NASA memorabilia

[TakMan]

 

🎅 Finished for Christmas! Just back home from our work’s do - a day at the (very wet) races - Uttoxeter. Despite choosing horses with a vague ‘astronomy name’, today was unsuccessful, so I’ll have to go back on the 2nd!

Anyway, as the photographer and designer at auction house Richard Winterton's (you may know of him via daytime television - David Dickinson's Real Deal and Bargain Hunt), I get to photograph all sorts of interesting items for our various sales.

Be that fine art pictures and prints, ceramics, gold and silver, jewellery and watches, toys, coins and stamps, books, maps, glass, you name it, I probably photograph it!

I'm always on the look out for something 'astronomy related' be that cigarette cards, stamps, comemorative coins, watches (Omega Speedmaster - the one that went to the moon, or their 'Constellation' model) - anything to send out to our little WhatsApp group and on here - well, it mixes things up a bit, rather than post the usual piece of shiny new equipment purchase or processed astro image.

We had our last Fine Arts Sale of the year a week or so ago, Lot 575 was right up my street…. Loads of official NASA signed autographs and photos, plus Soviet cosmonauts and personnel involved in The International Space Programme - perfect posting material !

 

 

Signatures included 2x Buzz Aldrin, Alexi Leonov (1st person to walk in Space), Valentina Tereshkova (1st woman in space), John Glenn (1st American to orbit the Earth), Charley Duke (CAPCOM for Apollo 11, he’s the one who uttered the famous; "Roger, Twank...Tranquility, we copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot!”  He was also a member of the Apollo 13 back-up crew and became the 10th man to walk on the moon (Apollo 16).

 

 

 

Other stand out signatures included Alan Shepard (1st American in space), Gene Cernan who became the 11th and then the very last person to stand on the moon and both Jim Lovell and Fred Haise Jnr (Apollo 13), together with personnel from the shuttle missions including early test pilots. There were also many photographs taken from space and a photographic album of the doomed Challenger Mission in 1986.

 

Sold for over £600 (fees in addition)

 

Anyway, wishing you all a great Christmas with at least a few clear skies (when I don’t have anything on, anything 'planned for me' or am too sozzled to head out)! 🥳 🤪

 

Damian

 

 

 

 

Edited December 20, 2019 by TakMan

[Sunshine]

Thats one helluva collection!

[TakMan]

Indeed....

Could have added an easy grand to the total though with just one Neil Armstrong signature!

From the same vendor we have a signature from the last member to survive the Titanic disaster going up for sale in late January, a young girl at the time heading for a new life in America. She, her mum and I believe her brother survived (3rd Class passengers), her father not....

You just never know what someone is going to bring through the doors!

D

[maw lod qan]

All that space history, I would have thought it would bring more. 

But I guess it depends on who is there that wants it..

You do have a very interesting job.😁

[Anakin Skywalker]

man you literally have chunks of history on your hands. thats a BIG COLLECTION😃

[Anakin Skywalker]

Just now, Anakin Skywalker said:

man you literally have chunks of history on your hands. thats a BIG COLLECTION😃

guess the saying was true

"Ad Astra per Aspera..." - A rough road leads to the stars.

No truer words. Remembering the Apollo 1 astronauts. You are remembered as heroes for ever