posted 01-26-2024 06:23 AM               

Hand-cancelled at Cape Canaveral, it has a black printed cachet with an added magenta semi-circular rubber stamp cachet. Both the printed and rubber-stamped cachets look familiar, and have big similarities to other known cachet makers' work.

The black printed part shares many characteristics of Alfred Boerger (ABC) cachets, but his name is not found on this one. Indeed, if you look carefully in the lower left corner you can see a capital W overlaid by a capital A symbol.

The magenta rubber-stamped cachet seems to me to be very like the small circular cachets that Morris Beck provided, although I've never seen mention of any semi-circular varieties.

posted 01-26-2024 07:25 AM               

And after some internet searching I managed to unearth this footnote:

note 1: Alton A. Weigel

The brand name Artopages, derived from a contraction of Art Topic Pages, began producing its first cachets back in 1962; their cachets were originally produced by pioneer designer Alton A. Weigel (1893-1980) from Woodville, Ohio, a former engineer whose initiation into the philatelic business came through designing pages for stamp albums.

Weigel’s early philatelic work drew the attention of Alfred Boerger, a Toledo, Ohio stamp dealer, who suggested he draws some designs for first day covers (FDCs). Weigel started doing so for U.S. stamps in 1960.

Weigel worked for Boerger A.B.C. cachets (the "A.B.C." stands for "Alfred Boerger Cachets"); hence, the similarity between Boerger and Artopages cachets. A.B.C. existed before the Artopages brand.