posted 04-23-2022 05:04 PM               

This isn't the first time this has happened to me. On Heritage a few years ago, I won a set of Apollo-era name tags that don't match any tags I've ever seen, among hundreds of photos. So this leads me to two questions:

1. Does anyone happen to know anything about this style of tag? If a photo exists of Christa with a similar tag, I would be so grateful for a link to it.

2. Is it wrong to blindly trust these auction houses?

   I'm sure they get it right most of the time. But things like this make me wonder. If someone on eBay was selling this tag, saying it was obtained from a friend who knew Christa and received it as a gift from her, I'd be skeptical. But if RR offers the same item with the same story, I'm willing to bid. And that is starting to feel less sensible.

   I feel like I could buy a replica tag, scrape it up a bit, and consign it to a major auction house with a story about how my grandfather worked at NASA. And they wouldn't be able to verify it either way.

   Would it be better to avoid things that don't come with direct provenance to verifiable participants of the space program?

posted 04-23-2022 07:29 PM               

I wonder about the formatting of the McAuliffe tag. Given that they are using her initial (which is an abbreviation for her maiden name), I would have expected the use of her full name ("S. Christa C. McAuliffe").

Also, her role on the crew was payload specialist, not civilian, but I haven't looked at other payload specialists' name tags to see how they were titled.

On edit: While trying to find an similar example for another payload specialist, I came across another similar name tag — Ellison Onizuka's, as displayed within the Forever Remembered exhibit at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex:

posted 04-24-2022 01:36 AM               

The Onizuka tag lists his Air Force credentials, not his Mission Specialist title. So that would line up with the McAuliffe tag listing her civilian status rather than her Payload Specialist title. In addition, I found photos of McNair and Resnik with similar styles. McNair has the same NASA wings on his badge:

However, both the McNair and the Onizuka badges have very obvious stitching along the border. The McAuliffe badge does not. And the font seems different as well. So that worries me.

From a certain point of view, I suppose the lack of photographic evidence for this badge can be seen as (an admittedly weak) form of evidence for authenticity. If someone wanted to make a fake badge, they'd presumably refer to a photo for reference. And every photo of her seems to have a basic name tag, which would actually be easier to forge. So it'd be strange for someone to take the time to make a complicated replica of a badge she never wore, rather than the simple one that she did.

Perhaps this style of badge was made for the initial round of applicants for the Teacher in Space program. And then once Christa and Barbara were selected to continue, those two received the updated versions we see in the photos.