If you're a space buff, chances are good that you already have one or more souvenir patches. This can easily form the core of your nascent collection. But regardless of whether you have any or not, it will be instructive to take a few steps before beginning to collect more.

First, take a look at the patches that are available. Start with Jacques van Oene's and Erik van der Hoorn's spacepatches.info site. He has a pretty good collection, which consists primarily of mission patches. Next, surf over to Mary Wagner's Cargo Bay Emblems, and check out the quirky organization of her website's collection of patches. Finally, point your browser to Randy Hunt's Patches, Etc.. If you aren't blown away by the variety of patches you see at these sites, then this isn't the hobby for you.

By now you should have discovered two things: one, patches are created for just about everything conceivable: payloads, launchers, unmanned spacecraft, contractors, security forces, even individual space travelers. Second, there's no way you could ever collect all the patches that are made.

Narrowing the Field

So, the second step is to decide what kind of patches you are going to collect. If you're thinking that mission patches are too pedestrian, take a look at my site, Space Mission Patches. For the most part I confine my collecting to pre-Shuttle U.S. manned space mission patches. Disregarding the early flights that didn't have patches, that works out to 25 missions (9 Gemini, 12 Apollo, 3 Skylab, and Apollo/Soyuz) -- yet I have over 80 distinctly unique patches in my collection, and there are still patches I'm trying to get.

You could make it easy on yourself by collecting Shuttle mission patches -- except that some of the earlier patches are no longer quite so easy to come by. And then, there are a number of "unofficial" patches -- patches for missions that never got off the ground, patches for missions that had crew changes after the patch had been designed, and so on. (Jacques van Oene specializes in these "oddball" patches.) On the other hand, you could pick something really tough, like mission patches from Soviet and Russian manned flights (see Collecting Soviet Mission Patches, by Chris Smith, on this site).

There are people who are very serious about having only "genuine" patches in their collection. I assure you that even attempting to define what a "genuine" patch is will lead you down a long and torturous road. Then again, you could get really, really serious and try to acquire a complete collection of "flown" patches. (I suppose if you owned Microsoft that wouldn't be too outrageous.)

Starting Small

Next, you need to "seed" your collection. It's likely you can get a core set of whatever kind of patch you're collecting at The Space Store, Patches, Etc, Cargo Bay Emblems, or even a nearby science museum. This shouldn't be a particularly expensive proposition, and if it is then you can spread out the acquisitions over a period of time.

Once you have a few dozen patches in your collection, you're going to start wondering how to store them in some orderly way. A solution that works well for me is to use CD-ROM sleeves that are designed for 3-ring binders. It's easy to insert and remove patches; the pockets are big enough for almost every patch I have (only my LTA-8 patch is a problem); the patches are easily visible without removing them; and if you make a point of getting acid-free sleeves they provide good protection for the patches. I also keep an inventory of each patch in my collection, including distinguishing characteristics (some patches are very similar), who and where I acquired them from, the date acquired, and the price paid.

Thinking Big