Apollo 14 |
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![]() When they stepped out of the recovery helicopter onto the deck of the U.S.S. New Orleans the Apollo 14 crew were wearing dark blue jumpsuits with an embroidered mission patch attached. The black and white photo KSC-71P-168 shows the patches fairly well (see detail above). The photographic evidence shows that the patch worn by the crew on their post-flight jump suits is almost certainly the regular AB Emblem mission patch, as shown on the right here. Since the regular AB Emblem patch worn by the crew is not rare it is not considered by collectors to be a 'Crew Patch'. Instead collectors tend to focus on the patch that was produced specially for the backup crew which showed the Roadrunner representing the backup crew already standing on the moon as the gray-bearded Coyote representing Alan Shepard and his crew arrives. Examples of this patch were hidden all over the spacecraft by the backup crew before the mission. Later replica versions with the Road Runner outlined in red thread are not valuable. A modern replica of the original backup patch, complete with gold border, has recently appeared so collectors need to be wary of this. |
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The Crew Souvenir Patch & Backup Crew Patch |
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Other Embroidered Mission Patches | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Other Embroidered Backup Crew Patches | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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"Beep Beep Your Ass" Patches |
The "Beep Beep Your Ass" patches detailed below have often been cited as a reaction by Alan Shepard to the joke "Beep Beep" patch produced by the Apollo 14 backup crew, in which he was depicted as the aging (grey bearded) Coyote arriving at the moon after the speedy backup crew represented by the Roadrunner. In fact the prominent checkerboard motifs are a pretty big clue as the real origins of this patch, which has nothing to do with the joke patch of the Apollo 14 backup crew. In reality the design is related to the Plymouth Roadrunner muscle car of the late 1960s through 1970s, which adopted the Roadrunner cartoon image for use in promotional material. This particular design was likely produced by fans of the rival Dodge muscle cars. That said, there is circumstantial evidence that some NASA workers bought these patches and kept them as parts of their own private space patch collections. Most likely this was just because they seemed to make good companion pieces to the Apollo 14 backup crew patches, rather than because of any real link to Shepard or NASA. The result of all this is that these patches have been actively hunted by space patch collectors over the last few years and due to the relative scarcity of these vintage patches the prices have often reached remarkably high levels. |
3" Embroidered Mission Patches |
[1] Examples of flown patches: Heritage Fall 2011 Space sale lot 41052 FLOWN Lion Brothers patch [Ed Mitchell] Heritage May 12, 2012 Space auction lot 41054 includes FLOWN Lion Brothers patch [Al Shepard] Heritage May 12, 2012 Space auction lot 41058 FLOWN Lion Brothers patch [Ed Mitchell] RRAuction Lot 558 May 23, 2013 at $2,404.80 FLOWN Lion Brothers patch [Shepard] RRAuction Lot 241 Apr 28, 2015 at $1303.4 FLOWN AB Emblem patch [Mitchell] Lunar Legacies Auction lot no. 308 Nov 14, 2015 unsold FLOWN AB Emblem patch [Mitchell] Lunar Legacies auction lot no. 360 sold Mar 11, 2017 at $1190 FLOWN AB Emblem patch [Mitchell] RRAuction Lot 8321 Apr 20, 2017 at $1,549.63 FLOWN AB Emblem patch [Mitchell] RRAuction lot 9172 Nov 16, 2017 sold at $2,230.73 FLOWN AB Emblem patch [Mitchell] [2] Examples of crew souvenir patch sales: [3] Examples of vintage backup crew patch sales: [4] Examples of vintage silver border backup crew patch sales: [5] Examples of AS14UNK1 sales: [6] Examples of AS14UNK2 sales: [7] Examples of AS14UNK3 sales: [8] Examples of "Beep Beep Your Ass" [BBYAUNK1] patch sales: [9] Examples of "Beep Beep Your Ass" [BBYAUNK2] patch sales: [10] Examples of "Beep Beep Your Ass" blue border [BBYAUNK3] patch sales: [11] Examples of "Beep Beep Your Ass" 3" red border [BBYAUNK4] patch sales: [12] Examples of "Beep Beep Your Ass" 3" blue border [BBYAUNK5] patch sales: [13] Examples of "Beep Beep Your Ass" 3" blue border [BBYAUNK6] patch sales: [14] Examples of Space Spinoff patch sales: [15] Examples of oversize GEMSCO patch sales: | ||