Apollo 11 (Gold-Plated)
Year: 1970 / 1971
Mint/Issuer: Barco Mint/NASA MFA Office
Mintage: 200,000
Flown metal: LM: pulley clamp; CM: heat shield bolt
Additional Information:
Dr. Preston T. Farish, director of the Manned Flight Awareness office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama again convinced NASA officials to issue a second medallion; this one commemorating the flight of Apollo 11 and containing material flown during this historic first Lunar landing. The Apollo 11 medallions contained metal removed from parts of the spacecraft after the mission.It was agreed that materials from both the Command Module "Columbia" and the Lunar Module "Eagle" would be incorporated into these medallions. The artifacts chosen were a stainless steel heat shield bolt from the Command Module "Columbia" whose function had been to bolt down the heat shield which protected the crew and craft during re-entry, and a "Rock Box" clip used in hoisting the Lunar samples from the Lunar surface into the ascent stage the Lunar Module "Eagle". The majority of this pulley system still remains on the Moon. Dr. Farish personally oversaw the entire development of this medallion including personally adding these two artifacts to the molten nickel-silver at the Meriden Rolling Mill in Meriden, Connecticut. From the ingots, Barco Mint of New Orleans minted 200,000 medallions. A small subset of the 200,000 were made with a gold plating for VIPs.
