Space, it is said, is the Final Frontier. Today, we are nearly a half a century in to the Space Age. When you consider that a good number of us have grown up with space exploration as part of our lives, it's only natural for people to want to collect stuff about space.

There are the all sorts of do-dads like Apollo moonshot glass, toys, figurines, keychains, and all of the other mass produced trinkets related to the space program. Then there's the real space collectibles. things like flown pieces of the spacecraft, autographs, or anything that comes directly from the space program.

I couldn't find any way to pin a rough estimate of the number of collectors, but the website, collectSpace, has a few hundred active participants. Alexa ranks the website at 160,228. In comparison the popular coin collecting forum at Collectors Universe ranks at 92,914. While collecting space memorabilia may not be as popular as coin collecting, it does appear to have a fair number of collectors. Whether the hobby will grow is debatable. It's growth, as with any hobby, will depend upon the number of young people who become interested in early space history and the artifacts from that era.

For those interested in collecting space memorabilia, there are a few auction sites that routinely sell space collectibles. Heritage Auctions'  October, 2008 Signature Space Exploration Auction realized a total of $821,360.44. Two other sites that regularly schedule auctions of space memorabilia are Aurora Galleries and Regency-Superior.

As with any rarity, one must have a certain amount of skeptism about the authenticity of flown and signed items. This is where sites like collectSpace become critical to the collector, particularly those new to space collecting. A recent auction house catalog was scrutinized carefully for accuracy and provenance. Their diligence resulted in a thankful auction house that went back and withdrew several lots. Additionally, the site's resources and guides is rich with NASA reprints that tell you what types of items were allowed on space flights, Official Flight Kit manifests, or articles on identifying an astronauts autopen signatures.