Originally Posted by lurker01

Joe,

FYI for you and others here about stapled Estes kits...

They do exist, just very hard to come by.

If you have 62/63/early 64 kits, they are indeed stapled. I have a handful of such kits that were factory stapled and shipped this way directly from Estes. How do I know this, well I opened a sealed mailing box that contained Estes items (from an estate sale) and inside were a couple of 'direct from Estes' Astron Marks. Yes, they were stapled and yes they are mint from Estes. They date to ~1962/63. What is most interesting about them is that they come with the old hollowed out balsa nose block for a thrust ring... very nice.

There could be two reasons why early kits from Estes were stapled:

1) They didn't yet posses a heat sealer yet (applies to the very EARLY kit offerings)

or

2) The heat sealer was down, so they stapled kits until they got the sealer working again; same way the 'Blue Paper" Estes motors were released due to them running out of the brown motor paper for a very short time.

My money is on #1.

What I find so surprising from this group is that no one has picked up on the rarity of the Sky Hook that just closed on ebay ... it doesn't have a "K" number on the instructions and features a 'special price'! This is the kit version that you ordered from the Model Rocket News and not the commercial version that you later bought in 1964.

So not only isn't it opened, but its the 'pre-' version of the "K" kit catalog version; or the Model Rocket News kit (see MRN V3N4).

I believe that at the time MRN V3N4, Estes had decided to kit the Skyhook, but since the 1963 catalog had already been out for 7+ months, they offered the kit in MRN and then made space for it in the 1964 catalog.

So the take home message is: Don't assume that a stapled kit is an opened kit. Estes did in fact staple their early kits (I am not lying or making this up, as I have examples of their stapled kits direct from Estes). The early nascent kits had hollowed out balsa nose blocks for thrust rings and finding them is well a bit hard.
Also remember, Estes had paper hang tags that were stapled, but that was a later time and only deals with a handful of their kit offerings.

I know I know, go back under my rock ... so yes I will return. Hope you find the information above educational... or not.

Lurker01