"Supersonic Silver $" - Has Anyone Seen This Before?

from a May 2008 post on the VAMWORLD forum

New to me, what a piece of .... marketing.

How is that any worse than "Early Release" that everyone seems to fawn over?

My idea for NASA was "Rocket Water".

Every time a rocket is launched, literally millions of gallons of water is shot down under the vehicle as vibration mitigation. Most of that water turns to steam (that's all the white you see - it's steam, not smoke) and then of course it condenses into the pools beneath the pad as purified or distilled water.

People spend $3.99 for a bottle of Fiji. Why not bottle that distilled water, slap a label on it with an image of the mission patch from the mission, and sell it for $1.99 as "NASA's Rocket Water"? It literally helped launch a vehicle into space!? That's cool. =) NASA could use the funding...

This reminds me of my Apolo 14 collection.

Here's a link where they talk a little bit about the commerative. I picked that up for a dollar at a coin shop in Houston.

I picked up the mission patch from the NASA giftshop in Houston.

What precipitated me buying both of those is the cool part of this story

I was at a garage sale on the outskirts of Houston about 10 years ago. The lady there had a bucket of picture frames that she was selling for 25 cents each. These things were covered in filth as they'd been stored in a barn for about 30 years.

I noticed that 3 of the frames had pictures in them but they were so filthy that I couldn't tell what the pictures were. I bought them.

After taking them home and cleaning them off I saw what I was hoping for. Each of the 3 pictures were original still shots taken from the someone stationed on the air craft carrier that picked up the capsule. One picture of Sturart Roosa was taken from the helicopter pulling him from the capsule. One picture was taken from the flight deck and shows the actual splashdown. One picture shows all 3 astronauts exiting the helicopter onto the flight deck.

All 3 pictures are signed. 2 of the pictures are signed by all 3 astronauts (sheppard, roosa, and mitchell). 1 of the pictures is just signed by roosa.

I had them cleaned up and professionally mounted and then took them to the Antiques Roadshow when it visited Houston. If I'd gone to the show a little earlier I would have been on TV but they had already packed up the filming. The appraiser said this was exactly the sort of thing they were hoping to find while at the Houston show.

Appraised value was $1200. ($500 for the 2 that had all 3 signatures, and $200 for the one of roosa.) The funny thing is I'm a huge Oklahoma nut and the one of Roosa is the one I like the best since he's from Claremore.