posted 02-17-2024 02:11 AM               

Space Cover 741: Hand and mechanical postmark

As postmark is the key element in Astrophilately class, postmarking process for our space covers is the most important phase in the creation of our space covers.

When we decide to create a space cover, we search the address for nearest post office linked with the space event, select stamps according current postage rate and send our covers to be postmarked.

Once covers are received, if postmark is applied at requested, then normally add the cachet and we have our own space covers.
All the process in creation of our space covers is under our control except the time and way of postmarking our covers.

Depending on how postmark is applied, sometimes our covers result a failure, like some rocket launches, or in the majority of the cases, a success. But in this life, not all is black or white and they are a lot of grey tones. And this is the wealth of our space covers.

Cover shown was sent to be postmarked at Fort Myers, FL in Sep 12, 1966 as tracking station for the launch of GT-11 from KSC with astronauts Conrad and Gordon on-board.

Most probably this cover was placed upside down when entered on the postmark tape. The result was the mechanical postmark at the bottom left of the cover. Then, when postal employee saw this, applied a second but hand postmark over the stamp to fulfill the postal rules of postmarking the stamps.

It is not a rare case but a common situation when a lot of covers have to be placed on the postmark tape and some of them are not placed on correct direction.

For sure, many of ours have other covers with this similar result. Please, feel free to show and explain here. Thanks.

posted 02-17-2024 07:16 AM               

There is what appears to be a hand stamped postmark across the cover just above the address, which appears duplicated (which on an initial glance I thought was just a long blurred line of black smudged ink). It is hard to read and the image resolution is not sharp enough to be conclusive, but there appears to be a line of text in blue pen, overlain by a double strike of a black ink rubber stamp which reads (?) "Demand for additional postage".

Something has also been written and scribbled out in blue ink just underneath the stamp.

posted 02-19-2024 03:00 PM               

The first photo-scan below depicts a most unusual Apollo 8 launch day cover with an added Apollo 8 U.S. First Day Cover Issue. It has a rare Space Craft Cover cachet by Swanson, however, I have never seen this "partial" SCC cachet beforehand. The cover first started out with Apollo 8's launch from Kennedy Space Center on Dec. 21, 1968, along with an added Apollo 8 "Earthrise" 6-cent postage stamp for its official FDI on May 5, 1969, at Houston, Texas.

The doubled-sided cover below it is an unusual multi-cancelled cover for Apollo 12's launch, lunar landing, and splashdown all tied up together on the same cover. There is a KSC-hand cancel for launch on Nov. 14, 1969, Cape for splashdown-recovery on Nov. 24, and on the same back-sided cover is a machine cancel as depicted on Nov. 19 for Apollo 12's moon landing where NASA's mission control center at the Manned Spacecraft Center (now the Johnson Space Center) in Houston, Texas, is located.

posted 03-09-2024 01:56 PM               

So it the case of the Gemini 7 cover the hand cancel was likely applied first which missed the stamp so a machine cancel was applied.

posted 05-19-2024 06:25 PM               

I suspect that because the machine cancellation is difficult to see on the dark Gemini stamps the hand cancellation was applied.