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ALAN SHEPARD AND THE MERCURY SEVEN BOOK SIGNED & INSCRIBED BY SHEPARD THE DAY HE BECAME THE FIRST AMERICAN IN SPACE. image 1
ALAN SHEPARD AND THE MERCURY SEVEN BOOK SIGNED & INSCRIBED BY SHEPARD THE DAY HE BECAME THE FIRST AMERICAN IN SPACE. image 2
Lot 7

ALAN SHEPARD AND THE MERCURY SEVEN
BOOK SIGNED & INSCRIBED BY SHEPARD THE DAY HE BECAME THE FIRST AMERICAN IN SPACE.

12 – 21 July 2021, 16:00 PDT
Los Angeles

Sold for US$16,562.50 inc. premium

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ALAN SHEPARD AND THE MERCURY SEVEN

BOOK SIGNED & INSCRIBED BY SHEPARD THE DAY HE BECAME THE FIRST AMERICAN IN SPACE.
Martin Caidin's The Astronauts, Signed & Inscribed by ALAN SHEPARD and on the facing page: Alan Shepard, Virgil Grissom, John Glenn Jr., M. Scott Carpenter, Wally Schirra, Gordon Cooper Jr., Donald K. Slayton) and by the author at the bottom.
Provenance: NBC News correspondent Jay Barbree from the author (with letter from the author attesting to the circumstances of the inscription).

"BOY, WHAT A RIDE!"

SIGNED & INSCRIBED by Alan B. Shepard Jr. and dated "5/5/61," the day that he made history as the first American to travel into space aboard the Mercury-Redstone 3 spacecraft. The only known copy signed that day.

The lot is accompanied by a notarized letter from author Martin Caidin describing the circumstances of the inscription. In part: "Astronaut Deke Slayton carried Jay Barbree's signed copy of The Astronauts signed by the Mercury Seven to Grand Bahama Island with him where, on the day of his flight, astronaut Alan B. Shephard Jr. signed the second blank page, opposite the earlier autographs, with what became the headline on that day: "Boy what a ride!"
On that historic day, Jay Barbree's copy of The Astronauts signed by the Mercury Seven became the only copy autographed by Alan B. Shepard, Jr. on the date he made America's first flight into space."

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