posted 02-06-2024 02:47 PM               

Space Cover 739: Project Mercury FDC

Most space cover collectors have Project Mercury FDCs in their collections. Ranging from common FDCs with no cachet to the cachet makers of the time (Art Craft, Artmaster, etc.) these covers can be found with single, pairs, and blocks of 4 Project Mercury stamps with the Cape Canaveral machine cancel. Plate blocks, however, received a Cape Canaveral hand cancel. Pictured above is an Art Craft Project Mercury FDC with the hand cancel.

Up until now, there seemed to only be a single version of the hand cancel. Now, however, there seems to be a second version.

The black-and-white scan of this Artmaster Project Mercury FDC shows the second version of the cancel.

Specifically note the difference from the top scan: the font of the digit 2 of 20, the size of the time (only partially over the 2 in 1962 while the first version extends past the 2), and the specific differences in the font of the 1 and 2 in 1962.

Here is an enlargement of the cancels next to each other for comparison.

After the discovery of a couple of these cancels a continued search in dealer inventories and online sales for other Project Mercury FDCs with the second cancel have not found a single other instance of it.

Anyone out there have a version with the second cancel version? Any thoughts about it?

posted 02-07-2024 10:01 AM               

There is the Cape Canaveral in geography terms and not in terms of the city - Cape Canaveral geographicaly is a seaward extension of Canaveral Island, a barrier island running southeastward along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. The cape is separated from Merritt Island to the west by the Banana River, and the island is separated from the mainland by the Indian River. The cape area is the site of operations for the U.S. space program under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). This area also included the city of Port Canaveral.

posted 02-07-2024 11:45 AM               

It is my understanding that this was a secret stamp whose existence was only revealed once John Glenn had been launched. Even the post masters (305 I believe, throughout the US) who had been sent bundles of stamps beforehand, didn't know what they contained (although I suppose some would have guessed the content!).

But how was a temporary station set up to handle the thousands of covers in secrecy? Were postmasters and staff shipped in to Cape Canaveral unknowingly? Did the local community know a location had been appropriated for an unknown reason, only to turn out to be a post office for the day?

And the cancel devices! Someone, somewhere must have manufactured them. Did they not suspect what they were for beforehand? There are so many questions...

On edit: One further question - was Port Canaveral also one of the 305 locations where Project Mercury stamps were released for FDCs?

posted 02-07-2024 12:45 PM               

Florida OFFICIAL cities:

• Cocoa
  
• Cocoa Beach
  
• Fort Lauderdale
  
• Jacksonville
  
• Miami
  
• Orlando
  
• Pensacola
  
• Saint Petersburg
  
• Tallahassee
  
• Tampa
  
• West Palm Beach

posted 02-07-2024 12:58 PM               

NASA's original Launch Operations Directorate (LOD), while based at Cape Canaveral, wanted to make Merritt Island, located to the north and west of Cape Canaveral, as the prime site for the new space center (NASA) that would launch Americas to the moon. This new and advanced launch complex and industrial area were separate from the Cape and its oceanside military-established missile and rocket test range center.

So NASA at Kennedy Space Center was not located on the Cape Canaveral area, but rather on Merritt Island, known as the Merritt Island Launch Area (MILA) during the early 1960's. NASA did, though, have some of their own support facilities located on the Cape-side station range. Overall, the Cape station was managed and operated by the US Air Force, Navy, and Army under the Department of Defense (DOD).

With NASA in the picture, the Air Force sought to continue control of the Cape range, with NASA as a tenant. But in the long run, NASA got their own property rights in Jan. 1963 when NASA announced that Launch Complex 39 with all related supporting industrial areas became the Launch Operations Center (LOC) with MILA now a separate and distinct NASA installation away from the old Cape-Atlantic missile range. The new Space Agency was given title and management of its property on Merritt Island, and not Cape Canaveral. The Air Force continued to manage the range, with NASA as a user.

On another note: The Cocoa post office played a major staging role for the release of the new 4-cent Project Mercury postage stamp in 1962 that I don't know if many collectors are aware of. If there is interest, I'll be happy to report more details in an upcoming posting here.

posted 02-07-2024 01:20 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Axman:
...only revealed once John Glenn had been launched.

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quote:

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Someone, somewhere must have manufactured them.

