posted 04-16-2011 04:16 PM               

Space Cover #105, Foreign Postage Stamps (only) on US Space Covers

While it's not too unusual to find US space covers with foreign (non-US) space stamps added along with US postage, it is unusual to see only foreign space stamps on US space event covers.

With the joint US/Soviet Apollo/Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) approaching in 1975, I decided to try to create some unusual space covers for that big international space event.

I was able to acquire a few relevant foreign space stamps prior to ASTP. The Soviet Union issued a stamp picturing a painting of the planned Apollo-Soyuz spacecraft linkup by cosmonaut-artist Alexei Leonov (top cover), and East Germany had issued a stamp in 1965 picturing Leonov and commemorating his Voskhod 2 flight (second cover). Both covers were cacheted and canceled at KSC for the Apollo launch.

The third and fourth covers have only Soviet postage affixed and were canceled at KSC for the September 16, 1975 ASTP crew awards ceremony. The Soviet stamp on the 3rd cover pictures the five US and Soviet ASTP crew members, and the fourth cover has a Soviet ASTP linkup stamp that is very similar to the U.S. ASTP linkup stamp.

About two years later, on the occasion of the first Enterprise Approach and Landing Test (ALT) free flight, a West German Spacelab stamp was affixed to a cover and canceled for this early Space Shuttle event (fifth cover). The sixth and bottom cover also has a West German Spacelab stamp and was machine canceled at KSC for the second Spacelab flight on STS-61A.

How were these unusual covers created? US postage stamps were affixed to peelable labels cut to the same size and then applied to the covers below the foreign stamps. After the covers returned through the mail, the US stamps were easily removed leaving only the foreign space stamps canceled on the covers (While this practice is certainly frowned upon by the USPS, the uncanceled US stamps were destroyed).

posted 04-17-2011 11:46 AM               

May have also been a "soft touch" to the "I live in xxx and don't have access to US stamps so please cancel."

posted 04-20-2011 03:34 PM               

Here are two more of my covers that I put US stamps on peelable labels to be removed after receiving cancels.

The top cover is a miss, as the cover, with a 10 cent US flag stamp still affixed to the peelable label after 36 years, and with an unintended and unwanted KSC hand cancel applied instead of a machine cancel - which canceled both stamps.

The bottom cover is as intended, but instead of a foreign stamp, has a US 18 cent stamp canceled for the STS-31 Space Shuttle launch, that deployed the Hubble Space Telescope. The postage rate at that time was 25 cents, but the future space telescope stamp (from the block of 8 Space Achievement stamps of 1981), is an 18 cent stamp and pictures a space telescope very similar to the actual HST deployed 9 years later. I applied a ten cent stamp on a peelable label on the cover that was later removed, resulting in a cover with a cachet and stamp of very similar designs.