posted 10-21-2011 12:32 PM               

Space Cover #132, Captain's Covers for the First Two Mercury Manned Orbital Flights

Featured this week are two classic early US manned spaceflight covers that are from two of our hobby's pioneer collectors and prominent cover/cachet makers: Harry Gordon and Donald Schultz

The top cover is a Prime Recovery Ship Captain's Cover for John Glenn's Mercury-Atlas 6 flight, with the standard USS Randolph's label cachet and authentically autographed by the ship's captain and Glenn.

The USS Noa was the first on the scene and picked up both Glenn and the spacecraft. But then Glenn was flown by recovery helicopter to the Randolph, while the Noa delivered the Friendship 7 spacecraft to port.

The second cover for Scott Carpenter's Mercury-Atlas 7 flight, is also a Prime Recovery Ship Captain's Cover and has the USS Intrepid's special recovery cachet and is autographed by Carpenter.

These two ships, involved in the first two US manned Earth orbital missions, share a fairly unusual distinction. The Intrepid, like the Randolph, were not the first ships on the scene of the spacecraft splashdowns, but had the astronauts flown to them while other ships took care of recovering the spacecraft. The unusual result is that there were two ships involved in each of the two end-of-mission recoveries that can be called Prime Recovery Ships.

The USS Randolph PRS cover was acquired in a 1986 Space Unit auction for the fairly high price (for back then) of $110, while the USS Intrepid PRS cover was acquired from early collector Dr. E.V. Smith in 1980 for $50.

posted 10-22-2011 02:17 PM               

Collectors looking to add this paticular cover to their collection would do well to find a copy that has not had glue yellowing.

With the passage of nearly 50 years since the Project Mercury missions, some covers from that era are starting to show the effects of the decades. Those envelopes made with so-called rag content and without gum on the flap have held up the best. The cheap "drugstore envelopes" are showing signs of deterioration due to higher acidic content and gum on the back flap.

posted 10-23-2011 01:52 PM               

The second cover is not a captain's cover but a rare USS Pierce recovery cover on a Goldey cachet. The USS Pierce recovered the capsule.

posted 10-24-2011 08:05 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by DChudwin:
Bob, the Harry Gordon U.S.S. Randolph cover for the Glenn recovery is a particularly nice example. On many of those covers the glue used to apply the ship's label cachet has yellowed with age. Your cover appears from the scan to have minimal yellowing.

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I was fortunate to acquire this cover with, actually, no yellowing or glue staining to the label, which from what I've seen through the years is fairly common with these covers.