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.

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.

The entire run of medallions was carried on each flight until Apollo 15, when the misspelling of Apennines (as Appeninnes) led to a batch being sent back to the company to be re-struck. Unfortunately this could not be done in time for the launch which meant that only 127 of the 304 medallions were flown. The re-struck unflown examples (bearing serial numbers 128 to 304) have Apennines correctly spelt on the reverse.

Until recently it was believed that the Apollo 15 Robbins medallions were struck from silver salvaged from the Spanish 1715 Plate Fleet wrecks, as was the case with some of the Apollo 12 medallions. Apparently, however, the real story is that a small ingot of this silver was carried on the Apollo 15 flight and then added to the melt for the restrike of medallions 128 to 304. Thus only the unflown medallions actually contain this treasure silver.

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.

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