caveduck
semi old rocketeer
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2011
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I noticed recently that in the last couple of years Estes has *drastically* increased the number of legacy catalogs posted in their full-catalog PDF archive. Since a forum search for "Estes catalog online" didn't turn up any well-labeled link to this, I thought I'd post it:
https://www.estesrockets.com/customer-service/full-catalog/
The coverage for Estes looks to be virtually complete year-wise, with at least one edition for all years back to 1963 except the ones that I think don't exist (1965, 1999, 2009). It does not cover some known variants though - in the 1980s and 1990s when there were separate "P" (priced) and non-priced versions the ones shown are all the P edition (which is probably what you'd want mostly). There is also a partial set of Centuri catalogs - 1974 and 1979 through 1982.
Also of note is the kit instructions archive here:
https://www.estesrockets.com/customer-service/instructions
This includes some 25+ year old kits (spot checking I found things like the Avenger, Colonial Viper, Astrocam, and 2nd-gen Mars Snooper) but is not at all comprehensive (missing examples include Blue Bird Zero, Falcon, Missile Toe, the gliding Bomarc, Cineroc, Omega). Nonetheless it puts a whole lot of instruction sets in one official place. There aren't any Centuri kit instructions (yet - dare we hope???).
This is a great resource for old-kit cloners and people interested in the history of our hobby. Much thanks goes to the current staff at Estes for gathering up and posting this historic material.
https://www.estesrockets.com/customer-service/full-catalog/
The coverage for Estes looks to be virtually complete year-wise, with at least one edition for all years back to 1963 except the ones that I think don't exist (1965, 1999, 2009). It does not cover some known variants though - in the 1980s and 1990s when there were separate "P" (priced) and non-priced versions the ones shown are all the P edition (which is probably what you'd want mostly). There is also a partial set of Centuri catalogs - 1974 and 1979 through 1982.
Also of note is the kit instructions archive here:
https://www.estesrockets.com/customer-service/instructions
This includes some 25+ year old kits (spot checking I found things like the Avenger, Colonial Viper, Astrocam, and 2nd-gen Mars Snooper) but is not at all comprehensive (missing examples include Blue Bird Zero, Falcon, Missile Toe, the gliding Bomarc, Cineroc, Omega). Nonetheless it puts a whole lot of instruction sets in one official place. There aren't any Centuri kit instructions (yet - dare we hope???).
This is a great resource for old-kit cloners and people interested in the history of our hobby. Much thanks goes to the current staff at Estes for gathering up and posting this historic material.
