posted 06-01-2014 10:52 AM               

Space Cover #267: My Favorite Space Cover Cachets

This week's Space Cover of the Week presentation will feature some of my favorite space cover cachets. Our hobby has been fortunate to have had many skilled and creative cachet designers who created many superb cachets for space covers, and here I've displayed my eight favorites. These eight span from John Glenn's Friendship 7 Mercury flight in 1962 to his return to space on Space Shuttle mission STS-95 in 1992.

The two cachets above show, at left, an Artcraft FDC cachet for the 4-cent Mercury stamp commemorating Glenn's Friendship 7/MA-6 flight. The cachet on the right is a colorful cachet for the Mars Viking missions from the JPL Stamp Club.

At left is an impressive moonwalker cachet designed by Paul Calle, and on the right is a nifty double portrait cachet for Glenn's return to space on STS-95 that marks his two space flights 30 years apart.

At top left is a handsome Heritage Craft cachet for Apollo 13, and at top right is an impressive Apollo 17 mission emblem/crew patch cachet. At bottom left is the mission emblem/crew patch cachet for STS-6, and at bottom right is the mission emblem cachet for STS-53.

With so many well-designed mission emblems for the 135 space shuttle flights, it's hard to pick just two, but these two are my top favorites, with STS-1 and STS-8 close behind.

These are just a very few examples of the vast number of creative and well-designed and interesting cachets that have graced and added so much to space covers from the earliest days of space exploration.