Posts: 106
From: Santa Clara, CA, USA
Registered: Nov 2009

posted 12-02-2009 05:14 PM               

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The Apollo 13 patch has always been a puzzle to me. The official version before the flight had the orange-ish border, same color as the sun and the three horses of the same tan color, not the usual versions ever since that have used three different colors for the three horses.

Photos of the patch on the astronauts' post-landing blue jump suits show the horses in the same color, but with a silver border. Their flight spacesuits bore the original version with the orange border on launch day. Except for the Lion Bros. patches, I've never seen an Apollo 13 patch that included the three horses of the same color and an orange border. Even the Lion patch uses a much too loud color for the horses and of course used the silver border.

Perhaps, with the switch from Mattingly to Swigert, "they" decided to alter the patch and exchanged the orange border for the silver one. I've never found confirmation of this as "official" and I have no idea how the three different color horses were introduced into what became the standard design of the patch.

Posts: 106
From: Santa Clara, CA, USA
Registered: Nov 2009

posted 09-08-2010 07:51 PM               

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Just acquired: Apollo 13 patch, cloth back, silver border, common colors to all horses, arched ribs in orange embroidery of the Sun.

Gene Dorr's site identifies it as a vintage (1970...) AB Emblem patch. After years of looking, I've only seen this patch this once.

Posts: 3177
From: Paris, France
Registered: Aug 2003

posted 09-09-2010 05:55 AM               

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I note every example that I spot offered for sale (including yours) at the bottom of the Apollo 13 page of my Crew Patches site. You'll see that there have been around a half-dozen examples sold per year over the last two to three years.

All-in-all a very nice patch to have.

Posts: 104
From: Alabama, USA
Registered: Feb 2011

posted 04-01-2011 11:54 PM               

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My Apollo 13 patch (the first patch I ever bought, in fact, when I was 12 years old) is of the type the referenced above, with the all-the-same-color horses and the rays and craters like he describes. I can state to 100% certainty that this was bought in the Kennedy Space Center visitor's center in the summer of 1970. It has a plain cloth back, not the heat-adhesive backing.

It started my interest in mission patches. To be honest, I thought the Apollo 13 patch was "very cool" and getting that souvenir was the highlight of my vacation! It cost me the princely sum of $1.80 if I recall correctly, "out of my own money." Memories!

Unfortunately it is not any more in mint condition, it got wet at some point and I remember having to iron it and it now has a little bit of misshape to it, which is absolutely making me sick right now! But I wouldn't sell it anyway.

Could be an early AB Emblem design. It is very close to the Lion Bros. but a little lacking in detail.

Posts: 104
From: Alabama, USA
Registered: Feb 2011

posted 04-23-2011 07:40 PM               

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I'm sitting here now finally being able to compare the Lion Bros. Apollo 13 with the standard A-B version, and I can't believe how poorly executed the A-B one is. After 40 years, you would think a company that does such good work overall would have gotten it right by now!

They shrunk the horses, changed the colors and sort of weakened the lettering around the edge. It's really a shame that that standard version is so ordinary for a mission of such historical significance.

The Lion Bros. one is fantastic! Already pretty much my favorite patch in my collection! It looks like the artwork we have seen for so long. Better detail, better quality, much better "eye appeal." What a difference it makes that the horses are uniform in color (and I don't think the color is too dark at all personally). To me it looks just right all the way.

Posts: 106
From: Santa Clara, CA, USA
Registered: Nov 2009

Posts: 562
From: Seminole, Fla.
Registered: Jul 2003

Posts: 53
From: Richmond, VA, U.S.A.
Registered: Aug 2005

posted 10-31-2013 09:15 AM               

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After a month or two of preparations, Joe Fricano (Skyforce Space Patches) and I are happy to announce that the final production order for an Apollo 13 replica patch has been placed. I've seen a run-out prototype of the patch, and the design came together really nicely.

More information about ordering can be found here.

Special thanks to Chris Spain for assistance with color-matching for this project.

Posts: 53
From: Richmond, VA, U.S.A.
Registered: Aug 2005

Posts: 3177
From: Paris, France
Registered: Aug 2003

posted 01-16-2014 04:21 PM               

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It's an excellent, and much needed, replica.

I reckon these patches will be the new default for use in any Apollo 13 themed displays.

Posts: 104
From: Alabama, USA
Registered: Feb 2011

posted 01-27-2014 08:23 PM               

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Got mine today and it is a really nice rendering.

There is one relatively minor thing I noticed though. On the pic that was posted before, and on my patch, it appears that the embroidering of the rim around the sun is either incomplete, or staggered in stitching in some way, right about the 10 o'clock position. I wonder if this is just an idiosyncrasy of this run of patches?

I like the "curving fill" pattern of the sun, though, and the more I examine it as compared to pics of the actual crew patch, it appears that the sun rim stitching is sort of a carryover artifact from the original. I don't have a crew patch to compare but the pics do kind of show that sun rim to be irregular at that exact point.

Posts: 602
From: Madrid, Spain
Registered: Oct 2005

Posts: 3177
From: Paris, France
Registered: Aug 2003

posted 05-19-2014 12:48 PM               

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I've just updated my Crew Patches website to add a color variant of the Apollo 13 AB Emblem patch that I call the 'Dark Horse' variant.

This was prompted some time ago by Robert, who noticed that the Apollo 13 patches apparently flown by Jack Swigert on Apollo 13 (at Nate D Sanders) show a distinctive color difference to the regular color scheme with the right hand horse a darker brown and the middle horse taking the color usually used for the one on the right.

I'd be interested to know how many of these are out there. A random sample of 11 vintage bare back patches that I've sold over the years didn't include any examples, so it must be relatively scarce.

Posts: 236
From: Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Registered: Jan 2011

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