posted 02-28-2021 03:32 AM               

Space Cover 599: USS Furse GT-4.

Gemini-Titan 4 mission was a historic mission, not only for US citizens but for all mankind and especially for space lovers. In this second manned Gemini mission, astronaut Ed White “walked” in space on June 3, 1965. It was the first US astronauts performing an EVA just some months later than Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, who became first human to walk in outer space on March 18, 1965 in the Voskhod-2 mission.

Gemini-Titan 4 returned to Earth on June 7, 1965 and astronauts James McDivitt and Ed White were recovered by USS Wasp in North Atlantic Ocean.

Prime Recovery Ship covers from USS Wasp are well known by astrophilatelists: Captain covers, Unnumbered Beck covers, Beck covers and RSC covers from USS Wasp can be widely found in philatelic market.

Furthermore, Secondary Recovery Ship covers of other assigned ships to GT-4 space mission also can be easily found, both from the ships of the Atlantic fleet and from the Pacific fleet.

For more than 55 years different space covers came to the market and were widely studied and catalogued.

Above cover is an unnumbered Beck printed cachet cover for USS Furse, secondary recovery ship from Atlantic fleet, postmarked on June 3, 1965, launch date for GT-4 mission.

As everybody knows Beck covers were created by dealer Morris Beck, who sent only 25 unnumbered covers to each Captain’s ship to use as he saw fit.

Just because of its reduced quantity the unnumbered Beck covers are specially sought after astrophilatelists. But, just because the low quantity? No, this cover is really different.

As a consideration, above a numbered Beck cover USS Furse postmarked on June 3, 1965. B542 is the correct number for USS Furse ship and there are 418 copies.

And then, why is different?.

We can pay attention to the postmark. Both are dated A.M./3/JUN/1965 but the ship name, even in same position, appears in different way. Meanwhile in unnumbered cover USS Furse is written USS without dots, in numbered covers, U.S.S. Furse is written with dots.

As the unnumbered USS Furse cover is the first I have ever seen, I cannot know if all unnumbered USS Furse covers were postmarked with same USS without dots.

In addition, USS Furse letters font look different.

Any additional unnumbered USS Furse for GT-4 mission maybe can help to know if this was just an error, or all unnumbered covers shows USS without dots, or maybe the USS Furse without dots is a counterfeit postmark.

posted 03-01-2021 07:58 AM               

To Antoni, great find. I've just checked my main stash of ship covers and all my USS Furse covers, both the Beck printed covers and the Beck designed Navy rubber stamp covers, are all U.S.S. Furse. I don't have a USS Furse crew cover.

posted 03-01-2021 08:38 AM               

Both U.S.S. Furse and USS Furse postmarked covers exist. The U.S.S. version appears to be the original and was replaced or added to by the USS version sometime in the mid 1960s with both being used for a time.

posted 03-01-2021 12:41 PM               

The covers I've seen postmarks for are:

• U.S.S. (top) Furse (bottom) from 1946-1956
  
• U.S.S. Furse (top) incl. GT4 from 1960-1965
  
• USS Furse (top) from 1967-1972

Note also that Toni's cover looks to be missing the background color.

posted 03-04-2021 05:46 PM               

Wouldn't that require an altogether unauthorized different rubber stamp cancel device? Also, how about the Beck cachet envelope itself and would it had been a left-over or unused Beck cachet for GT-4?

It would just seem like way too much trouble to falsely produce a ship postmark for a secondary recovery ship that's not even a prime assigned pickup vessel.

posted 03-04-2021 06:11 PM               

The USS Furse has a fake cancel based on the USCS catalog. I don't know what it looks like.

One could ask the same question of many of the suspect space covers — plugged 9 cancels, suspect Skylab NASA cachets, suspect VIP cards — really worth the trouble of making them? I don't think so but we know they exist.

We do know of a number of Beck cachets that did not get cancelled for some reason on the ship and arrived back to the collector without a postmark. I have one from Cooper's flight I found in a dollar box. As you said, it could also be a leftover or unused Beck cachet; we know some Beck cachets are cancelled on anniversary dates of the flight.

Have also seen some "Beck-like" cachets, not true Beck cachets but ones where parts of his artwork was printed or made into rubber stamps by someone else. Wasn't smart enough at the time to retain copies of them for research purposes.

But this one... a "crew" cover with potential color missing (Toni hasn't posted if the background is printed on the cover or not) — never seen one like it before.

No other USS Furse crew covers are known (based on Owen Murray's Beck cover site).

posted 03-05-2021 09:47 AM               

It would be really nice to see some covers between GT-4 and December 1966 to narrow the postmark change date.

As Ken stated, likely applied not at mission time but later to unserviced/unused cover.

posted 03-06-2021 03:12 AM               

With no real evidence of this USS (wihtout dots) postmark at the time of GT-4 recovery, then we should apply the logic and think that cover was backdated or it is a forgery.

In any case seems clear that cover was not postmarked on Jun 3, 1965 but LATER.

In my initial post I simply suggested that cover could be a forgery because it is very rare that numbered Beck covers (printed and RSC) bear USS with dots and just unnumbered Beck covers bear USS w/o dots. It has no sense except if we understand that both bunch of covers were postmarked at different dates.

All of us know how numbered printed Beck covers were created and how they were distributed to collectors, but unnumbered Beck covers followed another path.

As this kind of covers were not created in origin for collectors but as a gift to naval sailors then these covers had different solutions: postmarked at same time, no postmarked at time but later as consequence of collectors demand, lost...

Identifying now if this cover is backdated or forgery is really difficult and again we should use the common sense.

As this USS Furse postmark without dots exist, but in later dates, the most normal is that unnumbered Beck covers were backdated. It is easier to backdate before making a forgery.

And if this a forgery, do not think that 25 covers is a loss of money and time. If I was a forger then I would create 25.000 covers, or 2.500, or 250 covers not just 25 covers. And if only 25 covers, I would like to sell them for high prices.

So, in my opinion (just my opinion) this cover is backdated.

Ref background quoted by Tom, see below a close-up scan in which you can see the difference. I also think that this unnumbered Beck cover has not grey background.

As previously posted, this was the original list in which I bought this cover. I was interested in this ship for a double reason: it was involved in space mission and it was transfered to Spanish Navy in 1972, when it was renamed as Gravina.

Todocoleccion is a web page mainly for Spanish collectors. I bought the cover in Oct-20 after months of tracking this item. During months I tried to get information about this cover and most of questions raised here were already made by me.

Finally, for satisfying your curiosity, price paid was 10 EUR (around 12 US) plus registered postage.

Genuine cover, backdated or forgery, price was a bargain.

posted 03-06-2021 11:57 AM               

Typically, forged postmarks weren't for a specific event but had changeable dates just like the post office cancel devices, e.g. plugged 9 postmarks appear with lots of different dates.

And, as we also know, there isn't a lot of value to many of the covers that forged postmarks/cachets appear on.

Beck unnumbered covers, that could be a whole separate thread/threads of theories about — as David said — the story goes.