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  Apollo 12 astrophilately (1969-2019)

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Author Topic:   Apollo 12 astrophilately (1969-2019)
Ken Havekotte
Member

Posts: 2913
From: Merritt Island, Florida, Brevard
Registered: Mar 2001

posted 10-22-2019 02:37 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Ken Havekotte   Click Here to Email Ken Havekotte     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
In celebration of America's second lunar landing — 50 years ago — in Nov. 2019, here are some of my own crew signed postal covers, cards, stamps, stickers and badges all from Apollo 12's amazing 10-day voyage to the moon and back.

Perhaps a second panel display can be added later with more Apollo 12 signed material by crewmen, including backup and support, Capcom astronauts, mission leaders, officials, and others in all flight and support areas from start to finish.

Of special note, one of the top depicted covers has an inscription on the back envelope surface with, "This Apollo XII Crew-signed envelope, is from my personal collection, Charles Conrad Jr. (signed), Cdr. Apollo XII." This was one of a dozen(+) or so Apollo 12 crew-signed insurance covers using the Bishop astronaut Navy wings insignia cachet covers that the veteran Gemini and Apollo astronaut pioneer provided to me in 1991. It had been the first time that Captain Conrad penned on any of his personal insurance covers such an annotation as I had suggested.

But the Conrad signed-inscribed covers in such a special way wasn't the first time that an Apollo astronaut did this for me. In fact, the first astronaut to do so for me, or for anyone else, was Jim Irwin on some of his personally-owned Apollo 15 crew insurance covers during the early/ mid-1980's.

As the all-Navy Apollo 12 crew rocketed to their lunar destination on Nov. 14 in 1969, I was there "live" at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida as a wide-eyed teenage space enthusiast. It was actually my first live liftoff "from KSC grounds itself" at a viewing site not too far away from the VAB. Little did I know at the time how much that first "up-close" lightning-zapped Saturn V moon rocket launch would impact my life in such a special way.

Pete Conrad and Alan Bean had landed on the lunar surface just four months after Apollo 11 achieved the first manned lunar landing goal in a remarkably short time frame. What's even more incredible about Apollo 12 was its pin point landing in the Ocean of Storms, only about 500 feet away as planned from the nearby unmanned Surveyor 3 spaceprobe which had soft landed on the moon in April 1967.

As Dick Gordon signed and inscribed a couple of my beautiful Apollo 12 JFK Heritage/Crafts cachet covers to me during one of our visits together, he wrote on each, "Not one, but 2 moon landings before the end of the decade!"

Bob M
Member

Posts: 1744
From: Atlanta-area, GA USA
Registered: Aug 2000

posted 10-22-2019 04:28 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Bob M   Click Here to Email Bob M     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Holy cow, Ken, what a fantastic Apollo 12 display!

Really like all the Apollo 12 crew signed covers — the Apollo 12 crew was among the best at signing for us bothersome collectors (and, unfortunately, also dealers and opportunists masquerading as collectors).

Ken Havekotte
Member

Posts: 2913
From: Merritt Island, Florida, Brevard
Registered: Mar 2001

posted 10-23-2019 08:04 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Ken Havekotte   Click Here to Email Ken Havekotte     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
That's right, Bob, some of the top-left and middle crew signed covers were gotten by mail requests throughout the 1970/80's along with the two covers at very bottom. But all of my Bishop covers came from Conrad himself, but with the only exception of the un-posted cover. Also, two of the crew covers above were signed before their launch to the moon while in crew quarters here at Kennedy. They're not too hard to spot and I got a few more other crew signed covers not shown in this display.

I've also got hundreds of more covers, lots of photos, badges, etc. signed by Bean and Gordon within the last 25 years during private meetings and visits with them.

But with Conrad, while not signed in person, I've got a lot of great material signed by the 3rd moonwalker through a business transaction in 1991-93 that also resulted in being able to acquire some of his own personal memorabilia of both his Gemini space feats, Apollo 12, and as the first American astronaut commander of our nation's first space station.

As you pointed out, most of our astronaut mailed-in autograph requests during the 70/80's were mostly successful, however, I did recall hearing about some-rather heavy autopen uses by all the 12 crewmen and especially with Bean during his Skylab training years.

Ken Havekotte
Member

Posts: 2913
From: Merritt Island, Florida, Brevard
Registered: Mar 2001

posted 10-27-2019 06:18 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Ken Havekotte   Click Here to Email Ken Havekotte     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Forgot to include a few more Apollo 12 crew signed covers, including one of my favorite "Home from the Moon" USS Hornet prime recovery ship covers.

I've also added another Bishop crew signed insurance cover from Conrad that is a bit unusual. I thought it would be of interest to insurance cover collectors. Note that the C76 10-cent airmail "First Man on the Moon" postage stamp covered up some of the end portions of the Conrad and Bean autographs. For man's second lunar landing, apparently, most if not all of the Bishop covers were signed before having their postage stamps affixed, as with other Apollo flight insurance covers, but that wasn't always the case, though.

Included below the insurance cover is a Rhodes/Yorio ONC for AS-507's KSC-launch with a Type 1 (HQS) machine cancel. The bottom cover is a Bendix Launch Support Division printed cachet cover for the launch of the all-Navy astronaut crew, but seldom seen crew signed. Some of the different Apollo crew signed Bendix covers were made available to Apollo crews while crewmen were staying in their MSO-quarters at KSC before launching into space. That subject may be the topic of another cS-thread.

I've still got a few others, along with some duplicates, but I think this would be enough for now, as I wanted to represent different types of crew signed cachets and cover varieties from November 1969.

All times are CT (US)

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