Apollo 17 special crew commemorative patches

The Apollo 17 crew commissioned a special set of patches from AB Emblem. These were larger than the 'standard' crew patches, and they were marked with initials of each crew member sewn into the background between Apollo's shoulder and the galaxy. There were reportedly about 150 of these patches made for each crewman's initials. The star above Apollo's shoulder also distinguishes these from other embroidered patches. It's there on the Beta cloth patch and the original artwork, but on neither AB's standard patch nor the Lion Brothers version.

Two of the patches in my collection are still in their original plastic wrappers, making it somewhat hard to see the initials in this scan. Ron Evan's patch is at the upper left, Gene Cernan's in the middle, and Harrison Schmitt's is at the lower left.

These patches were not available to collectors at the time of the flights. They only started coming onto the market in the 1990s