed there were three "good ones," of which Apollo 12 was one of them.

To make a long story short, Rick, I did not back off from my evaluation with him, however, later on I did show the gentleman a collection that I had of the same-type crew lithos he had, but that mine were all autopen too, just as most of his were and with the exact same AP-patterns and ink colors used.

Eventually he did agree (somewhat) that he could "see" some of the AP-characteristics, but still insisted that "most of them" were hand signed for him.

Conclusion? I don't know, but its possible that he really believed all of the Apollo crew signed photos were genuine, and he's certainly entitled to that personal opinion "since he was there." Do I believe what he says is true that they're all authentic, well in good faith "No," as you can't question or dispute in my opinion a 100% proven autopen machine-generated signature. Now if there is a surprise ending to your story, Rick, I would love to hear it. Are one or more of the signatures in reference to genuine or what else does she have to say?

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posted 11-07-2021 05:26 AM               

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As noted in the autopen section of Chris Spain’s excellent website there have been many recorded instances when crew have handed out such lithographs in so doing conveying a presumption of authenticity.

It is not unreasonable to presume that with the passage of time details from such encounters have become blurred.

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posted 11-07-2021 05:36 AM               

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Oh for sure, Rick, KSC handed out, even by shuttle crew astronauts themselves, AP-signed lithos for workers mainly on their return post-flight "thank you" visits. But it really wasn't a common practice by most crews as many astronauts did in fact hand sign on their many visits to space centers across the country.

During Apollo, in some instances, NASA management and department heads (for contractors as well) did at times gift AP- crew signed lithos to employees, but never really telling them such photos were not hand signed. It was simply an innocent practice done by some divisions in thanking various work teams.

Some departments had requested from either the astronaut office or public affairs if they could obtain "signed crew photos" as a "thank you" of sorts to their workers in specific areas. Well, of course, the Apollo crews in several cases were not able to honor such requests as their work schedules and training activities required much of their time. Simply put, there wasn't a lot of time in signing thousands of autographs, therefore, autopen photos were used, and for much of the public "fan mail" as well.

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posted 11-07-2021 03:12 PM               

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Thanks guys. I would welcome further opinions. For the record I knew immediately when I saw the piece that it was an autopen and said as much to Robert when I sent him the image.

My intention was to protect the mate that owns the piece. He was/is convinced by the narrative given to him: that the piece was genuine. For the record, the piece was gifted to him in good faith by a former NASA employee many years ago who claimed the litho was signed in person.

He was thinking of selling it and believing it to be real was anticipating a return of $6 or $8 K. But over the years I have seen a handful of collectors (and one or two questionable dealers) fall by the way side when a supposedly genuine piece has been found to be otherwise. As a consequence, the seller’s reputation has been tarnished and any subsequent sales questioned.

Usually those sellers are no great loss to the hobby and all too often, scull duggery played a part in their attempts to offload bogus signed pieces. But I'm sure, on occasion (as in this instance) genuine sellers have simply made an ill informed mistake and become disillusioned with the whole space collecting thing as a consequence.

I did not want that to happen to a friend. To that end, I will share this thread with him in the hope he will be convinced.

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posted 11-08-2021 07:56 AM               

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As already noted, these are all classic Autopen signatures (with not even a shred of doubt).

I can definitely relate to Ken's story of people telling him that an Autopen piece was signed for them by the astronauts. I've certainly had people tell me this, although it's far more common for it to be family members who have inherited a 'signed' photo/litho which the original recipient told them was signed by the crew in person for them. It's often difficult for them to accept that their parent had been mistaken, or more likely had mildly exaggerated what happened (e.g. they met the crew at an event and were handed a pre-signed Autopen photo but then told the kids the astronauts had signed it for them at the event).

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posted 11-16-2021 09:17 AM               

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Your friend is in 'good' company.

Back in 2019 the esteemed experts at the BBC's "Antiques Roadshow" identified Apollo 11 crew autopens as genuine signatures and sent a guy away believing he had something worth over £3k. When approached, the BBC weren't interested in any such criticism and even repeated the same episode (unedited) earlier this year. Hey ho!

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posted 11-16-2021 10:56 AM               

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For the record, during correspondence with one of the producers regarding my own appearance on the show (and broadcast only a week or so ago), I reminded him of the Apollo 11 piece mentioned above and told him it was fake.

The producer did not acknowledge my comments at all.

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