posted 02-02-2016 09:13 PM               

Space Cover 354: Crazy Cachets

Cachets represent a major portion of our hobby by depicting images and/or text describing the event on a cover. There is a wide variety of cachets created from those created by world-class artists such as Chris Calle to hand-drawn "scrawling" of words that are hard to read.

Besides the variety of the types of cachets and material in the cachet there are sometimes errors created by those not paying close enough attention to details – the Colorano silk cover above was created for the death of Project Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard but has a picture of Yuri Gagarin depicted in the cachet.

Other covers have a space cachet on covers that have nothing to do with a space event such as the USS Kearsarge cover above that has the cachet that was used on covers for Gordon Cooper's flight but this cover is dated February 1967 — not even an anniversary date of the flight.

But the ones I really enjoy seeing are covers like the ASTP recovery cover show at the top of this post that are just "crazy" wrong.

The cover is correctly postmarked for the ASTP splashdown on July 24, 1975 from Norfolk, Virginia where the US Navy Atlantic Recovery Task Force 140 was based.

Checking out the cachet it shows:

1. a single parachute - instead of the actual three parachutes
   
2. parachutes attached to the Apollo service module – which was actually jettisoned prior to command module re-entry
   
3. landing in the ocean – check out the size of the "splash" into the ocean – as tall as the service module!
   
4. "USA" would be upside down when the command module was on the launch pad – never seen that in a launch pad photo!
   
5. splashdown into the ocean is "capsule first" putting the astronauts under water – don't think it happened that way

This cover has Stan Henderson's name and address on the back. Stan is known for creating some very rare and unique covers with very detailed cachets for the shuttle tests so how he is associated with a cover with a cachet like this is interesting.

Do you have any "crazy" cachets in your collection to share?

posted 02-09-2016 12:35 PM               

But otherwise, an appropriate stamp was used, with a well-applied Interpex Station pictorial cancel and a red rubber stamp cachet also applied and evidently available at the Interpex show.