posted 07-20-2019 06:53 AM               

Space Cover #524: Apollo 11 plus 50

Exactly 50 years ago yesterday, on July 20, 1969, men from Earth landed and walked on the moon. John Kennedy's challenge to have this country land men on the moon and return them safely to the Earth by the end of the decade was met. And met five more times by December 1972. But as most would agree, Apollo 11 will stand alone as mankind's greatest achievement in space.

Previously, Steve, Ken and Eddie have displayed an excellent assortment of Apollo 11 covers. So the challenge for this SCOTW contributor was to find something significant that wasn't already shown. And also I wanted to present just one single cover that would best honor this historic achievement.

So I selected one of the Artcraft First Man on the Moon First Day Covers and one autographed by the Apollo 11 astronaut who took that one small step into history.

The Artcraft cachet pictures the Apollo 11 crew, with Lunar Module Eagle descending to the lunar surface. Besides the first day of issue date stamp, it also has another date stamp with the date of the moon landing. And best of all, it's affixed with one of the over 150 million Paul Calle-designed "First Man on the Moon" stamps picturing Armstrong taking mankind's first step on the moon.

The Artcraft Apollo 11 FDCs are one of my favorite covers and I had always wanted one autographed by Armstrong. Foolishly passing on one for $95 in 1989, a few years ago I found this one available and my dream of having such a cover was realized, but sadly for much more than the bargain cover years before.

posted 07-21-2019 09:07 AM               

Artcraft FDC for Apollo 11 moon landing have a kind of mystery for me.

There are thousands of Artcarft FDC with Apollo 11 stamp postmarked with first day mechanical or hand cancel, combo versions by adding to Apollo 11 stamp others US space stamps...and even the Artcraft cover illustration can be found in black color but also in blue color.

However, I have seen many others First Day postmarks for Apollo 11 stamps issued by other countries or postal administrations using as basis the same Artcraft cover.

Who knows how these kind of covers were produced?. Maldives cover is only an example but there are many other Apollo first day from other places different to USA.

posted 07-23-2019 02:45 PM               

Anyway, let me share one of my all-time favorite C76 signed FDCs. This one has the signatures of the first manned lunar landing astronaut crew along with NASA Administrator Thomas O. Paine at the time during four Apollo lunar flights, including Apollo 11 of course, (from 1969-70). I've also included a nine-stamp pane of the First Man on the Moon issue signed by the first two lunar explorers.

Right below the signed cover/stamps, Bob, are a couple of just-released "new" First Day of Issue "stamp twins" for the July 19/20, 2019 celebration of Apollo 11's epic voyage to another world, 50 years ago to this week! I thought it would be fun to include an original 1969 unused Artcraft and Fleetwood printed cachet cover and include the new anniversary cancels on them that you see here. I've got many, many more, all with different cachet and cancel types, that are still being worked on here at the Florida Space Coast in celebrating the first moon men.

One of the special Apollo 11 pictorial cancels that you see was the design of Paul and Chris Calle, which by the way, was an earlier illustration that Chris' father had done. The golden anniversary postmark, featuring a depiction of Apollo 11's LM-Eagle from the mission patch logo along with an Apollo CSM orbiting the moon. As most of us know, Paul was the postage stamp designer for the 1969 First Man on the Moon airmail issue, America's first-ever lunar landing postage stamp depiction.

It's one of two different pictorial cancel designs now in use at the Cape Canaveral post office, however, the second postmark device has not yet been in use because of a cancel device error. It should be available soon, though, and both cancel strikes are for July 20th only.

quote:

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Originally posted by Antoni RIGO:
I have seen many others First Day postmarks for Apollo 11 stamps issued by other countries or postal administrations using as basis the same Artcraft cover.

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Below are a few others that I have from South America's Venezuela and the African nations of Alger (Algeria), Ghana, and the 115 islands in the Indian Ocean of East Africa, Seychelles. Note that the Venezuela cover is an Artmaster cachet cover -- all with their first-time issued Apollo 11 postage stamps.

There is even an Artcraft issue printed in a red tone with a Cape postal cancel for moon landing on July 20th. This one is part of a 3-Artcraft cover set for the July 16th launch, using a blue engraved printed envelope, and splashdown on the 24th from the Cape with a standard black-ink issue.

It's my impression, though Antoni, that all of them seem to be original FDC printed cachet covers, and not unofficial or unauthorized reproductions. As you know, most of the big 3-cachet FDI cover fims, such as Artcraft, Fleetwood, and Artmaster, did advertise and promote their unused cachet envelopes worldwide for the mega moon landing just after a few weeks once the astronaut trio were back home safe. The trio-Artcraft cover set with Cape cancels during the actual flight in July 1969 had to be Artcraft-cachet after the covers had been cancelled as "blanks."

posted 07-24-2019 07:05 AM               

As per your collection I can see that other cachet-makers, not juts Artcraft, were used as first day cover for many countries.

How these countries or postal organtizations got these illustrated covers to be used in the first day issues is still a mystery for me. Also, if there is some kind of relation between Artcraft or Fleetwood and the countries that used them. Would be possible to suggest that Artcraft or Fleetwood were in charge of printing stamps from these countries?

Thanks too for the info about three-Artcraft set. Blue for launch 16th, Red for Moon landing 20th and black for return 24th. All with CC postmarks, right?

posted 07-25-2019 10:43 AM               

Surely all of us long-time space cover/autograph collectors made mistakes with our collecting thru the years, either buying some things we shouldn't have (forgeries) or not buying some things we should have (the cover in question).

But in this case, at least I did buy one of the two covers that were offered by the seller back in 1989. Also available for $95 was a superb Armstrong signed Apollo 11 official NASA/KSC cacheted launch cover, which I did buy and am very proud of. Of course, my mistake wasn't buying both.

But I had been fooled before with Armstrong forgeries and was leery of paying about $200 for two covers that I might have later realized were forgeries. Many of us back then weren't overly familiar with all the Armstrong autograph styles and forgeries were a danger and we needed to be careful.

But after all these years and more money spent than I'd have liked, I have now two excellent Armstrong autographed Apollo 11 covers I always wanted.

posted 07-25-2019 04:27 PM               

Some of the featured crew covers were those of Heritage Crafts, in my opinion, perhaps some of the best Apollo cachet covers ever produced. It's hard enough even in trying to locate nice unsigned Apollo covers by this firm, yet alone, with genuine and vintage flight crew astronaut signatures!

If I recall the cover prices, all crew signed, were far below — even at that early time period — of their estimated values. I mean, c'mon, like $45 or so for a signed Apollo 10 Heritage Crafts launch day cover in great condition.

I never did find out, though, how many of the crew covers Superior had available. But when I did decide to call the stamp company, after perhaps waiting a bit too long in doing so, they were no longer available! I wonder if someone did snatch all of them up in a single order or two.

posted 07-26-2019 10:26 AM               

The Apollo 10 covers were excellent Heritage Craft covers, while the others were all insurance or insurance-type covers, with the Apollo 15 a "Bishop" type, that was later deemed by Al Worden not used by the crew as insurance covers.

Back on the subject of Apollo 11 and bargain covers from the past, perhaps the bargain deal of all time for space and space cover collectors was the sale in late 1989 by Rand Philatelic Bureau where they sold all three types of the Apollo 11 insurance covers (never mentioned by them that they were insurance covers) for $150 each.