posted 04-07-2024 11:27 AM               

Space Cover 748: STS-8 flown cover cancel error

We've "covered" the famous STS-8 flown covers well (SCOTW 423 and SCOTW 596), but I've decided to add a little more to the subject.

To recap, in August 1983, NASA flew 261,899 of these covers in Challenger's cargo bay. They then were made available to collectors for around $15 and proved to be very popular. Then anyone could afford and own something flown in space aboard a space shuttle.

Normally three cancellations appear on the face of the flown covers and one on the back. But on some covers individual cancels failed to be applied, as described and shown in the earlier SCOTW's on these covers.

One of the flown covers I bought failed to have the "Returned to Earth" cancel applied on the back. That error made this an unusual and more special cover.

Then in 2016, 33 years after the STS-8 mission, while attending a philatelic show in Birmingham, Alabama, and while showing my primary exhibit, "How We Got Men to the Moon," a dealer told me that there was another big show scheduled in Denver, CO. He also said that Adm. Truly was expected to be there, and it would be a good chance to meet him, show him your exhibit and have him sign one of your flown covers.

With that information, I took my cover with the missing back cancel error to the Denver show in hopes that I'd run into Truly. When I located him he had already seen my exhibit and seemed to be impressed. We talked for about half an hour and then I pulled out my flown error cover and asked him if he would sign it.

He replied "We normally do not sign these covers, but it's been a long time now and I know that I won't receive thousands of requests", and he signed it (of note, things change and four of the five crewmen were receptive to sign the covers for years and flown covers with one to four autographs are not rare). At a later show, STS-8 Challenger pilot Dan Brandenstein was the guest and he saw the cover and told me, "Well, if the boss signed it, it's okay for me to sign it, too." Error cover mission accomplished.

Above: Ray and Adm. Truly at the Denver exhibition in 2017.