I was thinking of Mercury Joe while bidding on this:
“A flown piece of America’s second manned spacecraft.
Mercury-Redstone 4 Liberty Bell 7 Flown Large Component from the Recovered Spacecraft. This is an original component form the Liberty Bell 7 Mercury spacecraft, recovered from the Atlantic Ocean on Jul 20, 1999, from a depth of 16,043 feet. Gus Grissom was the pilot of this sub-orbital mission, America’s second-ever spaceflight; he barely escaped from the capsule as it floated in the Atlantic Ocean when a hatch exploded prematurely. Grissom was rescued, but Liberty Bell 7 sank into the ocean. The text on the verso relates the history of this part: This Liberty Bell 7 component was removed during an extensive restoration conducted on the spacecraft by the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson, Kansas. The item could not be reinstalled in the spacecraft because of the corroded condition of the component to which it was originally attached. The T-shaped part in this display is much more elaborate than most of these that we’ve seen.”
Update: as i learned below, it is a T-valve from the landing bag system.
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