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posted 02-08-2024 02:12 PM               

The US Post Office Department (POD) used the CPO, located about 10 miles from the Port/Cape Canaveral area, as the primary launch-site location for the new space stamp release. The Cocoa postal station had better accommodations and more public access than the much smaller Port Canaveral postal unit just south of the Cape-seaport harbor and Jetty Park.

Thousands of the Project Mercury stamps were sent to CPO for public sales of the surprise Glenn flight stamps along with thousands of government-provided envelopes for official first day issue cover cancels. Throughout February post-flight until mid-March 1962, altogether, about one million envelope covers were prepared by 40 extra clerks at Cocoa by affixing on them the dark blue and yellow first class stamps.

All of the stamped covers were trucked over from CPO to a Cape-area site, not too far from the tiny Port post office there, where they received official FDI postal cancellations that would read "Cape Canaveral," FLA," even though there was no "Cape Canaveral" post office in operation at the time.

There were initially two special cancelling machines designed specifically for this enormous task operated by postal equipment technician Leonard Pulinski of Dearborn, Michigan. His equipment was set-up inside an Air Force/NASA trailer-type van that had been sent over from CPO to the Cape-launch site area as an official "temporary mobile cancel facility."

Another report had indicated that the twin machines were later transported back to CPO a few days after launch and set-up in the CPO's basement for further cover cancel work. The supervisor of the Mercury philatelic sales of Washington, D.C., George King, reported that it would take about three weeks for his postal workers at Cocoa (and I believe with a later third machine at the temporary Cape-site location) to fully process nearly one million pieces of mail while working every day, including weekends and holidays, until the job had been completed. At the time King said the first day covers were available for public sale from both locations at 5-cents each.

The first buyer for a sheet of Project Mercury stamps at CPO was Allan Schulz of Jacksonville, Florida, said CPO postmaster Ted Booth. At the close of launch day, Booth said that 150,000 stamps and 10,000 covers had been sold. Those head clerks working with Booth and superintendent Ivan Townsend of Cocoa mails were the wives of William Spieth, John Bennett, Burgess Ward, and John Dixon.

posted 02-08-2024 06:33 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by yeknom-ecaps:
Anyone out there have a version with the second cancel version?

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After examining hundreds of my own MA-6/Glenn first day covers from Feb. 20, 1962, only the standard first type cancel strikes I have seen and have on all of mine. The below pictured cover that my firm produced, of which there were a total of 500 created as a combo-launch cover for both of Glenn's spaceflights in 1962 and 1998, all had the same HC impressions (Type 1 from your studies) on Feb. 20, 1962 along with hundreds more of original and different cachet first day hand-cancelled covers owned. By he way, of those 500 combo-covers done, I still have over a hundred.

posted 02-09-2024 06:10 AM               

Concerning the Orbit Covers of Gemini and some Apollos, we know Ronson first ordered as many engraved covers that he thought or planned to use for those missions with legit postal cancels. Did he originally produce 1,000, 1,500, or more for the Gemini launch days? We'll probably never know for sure.

But once those flights were over with, even after a few years, we know that other Orbit Covers for those past same missions were appearing on the market with perhaps re-printed envelopes, some with later-issued US flag stamps not in use at flight time, and fraudulent postal markings. That's why, as you say, "thousands of covers" are out there, but I don't think he did that many thousands of original flight covers early on as they were probably sold out after his initial production.

Once he started to get more and more orders for them, even years afterwards, re-prints were made but he couldn't get the actual mission postal dates as that would not be possible (illegal backdating). So, in my opinion, he simply went to a rubber stamp company and ordered a complete replica (or the best that could be done) and used those unofficial devices with changeable date slugs for the month, day, and year needed. To the best of my knowledge, I can't recall any other space covers that have those exact "Plugged 9" hand cancel varieties other than Orbit Covers. Isn't that odd that only his covers have them? Just my 2-cents worth.

posted 03-12-2024 07:25 PM               

I've scanned them side-by-side and also did a transparent overlay of the cancels for comparison with the ones Tom shared.

As I was lining up the overlay, I checked both the CAPE CANAVERAL and FLA text, these are the same letters in size and font and overlapped well with each other as I was moving the layers around.

For the center removable date stamp section, there are certainly size and font differences with the FEB, 20, 330 PM, and 1962.

Overlay with center lined up (best I could to show size differences):

Overlay with outside lined up (CAPE CANAVERAL and FLA):