Yes, this person first posted some of these items on ebay a few weeks ago. I REALLY wondered where he had gotten all these items. They all seemed like items that should have been in the Smithsonian (the lister has a Reston, VA address).
I sent him a message at the time about the Railway Express receipt that had been signed by Carlisle. His response was he had gotten from the Carlisle family years ago.
But just how he has managed to collect such old, key items from a variety of early pioneers in the hobby is a real mystery to me. It all seemed like items that would have been part of the Stine Collection originally donated to the Smithsonian, but which now I believe has ben transfered to the museum out in The Seattle area I believe.
The Listers ebay 'name' is Samuel Auld, which I personally do not recognize.
And yes, that Westcraft letter on the original order for the MMI launch towers was very interesting and seems to tell a story of poor sales by MMI on the towers, hence their cancellation of the remaining 3000 towers (out of an original order to Westcraft of 5000). Seems Harry didn't think they could sell 5000 towers, but Westcraft was suing for beeach of contract because they had developed all the tooling for making the towers and had the raw materials on hand already for the full 5000 order. I wonder what ever became of the lawsuit and if any third party ever took the balance of the tower parts off their hands?
I guess MMI really thought originally they were gonna make a mint off this 'model rocket' business, but seems it just did not quite turn out that way for Harry and Co. My understanding is that Estes wound up buying out the remainignstock of MMI materials sometime in the early 60s after MMI finally folded.
Earl