Apollo-era Robbins medallions

Some years after the Apollo 7 mission, Walter Cunningham commissioned the Robbins Company to strike a further 45 silver medallions from the original Apollo 7 dies. These unflown medallions were given serial numbers 256 through 300.

All 450 Apollo 11 Robbins medallions were intended for flight but Collins has reported that 10 went missing from the KSC crew quarters pre-flight and thus were not flown. Some of these medallions have since resurfaced and can be identified by the fact that the mission dates are not engraved in the reverse. See the CollectSpace.com article The Case of the unflown flown Robbins by Howard C. Weinberger for more details.

The first 82 Apollo 12 Robbins medallions were struck from an ingot of silver salvaged from the wreck of a Spanish treasure ship (part of the Plate Fleet) that was sunk by a hurricane off Cape Canaveral in 1715. These medallions, with serial numbers 1 through 82, do not have the Sterling silver mark below the serial number because the Spanish silver is of a higher purity than Sterling.

22 of these 82 'Spanish Plate Fleet' medallions were converted after the mission by the Robbins Company into "Wives' Pins". This entailed setting a small diamond into the face of the medallion at the approximate site of the Apollo 12 landing and adding a pinback mechanism to the reverse, allowing them to be worn as a pin.

When the Apollo 13 crew was changed very shortly before the flight, the cew names on the reverse of the medallion became obsolete. There was not enough time to restrike the medals so it was decided to fly them as they were. When the moon landing was cancelled this also rendered the "Landed" field on the reverse of the medallion obsolete, so after the mission the flown medallions were melted down and re-minted with the correct crew names displayed and only two date fields on the reverse. According to Weinberger a few unflown medallions were melted-down with the 400 returned flown examples and a total of 404 re-strike medallions were finally minted.

Prior to Apollo 15 the entire run of Robbins medallions was always carried on each mission. However, for Apollo 15 only 127 of the 304 medallions minted (serial numbers 1 to 127) were carried on the flight.

The reason why the other 177 medallions (numbers 128 to 304) were unflown was originally said to be due to the misspelling of Apennines (as Appeninnes) which led to a batch being sent back to Robbins to be re-struck but not in time for the mission. However, Larry McGlynn recently asked Dave Scott about this and was told that the reason only 127 were carried was simply due to weight restrictions.

In any case the unflown medallions have the distinction of containing a significant amount of flown material with an interesting background.

Before the mission, Al Worden acquired an ingot of silver salvaged from the Spanish 'Plate Fleet' that was sunk in 1715 off the Florida coast, and this was then carried on Apollo 15 in Dave Scott's PPK.

After the flight the 177 unflown medallions were returned to the Robbins company and restruck (with the spelling of Apennines corrected) with the flown silver ingot added to the mix. Based on an estimated weight of approximately 2.2 lbs for the flown silver ingot the flown content of these medallions is probably quite significant, perhaps 17 to 20% by weight.

As noted in Howard C. Weinberger's article "The Enigmatic Apollo 16 Robbins Medallions" only the 98 flown medallions from Apollo 16 were stamped with serial numbers on the rim. The 202 unflown medallions were un-numbered although, because this was not widely-known until recently, a significant number of these medallions have been mis-identified at auction over the years as flown.

In recent years we have seen examples sold with serial numbers 301 and 303, with the latter apparently coming from the collection of a former Robbins executive. It's not known at present whether these are later re-strikes or were produced as part of the original production run.

Note that 80 bronze unflown medallions were struck for Skylab III.