I'm sorry to say, but I believe I read that Sam and Friends is an unfortunate victim of the early Quadraplex video age...which is to say, that when TV stations bought video recorders in the fifties and early sixties, their intent was to keep using the tapes over and over again, to save money and time on film processing. Unfortunately, since they didn't think that most shows, especially some kids' puppet show that we all hold so dearly NOW, was important enough to save! A whole heck of a lot of shows from that time were simply erased after they were shown to save tape and time for the next show. Sad, isn't it?
Of course, there are probably kinescopes (films made badly by pointing a film camera at a TV monitor...what were they thinking???) of the show somewhere, I'll bet, but they won't look so great. They were mostly used for safety backups.
*sigh*
later
eric