posted 06-14-2022 11:14 PM            

Background: About 30 years ago I obtained the autographed photo in the pictures. It's an 8x10 photo (or whatever the standard size is).

As background, I was working as a young aerospace engineer at the time at McDonnell Douglas. My mother liked to go to garage sales and found some old McDonnell trinkets at one. She started talking to the woman running the sale, and the woman (retired) had been the personal secretary of James McDonnell in the early 1960s. The woman said that she got the autographs personally while the astronauts were on site, so she's the name of the recipient at the top of the photo.

The photo wasn't for sale, but when the woman found out that I worked there, she brought the photo out of the house and offered to sell it. My mother worked hard to convince me to pay $20 for it. (Hey, like I said, I'm not a collector.)

I'm wondering if the photo itself was more of an internal company photo, because I've only seen one other copy online, which was unautographed and sold as part of a lot of photos in a Sotheby's auction.

With that background, I was hoping that you folks would consider weighing in with some opinions. I'm particularly interested in Question 5.

1. Given the provenance, I would be very surprised if any of these autographs are forged or secretarials or autopens, but I know nothing about autographs. So first off, I wanted to ask about that to be sure. Do you see anything that would concern you about their authenticity?

2. In terms of value, I've been cruising your site and I've read that personalization on an autograph will lower the value. Is that true even if Alan Shepard did it (which I think is the case based on the writing), and the person involved was James McDonnell's personal secretary?

3. Wally Schirra signed with a ball-point pen that is really faded, with only traces of ink left. But if you hold the picture at an angle, you can clearly see the indentation of the pen to form his signature. I figure that's not a good thing, but how much does that hurt?

4. John Glenn's signature has a little smearing, as you'll see. I think it's original to him signing and not something that happened later. How much does that impact value?

5. In addition to the astronauts, there are two other signatures. Walter Burke, the head of the Mercury program at McDonnell Douglas, is on the left (signature partially hidden under the museum mount), and you also see the autograph of James McDonnell at upper left, the founder of McDonnell Douglas. I particularly like that McDonnell added "Space Cadet!" to his signature. Do those two autographs add interest and value or do they lower interest and value?

I've attached a number of photos in this post that show the picture overall and some closeups.

posted 06-15-2022 03:22 AM               

This is one of the first that I have seen with two leading autographs of the Project Mercury MAC (McDonnell Aircraft Corp.) spacecraft builders that were included with the Mercury 7 astronaut team.

posted 06-15-2022 06:04 AM               

Regarding the personalisation, although not 100% certain, I think it would be possible to crop this out with a new mount and leave just "The Astronauts" in view (if one wanted to).

Personally I like the extra signatures as, like Ken says, it tells the bigger story. "Space cadet!" is terrific.

If you're going to keep it any longer I'd get it into a dark dry place as soon as you can to prevent further light damage.

posted 06-15-2022 10:22 AM            

As a few responses and a bit more clarification...

1. I had never previously questioned whether they were real autographs, but after poking around on this site and reading about things like autopens and secretarials, I wanted to check. Given the back story from the woman who sold it to me, I was still confident that they were authentic, but it's great that you all agree.

2. I'm glad that the fading on the Schirra is not a disaster, because that's my fault. I've had the photo for about 35 years, and for about ten years I had it hung on a wall. (It was a great conversation piece.) At some point I noticed the Schirra fading, and I put it into a dark closet to protect it. It makes me sad that I can't display it, though.

3. I think a good confirmation that it's not a copied photograph is ironically the Schirra autograph. Because he signed it in ball point, his signature is quite indented into the photo, which in my mind confirms that his is real and supports an assertion that the others also are. Does that seem like a reasonable conclusion? I'm sure an expert could quickly tell from the other inks anyway if they were looking at it in person.

4. If you're interested in a closer look at the Cooper autograph, I can see if I can do some sort of color shift on the picture. But it seems like he just didn't have a good place to sign, hence the black ink over the brown suit. But I can say that in person it's a nice crisp signature that's in great shape.

5. I was really curious about the impact of the Burke and McDonnell signatures. I wasn't sure if astronaut purists wouldn't like them, and in my mind that was my biggest question mark. It's great to hear that serious collectors would find those autographs to be of added interest/value. (The funny thing is that I had to wait until the Internet was invented and matured before I could figure out who Walter Burke was.)

6. I kind of wonder if the photo itself was for internal company use and not widely distributed. As I mentioned in my original post, I've only found one other copy of the photo online, which was not autographed and part of an auction lot (and now I can't find it again to share the link).

7. Wow on the assessment of value. I'd looked in the past on ebay and other sites and had seen stuff for sale in the $5K range, though I hadn't seen anything exactly like this. And a "for sale" price might be very different than a "sold" price, so I figured that was optimistic. But I saw an episode of Antiques Road Show last month where someone had an autographed book with several astronaut photos, and the appraiser said that an autographed photo of early astronauts might go in the $10k-$15k range. Even though I always figure that Antiques Road Show is generous in appraisals, that piqued my interest and caused me to start looking, which led me to this site.
   
   
8. I had it museum mounted 30 years ago or so, and I keep it in a dark closet. Is there anything else I should do to protect and preserve it? I live in a dry climate in Denver, but overall the photo has remained in great shape over the years that I've owned it.

9. As I mentioned in the original post, I asked about this mostly based on curiosity. I like it and don't really have an intent to sell it. But at the same time I'm not a serious collector, so maybe some day...

posted 06-16-2022 04:48 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by capoetc:
...the dedication does not detract at all, and I would not want to mat it out.

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It's really only relevant if the owner was to consider selling it as it might help achieve a higher price because, let's face it, some folks really don't like personalisation.

posted 06-28-2022 08:22 PM               

In addition, I have a hobby of digitally restoring old or damaged photos. If you were willing/able to send me a high-resolution scan, I could darken the faded signatures to make them bolder, and clean up any discoloration/damage that comes with age. And then post an unaltered and an enhanced version here, so that anyone who would like a copy can print it themselves. It really is a fantastic item, and I'm sure a lot of people would love to have a copy for their collections.