posted 03-02-2025 12:00 PM               

Space Cover 795: Mercury FDC - Lompoc/Edwards Combo?

Many space cover collectors are interested in collecting FDCs for the Project Mercury stamp from the 305 post offices that comprised the official first day sales after John Glenn successfully splashed down and, of course, unofficial cities. The official FDI site was Cape Canaveral (even though no such city existed at that time, the city was still named Port Canaveral).

Many of the unofficial cities have a space connection and can be found with space cachets – Huntsville, Houston, Corpus Christi (tracking station site for the flight), Langley AFB, etc.

Then along comes this unofficial FDC above from Edwards AFB with the Boy Scout X-15 cachet. Postmark date is FEB 20, 1962, check, so an unofficial FD cancel , pair of Project Mercury stamps, check, so an unofficial FDC. So far so good...

...but what about the rest of the postmark, the city is "LOMPOC, CALIF. EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE STA." which is a cancel I had never seen before or since. "Station" cancels were used at that location, so this means this cancel would have been used at Edwards AFB. The "Station" or "Branch" postmarks that I know of are typically within the city of the postmark. See the Edwards AFB Rocket Test Site Br. Space Cover of the Week by Pooz, where the Rocket Test Site in within Edwards AFB. However, the "straight line" distance between Lompoc and Edwards AFB is about 150 MILES!

Here is a close-up of the postmark.

Question one: why is there an Edwards AFB Station of the Lompoc post office? I cannot come up with an answer to this one.

Question two: why are there no other examples of this postmark? As stated, I have never seen one, has anyone else?

The cover is addressed to Max Kronstein, who is known for obtaining covers for rare events from rare places. The address is typed in Max's format and typewriter style along with the "FROM THE DEVELOPMENT FLIGHTS OF THE X-15 ROCKETPLANE AT EDWARDS CAL." as seen typed on other Kronstein X-15 covers. So, this is definitely a Kronstein created cover.

Question three: how was this combination produced? Since Max (or anyone else) did not know about the Project Mercury stamp before February 20th , did Max have unstamped envelopes with the Boy Scout service to which the servicer purchased stamps and added stamps to the envelope and got it postmarked? Quite a lot of effort for only a few (only one?) covers. Did Max send this "later" and the cover had a backdated postmark applied? Or??? Any thoughts?

If anyone has a cover for any event with this postmark and/or an Edwards AFB Project Mercury unofficial FDC please post scans. Any thoughts on the questions posed appreciated!

posted 03-02-2025 02:02 PM               

There's an excellent book on California postal history in the APS Library. I'd photocopied off everything about Kern County (where Edwards lies), but there is no reference to a combo Edwards/Lompoc postmark under Kern County. One would probably need to check that book out and look at Santa Barbara County, where Lompoc lies.

posted 03-02-2025 02:22 PM               

Allow me to concentrate on one aspect - Dr Max Kronstein.

I have a number of his covers, mostly with hand applied 'cinderellas' and typed comments. I've never seen any others for each of the events I've got, and have wondered for a while just how unique these are?

Are they literally one-offs he prepared personally for his own collection?
Or did he make a number of hand made covers for each event?