Space Cover #564: Rare Surveyor 6 Space Craft Cover
This week's Space Cover of the Week features a very rare and possibly unique Space Craft cover.As many space cover collectors know, Space Craft Covers has long been considered the premier set of space covers covering events throughout the 1960's. Joe Fitzpatrick and cachet artist Carl Swanson gave us beautifully detailed covers for most of the major launches during the decade.
Though the majority of the Space Craft Covers received the common cancels (Cape Canaveral, Patrick AFB, Vandenberg AFB, Wallops Island ect.) Joe Fitzpatrick was fascinated by covers postmarked at Kennedy Space Center. Back then it was not very easy to obtain KSC cancels on covers. The post office limited it to two covers per request. This made it extremely difficult to get a large quantity of covers with KSC cancels for any particular launch.
Undeterred by this, Joe devised a plan to use the addresses of family and friends to send in covers to receive the KSC cancel. He would then apply the Space Craft cachet to them. He planned to save these and sell them at a later date. He hoped to make some money due to the scarcity of KSC cancels.
The first real success he had was for the launch of Apollo 5 (AS-204). He was able to obtain 18 covers with the KSC cancel. These all also had the KSC official NASA cachet that was applied by the post office. For the longest time, these Apollo 5 covers were thought to be the first Space Craft Covers with KSC cancels.
However, back in 1988 we were put in contact with Joe Fitzpatrick's widow through Chuck Vucotich, the man who literally wrote the book on Space Craft Covers. She still had a couple of large boxes full of Space Craft Covers as well as Joe's personal collection of space covers and autographs. Dad and I purchased all of this. In going through all the covers, we found three Surveyor 7 covers with KSC cancels. This predates the Apollo 5 cover by two weeks. It was a nice surprise.
Which brings us to the cover pictured above. I found this Space Craft Covers' Surveyor 6 recently. What caught my eye was the fact that it was postmarked with a KSC cancel! This now predates the first KSC Space Craft cover by two months.
A possible explanation from Chuck Vukotich is that Joe was surprised by the fact that Surveyor 3 covers postmarked at Kennedy Space Center also received an official NASA cachet. So to not be caught off guard by this again he speculates that Joe sent in a couple of covers to KSC for every NASA launch in hopes to receive a cover with a KSC/NASA cachet. Of course none did.
It is also possible that Joe or a friend simply obtained this cover with no cachet. I did notice that it uses a different stamp than the regular SCC Surveyor 6 issue and the stamp is lowered so to show the pictorial part of the KSC cancel. Covers such as this may have simply been thrown in at the end of the print run for that particular launch to receive a cachet.
Either of these explanations is plausible for how this Surveyor 6 cover came to be. It may be unique in the world of Space Craft Covers.
I have an extremely extensive collection of Space Craft Covers collected over the past 50 years or so. To find a cover I did not have and to be able to add it to my collection was absolutely fantastic! Just goes to show that you need to keep looking as you never know what might be out there.
posted 05-29-2020 04:13 PM
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