The final 3 missions.

This Cover is number 140 of 398 covers that were flown to the Lunar Surface on Apollo 15. Originally 100 covers were requested to be flown to the Moon by H. Walter Eiermann who was acting on behalf of German Stamp dealer, Hermann Sieger. The crew agreed in return for a trust fund of $7000 being set up for each Astronaut in a Swiss Bank Account. The crew also wanted to carry a further 300 covers for themselves, but 2 were destroyed before the flight, making the total number of covers flown 398.

The covers were not listed in the Crews preference kits, but instead carried in the pocket of Dave Scott's space suit onto the spacecraft, where they were then placed in the LM. Once back from the moon and while on the USS Okinawa the crew added the stamps and had the covers cancelled and date stamped at the on-board ship's post office, they then signed the covers on the flight from Hawaii back to Houston. 

Of the total 398 covers, 100 were sent to Hermann Sieger and the remaining 298 were kept by the Apollo 15 Crew. It had been agreed that no covers be sold until after the completion of the Apollo program, but Sieger started selling his 100 covers almost immediately at $1,500 each. When the crew heard about the sale, they tried to retrieve the covers from Sieger, but were unsuccessful and so tried to save their reputations by returning the $7,000. However, a Congressional investigation wanted to make an example of the Astronauts and so NASA had no choice but to suspend them from flight status. NASA also confiscated the 298 covers. 

In 1983 Al Worden successfully had the 298 covers returned to the crew after suing the United States federal government when similar covers were to be flown on the Space Shuttle. It is thought that had the crew declared the covers in the first place then there would have been no problem.

This cover is one of the 298 that belonged to the crew and comes with a certified letter of provenance which they supplied with each cover hand signed by each crew member. 

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This cover came from Dave Scott's collection and comes with a card insert signed by Scott 

This UK flag was flown to lunar orbit aboard Apollo 15 Command and Service Module "Endeavour" in July/August 1971. I recall as a spotty youth recording the 3 surface EVAs to a large reel to reel tape machine all the while imploring my parents to "shush". To this day the talking..... and the "shushing" can clearly be heard.

In 1974, on a private visit to the UK fellow Apollo 15 astronaut James B. Irwin presented Prime Minister Harold Wilson and "the people of the United Kingdom" with an identical flag. Jim had carried the flag to the moon in his own Personal Preference Kit.

This Apollo 16 betacloth was the first surface flown artifact I acquired more than 10 years ago. In October 2012 I was afforded an opportunity to reacquaint Charlie with the mission emblem that meant so much to him.

Charlie was kind enough to illustrate the location of the beta cloth patch for the duration of his stay on the moon.

Autographica 2007 was I believe the first time Gene Cernan had seen one of his Challenger flown navigational charts framed and beautifully presented courtesy of Novaspace Galleries. He was so impressed he spent the next 10 minutes showing it to his assistant and explaining the various features, numbers and notations.

Gene Cernan. The last man to walk on the moon, in a classic image from Apollo 17, December 1972.